Abolitionist Harriet Tubman was officially made a one-star brigadier general in the Maryland National Guard on Veterans Day at a ceremony attended by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore.
“Harriet Tubman lived the values and virtues that I was taught when I served in the United States Army,” Mr. Moore said at the event in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore. “And with each act of courage, Harriet Tubman helped bring us together as a nation and a people. She fought for a kind of unity that can only be earned through danger, risk, and sacrifice. And it is a unity we still benefit from to this day.”
Tubman’s great-great-great-grandniece Tina Wyatt represented her family in receiving the proclamation of Tubman’s commission in the Maryland National Guard.
“Aunt Harriet was one of those veterans informally, she gave up any rights that she had obtained for herself to be able to fight for others. She is a selfless person,” Ms. Wyatt said, according to The Associated Press.
Tubman was born and raised in Dorchester County before her escape from slavery and move to Philadelphia. She would go on to cross the Mason-Dixon line multiple times, helping other enslaved people escape bondage via the Underground Railroad. She died in 1913.
During the Civil War, she worked as a nurse, scout and spy for the Union, helping to land hundreds of Black soldiers in South Carolina as part of a gunboat raid. The 1863 Combahee Ferry raid allowed Union soldiers to destroy several coastal plantations and liberate 750 other enslaved people, according to the National Park Service.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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