[2][3] After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends,[4] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known collectively as the Underground Railroad.

For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as the first woman to lead an armed military operation in the United States.

She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and was admitted to a home for elderly African Americans, which she had helped establish years earlier.

Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.

[7] Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement.

[12] They married around 1808, and according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

[16] When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community.

[28] As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee.

[53][58] Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land.

[75][b] Because the Fugitive Slave Law had made the northern United States a more dangerous place for those escaping slavery to remain, many escapees began migrating to Southern Ontario.

[78]From 1851 to 1862, Tubman returned repeatedly to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions,[4] including her other brothers, Henry, Ben, and Robert, their wives and some of their children.

She stayed with Sam Green, a free black minister living in East New Market, Maryland; she also hid near her parents' home at Poplar Neck.

In Wilmington, Quaker Thomas Garrett would secure transportation to William Still's office or the homes of other Underground Railroad operators in the greater Philadelphia area.

[86] By the late 1850s, Eastern Shore slaveholders were holding public meetings about the large number of escapes in the area; they cast suspicion on free blacks and white abolitionists.

Although other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse his tactics, Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for those freed from slavery, and made preparations for military action.

General Benjamin Butler declared these escapees to be "contraband" – property seized by northern forces – and put them to work, initially without pay, at Fort Monroe in Virginia.

[132][133] In January 1862, Tubman volunteered to support the Union cause and began helping refugees in the camps, particularly in Port Royal, South Carolina.

[136]Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery and infectious diseases.

[144] Tubman watched as those fleeing slavery stampeded toward the boats; she later described a scene of chaos with women carrying still-steaming pots of rice, pigs squealing in bags slung over shoulders, and babies hanging around their parents' necks.

[147][148] Newspapers heralded Tubman's "patriotism, sagacity, energy, [and] ability" in the raid,[149] and she was praised for her recruiting efforts – more than 100 of the newly liberated men joined the Union army.

[154]For two more years, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated people, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia, a task she continued for several months after the Confederacy surrendered in April 1865.

[171][172][173] She knew white people in the South had buried valuables when Union forces threatened the region, and black men were frequently assigned to digging duties, so the claim seemed plausible to her.

[171][174][175] The crime brought new attention from local leaders to Tubman's precarious financial state and spurred renewed efforts to get compensation for her Civil War service.

[176] In 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill to pay Tubman a $2,000 (equivalent to $53,900 in 2023[45]) lump sum "for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy",[177] but it was defeated in the Senate.

[220] She is the subject of operas by Thea Musgrave,[221] Nkeiru Okoye,[222] and Hilda Paredes,[223] as well as plays by Carolyn Gage and a collaboration of May Miller and Willis Richardson.

[230] Since Tubman's life was first dramatized on television in a 1963 episode of the series The Great Adventure,[231] she has been portrayed in TV productions such as The Good Lord Bird,[232] Timeless,[233] Underground,[232] and A Woman Called Moses.

[235] Artists including Fern Cunningham,[236] Jane DeDecker,[237] Nina Cooke John,[238] and Alison Saar[237] have presented Tubman in sculptures.

She has been drawn or painted by numerous artists, including Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, and Faith Ringgold.

[256] Conrad experienced great difficulty in finding a publisher – the search took four years – and endured disdain and contempt for his efforts to construct a more objective, detailed account of Tubman's life for adults.

[257] Though she was a popular historical figure, another book-length biography based on original scholarship did not appear for 60 years,[258] when Jean Humez published a close reading of Tubman's life stories in 2003.