Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom.

Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. By Catherine Clinton. (New York and Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004. Pp. xiv, 272. $27.95, ISBN 0-316-14492-4.)

Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories. By Jean M. Humez. Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, c. 2003. Pp. xii, 471. Paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-299-19120-6; cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-299-19124-9.)

Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. By Kate Clifford Larson. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004. Pp. xxviii, 402. Paper, $14.95, ISBN 0-345-45628-9; cloth, $26.95, ISBN 0-345-45627-0.)

Between 1863 and 1943 fewer than ten serious biographies of Harriet Tubman appeared. There is no correlation between this meager body of scholarship and the immeasurable reputation of the woman known as "General Tubman" to the abolitionist John Brown and as "Moses" to the fugitives from slavery whom she liberated. Much of the data about the legendary Harriet Tubman comes from and has been perpetuated by scores of fictional and nonfictional works written for young readers. Given this bias against adult and academic readers, the nearly simultaneous publication of three scholarly studies about the well-known Underground Railroad conductor are welcomed additions to the literature.

Against such a backdrop, it is appropriate to ask what precipitated the current explosion in scholarship. Catherine Clinton maintains that increased interest in the enslaved population has intersected with the proliferation of scholarship about women. Hence, her biography of Harriet Tubman, a slave-born woman. Jean M. Humez notes that Tubman's narrative was "fragmented and obscured by the mediated forms in which it was recorded" (p. 6). As a result, her life story has not been a part of contemporary discussions about nineteenth-century narratives written by black women. Humez's efforts to recover Tubman's own history make it possible for the emergence of her "autobiography" and for her to receive a place, perhaps, in the pantheon of nineteenth-century black women writers. Finally, Kate Clifford Larson argues that Tubman's actual life story is more compelling than the partially fictionalized versions so readily available to young readers. In short, Larson aims to ferret out myths from reality and "reconstruct a richer and far more accurate historical account" than found in previous biographies (p. xvi).

Motivations and intents aside, the scholars take on the challenging task of chronicling Harriet Tubman's life without the benefit of manuscripts in their subject's own hand. Despite the absence of such written records, accounts of stories told by the illiterate woman, songs she sang, and re-enactments she performed, along with the authorized but seriously flawed biographies by Sarah Hopkins Bradford, make it possible to reconstruct Harriet Tubman's life.

These studies provide many details about the Maryland-born slave who suffered the emotional pains of separations from siblings and endured physical abuses. Yet Tubman was courageous, fled from bondage, and returned to the South repeatedly to guide dozens of others, including members of her own family, to freedom. According to popular lore, Tubman rescued her parents from slavery in 1857. In actuality they were already free. Her father, Benjamin Ross, was emancipated in 1840 by his owner, Anthony Thompson. Fifteen years later, Ross purchased his wife, Harriet, from Eliza Ann Brodness for the meager sum of twenty dollars. In the aftermath of vociferous debates between proslavery and antislavery advocates and the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), it was too dangerous for Benjamin and Harriet Ross to remain in the South. His antislavery activities subjected him to the imminent possibilities of arrest. Therefore Tubman rescued her aging parents from the threatening atmosphere surrounding free blacks in the slave South.

Tubman's final rescue attempt, in December 1860, resulted in a bittersweet ending. She failed to liberate two of her deceased sister's children but succeeded in bringing seven other slaves out of bondage. When assessing Tubman's overall tenure as an Underground Railroad agent, the authors find she was a resounding success and responsible for freeing dozens of fugitives.

Tubman distinguished herself in the Civil War. Decades afterward, she received a widow's pension based on the military service of her second husband, Nelson Davis. Tubman insisted that she was entitled to compensation based upon her own service record as a nurse and spy, but the gendered nature of war marginalized her role as a "soldier." Nevertheless, after much debate, Congress agreed in 1899 to grant her a pension of twenty dollars per month, a sum equal to the eight dollars per month for widows and twelve dollars for nurses. In all probability Tubman's fame and assistance from Sereno E. Payne, a New York congressman, were significant in securing the relatively hefty pension (veterans received only twenty-five dollars per month).

In the post--Civil War era, the indefatigable and impoverished Harriet Tubman fulfilled her vision of establishing a home in Albany, New York, for the orphaned, ailing, and poor among her people. The official opening of the Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Infirm Negroes occurred in 1908. Aside from her humanitarian efforts, Harriet Tubman, a progressive reformer, was an avid supporter of woman suffrage and lent her name to a Boston-based service organization aligned with the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

The three biographies successfully link Harriet Tubman's life to broader historical issues. Catherine Clinton's expertise in writing Civil War history is readily evident in discussions of Tubman's role as a scout, spy, and indispensable leader in the June 1863 Combahee River (South Carolina) Raid that resulted in the liberation of hundreds of women, men, and children. Many of the able-bodied men among them joined the U.S. Colored Troops. Humez's study provides a clear explanation for the evolution of public perceptions of Tubman as an abolitionist, soldier, and feminist. Showing the extent to which Tubman influenced the telling of her own story is a defining characteristic of Humez's book. And Larson's Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero, the longest and most prodigiously researched of the three books, yields the best analysis of the "independent and savvy" Tubman, who hired out her own time in the 1840s and "did all the work of a man" (pp. 64, 65). As a laborer, Tubman gained access to the private communications networks among watermen and loggers and learned skills that proved indispensable to her success as an Underground Railroad agent and Civil War operative.

Of the three books, Jean M. Humez's Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories, a volume in the Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography series, does not follow the traditional biographical format. Instead, the author skillfully and imaginatively cobbles together a four-part hypothetical version of Tubman's "autobiography" from mini-narratives defined as core stories, sayings, and sources that Tubman selected for inclusion in the authorized nineteenth-century biographies. Humez also adds a treasure trove of primary sources, including letters dictated by Tubman, U.S. government pension claims, testimonials from acquaintances, and newspaper accounts that under-gird Tubman's life stories. The result is an unusual "autobiography" influenced by Tubman, a nontraditional author.

An apparent interest of the authors in personifying Harriet Tubman's life generally succeeds, but two matters stand out precariously. One involves the relationship between Harriet Tubman and her husband John Tubman. Two of the biographers are clear in saying that he "must have loved her deeply" (Larson, p. 63) or was "deeply attached to his partner" (Clinton, p. 27). Despite the love they shared, Harriet ran away without him in 1849 and returned in 1851 to find that he had taken another partner. This is not surprising since prior to her departure he had not appeared truly interested in calming Harriet's pervasive anxieties about being sold.

Humez describes John Tubman as "faithless," apparently based on her readings of the 1869 biography of Harriet Tubman by Sarah Hopkins Bradford (Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman [Auburn, N.Y.]). Humez explains, "Tubman almost surely provided the critical perspective of John Tubman. Harriet's story suggests that she still may have been angry at his later betrayal" (p. 185).

Perhaps it is also the Bradford biography that prompted Larson's comment that "this infidelity has become the defining moment for a seemingly flawed and weak man" (Larson, p. 63). Weighing in on the subject, Clinton, perhaps also influenced by Bradford, writes, "While [Harriet] risked everything for a chance that they might be together, he turned her down. Worse yet, he allegedly would not even go to see her" (p. 83).

This aspect of John and Harriet Tubman's union appears negative primarily due to John's behavior. None of the biographers view Harriet's two-year absence from John as desertion. Perhaps John Tubman, a free man, without the same fears about bondage as his enslaved spouse, believed he had cause to end the marriage, which had no legal standing. Regardless of his rationale, such a discussion about John Tubman without subjecting Harriet to the same standards of fidelity and pondering the gendered roles of husbands and their wives in nineteenth-century America does not advance the scholarship on the Tubman marriage beyond Bradford's several flawed biographies.

Similarly, lengthy discussions appear in the Larson and Clinton biographies about Harriet Tubman and her relationship to Margaret Tubman (also known as Margaret Stewart) as either Margaret's aunt or mother. The speculative nature of the mother-daughter scenario seems forced, especially in view of an explanation by Alice Lucas Brickler, Margaret's daughter, who claimed that her mother was Tubman's "favorite niece." Tubman "fell in love with the little girl," Brickler said, "Maybe it was because she [Tubman] knew the joys of motherhood would never be hers" (Larson, p. 197). Why Brickler's observations about Tubman and her mother did not have more currency with the authors gives pause. Equally arresting is the virtual erasure of Margaret's twin brother, who also could have been Harriet Tubman's child.

The vast number of sources unearthed by the authors makes it possible to answer more questions than ever about the legendary Harriet Tubman. The authors' success in achieving such a goal varies. Clinton's Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, a highly readable and relatively brief biography, is occasionally disappointing when historical contexts, explanations for conclusions, and source citations are not provided. For example, the author writes, "It was remarkable that Tubman was willing to travel back into Maryland, and even to Baltimore, a notoriously dangerous city for fugitives" (p. 81). This conclusion is not clear, especially when read in conjunction with Steven Whitman's "Diverse Good Causes: Manumission and the Transformation of Urban Slavery" (Social Science History, 19 [Autumn 1995], 332-70). Whitman argues that the possibilities of freedom for enslaved women and men in the city, combined with the more fluid nature of interactions among blacks, enslaved and free, made Baltimore "a place to hide for urban and rural runaways aided by free people of color" (Whitman, p. 352). Moreover, Whitman claims that free blacks gravitated to Baltimore in large numbers after 1820, making slavery there "all but unsustainable" (p. 336).

And a few readers may wince at the more than adequate discussions about various facets of Tubman's life that are supported by voluminous sources in Larson's Bound for the Promised Land, or the repetitions in narrative, life stories, and documents in Humez's Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories. But when taken together the three biographies complement each other and fill the interstices in the illustrative life of an extraordinary, yet ordinary, black woman in nineteenth-century American history.

University of Missouri at Columbia

WILMA KING