SEC. 2. Findings.
Congress finds the following:
(1) Harriet Tubman was a formerly enslaved abolitionist who guided about 70 people from slavery to freedom in 10 years.
(2) Born in March 1822, Tubman was a notable abolitionist who not only freed herself, but also freed others from slavery.
(3) Harriet Ross Tubman, born Araminta “Minty” Ross, was born enslaved on the plantation of Anthony Thompson in Dorchester County, Maryland.
(4) With the help of the Underground Railroad network, in the fall of 1849, Tubman escaped from Poplar Neck in Caroline County, Maryland, heading north to freedom in Pennsylvania.
(5) With the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850, the operations to help enslaved persons escape became dangerous and she risked her life to rescue them from slavery.
(6) Despite passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act, Tubman continued her work, escorting her refugees to Canada instead.
(7) It was during the 1850s that Tubman made 13 trips back to Maryland, guiding approximately 70 enslaved persons to the North, including family members, and providing instruction to about 70 more who found their way to freedom on their own.
(8) Regardless of the arduous process of helping fugitive enslaved persons escape through the Underground Railroad, not a single person was recaptured under Tubman’s supervision.
(9) During 1859, Tubman aided abolitionist John Brown by recruiting supporters for his raid on Harper’s Ferry, a planned insurrection against slaveholders in Virginia and Maryland.
(10) In the beginning of the Civil War, Tubman served as a spy, cook, and nurse in South Carolina and Florida.
(11) Tubman also recruited newly freed African-American men to join regiments of African-American soldiers called United States Colored Troops.
(12) In recognition of her abilities, Tubman served as an army scout and spy for Major General David Hunter and Colonel James Montgomery. Harriet Tubman was inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.
(13) Tubman distinguished herself as the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the Civil War, the Combahee River Raid, resulting in more than 700 enslaved persons in South Carolina being freed.
(14) After the Civil War, Tubman frequently sheltered and fed newly freed enslaved persons at her home on South Street in Auburn, New York, which she purchased from Secretary of State William Henry Seward, even though she had little money herself. She found a means to an end by working as a domestic, selling produce from her garden, taking in donations of food, loans from friends, and raising pigs on her farm.
(15) Tubman became active in the women’s movement as early as 1860. She attended meetings and gave speeches in her home State of New York, as well as in Boston and Washington, D.C.
(16) Tubman was an avid advocate for African-American women and their civil rights. In 1896, she was invited as a speaker at the first meeting of the National Association of Colored Women in Washington, D.C.
(17) Although living in financial insecurity, Tubman transferred a 25-acre parcel of land to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1903, which eventually became The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged and Indigent Negroes. At the time, few social services existed for elderly and ill people of color.
(18) Escaping slavery, risking everything to save her family and friends, aiding enslaved persons in escape from slavery, leading a military raid, championing the cause of women’s suffrage, advocating for civil rights and access to health care, Harriet Tubman is an individual that has performed achievements that have had profound impacts on history and culture in the United States.