00:00:00.000welcome back to bitchy history yes we have a new intro again let me know what you think of it i
00:00:28.760I take constructive criticism, no matter what my commenters on TikTok might claim to the contrary.
00:00:33.640This is the 33rd episode of this show. Can you believe that?
00:00:36.600I mean, it would be more, but teaching takes a lot of time when you actually give a shit about your students and the education they get from you.
00:02:51.680Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, who would have a very close relationship with Harriet Tubman in the following years,
00:02:58.000sarcastically summed up the issue this way,
00:03:00.260We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.
00:03:09.120But Harriet, like so many of the enslaved, didn't wait for the war.
00:03:13.200She escaped to freedom 13 years before the Emancipation Proclamation would tie the issue of slavery directly to the Union's cause for fighting.
00:03:21.100But Harriet wasn't satisfied with simply escaping slavery and starting her new life in Philadelphia.
00:03:26.640For the next several years, she would risk her life and freedom going back to Maryland at least 13 times to help guide other slaves,
00:03:33.440many of them her own friends and family, to freedom as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.
00:03:38.380All in all, she rescued around 70 people on those trips,
00:03:41.940though later numbers by her biographer, Sarah Bradford, would inflate those numbers to 19 trips and over 300 people.
00:03:48.620Of her work, it is said that Tubman had this to say
00:03:51.840I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years
00:03:55.200And I can say what most conductors can't say
00:04:19.500The last time I ever saw John Brown was under my own roof, as he brought Harriet Tubman to me, saying,
00:04:24.900Mr. Phillips, I bring you one of the best and bravest persons on this continent, General Tubman, as we call her.
00:04:31.260In 1859, Tubman would play a key role in helping Brown plan his famous, but ill-fated, raid on Harper's Ferry.
00:04:37.820She used her geographical knowledge of the Mid-Atlantic region and helped raise funds in Boston for the raid.
00:04:43.780Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry was a failure, but ultimately an important moment in building tensions between the North and South.
00:04:50.080Tubman said, after Brown's death, that he had done more in dying than a hundred men would in living.
00:04:55.920A count of 70 freed souls and her aid on the Harper's Ferry raid would be more than enough to give her general credentials in my book.
00:05:02.460But when the Civil War begins in 1860, her work on the Underground Railroad shifted into something that gave Brown's nickname for her even more literal a meaning.
00:05:11.500Her involvement with the Civil War started out in the more traditional role that women tended to play in military camps, as a nurse and a cook.
00:05:19.040In early 1862, Tubman traveled to South Carolina to provide badly needed nursing care for African American soldiers and civilians.
00:05:26.620However, soon she also began serving as a spy and a scout behind Confederate lines.
00:05:31.020She recruited escaped slaves to act as river pilots, spies, and scouts as well.
00:05:35.520This group of spies were able to undermine the Confederates, liberate many enslaved African Americans,
00:05:40.860and destroy goods and the property of plantation owners and the Confederate Army as well.
00:05:45.800Dressed as a field hand, she led scouting and spying missions to identify and map the locations of Confederate mines, supply areas, and troops.
00:05:54.220Tubman delivered the information all to Union Colonel James Montgomery,
00:05:58.060commander of the 2nd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, to support military operational planning.
00:06:03.480It was with Colonel Montgomery that one of the largest successes of Tubman's career came on June 1, 1863.
00:06:10.980This one mission destroyed millions of dollars of Confederate property, freed more than 700 slaves,
00:06:16.980and made Harriet Tubman the first woman to lead an armed military operation in the United States.
00:06:22.420This was the raid on the Combahee River Ferry.
00:06:25.260The Combahee River is a short river in the southern Lowcountry region of South Carolina.
00:06:30.180It bordered and supplied the water for some of the largest and most productive rice plantations in the state.
00:06:36.000Or it did until the Union soldiers torched them all with Harriet Tubman's help.
00:06:40.740Union Colonel James Montgomery was an abolitionist who really put his money where his mouth was on the topic.
00:06:46.380He was well known during the Civil War for liberating slaves during his raids,
00:06:49.880as well as burning and looting the goods and properties of the pro-slavery populations he encountered.
00:06:55.200Montgomery was authorized to raise a regiment of African-American infantry in January of 1863
00:07:00.420that would become the 2nd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment,
00:07:04.580which would accompany Tubman and himself on this raid.
00:07:07.800June 2nd, 1863, at around 3 o'clock in the morning,
00:07:11.500two ships, the Harriet A. Weed and the USS John Adams,
00:07:15.040arrived at the mouth of the Combahee River at Fields Point.
00:07:18.320Small detachments of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment were sent to drive off Confederate soldiers,
00:07:22.900while the other two ships continued upriver to Nichols Plantation, where the gunboat Harriet A. Weed anchored.
00:07:29.320Carrying the remainder of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry and Tubman, the USS John Adams went upriver to the Combahee Ferry.
00:07:36.820Here I will read from Sarah Bradford's biography of Harriet Tubman.
00:07:41.360The word was passed that these were Lincoln's gunboats come to set them free.
00:07:45.940In vain, then, the drivers used their whips in their efforts to hurry the poor creatures back to their quarters.
00:07:50.880they all turned and ran for the gunboats they came down every road across every field just as they
00:07:56.620had left their work and their cabins women with children clinging around their necks hanging to
00:08:01.400their dresses running behind all making at full speed for lincoln's gunboats i never see such a
00:08:07.520sight said harriet we laughed and laughed and laughed here you'd see a woman with a pail on
00:08:12.000her head rice smoking in it just as she'd taken it from the fire young one hanging on behind one
00:08:17.720around her forehead to hold on, another digging in the rice pot, eating while they ran. Hold of
00:08:23.000her dress, two or three more. Down her back, a bag with a pig in it. One woman brought two pigs,
00:08:28.260a white one and a black one. We took them all on board, naming the white pig Beauregard and the
00:08:33.100black pig Jeff Davis. And so they came pouring down to the gunboats. When they stood on the shore
00:08:38.280and the small boats put out to take them off, they only wanted to get in at once. After the boats
00:08:42.860were crowded, they would hold on to them so they would not leave the shore. The oarsmen would beat
00:08:47.300them on their hands, but they would not let go. They were afraid the gunboats would go off and
00:08:51.560leave them and all wanted to make sure of one of these arcs of refuge. At length, Colonel Montgomery
00:08:57.340shouted from the upper deck above the clamor of appealing tones, Moses, you'll have to give them
00:09:02.480a song. Then Harriet lifted up her voice and sang. The song Harriet sang, according to Bradford's
00:09:08.580biography, was a few bars of a popular Yankee song known as Uncle Sam's Farm, of which I am
00:09:14.140providing a recording, because I'm sure as hell not going to try to sing it.
00:09:44.140away. Oh, come to this country and have no fear of harm. Our Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us
00:09:53.080all a farm. Somewhere between 700 to 800 slaves were freed on this one raid. Numbers differed
00:10:00.720slightly depending upon the source. In addition, houses and barns and railroad bridges were burned,
00:10:06.260railroad tracks were torn up, torpedoes destroyed, and many of the freed African Americans would join
00:10:11.380the Union Army as well. Of the raid, newspapers had quite a lot to say. For instance, in the
00:10:17.120pro-Union Commonwealth newspaper, they said,
00:10:41.380receiving a scratch. It was a glorious consummation. The colonel was followed by a speech from the
00:10:46.300black woman who led the raid and under whose inspiration it originated and conducted. For
00:10:51.340sound sense and real native eloquence, her address would do honor to any man, and it created a great
00:10:56.580sensation. That's pretty good coverage. I mean, it would have been nice if they had named the woman
00:11:00.820in question, but still, for its day, pretty progressive. The pro-Confederacy Charleston
00:11:06.420Mercury had a slightly different take, spending most of their article recounting all of the
00:11:11.360goods burned or looted and naming all of the poor poor plantation owners who'd been wronged by the
00:11:16.560bad bad union. You can tell how sympathetic I feel to their terrible plight. The raid was enormously
00:11:23.100successful and the union would go on to adopt the tactics used for future operations. The Combahee
00:11:29.200Ferry raid proved the value of black troops in combat and demonstrated Harriet Tubman's
00:11:33.720intelligence and bravery. Reporting on the raid to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a union general
00:11:39.040said this this is the only military command in american history wherein a woman black or white
00:11:44.920led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted it's unfortunate that
00:11:50.540despite her many years of service and incalculably beneficial work for the union tubman would not be
00:11:56.300recognized for her military service ever during her lifetime many people worked to petition the
00:12:02.120government on her behalf including secretary of state william seward who bradford said exerted
00:12:07.620himself in every possible way to procure her a pension. Bradford sums up the situation far more
00:12:13.320eloquently than I could. It is a shame to our government that such a valuable helper as this
00:12:18.440woman was not allowed pay or pension, but even was obliged to support herself during those days
00:12:23.720of incessant toil. Officers and men were paid, indeed many enlisted from no patriotic motive,
00:12:29.740but because they were insured a support which they could not procure for themselves at home.
00:12:33.620But this woman sacrificed everything and left her nearest and dearest and risked her life hundreds of times for the cause of the Union without one cent of recompense.
00:12:43.560She returned at last to her little home to find a scene of desolation, her little place about to be sold to satisfy a mortgage, and herself without the means to redeem it.
00:12:52.980Bradford's biography of Tubman's life, published in 1869, would bring Tubman around $12,000 in funds,
00:12:59.280and many of her friends and supporters from the days of her abolition work would raise funds to
00:13:03.920support her as well. In 1874, Representatives Clinton McDougal of New York and Jerry Hazleton
00:13:10.020of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a $2,000 lump sum for services rendered by her to
00:13:16.720the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy, but it was defeated in Senate. The Dependent and Disability
00:13:22.920Pension Act of 1890 made Tubman eligible for a pension after her second husband, Nelson Davis,
00:13:28.620a Civil War veteran, died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1888. In 1895, Tubman was granted
00:13:36.220a monthly widow's pension of $8 a month. In December of 1897, New York Congressman Serena
00:13:42.360Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension of $25 a month.
00:13:47.640Congress received documents and letters to report Tubman's claim on her work as a soldier,
00:13:52.120but despite the vouching of people like Brigadier General Rufus Saxton and others,
00:13:56.340some members objected to a woman being paid a full soldier's pension, because of course they
00:14:01.840fucking did. One has to wonder how much any of them actually did during the war.
00:14:07.540One of the members of the committee who blocked Tubman's $25 pension was W. Jasper Talbert of
00:14:12.640South Carolina, so you can imagine his reasons for doing so. In February of 1899, Congress approved
00:14:19.940a compromise amount of $20 per month, which was actually $8 a month for the widow's pension and
00:14:25.660twelve dollars for her service as a nurse, but they refused to acknowledge her service as a scout
00:14:30.560and a spy, and let's face it, a military officer. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died
00:14:36.920of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in
00:14:44.280Auburn, New York, where she had lived with her family on land purchased from the Secretary of
00:14:48.820State Seward family in 1859. She never did what she did for the accolades, as far as I can tell,
00:14:55.660which is really why she deserved far better than what the country she fought for gave her.
00:15:01.000In 2023, the Army Surgeon General and Army Chaplain Corps hosted a ceremony in Washington to honor her.
00:15:07.520And earlier this year in Philadelphia, a statue of Tubman titled
00:15:10.900A Higher Power, The Call of a Freedom Fighter was approved by the Philadelphia Art Commission to be placed outside City Hall.
00:15:18.300Artist Alvin Petty said that it was inspired by this very raid on the Combahee Ferry
00:15:22.580and will be larger than life, standing 15 feet tall,
00:15:26.100a timely reminder of the struggles faced to truly make this country
00:15:29.500something approximating a land of the free.
00:15:32.160Because yes, Nikki Haley, there is systemic racism in America,