Besides being the Underground Railroad's fearless leader, Harriet Tubman served as a spy for the Union army. She was recruited to provide medical care and teach life skills to self-emancipated Black people.
She recruited and trained those she’d healed to be Union scouts. These spies collected crucial intelligence leading to the 1863 Combahee River Raid.
Knowing how to walk silently through the woods and read the river, Tubman guided a regiment of formerly enslaved Black soldiers up the Combahee River.
Along the way they raided numerous plantations, destroying millions of dollars of Confederate property, freeing over 750 enslaved persons, and opening up the river so Union ships could pass along the waterway.
Harriet Tubman was responsible for much of the Union’s victory, yet her contributions have often been overlooked. Much of this is because of the times she lived in, and her status as a Black woman.
But whitewashed historians likely refused to acknowledge Tubman as a war hero because doing so would shatter the myth that “good white Northerners ended Southern racism.”
Tubman reminds us that the only war we should be fighting is the war against racism. It’s a war we’re going to win as long as we continue to support and love each other, just like Tubman did.