Harriet Tubman honored for her military service on Veterans Day nearly 160 years later

A scout. A spy. A nurse. An advocate. These were just a few of the titles used to describe a renowned freedom fighter and former enslaved woman who spent her life fighting for others at a commissioning ceremony in Maryland.

The Maryland National Guard and Gov. Wes Moore posthumously commissioned Harriet Tubman as a one-star general in the Maryland Army National Guard on Monday. The ceremony, commemorating her service to the Union Army during the Civil War, was held near her birthplace at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park Visitor Center.

“This is a person who was one of the greatest Marylanders we’ve ever known, and someone who was willing to risk her own freedom, her own safety, her own life in order to save others. That is patriotism. That is heroism,” said Moore, acknowledging the importance of honoring Tubman on Veterans Day.

John A. Andrews, the governor of Massachusetts at the time of the Civil War, recruited Tubman to the Union Army shortly after the war began. Tubman was the first African American woman to serve in combat for the US military.

She first served as a liaison between Union commanders and escaping slaves, helping to recruit them into the military. She then worked as both a nurse and a spy, commanding her own group of spies and leading an expedition that led to the freedom of over 700 slaves.

After the war ended, Tubman was denied military benefits by the USgovernment. She received a widow’s pension more than 20 years later for the military service of her second husband.

Maj. Gen. Janeen L. Birckhead, the commanding officer for the Maryland National Guard, hosted the ceremony to officially recognize Tubman’s military service, commissioning her as a brigadier general.

“On behalf of the Maryland National Guard, I am proud to call Brig. Gen. Harriet Tubman among the best of us,” said Birckhead. “With courage and selflessness, Harriet Tubman nobly advanced the survival of the Union and the proposition that all people are created equal.”

The decision won unanimous support from both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly, state delegate Edith J. Patterson explained. Following speeches from political leaders, Birckhead placed the symbolic rank around the neck of Tina Wyatt, the three-time great grandniece of Tubman.

“She came into the Civil War, into the bowels of slavery, after having freed herself to be able to free others, and to be able to fight for the Union… but mostly to free the enslaved that were there and then to let them fight,” Wyatt said as she accepted the honor.

Born into chattel slavery in 1820 as Araminta “Minty” Ross, Tubman was raised on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. She was one of 11 children.

As a five-year-old child, she was rented out to a neighboring family. When she was 12, Tubman was hit in the head with a heavy metal weight while trying to aid a fleeing slave. The injury caused her to have sleeping spells for the rest of her life, and episodes where she would drop into unconsciousness without warning.

Tubman decided she would escape around 1850, after learning she and two of her brothers were to be sold. The siblings left together, but, fearful of what would happen if they were caught, her brothers turned back. Tubman continued the journey to Philadelphia alone, according to an 1886 biography by Sarah Bradford.

In 1850, Tubman began her famous work with the Underground Railroad, first organizing the escape of her sister Mary Ann and her family. In 1857, Tubman returned to Maryland and freed her parents. Tubman is said to have made at least 17 additional trips south during her lifetime.

Tubman became a legend to many of the people who heard of her journeys, becoming known as the Moses of her time. Whispers of a mysterious Moses spread among plantation owners, who offered large rewards for her capture.

Tubman made her last trip to Maryland in November 1860, around the time that Abraham Lincoln was elected president. She died in 1913 at the age of 92.

In 2016, US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced plans to have a portrait of Tubman featured on the front of the $20 bill. In 2021, the Biden administration said it was “exploring ways to speed up” the release of $20 bills featuring the abolitionist after the Trump administration delayed the move first initiated by President Barack Obama.

If put on the $20 dollar bill, Tubman will be the first African American to appear on a US banknote.

Monday’s commemoration is the first time Tubman has been officially recognized for her military service.