Sep 17, 2026 · 7 min · 6 segments
Bonus episode from the newsletter On This Day in Women's History! On September 17, 1849, Harriet Tubman made her break for freedom. She ran away from her enslaver in Maryland, making for the…
Harriet's break for freedom was helped along by the practice of hiring out.
It sometimes happened that a slave owner held more human chattel than he or she personally needed.
If so, the enslaved person could be rented by someone else.
In Harriet's case, it went even further.
Harriet was in charge of finding jobs for herself and collecting the payment.
She paid a regular fee to her enslaver, but otherwise she was free to keep the rest, however small that amount might be.
In practical terms, this meant that no one had too close an eye on her.
She had a window of time in which every one of the people who might raise the alarm could reasonably assume that she was appropriately and obediently working elsewhere.
That is why it was not until two weeks later that an ad appeared looking for Harriet, known as Minty at the time, and the two younger brothers she took with her.
The ad described Minty as about 27 years of a chestnut color, fine looking, and about five feet high.
Even so, the first escape attempt failed.
Her brothers were scared and worried about leaving their families.
But in October, Harriet tried again, this time on her own.
She made it to a safe house, and a Quaker man loaded his wagon with her in the bottom and drove her to the next safe house.
With the help of the Underground Railroad and the guidance of the North Star, she eventually crossed the Pennsylvania border.
When I found I had crossed that line, she later said, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.
There was such a glory over everything.
The sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.
Later on, Harriet would return across that line in the other direction.
Many, many times.
She was coming back, putting herself at risk to help her family and others follow her lead into the free north.
Many of them she led up into Canada, because after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, even the Free North wasn't very free.
That is why the spiritual Go Down Moses is sometimes thought to be about her or even by her.
Harriet's break for freedom was helped along by the practice of hiring out.
It sometimes happened that a slave owner held more human chattel than he or she personally needed.
If so, the enslaved person could be rented by someone else.
In Harriet's case, it went even further.
Harriet was in charge of finding jobs for herself and collecting the payment.
She paid a regular fee to her enslaver, but otherwise she was free to keep the rest, however small that amount might be.
In practical terms, this meant that no one had too close an eye on her.
She had a window of time in which every one of the people who might raise the alarm could reasonably assume that she was appropriately and obediently working elsewhere.
That is why it was not until two weeks later that an ad appeared looking for Harriet, known as Minty at the time, and the two younger brothers she took with her.
The ad described Minty as about 27 years of a chestnut color, fine looking, and about five feet high.
Even so, the first escape attempt failed.
Her brothers were scared and worried about leaving their families.
But in October, Harriet tried again, this time on her own.
She made it to a safe house, and a Quaker man loaded his wagon with her in the bottom and drove her to the next safe house.
With the help of the Underground Railroad and the guidance of the North Star, she eventually crossed the Pennsylvania border.
When I found I had crossed that line, she later said, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.
There was such a glory over everything.
The sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.
Later on, Harriet would return across that line in the other direction.
Many, many times.
She was coming back, putting herself at risk to help her family and others follow her lead into the free north.
Many of them she led up into Canada, because after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, even the Free North wasn't very free.
That is why the spiritual Go Down Moses is sometimes thought to be about her or even by her.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
