How did Harriet Tubman aid the cause of fugitives from slavery in the 1840s and 1850s quizlet?

He was born in 1800 in Rensselaer county as a slave, and freed at eighteen. Over his life he worked as a grocer, and steamboat steward, but started his journalistic enterprise in 1842. His wife, Harriet worked with him on the paper. He was a leading spokesperson for anti-slavery activity and rights for African Americans. His newspaper was called the Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate. In its pages he writes about temperance, rights of African Americans, the need to abolish slavery and many other things.

Later in his life he had other publishing ventures including the Pioneer, and Telegraph and Temperance Journal.

The picture of Stephen Meyers accompanying this text is taken from The Afro-American Press and Its Editors by Garland Penn. Copies of Stephen Myer’s newspaper are available at the NYS Library Archives. Important information may also be found regarding him in the notes provided to one of the articles authored by him included in The Black Abolitionist Papers, volume 3, edited by C. Peter Ripley, University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

Albany Evening Times – Monday evening February 14, 1870 — Obituary (1800-February 13, 1870)

Stephen Myers

This, the oldest and most celebrated of our colored citizens, died yesterday morning in the eightieth [sic] year of his age. Mr. Myers has passed an eventful life, having witnessed the greater portion of the most important epochs in the history of our country. For many…to the households of many of our Governors and other leading and distinguished citizens. He was also steward, for some years, in the earlier part of the century, on some of the North River steamboats, a most important position in those days. Until a few years since, he could always be found about the Capital during the Legislative session, and from his kind and pleasant manner made many warm friends. He was a prominent man among his race, being an agent for the “Underground Railroad” before the war, and did more for his people than any other colored man living, not excepting Fred. Dougalss. In days gone by, he was THE representative of them to the politicians of this State. With Wendell Phillips and Garett Smith, he was one of the leading anti-slavery lights in this State in days when, to be known as such was to incur the displeasure of a large number of people.

During the past few years, Mr. Myers, at one time, held the position of steward at the Delavan House; he was also for a few seasons, steward of the Fort William Henry Hotel, at Lake George. For some time before his death, Mr. Myers held the position of Janitor to Gen. Jones, postmaster in the City of New York. Mr. Myers was a firm christian and died in the faith in which he lived. He will be buried from the A. M. E. Church on Hamilton street Wednesday afternoon.

She is a revered American hero — but there’s more to Harriet Tubman’s story than what we learn in school.

Harriet Tubman was one of the most courageous and determined freedom fighters in U.S. history. She rose from a childhood of brutal abuse by slaveholders to emancipate herself, and she risked her life repeatedly to liberate others.

Next month and throughout the year, a variety of partners will recognize and host events in honor of Tubman’s 200th birthday, including a variety of speakers, tours and performances in Dorchester County, Maryland, where she was born.

Magazine Article

Remember Aunt Harriet

She taught them courage and endurance. Now, Harriet Tubman’s descendants can pay their respects at a park honoring the great liberator.

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Tubman is best known as a conductor for the Underground Railroad, and her legacy is awe-inspiring. She liberated about 70 people on more than a dozen dangerous missions to slave-holding states in the decade prior to the Civil War, and she assisted many others with her knowledge of safe spaces and escape routes. “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger,” she later said of her experience.

Her bravery and activism did not end there, however. She was active in the abolitionist movement and served the Union Army in various capacities during the Civil War. After the war, she fought for women’s suffrage, raised money to build schools for newly freed people (known as freedmen’s schools) during the Reconstruction Era, and donated her home for the care of the ill and elderly. She lived a life committed to freedom and dignity for all people.

Here are five facts about Harriet Tubman’s extraordinary life.

1. The person we know as “Harriet Tubman” endured decades in bondage before becoming Harriet Tubman. Tubman was born under the name Araminta Ross in 1822; her mother nicknamed her Minty. She lived on a plantation in rural Maryland, was hired out to work several grueling jobs, and was subjected to cruel treatment as a child and young adult. It wasn’t until her owners threatened to sell her in 1849 — as they had sold two of her sisters — that she decided to take matters into her own hands and escape. Before leaving, she adopted her mother’s first name and her husband’s last name — although her husband, a free Black man named John Tubman, refused to join her. She eventually traveled 90 miles on the Underground Railroad to Pennsylvania, a free state, under her new identity.

2. Tubman helped John Brown plan his 1859 raid of a Harpers Ferry arsenal, one of the major events that led to the Civil War. Tubman first escaped to Philadelphia, then relocated to Ontario after the Fugitive Slave Act became U.S. law in 1850. (The act threatened imprisonment for anyone caught assisting a fugitive and meant she was at greater risk of capture if she stayed in the U.S.) It was in Canada that she first met John Brown, an abolitionist who believed that if he armed enslaved people with weapons, it would lead to widespread revolts and an end to slavery. Tubman helped him plan his raid on a federal arsenal by recruiting supporters and sharing her contacts and information on escape routes in the region. Brown valued her knowledge and referred to her as “General Tubman.” He eventually formed a small army and took the arsenal at Harpers Ferry but was soon captured by Marines and sentenced to death. Many of the men who joined his raid were killed, including two of his sons. The act of resistance sharpened tensions between the North and South and served as a major catalyst for the Civil War. Tubman later said of Brown, “He done more in dying than 100 men would in living.”

3. Tubman helped to coordinate a military assault during the Civil War that freed more than 700 people from slavery. When the Civil War finally began, Tubman did not stand on the sidelines. She first served as a cook and nurse, then as a scout and a spy for Union soldiers in South Carolina. In June 1863, under the leadership of Col. James Montgomery, she served as a key adviser for an operation in Combahee Ferry, South Carolina, in which a regiment of soldiers, whom she led, set fire to a large plantation, forced Confederate soldiers to retreat, and used gunboats to rescue hundreds of enslaved people.

4. Tubman underwent brain surgery in 1898 and chose not to receive anesthesia during the procedure. When Tubman was a child, an overseer hit her in the head with a heavy weight after she refused to restrain a field hand who had left his plantation without permission. She suffered severe trauma from the event and experienced headaches and seizures for the rest of her life. By the late 1890s, the pain in her head had affected her ability to sleep, and she found a doctor in Boston willing to operate on her brain. Instead of receiving anesthesia while the doctor cut open her skull and performed the surgery, she chose to bite on a bullet — something she had seen soldiers do during the Civil War when they suffered pain on the battlefield. It is unclear whether the surgery improved her condition.

5. Very few women have national park sites dedicated to them. Harriet Tubman has two. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Dorchester County, Maryland, interprets Tubman’s early life and features a visitor center with thorough and informative exhibits, the site of the plantation where Tubman was enslaved as a girl, and the general store where she suffered her traumatic head injury. The Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, New York, tells the story of her later life and includes the house she owned and eventually donated to become a home for the ill and the elderly, as well as the Thompson Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which she raised money to build. Visitors can also see Tubman’s grave at a nearby cemetery that is unaffiliated with the historical park.

This is an updated version of a previously published story.