Harriet Tubman's Greatest Achievement

Araminta Ross, also known as Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland in 1819 and died 1913. She was one of 11 children. Raised in harsh conditions, she got whippings even as a small child. Some nights she would sleep as close as she could to the fire as possible. She would sometimes stick her toes into the fire to avoid frostbite. Harriet’s early childhood was spent with her grandmother, who was too old to do slave labor. In 1844, Harriet married John Tubman at the age of 25. Five years later, in 1849, Harriet escaped the slavery society. During her escape she followed the North Star until she knew she was free. Since Harriet was a very brave, strong-minded, determined, decisive, tenacious woman, it helped her
throughout her struggles and made her achieve her dreams of saving slaves. This leads to Harriet Tubman's greatest achievement, the Underground Railroad. During the mid-1800s, Harriet Tubman’s greatest achievement was the Underground Railroad because of her success and implementation.
The Underground Railroad is one of Harriet Tubman’s greatest achievements due to her implementation, because of safety, locations, and people involved. The safety had a lot to do with implementation because it involved others’ health, as well as her own and if they were actually safe or not. People’s health was very important while this was going on, because food was hard to find as a slave. Harriet always put other people before herself. Even if Harriet had not eaten for two days straight, she would still feed someone else before herself. No poor helpless creature was turned from her door, however, very often she would not have a clue where their next meal would come from. Hard days continued throughout the seventies to the nineties, with Harriet toiling to provide for the helpless and aged who surrounded her (Conrad 210). Shelter was very hard to find as well, because nobody wanted to offer shelter to slaves. Harriet was putting herself in great danger when she was taking the slaves to freedom.There was an award for her capture that got raised up to $40,000. There were about six different people helping Harriet, some of the people who helped even saved a
handful of slaves themselves. A man named Wendall Phillips sent Harriet Tubman money to help her and her passengers and to keep them warm for the upcoming winter (Larson 234). Each person was located in a different town, but in the towns where it was more dangerous and where there was more slavery there would be more people in that town to help. The more slavery there was in a town, the harder it would be to sneak around, and the more people would help. There were about nine different towns where Harriet and her passengers could seek for shelter in Delaware. She made use of the Underground Railroad stations in Camden, Dover, Blackbird, Middleton, Millsborough, Concord, Seaford, Smyria, and Delaware City. She needed many stations for her and her passengers because there were many dangerous towns to avoid, and towns where proslavery sediments prevailed (Bentley58). Harriet needed these stations for quick stops for emergencies such as food and water. Due to not only the stations, but the people as well, accomplished her missions.
The Underground Railroad was a huge success because of the amount of saved people and she never lost a traveler, also known as a passenger (Stein 971). Harriet’s passengers were very important because without her passengers, there would not have been an Underground Railroad. She was very serious when it came to her travelers, especially when they wanted to turn around, and go back. Whenever someone wanted to go back, people say she would pull out a gun and threatened that traveler with it to scare them into not going back. She knew if any of her passengers ever went back it would put her and the other passengers in great danger because if that slave went back, they could tell the slave owners where the stations and where Harriet Tubman were and she, as well as her passengers, could get captured. Harriet Tubman made nineteen trips, back and forth, from Maryland to Canada and saved 300 slaves by taking them to northern states.. Harriet also saved her own family members that were in slavery as well. Despite all of Harriet’s struggles, she saved slaves for eight to ten years. During the mid-1800s, Harriet Tubman’s greatest achievement was the Underground Railroad because of her success and implementation. This would be Harriet's greatest achievement due to how many lives she led to safety. Harriet was a very brave, strong-minded, determined, decisive, tenacious woman, which is why she achieved so much. Harriet lived a long audacious life. Achieving the many things in her life, this had to be the one of most ambitious things she had done.