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How Did Harriet Tubman Contribute To The Abolitionist Movement

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Harriet Tubman Imagine risking your life day after day just to help others. Being a leader is not for others to fear, but for others to admire and see as the light at the end of a tunnel. For Harriet Tubman, this was no imagination or day dream, it was her life, goal, and reality. Harriet Tubman was an American hero and former slave who escaped from Maryland in 1849. She used the rest of her time on Earth to help other slaves escape using a team of brave people of all different races called the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman helped contribute to the abolitionist movement by leading slaves to freedom, continuously putting her life on the line, and being a symbol of hope for millions around the world in the past and to this day. Harriet …show more content…

But did this ever stop her from making these journeys? No. The text states in paragraph 12, “But there were so many of them this time. She knew moments of doubt when she was half-afraid, and kept looking back over her shoulder, imagining that she heard the sound of pursuit. They would certainly be pursued. Eleven of them. Eleven thousand dollars’ worth of flesh, bone, and muscle that belonged to Maryland planters. If they were caught, the eleven runaways would be whipped and sold South, but she—she would probably be hanged.” Harriet knew that she would most likely die for her actions, yet that never stopped her from overcoming the obstacles that faced her. In paragraph 11 of the text, the author states “She had never been to Canada. The route beyond Philadelphia was strange to her. But she could not let the runaways who accompanied her know this.” So, Harriet was taking a group of eleven runaway slaves to the North on a path she had never taken before to a place she had never been before, knowing that if she were caught, she’d lose her life. Harriet Tubman never failed to overcome the challenges in her life, which inspired many to support the …show more content…

Harriet Tubman influenced others to join the abolitionist movement because others saw that she would risk her life every year to help runaway slaves escape to freedom, and knew that what she was doing was important. If she put her life on the line that many times for people she didn’t even know, then the movement seemed extremely important. For example, Tubman inspired William Still, a man who had worked for the underground railroad. In paragraph 48, it says “By slow stages they reached Philadelphia, where William Still hastily recorded their names, and the plantations whence they had come, and something of the life they had led in slavery. Then he carefully hid what he had written, for fear it might be discovered.” but then, later in that paragraph, the author says “In 1872 he published this record in book form and called it The Underground Railroad. In the foreword to his book he said: ‘While I knew the danger of keeping strict records, and while I did not then dream that in my day slavery would be blotted out, or that the time would come when I could publish these records, it used to afford me great satisfaction to take them down, fresh from the lips of fugitives on the way to freedom, and to preserve them as they had given them.’ ” So at first he was afraid to publish the names of all the runaway slaves but he saw Tubman smuggling in slave and right. So later when slavery was abolished, he

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