Harriet Tubman - The "Moses" of Her People

Posted at Christian History/ Christianity Today

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"I always tole God, 'I'm gwine [going] to hole stiddy on you, an' you've got to see me through.'"
In 1831 a Kentucky slave named Tice Davids made a break for the free state of Ohio by swimming across the Ohio River. His master trailed close behind and watched Davids wade ashore. When he looked again, Davids was nowhere to be found. Davids's master returned to Kentucky in a rage, exclaiming to his friends that Davids "must have gone off on an underground road." The name stuck, and the legend of the underground railroad was born.

It was another two decades before the underground railroad became a part of the national consciousness, mostly because of the heroic exploits of the underground railroad's most celebrated "conductor."

Black Moses Harriet Tubman was raised in slavery in eastern Maryland but escaped in 1849. When she first reached the North, she said later, "I looked at my hands to see if I was de same person now I was free. Dere was such a glory ober eberything, de sun came like gold through de trees and ober de fields, and I felt like I was in heaven."

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