Harriet Tubman Quotes

“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”40”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“If you are tired, keep going; if you are scared, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Of course, in these racial passion plays, though the “good guys” might have been either black or white, the villains were nearly always white. It was tricky for the majority of blacks during the antebellum era to separate friend from foe. As one African American confided: “They [whites] was all . . . devils and good people walking in the road at the same time, and nobody could tell one from t’other.”4”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“If you are tired, keep going; if you are scared, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going.” Along with the inspirational spirituals for which Moses became so beloved, this motto has been handed down to the present generation as part of her enduring legacy.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“The free black community, especially in the border states, steadily increased at the turn of the nineteenth century. No black population grew more dramatically during the early years of the republic than Maryland’s. Its free people of color made up the second largest free black population in 1790—and became the largest free black population of any state by 1810.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“family”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“First, Howland offered to share her room with Tubman for the duration of the meeting. Second, she confronted convention organizers and pointed out the leadership’s responsibility to black delegates, insisting that they provide lodgings for women of color who attended future meetings.64 It was typical that these kinds of demands for reform came from Tubman’s friends, but not from her personally.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“the conference and Howland discovered how Tubman had spent the night, she was horrified, especially at her own thoughtlessness.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Tubman’s pension as a widow would be increased on account of special circumstances.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Payne hoped a straightforward soldier’s pension could be obtained on the basis of Tubman’s war record. The inquiry omitted any reference to the issue of back wages—just a simple pension request. Payne’s new bill proposed that Congress grant Tubman a “military pension” of $25 per month, the exact amount received by surviving soldiers.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“New York offered only segregated social services.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“During Reconstruction, southern freedpeople and blacks in general became scapegoats, suffering a violent backlash in war’s aftermath.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“after the American Civil War, chivalry and gallantry would be reinvented and racialized by advocates of the Lost Cause, the Confederates’ cult of nostalgia.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“With the official conclusion of wartime hostilities, Tubman and her fellow ex-slaves recognized another turning point, just as crucial as the emancipation, as they sought the brass ring of citizenship. Impassioned rhetoric began even before the war ended, as Frederick Douglass thundered: “If he [the black man] knows enough to take up arms in defence of this government and bare his breast to the storm of rebel artillery, he knows enough to vote.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“A black sergeant from New Bedford, William Carney, rescued the regiment’s national banner. He planted the flag on the Confederate works, and then, once retreat was sounded, rescued the flag and carried it back to Union lines, sustaining several wounds in the process. For his valor that day, Carney would be the first African American soldier to earn the Medal of Honor.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Years later Tubman likened her decision to an epiphany: “I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”40”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Democratic and radical impulses defined the Revolutionary generation that founded America. The egalitarian ideals of abolitionist activists, especially [Underground Railroad] agents, were perceived as a tribute to the country's founding generation. Promoters of the liberty lines echoed the sentiments of American's founders: impassioned opposition to tyranny and oppression....To that end, radicals advocated civil disobedience, especially in regard to fugitive slaves. Thus the [Underground Railroad] was a full-fledged grassroots resistance movement, representing the true national goals of democracy and liberty.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“When her voice is forever stilled, her soul, like the soul of him whom she calls her dearest friend, will later be ‘marching on.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“The Harriet Tubman Home became the only charity outside New York City dedicated to the shelter and care of African Americans in the state. The main brick building, John Brown Hall, also known as the John Brown Infirmary,”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Simultaneously, an Auburn banker named Charles P. Wood prepared a narrative of Tubman’s war service, with an appendix of available documentation. Copies are still on file at the National Archives.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Suffragist Susan B. Anthony introduced her as a living legend at the twenty-eighth annual convention of the New York State Women’s Suffrage Association, held in 1904.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Official military reports credited Montgomery with the Combahee River Raid’s triumph, yet soldiers recognized this victory as Harriet Tubman’s.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“South Carolina slaveholders were the staunchest of Rebels, belligerent for independence and ready for blood.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Tubman despised the licentious atmosphere that plagued towns where Civil War soldiers gathered. As one of the Union doctors complained, the mistreatment of black women was a shame and scandal of occupied Carolina, where lawless conditions reigned during the first year of occupation.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Three out of five Civil War soldiers who died during the war were killed by disease unrelated to wounds.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Sea Island blacks spoke in the Gullah dialect of their forebears (a blend of African languages that was a distinctive patois).”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Congress passed a Confiscation Act in July 1862, which “freed all slaves whose masters were rebels,” and a Militia Act, which allowed these “forever free” blacks to be enlisted by the military as paid laborers.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Months before, Lincoln had been forced to slap down another Union general for jumping the gun on emancipation. In his jurisdiction in Missouri, General John C. Frémont declared martial law and abolished slavery in August 1861.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

“Lincoln entered the war without any intention of freeing the slaves. Lincoln would even propose colonization for free blacks. 21 At the outset of the war, restoring the Union was Lincoln’s primary goal.”
― Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom