PASSION BEARER HARRIET TUBMAN (+ MARCH 10, 1913)

"The whistling wind of the cold December night carried the song across the Maryland countryside. The slave holders heard it, and dismissed it, thinking no doubt that it was just another Jesus-crazy old slave troubled by vague and incommunicative longings on the night before Christmas Eve. The slaves heard the song, probably with mixed emotions. Some, awakened unexpectedly in the night, undoubtedly expressed irritation and urged the singer to shut up. Others, one can imagine, awakened with a start and then lay in the close darkness, transfixed by the unfathomable mysteries communicated by the woman singing the song.

Who was she? How came she to the depths and the heights the song said she knew? Of all those who heard the song, of all those who blessed and cursed the singer, only a handful knew that the song was a code, saying that the woman known as 'the Woman,' the woman known as 'the General,' the woman known as Moses, was in the Cambridge, Maryland, area, and doing business at the same old stands."

This woman, Harriet Tubman, was born into slavery around 1820 in Maryland. As a child she was not educated and grew up, as she would say, "like a neglected weed." At the age of fifteen or sixteen, while defending another slave she was struck on the head so hard that it left a dent in her skull; afterwards, she was subject to sleep seizures which could overtake her at any time.

Although married, she ran away at the age of twenty to avoid being sold. She could not enjoy the freedom she had so long desired, however, because of the thought of family she had left behind. She considered slavery the next thing to hell, and from that point on she dedicated herself to rescuing slaves, risking her life over and over. It is said that she led more than three hundred to freedom, protecting and encouraging them by her courage and faith.

To pay for the raids, she hired herself out as a servant. Those who knew of her either wanted her dead, or considered her a fearless heroine. The songs she made up and the spirituals she sang were hymns of deliverance for those imprisoned in the darkness of those times. When they would finally cross the line between slave state and free, she would break into song: "Glory to God and Jesus too, one more soul is safe...."

During the Civil War, she served as a spy, a scout, and a nurse, and after the war she made her house into a home for elderly and indigent blacks. She lived out her life and spent her meager pension on helping those in need, dying on March 10, 1913.

The story of how Harriet assisted the fugitive slave Charles Nalle reveals her righteous suffering for Christ and her neighbor:

Charles Nalle, a runaway slave, had been caught and was being taken to the United States Commissioner's office. At the news of his arrest, an angry crowd gathered in the streets, among whom was Harriet Tubman, quietly watching. When Nalle was brought out of the office into the street, Harriet was the first to run to him. She locked arms with his manacled arms and held on tightly, never letting go for the half-hours walk to the judge's office. In the melee, she was repeatedly beaten over the head with policemen's clubs, but she cheered Nalle and his friends with her voice, and struggled with the officers until they were worn out, and Nalle was separated from them.

This is but one example of how she exposed herself fearlessly to the fury of the sympathizers of slavery, and suffered their blows without flinching. True, she had strong and earnest helpers in her struggle, some of whom had white faces as well as human hearts, and are now in Heaven.

Harriet crossed over the crowd, in the ferry-boat, and when the men who led the assault upon the door of the judge's office were stricken down, "Harriet and a number of other colored women rushed over the bodies, brought Nalle out, and putting him in the first wagon passing, started him for the West.

A lively team, driven by a colored man, was immediately sent on to relieve the other, and Nalle was seen about Troy no more until he returned a free man by purchase from his master. Harriet also disappeared, and the crowd dispersed. How she came to be in Troy that day is entirely unknown to our citizens; and where she hid herself after the rescue is equally a mystery, but her struggle was in the sight of a thousand, perhaps of five thousand spectators."