Women of Influence: Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was born as Araminta Ross, probably sometime in March of 1822. She was born into slavery and went on to become a great abolitionist and political activist. Tubman would ultimately escape her captivity and would lead 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, many of whom were her family and friends. She utilized a network of antislavery activists and safe houses which became known as the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.
Tubman was born in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents were Harriet Green (known as "Rit") and Ben Ross, who were also enslaved persons. The estimate of her birth year as 1822 is based on a record of payment to a midwife and on several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. But Tubman herself reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate says she was born in 1815 and her gravestone gives her year of birth as 1820. Her experience as a child was abhorrent, as she was beaten and whipped by her various slaveholders. In her adolescence, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another enslaved person. The weight hit Tubman, causing dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia. After her injury, Tubman claimed to have experienced strange visions and vivid dreams, which she considered to be premonitions from God.
Sometime around 1844, she married a free African-American man named John Tubman, a marriage that was complicated because of her slave status. Her status meant that any children she and John had together would be enslaved. Marriages between free African-Americans and enslaved people were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and by this time, half of the African-American population was free. Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, possibly right after their wedding.
In 1849, Tubman became ill and this diminished her value as an enslaved person. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman prayed for Brodess, first that he would have a change of heart, and then when it was clear that this was not going to happen, she said: "I changed my prayer. First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way.'" There was power in her prayer as a week later, Brodess died. Tubman expressed regret for her prayers.
After Brodess's death, his widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Fearing what this might mean, Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped on September 17, 1849. Tubman and her brothers had been hired out and Eliza Brodess did not learn of their absence for about two weeks, at which time she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to $100 for each slave returned. Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. The two men went back and they forced Tubman to return with them.
Soon afterward, Tubman escaped again, alone this time. She made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad, an informal but well-organized system was operated free and enslaved African-Americans, white abolitionists, and other activists. In Maryland many of those involved in the Underground Railroad were members of the Religious Society of Friends, called the Quakers. Tubman is believed to have travelled through the Preston area of Maryland near Poplar Neck, which contained a substantial Quaker community. From there, she likely went northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware and then north into Pennsylvania. This was a journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) made by foot and would have taken between five days and three weeks. Tubman had to travel by night, and had to avoid slave catchers. After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman later wrote:
"I was a stranger in a strange land, my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were in Maryland. But I was free, and they should be free."
The U.S. Congress meanwhile passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required law enforcement officials, even in states, to assist in their capture. As a result, many escaped enslaved persons sought refuge in Southern Ontario (then part of the British colony of Canada) which, as part of the British Empire, had abolished slavery.
Tubman helped many other enslaved person escape to freedom. In December 1850, Tubman returned to Maryland and assisted in the escape of her niece Kessiah and her two children, six-year-old James Alfred, and baby Araminta, along with Kessiah's husband, a free Black man named John Bowley. Early next year she returned to Maryland to help other family members to escape and during her second trip, she helped her brother Moses and two unidentified men. In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, to find her husband John. Meanwhile, John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she helped some other enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.
In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 fugitives, escape to Canada. Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass wrote: "On one occasion I had eleven fugitives at the same time under my roof, and it was necessary for them to remain with me until I could collect sufficient money to get them on to Canada. It was the largest number I ever had at any one time, and I had some difficulty in providing so many with food and shelter." Douglass and Tubman had great admiration for one another. Douglass wrote of Tubman:
"The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the night. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism."
Over 11 years, Tubman returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she rescued some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses". One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. She traveled to the Eastern Shore and led them north to St. Catharines, Ontario, where a community of former slaves (including Tubman's brothers, other relatives, and many friends) lived. Years later, she said, in an address she gave: "I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an abolitionist who advocated the use of violence to fight slavery in the United States. Tubman never advocated violence, but she worked with Brown, who called her "General Tubman." Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states was of great assistance to Brown and his planners. Other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse Brown's tactics. Brown had asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in present-day Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force. On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Ontario, where he set out his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.
In late 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman could not be contacted and when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman was not present. She may have been in New York at the time, ill with fever related to her childhood head injury. Some historians believe that she may have begun sharing Frederick Douglass's opposition to the plan.
When the raid failed, Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and for inciting a slave rebellion. He was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a the acts of a noble martyr. Tubman later said of Brown, "He done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."
In early 1859, abolitionist Republican Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York, for US$1,200 (around $35,000 today). Auburn was home to many antislavery activists. This land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. She took in relatives and boarders, and offered them a safe place for African-Americans seeking a better life.
In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission, which was to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. On her return to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of US$30 (around $900 today). She had no money and was unable to effect their escape. Instead, Tubman gathered another group, and brought to Auburn, though the journey took them weeks because of slave catchers along the route.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman saw a Union victory as a key step toward the abolition of slavery. General Benjamin Butler had helped escaped slaves escape from Fort Monroe in Virginia. Butler had declared these fugitives to be "contraband" – property seized by northern forces. He put them to work, initially without pay, in the fort. Tubman joined a group of Boston and Philadelphia abolitionists that went to the Hilton Head district in South Carolina where they assisted fugitive slaves in their escape.
Tubman met with General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. Hunter had began gathering former slaves for a regiment of African-American soldiers. President Abraham Lincoln was not prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states. Tubman was critical of Lincoln's response, stating:
God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free. Suppose that was an awful big snake down there, on the floor. He bite you. Folks all scared, because you die. You send for a doctor to cut the bite; but the snake, he rolled up there, and while the doctor doing it, he bite you again. The doctor dug out that bite; but while the doctor doing it, the snake, he spring up and bite you again; so he keep doing it, till you kill him. That's what master Lincoln ought to know."
Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, where she tended to men with smallpox. She did not contract the disease herself. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it an important step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. In early 1863 she led a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal, South Carolina. Her group, working under orders from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, mapped the area. She also worked with Colonel James Montgomery, and provided him with key intelligence that aided in the capture of Jacksonville, Florida.
Later that year, Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed assault during the Civil War. When Montgomery and his troops conducted an assault on a collection of plantations along the Combahee River, Tubman accompanied the raid. On the morning of June 2, 1863, Tubman guided three steamboats around Confederate mines in the waters leading to the shore. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, and seized thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Tubman watched as slaves stampeded toward the boats. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, steamboats packed full of slaves took off toward Beaufort. More than 750 slaves were rescued in the Combahee River Raid. Tubman was praised in Union newspapers. Tubman later worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner.
For the remainder of the war, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated slaves, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia. She returned to Auburn several months after the Confederated surrendered in April 1865.
During a train ride to New York in 1869, Tubman was told by the conductor to move from a half-price section into the baggage car. She refused, showing the government-issued papers that entitled her to ride there. The conductor ignored this and a struggle ensued as she resisted his efforts to move her. Her arm was broken in the process and she was thrown into the baggage car, causing more injuries.
Tubman never received a regular salary for her service to the Union army and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Her constant humanitarian work for her family and former slaves kept her in a state of constant poverty, and she was unable to obtain a government pension. She spent her remaining years in Auburn, caring to her family and other people in need. She worked various jobs and took in boarders to help pay the bills. One of these boarders was a farmer named Nelson Charles Davis, who had been a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. The two fell in love. He was 22 years younger than she was, but on March 18, 1869 they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874. Nelson died on October 14, 1888 of tuberculosis.
Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, which was published in 1869 and which generated $1,200 in income for Tubman. In 1886 Bradford released a re-written volume, also intended to help alleviate Tubman's poverty. It was called "Harriet, the Moses of her People."
In 1873 Tubman was the victim of a swindle involving gold transfer in which Tubman attempted to buy some gold with borrowed funds, only to be robbed in the process. New Yorkers sympathized with Tubman and in 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill providing that Tubman be paid "the sum of $2,000 for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy". Unfortunately the bill was defeated in the Senate.
Tubman was granted a pension under the Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 for her late husband's service in the Civil War. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension for her own service in the Civil War and in February 1899, the Congress passed a resolution which paid ger a pension, though in a reduced amount, and President William McKinley signed it into law. In 2003, Congress approved a posthumous payment of $11,750 of additional pension to compensate her for this deficiency. The funds were directed to the maintenance of her relevant historical sites.
In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. She began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and worked with Susan B. Anthony. Tubman spoke in favor of women's suffrage at meetings in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting. In 1897 a series of receptions were held in Boston honoring Tubman for her lifetime of service to the nation. Unfortunately, her impoverished financial position required her to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these.
As Tubman aged, the seizures, headaches, and suffering from her childhood head trauma worsened and sometime in the late 1890s, she underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital. She claimed that the surgery made her feels more comfortable, even though it was reported to have been performed without anesthesia.
By 1911, Tubman was described by a New York newspaper as "ill and penniless." She died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by family and friends. Before she died, she is reported to have told those present, "I go to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.
On April 20, 2016, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, to the rear of the bill. Lew instructed the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to expedite the redesign process. The new bill was expected to enter circulation sometime after 2020. But in 2017 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that he would not commit to putting Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill. In 2021, President Joe Biden instructed the Treasury Department to resume the effort to add Tubman's portrait to the front of the $20 bill.
Tubman was born in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents were Harriet Green (known as "Rit") and Ben Ross, who were also enslaved persons. The estimate of her birth year as 1822 is based on a record of payment to a midwife and on several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement. But Tubman herself reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate says she was born in 1815 and her gravestone gives her year of birth as 1820. Her experience as a child was abhorrent, as she was beaten and whipped by her various slaveholders. In her adolescence, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another enslaved person. The weight hit Tubman, causing dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia. After her injury, Tubman claimed to have experienced strange visions and vivid dreams, which she considered to be premonitions from God.
Sometime around 1844, she married a free African-American man named John Tubman, a marriage that was complicated because of her slave status. Her status meant that any children she and John had together would be enslaved. Marriages between free African-Americans and enslaved people were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and by this time, half of the African-American population was free. Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, possibly right after their wedding.
In 1849, Tubman became ill and this diminished her value as an enslaved person. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman prayed for Brodess, first that he would have a change of heart, and then when it was clear that this was not going to happen, she said: "I changed my prayer. First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way.'" There was power in her prayer as a week later, Brodess died. Tubman expressed regret for her prayers.
After Brodess's death, his widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Fearing what this might mean, Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped on September 17, 1849. Tubman and her brothers had been hired out and Eliza Brodess did not learn of their absence for about two weeks, at which time she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to $100 for each slave returned. Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. The two men went back and they forced Tubman to return with them.
Soon afterward, Tubman escaped again, alone this time. She made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad, an informal but well-organized system was operated free and enslaved African-Americans, white abolitionists, and other activists. In Maryland many of those involved in the Underground Railroad were members of the Religious Society of Friends, called the Quakers. Tubman is believed to have travelled through the Preston area of Maryland near Poplar Neck, which contained a substantial Quaker community. From there, she likely went northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware and then north into Pennsylvania. This was a journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) made by foot and would have taken between five days and three weeks. Tubman had to travel by night, and had to avoid slave catchers. After reaching Philadelphia, Tubman later wrote:
"I was a stranger in a strange land, my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were in Maryland. But I was free, and they should be free."
The U.S. Congress meanwhile passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required law enforcement officials, even in states, to assist in their capture. As a result, many escaped enslaved persons sought refuge in Southern Ontario (then part of the British colony of Canada) which, as part of the British Empire, had abolished slavery.
Tubman helped many other enslaved person escape to freedom. In December 1850, Tubman returned to Maryland and assisted in the escape of her niece Kessiah and her two children, six-year-old James Alfred, and baby Araminta, along with Kessiah's husband, a free Black man named John Bowley. Early next year she returned to Maryland to help other family members to escape and during her second trip, she helped her brother Moses and two unidentified men. In late 1851, Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape, to find her husband John. Meanwhile, John had married another woman named Caroline. Tubman sent word that he should join her, but he insisted that he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, she helped some other enslaved people who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia.
In December 1851, Tubman guided an unidentified group of 11 fugitives, escape to Canada. Tubman and her group stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Douglass wrote: "On one occasion I had eleven fugitives at the same time under my roof, and it was necessary for them to remain with me until I could collect sufficient money to get them on to Canada. It was the largest number I ever had at any one time, and I had some difficulty in providing so many with food and shelter." Douglass and Tubman had great admiration for one another. Douglass wrote of Tubman:
"The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the night. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism."
Over 11 years, Tubman returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she rescued some 70 slaves in about 13 expeditions. Because of her efforts, she was nicknamed "Moses". One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. She traveled to the Eastern Shore and led them north to St. Catharines, Ontario, where a community of former slaves (including Tubman's brothers, other relatives, and many friends) lived. Years later, she said, in an address she gave: "I was conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."
In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, an abolitionist who advocated the use of violence to fight slavery in the United States. Tubman never advocated violence, but she worked with Brown, who called her "General Tubman." Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states was of great assistance to Brown and his planners. Other abolitionists like Douglass did not endorse Brown's tactics. Brown had asked Tubman to gather former slaves then living in present-day Southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force. On May 8, 1858, Brown held a meeting in Chatham, Ontario, where he set out his plan for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Tubman aided him in this effort and with more detailed plans for the assault.
In late 1859, as Brown and his men prepared to launch the attack, Tubman could not be contacted and when the raid on Harpers Ferry took place on October 16, Tubman was not present. She may have been in New York at the time, ill with fever related to her childhood head injury. Some historians believe that she may have begun sharing Frederick Douglass's opposition to the plan.
When the raid failed, Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and for inciting a slave rebellion. He was hanged on December 2. His actions were seen by many abolitionists as a the acts of a noble martyr. Tubman later said of Brown, "He done more in dying, than 100 men would in living."
In early 1859, abolitionist Republican Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York, for US$1,200 (around $35,000 today). Auburn was home to many antislavery activists. This land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. She took in relatives and boarders, and offered them a safe place for African-Americans seeking a better life.
In November 1860, Tubman conducted her last rescue mission, which was to effect the escape of her sister Rachel, and Rachel's two children Ben and Angerine. On her return to Dorchester County, Tubman discovered that Rachel had died, and the children could be rescued only if she could pay a bribe of US$30 (around $900 today). She had no money and was unable to effect their escape. Instead, Tubman gathered another group, and brought to Auburn, though the journey took them weeks because of slave catchers along the route.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman saw a Union victory as a key step toward the abolition of slavery. General Benjamin Butler had helped escaped slaves escape from Fort Monroe in Virginia. Butler had declared these fugitives to be "contraband" – property seized by northern forces. He put them to work, initially without pay, in the fort. Tubman joined a group of Boston and Philadelphia abolitionists that went to the Hilton Head district in South Carolina where they assisted fugitive slaves in their escape.
Tubman met with General David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. Hunter had began gathering former slaves for a regiment of African-American soldiers. President Abraham Lincoln was not prepared to enforce emancipation on the southern states. Tubman was critical of Lincoln's response, stating:
God won't let master Lincoln beat the South till he does the right thing. Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free. Suppose that was an awful big snake down there, on the floor. He bite you. Folks all scared, because you die. You send for a doctor to cut the bite; but the snake, he rolled up there, and while the doctor doing it, he bite you again. The doctor dug out that bite; but while the doctor doing it, the snake, he spring up and bite you again; so he keep doing it, till you kill him. That's what master Lincoln ought to know."
Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, where she tended to men with smallpox. She did not contract the disease herself. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Tubman considered it an important step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. In early 1863 she led a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal, South Carolina. Her group, working under orders from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, mapped the area. She also worked with Colonel James Montgomery, and provided him with key intelligence that aided in the capture of Jacksonville, Florida.
Later that year, Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed assault during the Civil War. When Montgomery and his troops conducted an assault on a collection of plantations along the Combahee River, Tubman accompanied the raid. On the morning of June 2, 1863, Tubman guided three steamboats around Confederate mines in the waters leading to the shore. Once ashore, the Union troops set fire to the plantations, and seized thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies. Tubman watched as slaves stampeded toward the boats. As Confederate troops raced to the scene, steamboats packed full of slaves took off toward Beaufort. More than 750 slaves were rescued in the Combahee River Raid. Tubman was praised in Union newspapers. Tubman later worked with Colonel Robert Gould Shaw at the assault on Fort Wagner.
For the remainder of the war, Tubman worked for the Union forces, tending to newly liberated slaves, scouting into Confederate territory, and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia. She returned to Auburn several months after the Confederated surrendered in April 1865.
During a train ride to New York in 1869, Tubman was told by the conductor to move from a half-price section into the baggage car. She refused, showing the government-issued papers that entitled her to ride there. The conductor ignored this and a struggle ensued as she resisted his efforts to move her. Her arm was broken in the process and she was thrown into the baggage car, causing more injuries.
Tubman never received a regular salary for her service to the Union army and the U.S. government was slow in recognizing its debt to her. Her constant humanitarian work for her family and former slaves kept her in a state of constant poverty, and she was unable to obtain a government pension. She spent her remaining years in Auburn, caring to her family and other people in need. She worked various jobs and took in boarders to help pay the bills. One of these boarders was a farmer named Nelson Charles Davis, who had been a private in the 8th United States Colored Infantry Regiment from September 1863 to November 1865. The two fell in love. He was 22 years younger than she was, but on March 18, 1869 they were married at the Central Presbyterian Church. They adopted a baby girl named Gertie in 1874. Nelson died on October 14, 1888 of tuberculosis.
Sarah Hopkins Bradford, wrote an authorized biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, which was published in 1869 and which generated $1,200 in income for Tubman. In 1886 Bradford released a re-written volume, also intended to help alleviate Tubman's poverty. It was called "Harriet, the Moses of her People."
In 1873 Tubman was the victim of a swindle involving gold transfer in which Tubman attempted to buy some gold with borrowed funds, only to be robbed in the process. New Yorkers sympathized with Tubman and in 1874, Representatives Clinton D. MacDougall of New York and Gerry W. Hazelton of Wisconsin introduced a bill providing that Tubman be paid "the sum of $2,000 for services rendered by her to the Union Army as scout, nurse, and spy". Unfortunately the bill was defeated in the Senate.
Tubman was granted a pension under the Dependent and Disability Pension Act of 1890 for her late husband's service in the Civil War. In December 1897, New York Congressman Sereno E. Payne introduced a bill to grant Tubman a soldier's monthly pension for her own service in the Civil War and in February 1899, the Congress passed a resolution which paid ger a pension, though in a reduced amount, and President William McKinley signed it into law. In 2003, Congress approved a posthumous payment of $11,750 of additional pension to compensate her for this deficiency. The funds were directed to the maintenance of her relevant historical sites.
In her later years, Tubman worked to promote the cause of women's suffrage. She began attending meetings of suffragist organizations, and worked with Susan B. Anthony. Tubman spoke in favor of women's suffrage at meetings in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. When the National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded in 1896, Tubman was the keynote speaker at its first meeting. In 1897 a series of receptions were held in Boston honoring Tubman for her lifetime of service to the nation. Unfortunately, her impoverished financial position required her to sell a cow to buy a train ticket to these.
As Tubman aged, the seizures, headaches, and suffering from her childhood head trauma worsened and sometime in the late 1890s, she underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital. She claimed that the surgery made her feels more comfortable, even though it was reported to have been performed without anesthesia.
By 1911, Tubman was described by a New York newspaper as "ill and penniless." She died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by family and friends. Before she died, she is reported to have told those present, "I go to prepare a place for you." Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.
On April 20, 2016, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced plans to add a portrait of Tubman to the front of the twenty-dollar bill, moving the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, to the rear of the bill. Lew instructed the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to expedite the redesign process. The new bill was expected to enter circulation sometime after 2020. But in 2017 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that he would not commit to putting Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill. In 2021, President Joe Biden instructed the Treasury Department to resume the effort to add Tubman's portrait to the front of the $20 bill.