Post-Emancipation Life
At the end of the war, Tubman met her second husband, Nelson Davis, who was a Union soldier. They enjoyed a 19-year marriage, moving to Auburn, New York at the end of hostilities. Tubman did not stop her tireless work on behalf of others. She organized fundraisers for the African-American churches who had sheltered runaways prior to the war and founded a home for the elderly and poor on property next to her house. It was at this home that Tubman died in 1913.
Tubman’s Impact
Frederick Douglass wrote to Tubman, “I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardship to serve our enslaved people than you.” Tubman’s life is the stuff of legend, but Tubman never sought fame and remained humble throughout her life. More than anything, Tubman wanted to serve God and bring others to freedom.
Sources
Humez, Jean McMahon. Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin press, 2003.
Quarles, Benjamin. “Harriet Tubman’s Unlikely Leadership.” In Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Leon F. Litwack and August Meier. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991. 43-57.
Still, William. The Underground Rail Road. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872. Available at http://deila.dickinson.edu/theirownwords/title/0088.htm.