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- Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad -
They litter
the forest floor, sometimes inches deep, nature’s bed of nails. The seedpods of the sweet gum tree, common in the forests
of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, are large, round, and covered with spiny, prickly burrs. The spines pierce the calloused,
unprotected feet of terrified runaway slaves. Struggling to contain the involuntary impulse to wince in pain, the fugitive
slaves hesitate, knowing a moment taken to pause or cry out could end their dream of freedom. The lucky ones had shoes. The
children never did, and they suffered the most. How ironic the sweet gum would be so cruel.
For many of these slaves,
the sweet gum tree had provided for them since birth. A hollowed out trunk would be fashioned into a cradle, affectionately
referred to as “the gum,” for generations of slave children. The sweet gum’s bright green star-shaped leaves, which turn a
magnificent scarlet in the fall, emit an aromatic fragrance, a subtle hint to its therapeutic properties. A cut in its bark
reveals a yellowish resin used in making folk treatments for skin irritations, wounds, and dysentery. Yet for these runaways
the burrs of the sweet gum tree would be among the first of many natural and human barriers on the road to freedom. Harriet
Tubman knew this was where the weakest would turn back. For the faint of heart she carried a pistol, telling her charges
to go on or die, for a dead fugitive slave could tell no tales. Not all the tracks on the Underground Railroad were smooth....
It
was late November 1860 and Harriet Tubman had returned to Dorchester County, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to rescue her
sister Rachel and Rachel’s children, Ben and Angerine, from slavery. Tubman had spent ten years trying to bring them to freedom.
Time and time again, Rachel had been unable to join Harriet; separated from her children, Rachel had been unwilling to leave
them behind, and Harriet had been unsuccessful in retrieving them. This attempt would also end in failure, too. Unbeknownst
to Harriet, Rachel had died some months before. To compound the tragedy, Tubman's nephew and niece, Ben and Angerine, remained
out of her reach. Overcoming deep anguish and profound sadness, Tubman turned her attention, instead, to rescuing another
family from slavery: Stephen and Maria Ennals and their three children.
The weather was bitter cold, and the unexpected
driving snow and cold rain made this trip with children particularly dangerous and tense. With little planning, and no additional
clothing or food, the Ennals family trusted Tubman to bring them through to freedom. They suffered terribly. The baby had
to be drugged with opium to keep it from crying and revealing their hiding places as slave patrols passed by. They starved
and froze, and though they eventually celebrated Christmas in freedom, for Harriet the loss of her sister and the debilitating
effects on her health from the difficult trip were almost too much for her to bear. A decade of life-threatening devotion
to bring away family and friends from enslavement had taken a great toll. This would be Tubman’s last rescue mission...
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from Bound for the Promised Land -
Underground Railroad Maps - Harriet Tubman's Routes to Freedom:
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