Category: Timeline Stories

– On March 18, Tubman marries Nelson Davis in Auburn. Also this year: – On February 26, Congress passes the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extends voting rights to Black men and is ratified a year later. – In May, the women’s suffrage movement splits over the 15th amendment because it excludes women’s right to vote.

– Tubman dictates her first biography, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, to white abolitionist ally Sarah H. Bradford (1818-1912) in efforts to raise funds after she is denied her veteran’s pension. Also this year: – On July 9, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, which grants African Americans citizenship and “equal protection under the law.”

Tubman’s husband, John Tubman, is killed by a white neighbor during a dispute back in Maryland.

In either 1866 or 1867, Tubman meets Civil War veteran Nelson Davis (ca.1844-1888), who is twenty-two years her junior and a boarder in her home.

– On January 31, Congress passes the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery. – Tubman arrives in Washington, D.C. to work with freed women and their children. In the spring, she is sent to Fortress Monroe as a matron of the hospital for Black soldiers. – On April 9, the Civil War comes to an end when Confederate General Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) surrenders. On April 15, President Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865). – In October, Tubman is violently ejected from a passenger train by a racist conductor on her way to Auburn.

In August, Tubman meets Sojourner Truth in Boston, the latter who is on a lecture campaign promoting President Lincoln’s reelection. The two women hold different views on Lincoln. Tubman blames him for the unequal pay Black soldiers received in the Union Army in comparison to their white counterparts. However, after Truth meets with the president and publishes a laudatory open letter describing Lincoln as respectful and gracious, Tubman is persuaded that she may have been wrong about him.

– On January 1, President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation that frees bondspeople in Confederate states. – On June 2, Tubman becomes the first woman in U.S. history to plan and execute a military raid on the Combahee River in South Carolina, subsequently freeing over 750 people from slavery. – On July 18, Tubman serves the last meal of white commanding officer Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863), who led the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment to fight bravely in a doomed raid on Fort Wagner, South Carolina.

In January, Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts, and an admirer of Tubman, sends her to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where her skills as an Underground Railroad conductor are put to great use for the duration of the Civil War, working as a spy and scout for the United States Army. She also serves as a nurse and sees action in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. Tubman will be inducted into the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame in 2021 in recognition of her work as a spy during the Civil War.

– The U.S. Civil War begins on April 12 when Confederate troops fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor. – Harriet Jacobs (1815-1897) publishes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl under the pen name Linda Brent, the first slave narrative to highlight from an enslaved woman’s perspective the sexual violence that framed the experiences of enslaved women and girls.

– On April 27, Tubman leads a public rescue of freedom seeker Charles Nalle (1821-1875), who is ushered out of jail and across the Hudson River by a mob of townsfolk in Troy, New York. – On November 6, Election Day, Abraham Lincoln becomes the 16th president of the United States, thus prompting Southern states to secede from the Union in anticipation of his opposition to slavery. – In December, Tubman conducts her final rescue mission from the Eastern Shore. Failing to rescue her sister Rachel, she liberates the Ennals family instead.