Posted
on September 17, 2013
Today
we can celebrate a woman breaking laws, stealing, and running away
from her crimes.
Well—running
away WAS her crime!
In
the early United States, it was perfectly legal to own other people.
You could buy and sell other people, and you could pretty much do
what you wanted to do with “your own” people.
What
was against the law was for those people to run away. Not only was it
illegal for a slave to run away, it was illegal for anyone to help a
slave run away. And, in a sense, the runaway was depriving his or her
“master” of property that had been paid for.
Of
course slavery was horribly wrong, and so in this case, breaking the
laws was a good thing, and following the laws was an immoral thing. I
wonder if you think that any laws we have today are bad laws that
should be broken?
At
any rate, on this date in 1849, a woman named Harriet Tubman
successfully escaped slavery. She made it to Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, where slavery was illegal and she was free.
 |
| Why do you think that Tubman's nickname was "Moses"? |
But
Tubman didn't sit around up north just enjoying her freedom. Instead,
she continued her “crime spree” by returning to her home state of
Maryland to break out her family. One group at a time, returning over
and over again into dangerous territory, Tubman helped dozens of
enslaved people find their way to freedom.
Soon,
another bad law was created: the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 required
law officials in free states to help recapture escaped slaves. So
Pennsylvania and other free states were no longer safe. Tubman didn't
buckle—she just started traveling further with the groups she
led—all the way north to Canada.
When
the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army. She served as
a cook, a nurse, an armed scout, and even a spy! She was the first
woman to lead an armed expedition during the war—and this raid was
very successful, freeing more than 700 slaves!
To
learn more about the Underground Railroad, which was a system of safe
houses for escaping slaves, check out the Scholastic website.
To
learn more about Tubman, check out this earlier post.
Also
on this date:
Check
out my Pinterest pages on September
holidays, September
birthdays,
and historical
anniversaries in September.
And
here are my Pinterest pages on October
holidays, October
birthdays,
and historical
anniversaries in October.
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