FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HARRIET TUBMAN¹Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) was born into slavery as Arminta Ross to the slave owners Harriet Greene and Benjamin Ross, residing near Bucktown in Dorchester County, Maryland. She escaped bondage in 1849, and the following year she returned to Maryland as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, initially to rescue her family members. Following the successful relocation of most of her family to St. Catherine’s, Canada, Tubman focused her efforts on rescuing as many enslaved brethren as possible, eventually directing approximately 120 men, women, and children to freedom. During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army, first as a cook and nurse and then as a scout and spy in South Carolina. Jean M. Humez, Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories, (Madison, Wisc., 2003), 32–35; EAAH, 3: 247–58; EAA, 2: 683–84.

Rochester, [N.Y.] 29 August 1868.

DEAR HARRIET:

I am glad to know that the story of your eventful life has been written by
a kind lady, and that the same is soon to be published.²The writer and historian Sarah Hopkins Bradford (1818–1915) interviewed Tubman many times in Auburn, New York, in the years following the Civil War. Bradford used that research to compose the first of two biographies on the black abolitionist, which was written to assist Tubman and her philanthropic endeavors. Douglass alludes to Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, N.Y., 1869). Bradford’s second work was Harriet Tubman: Moses of Her People (New York, 1886). You ask for what
you do not need when you call upon me for a word of commendation.³This letter was published in the preface to Bradford’s work on Tubman. Bradford, Scenes, 6–7. I
need such words from you far more than you can need them from me, especially where your superior labors and devotion to the cause of the lately
enslaved of our land are known as I know them. 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. I have had the applause
of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the
multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few
trembling, scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have

led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt “” has
been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been
the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting
John Brown—of sacred memory—I know of no one who has willingly
encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than
you have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who
do not know you as I know you. It is to me a great pleasure and a great
privilege to bear testimony to your character and your works, and to say
to those to whom you may come, that I regard you in every way truthful
and trustworthy.

Your friend,

FREDERICK DOUG LASS.

PLSr: Sarah Hopkins Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, N.Y., 1869), 6–8.