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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 322 Print image (45K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 322 Print image (45K) |
| consequences of being caught that they turned back. Harriet also returned to her master; however, the return was only temporary until another opportunity to escape presented itself. When she decided to escape, even if it meant escaping by herself, she was fully aware that she might never see her parents, siblings, friends, and even her "free-black husband, John Tubman, whom she had lived with for five years."23 Harriet worked in the fields and even in the lumber mill with her father. Even though she was small in statute, she was stronger than any man. 24 She had a tender heart and loved John Tubman, although he did not wait for her to return for very long, once she had escaped. Once she escaped, she utilized the knowledge and skills that she had acquired while working outside in the lumber mill, and planting and plowing the fields, and working in the woods, swamps and marshlands, and in the trapping of small animals for food and sustenance. She also had the benefit of the medicinal cures that had become second nature to her. 25 Even though she had been successful in escaping to the North, purportedly above slavery, she was still not completely free as long as her relatives and others she held dear were still in bondage. Another reason she could not feel secure was the recent passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, 26 which gave her as well as all fugitives, and free blacks, more than just a degree of apprehension. |