Posted on 04/22/2016 8:37:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Harriet Tubman is a good choice to replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill. Jackson, the first Democratic president, is exactly the sort of overheated, pompous populist that has tended to screw up the American political system. His demotion to the back of the bill is long overdue.
But before we act to raise Tubman’s stature to the point that she is memorialized on commonly used currency, it behooves Americans to understand her role in our common history. It’s a lot more interesting than the description of her as an “Underground Railroad conductor” that appears in my son’s elementary-school materials and many popular accounts of her life.
In fact, Harriett Tubman was a gun-toting, Jesus-loving spy who blazed the way for women to play a significant role in military and political affairs.
Indeed, her work on the Underground Railroad was mostly a prelude to her real achievements. Born into slavery as Araminta Ross, Tubman knew the slave system’s inhumanity firsthand: She experienced the savage beatings and family destruction that were par for the course. She eventually escaped and, like most who fled, freed herself largely by her own wits.
She later went back south — always carrying a gun she wasn’t afraid to use — to help guide her own family and many others out of the plantations. The courage and will that this took is difficult to fathom. But she’s really a secondary figure in the history of the Underground Railroad. Historians estimate that she led 300 or so people to freedom, while figures like William Sill and Levi Coffin helped bring freedom to thousands.
This isn’t to say that Tubman is a minor figure. To the contrary, what she did during the Civil War secures her an important place in history. The Union, fighting a war mostly on southern soil, desperately needed good intelligence. Tubman’s exploits on the Underground Railroad, quick wits, mastery of stealth, knowledge of local geography, and personal bravery made her a near-perfect scout and spy. She could often “hide” in plain sight, since white-supremacist southerners probably were not inclined to consider a small African-American woman a threat.
Her quasi-memoir Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (told to Sarah Bradford and written in the third person) explains how things worked. While African Americans were suspicious — often rightly — of Union soldiers, they were willing to trust Tubman. “To Harriet they would tell anything,” Bradford writes. “It became quite important that she should accompany expeditions going up the rivers, or into unexplored parts of the country, to control and get information from those whom they took with them as guides.”
Tubman was one of the most valuable field-intelligence assets the Union Army had. She had hundreds of intelligence contacts and could establish new ones — particularly among African Americans — when nobody else could.
During one of her scouting missions along the Combahee River, she became the first woman and one of the first African Americans to command a significant number of U.S. troops in combat. The raid she organized and helped to command freed far more enslaved people than her decades of work on the Underground Railroad. She also was a strong advocate of allowing African Americans into the Union Army. She knew Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded the almost entirely African-American 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry regiment — the unit at the center of the 1989 film Glory. A (probably apocryphal) legend even has it that she cooked his last meal before the heroic assault in which he and much of his regiment perished.
In her “retirement” — she never really stopped working until she became ill at the very end of her life — Tubman remained a political presence. A friend of Secretary of State William H. Seward, she settled in his hometown of Auburn, N.Y., on land he sold her. There, she helped to build both a church (she was devoutly religious) and a privately run retirement home. She also fought for women’s suffrage, supported Republican politicians, and advocated for fair treatment of black Civil War veterans, which they rarely received.
In short, Harriet Tubman was a black, Republican, gun-toting, veterans’ activist, with ninja-like spy skills and strong Christian beliefs. She probably wouldn’t have an ounce of patience for the obtuse posturing of some of the tenured radicals hanging around Ivy League faculty lounges. But does she deserve a place on our money? Hell yeah.
— Eli Lehrer is the president and co-founder of the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank.
pretty soon there is going to be antoehr underground railroad, for Christians- trying to escape the persecution of the homosexual nazis who are taking over-
Hamilton was the leader of the Federalist Party.
Yep you are sooo correct
Barry won’t spend 10 days a year at his mansion in Hawaii...he will be on the “wallet enrichment tour” just like Billy Blythe did after his terms. Oldest daughter will be in college, younger one will continue to be raised by Grandma and Moochy will be on her own get rich quick tour - she and Barry will occasionally be seen in public together to keep the appearance of a marriage going.
What is never mentioned is that ALL the currency machines in this country and elsewhere that accept U.S. $20 bills are going to have to be reformatted in order to accept this new bill.
Poor Moochy’s ancestors. They made them sit in the back of the Underground Railroad.
I did my thesis on the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which was the sister regiment to the 54th Massachusetts, featured in the movie "Glory." During my research, I came across some excerpts from the Civil War diary of George Thompson Garrison, who was a lst Lieutenant in the 55th, and also the son of the abolitionist/journalist, William Lloyd Garrison. Harriet Tubman worked very closely with Colonel James Montgomery of the 2nd South Carolina, also known as the 34th U.S.C.T. She served as guide on several of the raids and expeditions on Confederate sites along the coast of South Carolina. In early February 1864, she was seen by Lt. Garrison on Folly Island, S.C. This island is connected to James Island, and isn't that far from Charleston. James Island was held by the Confederates. Folly Island was the site of Union camps, and where the 54th and 55th units were stationed for most of the war.
The Garrison diary excerpt pertaining to Tubman was found in the Wilder Collection of Cornell University. It reads as follows:
"She took me greatly by surprise when I entered by giving me a hearty embrace, flinging both her arms about me. Till this morning, I was not aware she was upon the island. She says she has been here three months."
William H. Seward is also buried in Fort Hill, as are several other noted people:
Fort Hill Cemetery Notable Burials
One of the families I met were descendants of the Osborne family who still live in the area. During my research, I met and became friends with the great niece of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (54th Mass). May Minturn Osborne's great grandmother was Shaw's sister, Susannah Shaw, who had married Robert Bowne Minturn. The Osbornes are also related to Thomas Mott Osborne, who was prison reformer, and Mayor of Auburn. The Mott connection is through Lucretia Mott. May Osborne unfortunately passed away several years ago.
She is buried in my birthplace town,and where most of ny family still lives. This community set the tone for the decency and fairness that should be everywhere. God bless her memory,she was a great role model.
I really enjoyed living in Auburn for the time I was there. I was born and raised in Rochester, NY, then moved to the Utica/Rome area, but moved to Auburn with my two sons when I started working at the prison as a Correctional Officer in September 1980. I transferred from Auburn in December of 1983 to a prison in the Utica/Rome area. Loved eating at The Sunset restaurant. When I head back to the Rochester area to visit family, I try to stop at The Sunset for take-out on the way home.
In its very earliest days, yes, along with John Adams and John Jay. So to be exactly precise you’re correct. But the Federalists were more a faction that believed in a stronger central national government and the last time they occupied the still-under-construction-and-not-yet-white White House was in 1801. But the dividing lines were fluid. For example, Madison was one author of the Federalist Papers, but also a founder with Jefferson of the Democratic Republican Party (ancestors of today’s Democrats).
Oh my Lord,that guy was lucky to walk out in one piece. About the prison,When I was a kid we used to always look at copper John on top of the prison,and be excited. I have a younger brother and sister that live a few blocks from the prison. It was a great area to grow up in,but it has lost a lot of businesses not unlike most of central ny. The democrat leadership in NY state does not care a whit about central or western ny. I will pass that video on,and it will be all over Facebook by tonight.
I read the article - I don’t understand your flag waving point?
Nope. Not in my wallet.
As I said before, she was an amazing lady. She’d have no use for the likes of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.
It’s too bad they don’t tell the truth in school.
Actually that’s an understatement, it’s a travesty.
“..it’s a travesty.”
It IS!
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