Harriet Tubman Finally Given the Rank of General for Leading Union Troops
The legendary Underground Railroad conductor was the first woman to lead a wartime military action in the U.S.
HB Lindsey/Underwood Archives/Getty Images
More than 160 years after Harriet Tubman led Union troops on a raid on Combahee Ferry in South Carolina, freeing more than 700 enslaved people, the legendary abolitionist was posthumously made a one-star brigadier general in the Maryland National Guard, NPR reported. “Today we celebrate one of the greatest authors of the American story,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Monday during a Veterans Day ceremony. Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland but escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, when she was about 27. She returned to Maryland soon after to rescue her family, walking 142 miles each way in the dark and using only the stars and waterways to guide her. When the Civil War broke out, she joined the Union Army as a nurse, but thanks to her clandestine trips to the South, she was quickly dispatched as a spy and a scout. On Monday, dozens of veterans and generals gathered at Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Maryland for the ceremony presenting the official order for her new rank.
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