On the recordMarch 10, 2011
12 years ago this very day, the Senate passed a joint resolution that honored Harriet Tubman, with Harriet Tubman Day, on March 10. That resolution was sponsored by Senator Carper and then-Senator Biden. In the House of Representatives, I served and I cosponsored a similar resolution. Harriet Tubman was a remarkable woman. She was born in Dorchester County, MD, in 1822. She was a slave for greater than 25 years of her life. At age 25, she married John Tubman. She escaped slavery in 1849. She returned to the eastern shore of Maryland, not once but 19 times that we know of within a 10-year period, in order to rescue slaves and to set them free. She rescued slaves in Dorchester County and Caroline County in Maryland and throughout the entire Northeast. She was known as the modern day 'Moses' for the Underground Railroad. In the Civil War, she joined Union forces as a spy, as a scout, and as a nurse, operating in Virginia, Florida, and South Carolina. After the Civil War was over, she settled in Auburn, NY, and was very actively involved in the women's suffrage movement, and she established one of the first African-American homes for the aged. She died in 1913. Harriet Tubman embodies the American spirit. She was a strong-willed person who fought for the rights and freedom of those who were oppressed in the barbaric institution of slavery.
