Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)

Harriet Tubman’s name is known world-wide and her exploits as a self-liberated Underground Railroad heroine are celebrated in children’s literature, film, and history books, yet no major biography of Tubman has appeared since 1943. Jean M. Humez’s comprehensive Harriet Tubman is both an important biographical overview based on extensive new research and a complete collection of the stories Tubman told about her life—a virtual autobiography culled by Humez from rare early publications and manuscript sources. This book will become a landmark resource for scholars, historians, and general readers interested in slavery, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, and African American women. Born in slavery in Maryland in or around 1820, Tubman drew upon deep spiritual resources and covert antislavery networks when she escaped to the north in 1849. Vowing to liberate her entire family, she made repeated trips south during the 1850s and successfully guided dozens of fugitives to freedom. During the Civil War she was recruited to act as spy and scout with the Union Army. After the war she settled in Auburn, New York, where she worked to support an extended family and in her later years founded a home for the indigent aged. Celebrated by her primarily white antislavery associates in a variety of private and public documents from the 1850s through the 1870s, she was rediscovered as a race heroine by woman suffragists and the African American women’s club movement in the early twentieth century. Her story was used as a key symbolic resource in education, institutional fundraising, and debates about the meaning of "race" throughout the twentieth century. Humez includes an extended discussion of Tubman’s work as a public performer of her own life history during the nearly sixty years she lived in the north. Drawing upon historiographical and literary discussion of the complex hybrid authorship of slave narrative literature, Humez analyzes the interactive dynamic between Tubman and her interviewers. Humez illustrates how Tubman, though unable to write, made major unrecognized contributions to the shaping of her own heroic myth by early biographers like Sarah Bradford. Selections of key documents illustrate how Tubman appeared to her contemporaries, and a comprehensive list of primary sources represents an important resource for scholars. Chronicles The Life Of Harriet Tubman Based On The Text Of Stories She Told About Her Life, Discussing Her Childhood In Slavery, Her Religious Beliefs, Her Escape To The North, Her Role In The Underground Railroad, And Other Related Topics. The Life. The Slavery Years -- Underground Railroad Years -- The War Years -- Postwar Years In Auburn -- The Later Years -- Coping With Poverty -- The Life Stories. Harriet Tubman's Practices As A Life-storyteller -- Reading The Core Stories For Harriet Tubman's Own Perspective -- Stories And Sayings -- Documents. Appendix A: A Note On Harriet Tubman's Kin -- Appendix B: A Note On The Numbers. Jean M. Humez. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 409-441) And Index. Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction 16 Part 1: The Life 22 The Slavery Years 24 The Underground Railroad Years 32 The War Years 58 The Postwar Years in Auburn 82 The Later Years 104 Coping with Poverty 122 Part 2: The Life Stories 144 Harriet Tubman’s Practices as a Life-Storyteller 146 Reading the Core Stories for Harriet Tubman’s Own Perspective 186 Part 3: Stories and Sayings 208 Part 4: Documents 290 Appendix A: A Note on Harriet Tubman’s Kin 356 Appendix B: A Note on the Numbers 362 Notes 366 Bibliography 422 Index 456 Harriet Tubman's name and exploits as a self-liberated Underground Railroad heroine are known worldwide, but Jean M. Humez brings together fresh research and complete texts of the stories Tubman told about herself to create an in-depth biography of this remarkable life.