The Abolitionist Who Returned Again and Again (Harriet Tubman, USA)

Quick answer: How many people did Harriet Tubman lead to freedom?

After escaping in 1849, Harriet Tubman repeatedly returned to Maryland's slaveholding territory and guided about 70 people to freedom, per the National Park Service, while helping others with instructions and contacts. In the Combahee River Raid on June 2, 1863, her reconnaissance helped Union boats free nearly 800 people.

Harriet Tubman was born on Maryland's Eastern Shore as Araminta “Minty” Ross, in a world built to shrink people to inventory. As a child she was struck in the head by a heavy weight thrown by an overseer, an injury she carried for life. In 1849 she escaped. She remembered checking her hands as if she might be someone else, and the sunrise coming “like gold through the trees.” But freedom never meant a clean break, because her family was still in Maryland. “I was free, and they should be free.” The legend makes it sound like one daring rescue. The real work, John writes, was an operator's calendar: return, plan, move, hide, wait, reroute, return again. She guided about 70 people to freedom, even after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act raised the stakes. During the Civil War, her reconnaissance for the Combahee River Raid helped Union boats avoid mines, and nearly 800 people surged to freedom in one night. The speech is easy. The return trip changes the story.

Why it matters for leaders: Turn the cause you care about into repeatable action; courage shows up in the next return trip, not the first speech.

Q: What did Tubman say about liberty?

A: “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.”

Q: Why did she keep going back?

A: Her family was still enslaved: “I was free, and they should be free.”

Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/the-abolitionist-who-returned-again

By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation