Right after sunset, three boats sailed towards the rice plantations on the Combahee River. Harriet Tubman knew they had to hurry - they only had six hours before the changing tide would make it very difficult to get away. Edda L. Fields-Black's book is "COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War." Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Who is Harriet Tubman and why is she significant?
She became known as Moses. People didn't know her real identity. Many slaveholders assumed Moses was a white man. And then the Civil War broke out. In South Carolina, the Union, or the U.S. Army, occupied Beaufort and surrounding areas. Etta Fields Black writes that Harriet Tubman would almost certainly have been following the news about what was happening.
It's during this time... that Tubman is sent by the governor of Massachusetts down to serve as a spy for the army.
She was going to be spying on the Confederacy. Why do you think that she was recruited as a spy? I mean, what were they looking for?
They were looking, I think, for people who knew how to navigate safely within Confederate territory, people who could learn the land, people who were used to operating in disguise and in plain sight. These were all things that Tubman did on the Underground Railroad. I also think they were looking for a certain level of fearlessness She risks everything to come south.
I call it the belly of the beast, if you will, to South Carolina to, you know, participate in the liberation of people she doesn't even know.
Harriet Tubman gathered intelligence from people who'd escaped slavery and were now living in a type of refugee camp.
And she interviewed people. She talked to the people who came from Confederate territory. These people had often seen all kinds of things. They knew where Confederate troops were stationed, what were their movements, what were their troop strengths, their armaments. And she would get that kind of information from them and give it to the U.S. Army commanders.
We know, for example, that Tubman's intelligence gathering, her espionage gathering, led to finding the people, the enslaved people, who were forced to mine the Cumbee River with torpedoes. And she led a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots, all men, Formerly enslaved, she and her men went to the Cumbee River and removed those torpedoes, and they opened the river to the U.S. Army.
And Harriet Tubman also recruited men who knew how to navigate a boat up the river. And so after sunset on June 1st, the three boats were ready to go, headed for the rice plantations.
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