Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad

Savior of Hundreds of Slaves

Harriet Tubman is probably the most well-known of all the Underground Railroad's conductors. During a ten-year span Harriet Tubman made nineteen trips into the South and escorted hundreds of slaves to freedom. And as she proudly pointed out, in all of her journeys she "never lost a single passenger."

Image: Harriet Tubman Leading The Way
By artist Janice Huse

Backstory
She was born Araminta Ross around 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland, on the plantation where her parents were enslaved. She later took her mother's name as her own: Harriet. At age five or six, she was "hired out" by her master as a nursemaid for a small baby. She had to stay awake all night so that the baby would not cry and wake the mother. If Harriet fell asleep, the baby's mother whipped her. Seven years later she was sent to work in the fields.

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Civil War Women Spies for the North

Women Spies for the Union

American society was still quite Victorian in many ways during the 1860s. Therefore, women spies were not as likely to be roughly interrogated or hanged when their true identity was discovered. These heroines exhibited great courage and were willing to suffer imprisonment or death in the service of their country.

Image: Illustration of Sarah Emma Edmonds on horseback dodging a bullet fired by a southern woman.

Elizabeth Van Lew
From a wealthy family well-known in Richmond society, Elizabeth Van Lew was educated in Philadelphia and returned home an ardent abolitionist. Elizabeth was in her forties when the War began, and steadfastly loyal to the Union. She started writing to Federal officials to tell them about the "seccession mania" occurring in Richmond, but she was soon sending information about Confederate troop locations, numbers and movements. Once regular mail was no longer safe, she recruited her servants as her messengers.

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First Women Lawyers

Pioneer Women in the American Legal Profession

Though women lawyers did not enter the legal profession until after the Civil War, that does not mean that women did not want to become lawyers in the antebellum period. It only means that there were no records kept.

First, women were denied admission to law schools, and then they were denied permission to practice law. Either the legislature or the supreme court of each state determined the requirements for admission to the state bar, and as a rule they were not keen on changing the status quo.

The entrance of American women into the practice of law formally began in 1869 when Arabella Mansfield was admitted to the Iowa bar. She was allowed to take the bar exam after a liberal Justice included women in the meaning of white male person - by a novel interpretation of a law which stated that masculine words may include females.

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Carrie McGavock

Civil War Nurse at the Battle of Franklin

Carrie McGavock's plantation home, Carnton, on the outskirts of Franklin, Tennessee, was used as a hospital after the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864. She not only oversaw the care of the wounded in and around her house, she was responsible for making sure that nearly 1500 Confederates were reinterred in a cemetery on the McGavock property.

Carrie Winder and John McGavock were married in December 1848. They had five children during the subsequent years, three of whom died at young ages: Martha (1849-1862), Mary Elizabeth (1851-1858) and John Randal (1854). The surviving children, Winder (1857-1907) and Hattie (1855-1932), witnessed the carnage at their home.

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