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From: <>
Subject: [BRADFORD-L] Book by Sarah H. Bradford
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 17:34:01 EDT

There was a book published about 1886, in New York, by Geo. R Lockwood & Son.
The name of this book is: HARRIET, The Moses of Her People, by Sarah H.
Bradford.
<A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/docsouth/harriet/harriet.html">Documenting the
American South, or, The South...</A>

..........PREFACE.

THE title I have given my black heroine, in this second edition of her
story, viz.: THE MOSES OF HER PEOPLE, may seem a little ambitious, considering
that this Moses was a woman, and that she succeeded in piloting only three or
four hundred slaves from the land of bondage to the land of freedom.

But I only give her here the name by which she was familiarly known,
both at the North and the South, during the years of terror of the Fugitive
Slave Law, and during our last Civil War, in both of which she took so
prominent a part.

And though the results of her unexampled heroism were not to free a
whole nation of bond-men and bond-women, yet this object was as much the
desire of her heart, as it was of that of the great leader of Israel. Her cry
to the slave-holders, was ever like his to Pharaoh, "Let my people go!" ...

.........Would that Mrs. Stowe had carried out the plan she once projected, of
being the historian of our sable friend; by her graphic pen, the incidents of
such a life might have been wrought up into a tale of thrilling interest,
equaling, if not exceeding her world renowned "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

The work fell to humbler hands, and the first edition of this story,
under the title of "Harriet Tubman," was written in the greatest possible
haste, while the writer was preparing for a voyage to Europe. There was
pressing need for this book, to save the poor woman's little home from being
sold under a mortgage, and letters and facts ............

........ The following sketch taken by Mrs. Bradford, chiefly from Harriet's
own recollections, which are wonderfully distinct and minute, but also from
other corroborative sources, gives but a very imperfect account of what this
woman has been.

Her color, and the servile condition in which she was born and reared,
have doomed her to obscurity, but a more heroic soul did not breathe in the
bosom of Judith or of Jeanne D'Arc......

.........A Letter from Gen. Saxton to a lady of Auburn.

ATLANTA, GA., March 21, 1868.

MY DEAR MADAME: I have just received your letter informing me that
Hon. W. H. Seward, Secretary of State, would present a petition to Congress
for a pension to Harriet Tubman, for services rendered in the Union Army
during the late war. I can bear witness to the value of her services in South
Carolina and Florida. She was employed in the hospitals and as a spy. She made
many a raid inside the enemy's lines, displaying remarkable courage, zeal, and
fidelity. She was employed by General Hunter, and I think by Generals Stevens
and Sherman, and is as deserving of a pension from the Government for her
services as any other of its faithful servants.

I am very truly yours,
RUFUS SAXTON, Bvt. Brig.-Gen., U. S. A. .......

....Her career in South Carolina is well known to some of our officers, and I
think to Colonel Higginson, now of Newport, R. I., and Colonel James
Montgomery, of Kansas, to both of whom she was useful as a spy and guide, if I
mistake not. I regard her as, on the whole, the most extraordinary person of
her race I have ever met. She is a negro of pure, or almost pure blood, can
neither read nor write, and has the characteristics of her race and condition.
But she has done what can scarcely be credited on the best authority, and she
has accomplished her purposes with a coolness, foresight, patience and wisdom,
which in a white man would have raised him to the highest pitch of
reputation......

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