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jdintr's review against another edition
5.0
What is remarkable here, is the scholarship that Lowry pulls together to form this biography is remarkable. The early sections, dealing with Harriet's--nee Arminta Ross--childhood on Maryland's eastern shore reminded me of the work of Annette Gordon Reed on Sally Hemings.
The fact is that Harriet Tubman never learned to read or write, so her background must be reconstructed from old runaway slave ads, wills, and other legal transactions. Even later in life, Tubman would dictate stories from her life to two sources. Still Lowry pieces together clear images of Tubman's work on the Underground Railroad and later in the Civil War as a nurse and scout among South Carolina's coastal islands.
I had known so little about Tubman before reading this. Lowry connects her memorably with James Brown, and she even places Tubman in the background of actions familiar to fans of the movie, Glory (1989). Col. James Montgomery--a "bad guy" in the film who commands his black troops to loot and burn the Georgia town of Darian--was one of Harriet's biggest supporters, and for him she scouted several raids to rescue enslaved people on rice plantations upstream from Union outposts.
Readers also learn in this book about Tubman's mystical experiences--visions, dreams and messages from God that followed a head injury when she was a teenager. I don't want to spoil this for readers, but Tubman claimed to have had premonitions of both the failure of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and the success of the Civil War and the end of slavery, along with other remarkable experiences that helped her to avoid capture as she returned time and time again to Maryland to lead slaves out of bondage.
The fact is that Harriet Tubman never learned to read or write, so her background must be reconstructed from old runaway slave ads, wills, and other legal transactions. Even later in life, Tubman would dictate stories from her life to two sources. Still Lowry pieces together clear images of Tubman's work on the Underground Railroad and later in the Civil War as a nurse and scout among South Carolina's coastal islands.
I had known so little about Tubman before reading this. Lowry connects her memorably with James Brown, and she even places Tubman in the background of actions familiar to fans of the movie, Glory (1989). Col. James Montgomery--a "bad guy" in the film who commands his black troops to loot and burn the Georgia town of Darian--was one of Harriet's biggest supporters, and for him she scouted several raids to rescue enslaved people on rice plantations upstream from Union outposts.
Readers also learn in this book about Tubman's mystical experiences--visions, dreams and messages from God that followed a head injury when she was a teenager. I don't want to spoil this for readers, but Tubman claimed to have had premonitions of both the failure of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and the success of the Civil War and the end of slavery, along with other remarkable experiences that helped her to avoid capture as she returned time and time again to Maryland to lead slaves out of bondage.
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