Tag: abolition of slavery

Part 2 – Harriet Tubman & the Daring Raid up the Combahee River, South Carolina, USA

 On June 2, 1863, Harriet Tubman and Colonel James Montgomery led Union Forces in what can only be described as a daring raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina, USA. It was so successful it destroyed the local Confederate infrastructure (another word) and resulted in the liberation of 756 slaves.

Details of the military raid
Harriet is known to have scouted the area and received widespread credit for planning the raid and her accompaniment of Montgomery was widely seen as a joint leadership of the raid.
This raid that enabled slaves to free themselves is what earned Harriett Tubman the honourable title as the first woman in U.S. history to plan and lead a military raid.

The night before, the pair had set off from Beaufort in three U.S. Navy gunboats. Montgomery led a detachment of soldiers from the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, an all-black infantry regiment. A company from the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery was entrusted with manning the ships’ guns.

The two Union gunboats reached the Combahee on the morning of June 2, 1863 went up the river, disembarking troops as they went.
The Commonwealth, a Boston newspaper, reported on July 10 that what caused the expedition’s successes included “destroying millions of dollars worth of commissary stores, cotton, and lordly dwellings, and striking terror into the heart of rebeldom,” all “without losing a man or receiving a scratch.”

One of the goals of the raid was also for the intention of removing mines (“torpedoes”) placed by Confederate forces along the river, and it is to Tubman’s intelligence efforts, that this was accomplished.

The easy process of liberating the “contraband”
The final objective of the raid, to liberate slaves, which the union forces tended to refer to as
“contraband.” Proved easy for Tubman and Montgomery.

This is because as word spread of the operation along the river, slaves began to leave their work in the fields and rush to the riverbanks to board the gunboats faster than they could be stopped by overseers and soldiers trying to stop them.

Harriet described the scene as follows:
“I nebber see such a sight … we laughed, an’ laughed, an’ laughed. Here you’d see a woman wid a pail on her head, rice a smokin’ in it jus as she’d taken it from de fire, young one hangin’ on behind, one han’ roun’ her forehead to hold on, ‘tother han’ diggin’ into de rice-pot, eatin’ wid all its might; hold of her dress two or three more; down her back a bag wid a pig in it. One woman brought two pigs, a white one, an’ a black one; we took ’em all on board; named de white pig Beauregard, an’ de black pig Jeff Davis. Sometimes de women would come wid twins hangin’ roun’ der necks; ‘pears like I nebber see so many twins in my life; bags on der shoulders, baskets on der heads, and young ones taggin’ behin’, all loaded; pigs squealin’, chickens screamin’, young ones squallin’.1”

In addition, Harriet Tubman reported that the raid liberated 756 enslaved blacks and that almost all of the able-bodied male slaves immediately joined the Union’s colored regiments.

James DeWolf Perry writes “The broader significance of the Combahee River Raid, I think, is that it shattered two persistent myths which had long impeded the arrival of emancipation for black Americans. First, the raid demonstrated very publicly that black troops were not merely fit as laborers or cannon fodder, but were every bit as capable as their white brethren at executing complex military operations under the most challenging circumstances. Second, the raid’s success in liberating hundreds of blacks (or, in allowing them to liberate themselves) electrified the northern and southern publics and defied the Confederacy’s insistence on the quiet loyalty of its enslaved population. The raid showed convincingly that enslaved blacks were, in fact, eager for freedom and willing to rise up on a moment’s notice, if given the opportunity, and to then join Union forces in droves and fight back.

Together, these two powerful truths helped to show the necessity and rightness of emancipation, at a time when the northern public, in particular, was only beginning to wrestle with that very issue.”

Sources:
Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid by James DeWolf Perry
Harriet Tubman, quoted in Sarah H. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, N.Y.: W. J. Moses, 1869), pp. 40-41.
www.tracingcenter.org

This is part of a series: American Civil War, Underground Railroad & Abolition Movement
SECTION 3.0 Abolitionists
3.1 Harriet Tubman Parts 1 & 2

Summary: American Civil War & Emancipation Proclamation Background to The Abolitionist Movement

Abolition of Slavery in the USA on 31st January 1865. A bitterly divided U.S. Congress on 31st January 1865, arrived at the narrow decision at the end of the Civil War, to abolish slavery throughout the United States.

Many in the Union were opposed to Emancipation even towards the end of the civil war in January 1865.President Lincoln issued the Emancipation proclamation.

The abolitionist movement had been relatively unpopular in the North until during the years leading up to the civil war. The Northeastern economy was dependent on southern slavery indirectly because their industry, shopping and finance depended heavily on the cotton trade for their success. Midwestern farmers profited greatly from transporting food to slave plantations in the south.

At the height of the war, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation proclamation, and in doing so he was releasing a message that Emancipation should be an outcome of the civil war, but the union controlled congress did not act. This was because Emancipation was unpopular among the Northern public and the union soldiers had gone to war for the purpose of preserving the union.

Few had abolitionist sentiments and not ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of blacks resident in the Southern states. The emancipation Proclamation caused a political backlash across the union.

CHANGE OF MINDSETS AND ATTITUDES IN THE NORTH OVER TIME RESULTED IN ACCEPTANCE OF EMANCIPATION FOR BLACK PEOPLE

Over a number of years and following four years of war, the Union soldiers lead the way in changing attitudes concerning emancipation. Union troops saw first-hand the courage and determination of slaves to live free lives and of black union troops to risk everything to live in freedom.

The Northern public had also changed having heard for many years from soldiers and journalists about the horrors and reality of southern slavery as well as the determination of those who strived to be free from slavery. The war had therefore provided ample opportunity for North to overcome prejudice and ignorance about black Americans and for them to gain understanding and appreciation; The north heard about the underground railway of blacks working to transport and therefore free slaves From the South.

Hearing about Harriet Tubman’s liberation pursuits and that of other all Black regiments excited the northern public to no end. Despite all this, it was still a struggle to win emancipation as nearly two years after Lincoln’s first emancipation Proclamation on June 15, 1864, the northern public’s elected officials in the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in a vote. Thus they repudiated the notion that the South’s slaves should be free as a consequence of the war. President Lincoln and his black and white abolitionist allies persisted and continued campaigning for their emancipation cause. They were able to win votes by offering incentives in relation to other issues.

When the House of representatives voted about the 13th Amendment again, the case for emancipation won the vote narrowly only by 2 votes.

“The rest is history: President Lincoln signed the measure the very next day, and by year’s end, the necessary three-fourths of the states had ratified the amendment, bringing it into force and ending slavery by law throughout the United States.The text of the Thirteenth Amendment reads as follows:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.The practical effect of this amendment was immense. The Emancipation Proclamation had created a patchwork of territories in which emancipation existed, at least in practice, under Union military control, and most northern states had ended slavery by law, at least by the end of the Civil War. But the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment extended emancipation by law, for the first time, through the nation, coast to coast, north to south, and did in practice ensure freedom for millions of Americans and their descendants.” Quote from tracingcentre.org Source Tracing Centre

Source: tracingcentre.org

Part 1 – Harriet Tubman, Former American Slave, Abolitionist and Political Activist

Part of a Series: Underground Railroad & Abolition Movement

SECTION 3.0 Abolitionists
3.1 Parts 1 & 2
Harriet Tubman, Former American Slave, Abolitionist and Political Activist
Recorded as the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war by guiding the raid at Combahee River (see Part 2).

PART 1
Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Rose in March 1822 (deceased 10th March 1913). Born into slavery in Dorchester County Maryland. Harriet was beaten and whipped by her various slave masters as a child. An injury during her life was slavery proved to be a turning point in Harriet’s life; She had a head wound when an enraged salve owner threw a heavy metal weight intended for another slave, but hit her instead. This head wound caused pain, dizziness and spells of hyper-somnia throughout her life. After this  injury, Harriet began to experience vivid dreams and visions which she ascribed to God. Harriet who had a Methodist upbringing, became devoutly religious as a result of these experiences.

She became an American abolitionist and political activist.In 1849, Harriet escaped from slavery to Philadelphia but returned soon after to Maryland to rescue her relatives  a number of times, taking them in small groups at a time. On her third trip, Harriett attempted to  rescue her husband, but he had remarried and refused to leave. This upset her, but what she reported to be a vision from God, Harriet joined the Underground Railroad and began guiding other escaped slaves to Maryland. She regularly took groups of slaves to Canada, distrusting the United States to treat them well

Harriet is recorded to have made in total 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 slaves who included her family and friends. Her rescues were through the network of antislavery activists and safe houses called the Underground Railroad.

Harriett was nicknamed Moses and it is said that she traveled by night and in extreme secrecy never losing a passenger. Following the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Harriet aided fugitives to travel further north into British North America (Canada) and helped newly freed slaves find work. In 1858, Harriett met John Brown and helped him raid Harpers Ferry in 1859.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, Harriet worked for the Union Army. She was initially a cook and nurse and later became an armed scout and spy. Harriett served as a guide in the raid at Combahee Ferry (1-2 June 1863) and because of this Harriett is known as the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war.During this raid, more than 700 slaves were freed.

Harriet was an activist in the struggle for women’s suffrage (the legal right for women to vote) later on in her life until she became ill and was admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she partook in establishing some years earlier. After her death in 1913, she has been remembered as an icon of courage and freedom.

Source:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/underground-railroad

Check out the following posts:
1.0 Summary: American Civil War & Emancipation Proclamation background to the Abolitionist Movement, USA
2.0 Underground Railroad
Next post in the series Part 2: Harriet Tubman