Known as âGeneral Tubmanâ
The great anti-slavery leader Frederick Douglass had enormous respect for Tubman. Another ally was white abolitionist John Brown, who advocated armed struggle to destroy slavery. Tubman helped him recruit supporters. Brown, who referred to her as âGeneral Tubman,â found her knowledge of support networks and resources to be important contributions to his raid at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., in 1859. While the action failed, it was seen by anti-slavery forces as a symbol of proud resistance.
By 1861, Tubman saw the Union victory in the Civil War as an important step in the abolition of slavery, and she joined the Union Army. She condemned President Abraham Lincolnâs inaction in outlawing slavery. âGeneral Tubman,â as she was known, was the first woman to plan and lead an armed assault in the Civil War. In 1863, she guided a regiment of 300 Black soldiers in a raid at Combahee Ferry, S.C., and commanded the gunboats around Confederate mines in the river. The battle was won; 756 enslaved people were liberated.
Tubman also served as a healer. She organized a hospital for Black soldiers and cured many of dysentery using herbal remedies learned from Indigenous healers. Butch Lee, author of âJailbreak out of History: The Re-Biography of Harriet Tubman,â explains that âfor every Black Union soldier who died in battle, ten died from diseases. ⊠To them, a healer was as militarily essential as a skilled artilleryman or sharp shooter.â Harriet Tubman was a warrior, leader, guerrilla fighter and military commander. Her contributions were great in the struggle to abolish slavery and as a fighter for womenâs and workersâ rights.
On the morning of October 17, 1859, Harriet Tubman was in New York having breakfast when she felt her heart beating wildly. "Somethings wrong," she told her friends. "Something dreadful has happened, or is about to happen." Her friends insisted that nothing could be wrong, but she could not shake the dreadful feeling. "Its Captain Brown," she said, shivering. "Something is happening to him. Something dreadful has happened to him."
"Everything on earth is destined for annihilation. This is the tomb of a very powerful king, of noble station, who protected the religion of God, who trusted in God, who carried out the commandments of God, .who fought for the cause of God, Mama, son of Kma, the son of Ai, known by the name of Omar ibn al-Khattab. May God have mercy on him. He was called to God on Sunday, 17 Muharram, 514 a.h. (18 April, 1120)." The Koranic text with which the epitaph opens, the use of indigenous Songhai names (the Songhai are the people of Gao) side by side with Moslem names, the evidence of cultural and commercial ties between the western Sudan and southern Spain during this period of Almoravid rule all these bear out the historians' view, that the 11th century was essentially the period When Islam began to be diffused throughout the region.
From the 9th century on, the Arab geographers and historians begin to provide valuable information about the States of the western Sudan. For example, Yaqubi, writing in about 872, knew of the kingdoms of Ghana and Kanem, and described the gold trade of Ghana and Kanem's trade in slaves with North Africa, by way of the Fezzan. Ibn Hlawqual of Baghdad, in the first half of the 10th Century, travelled as far as the Saharan town of Audoghast, on the outskirts of the Ghana Empire. Al- Bakri, who wrote his Masalik wa Mamali, an account of "Routes and Kingdoms", in about 1067, just aftsr the Norman conquest of England, though he lived most of his life in the Moslem State of Cordoba, in southern Spain, was clearly well informed about the western Sudan. Here again, the evidence of the Arab historians has been supplemented by the archaeologists. We know, from a 16th century Timbuktu historian, Hahmud Kati, that the name of the capital of the Kingdom of Ghana was "Kumbi". Recent excavations, carried out by MM. Mauny and Thomassey at Kumbi Saleh in French West Africa, about 250 miles north of Bamaka, have uncovered what is almost certainly part of the Moslem town referred to by Al-Barki well-constructed stone houses, a mosque, and tombs outside the town.
