Who is Harriet Tubman and Why Put Her on My Money?
Harriet Tubman's portrait has been approved to replace that of Andrew Jackson on the US $20 note. According to the U.S. Secretary of Money, Steve Munchkin, the date when this is to happen appears to have slipped back because of "technical issues" at the U.S. Mint. Whatever the reason for the delay, the following article which appeared in On Point, the Journal of the US Army Historical Foundation, tells a little known story of Tubman's contributions to the winning of the Civil War and shows her suitability for the honor of being placed on the bill.
Tubman was much more than an escaped slave and abolitionist, she was a spy for the Union.
A rare carte-de-visite of Harriet Tubman, 1868-1869 (Photograph by Benjamin F. Powelson, Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4)
The Jayhawker and the Conductor: The Combahee Ferry Raid, 2 June 1863
NOTE: This article contains excerpts from contemporary official Union and Confederate reports that include racial epithets. Additional eyewitness accounts employ local “dialect” that may or may not have been accurately rendered by the recorder. They are included only as a matter of record.
It was dark as three Union Army steamboats left St. Helena Sound off the coast of South Carolina and headed up the Combahee River. The black waters, cut by the ships’ blunt prows, parted and flowed along their hulls and through the paddle-wheels while the rhythmic chugging of the engines vibrated through the decks. At the rails, the soldiers quietly watched the indistinct shoreline shape shift in the darkness as they passed. They were nervous but excited to be going into action. Their commander, Colonel James Montgomery, did not doubt his men’s readiness for battle.
On board the gunboats John Adams and Harriet A. Weed, and the transport, Sentinel, were men of two units: the 2d South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment (African Descent) and a section of Battery C, 3d Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. The gunners of the 3d were at action stations, manning the ships’ cannons. They brought along two of their 12-pounder field howitzers for good measure.
Colonel Montgomery was an ardent abolitionist. He was born in Ohio, and moved first to Kentucky and Missouri as a young man. Then he moved again, this time to Kansas, where he became a “Jayhawker,” one of those involved in the violent struggle over whether Kansas would be a free or slave state —a conflict that left the region known as “Bleeding Kansas.”
Montgomery joined the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War and was soon chosen to lead the 2d South Carolina by his friend, Major General David Hunter. In early 1863, on Hunter’s order, he raised 130 black volunteers in Key West, Florida. Montgomery needed more free men to fill his unit and, although it was difficult to separate the slaves from their Southern owners, he had a plan. Many men were freed in small raids and others, left behind when their Southern owners fled the coastal lowlands, volunteered or were pressed into service to fill the demand.
They soon they took part in their first action. Montgomery’s volunteers accompanied another colored unit, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson’s 1st South Carolina Volunteers, on an expedition to Jacksonville, Florida, in early March 1863. There they would undergo their baptism of fire.
The force was transported by steamboat from Camp Saxton near Beaufort, South Carolina, and landed at the Jacksonville docks fully expecting to be engaged. Instead, they were met with silence. The Confederates had abandoned the town. The black soldiers and their white officers settled in and set up defenses around the town. The next morning, the Union soldiers were conducting drill training when the Confederates returned and opened fire on the Union pickets on the edge of the city. They assaulted the Union positions, but the Rebels were met by a vigorous defense and were turned back. The attack failed. Despite being largely untrained, untested, and having only been issued their weapons two days before, it was the Union’s 2d South Carolina Volunteers that stopped the Rebel advance. William Lee Apthorp, a Union captain with the 2d at the time, observed:
“They [the rebels] did not succeed in capturing the Jayhawker and his niggers as they had hoped, but on the contrary began to think that a black man could stand up and pull a trigger and that a bullet from his rifle was as deadly a thing to receive as if a white man had fired it.”
Several weeks later, the 2nd South Carolina went on another “fishing trip” into “Secesh” country, this time to raid the plantation of Confederate Colonel Stephen Bryant on the St. Johns River. The Rebel officer was surprised in his home and captured. Being short of fresh food, Colonel Montgomery told his troops “Boys, I don’t want you to interfere with private property but if any pigs or turkeys attack you, you must defend yourselves.” With the discomfited Rebel colonel in tow and their larders fully stocked, the 2d withdrew back to Jacksonville. Colonel Higginson was on the dock when Montgomery’s troops returned and recorded that:
“The steamer seemed an animated hen-coop. Live poultry hung from the foremast shrouds, dead ones from the mainmast, geese hissed from the binnacle, a pig paced the quarter-deck, and a duck’s wings were seen fluttering from a line which was wont to sustain duck trousers.”
Montgomery’s troops “liberated” cotton and other crops from the plantations along the river and captured a number of small Confederate detachments and their weapons. The Rebels’ Enfield rifles were especially prized trophies.
After concluding riverine operations in Florida in late March 1863, Montgomery and his band of raiders returned north to Beaufort. The city had been seized along with the Confederate installations of Fort Beauregard and Fort Walker on Hilton Head Island during the Battle of Port Royal on 7 November 1861. The forts were captured by a Union fleet of seventy-one ships, the largest yet assembled, and a ground force of nearly 13,000 men under Rear Admiral Samuel Du Pont and Brigadier General Thomas W. Sherman. After the loss of the two forts and the towns of Port Royal and Beaufort, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was in charge of coastal defenses along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard, decided he would not contest the Union presence and withdrew his forces inland to protect the cities of Charleston and Savannah and the all-important Charleston & Savannah Railroad line that linked them.
Fort Walker was renamed Fort Welles and became the headquarters of the Union Southern Department first under Brigadier General Sherman, who was later responsible for the capture of the Confederate stronghold at Fort Pulaski in Georgia in April 1862. Sherman was replaced by Major General Duncan Hunter.
In June 1862, Hunter directed Brigadier General Henry Benham to undertake an attack against Charleston. Benham’s plan foundered and the Union forces were turned back on 16 June at the Battle of Secessionville on James Island. Shortly thereafter, the War Department informed Hunter that some of his forces were needed for operations with Major General George B. McClellan during the Peninsula Campaign. Responding to the call, Hunter sent six infantry regiments and several companies of cavalry north to Virginia.
Thereafter, Hunter lacked the manpower for any large scale operations against the Confederates, but he was still able to mount harassing operations against his Rebel opponents in their home country. In late May 1863, Hunter ordered Colonel Montgomery and his 2d South Carolina Volunteers to prepare for an unprecedented mission.
In an effort that would presage Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s operations in Georgia, Montgomery was ordered to destroy railroads and bridges, and to deprive the Rebel troops of supplies in the Confederate’s own area. Another objective was to collect “contrabands” (slaves) for service in the Union ranks, as well as to deprive the Confederates of free labor. The first raid would be to destroy a ponton bridge located at a ferry site some forty miles up the Combahee River and wreak as much havoc as possible on the local farms and plantations.
Since their return from Florida, the men of 2d had been conducting drill and weapons training and were ready for action. They would be augmented with a section from the 3d Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. The Union forces had another and somewhat unusual resource: a diminutive African American woman by the name of Harriet Tubman.
By 1860, Harriet Tubman was already well-known (and actually “wanted”) in the South for her work. Born into slavery in Maryland, she escaped north in 1849. From that moment forward, Tubman became part of the Underground Railroad and helped over seventy slaves to escape to freedom, a talent that earned her the name “Conductor.” Even as a young woman, Tubman was ascribed with mystical traits; some thought she was an Ashanti sorceress who could take on the form of a leopard, thus explaining her ability to find hiding slaves and elude pursuing slave masters. It was a useful reputation.
When the Civil War began, she offered her services as a nurse to the Union Army. Tubman was first recommended to Hunter by John Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, to help at the hospital on Hilton Head Island. It quickly became clear to Hunter and others within his command that she had other useful skills. Her clandestine trips into the South as part of the Underground Railroad had given her the skills and experience to collect information in enemy territory, and she was dispatched into Rebel-held territory to gather information about the Confederate dispositions.
Tubman was not a commando or a steely-eyed killer, but she was able to do what neither of those types could do: pass through enemy lines and talk to her people about the local situation. She acted mostly in the role of an agent handler; she enlisted the help of locals who knew the area and spoke Gullah, the Creole language spoken by the blacks of the Sea Islands and the coastal low country of Georgia and South Carolina. She was what we would today call a “human terrain specialist” who knew how to work with the people to accomplish the mission.
According to her later pension request, a number of local black men assisted in her duties, two of whom would help with the upcoming mission. Charles Simmons and Samuel Hayward were riverboat pilots who knew the Combahee River well, not only its snags, currents, and sand bars, but where the Confederate positions and all the plantations were located. They also knew where the Confederate “torpedoes”—river mines—were placed.
On 1 June 1863, Colonel Montgomery and around 400 men of the 2d South Carolina Volunteer Infantry and the 3d Rhode Island Heavy Artillery departed Beaufort on three boats late in the evening. The tiny fleet made its way across the St. Helena Sound arriving at the mouth of the Combahee at around 0300 in the morning. Thus far, everything was going to plan, at least until the Sentinel ran aground. This necessitated the transfer soldiers on board the grounded boat to the other boats before the mission could resume.
Around daybreak, the two vessels reached Field’s Point, about twenty-five miles upriver. It was a known Confederate position, and a party led by Captain Thomas N. Thompson was landed to eliminate the threat it posed. The Rebels exercised discretion and fled, leaving the breastworks to the Yankees.
Two miles further upriver, Captain James N. Carver and his Company E landed at Tar Bluff. After consolidating their position they began to move northwest on the road towards Ashepoo. Their special orders were simple: “destroy rebel property and confiscate negroes.”
With their withdrawal route thus secured, the boats continued upriver until they reached Nichol’s Plantation. The Weed anchored and served as a gun platform on station. Two companies under Captains John M. Adams and William Lee Apthorp were landed and began to move up the river banks to begin their work. The slaves in the fields ran towards the river as soon as they realized who the soldiers were, while the white overseers departed on horseback in the opposite direction with some alacrity.
In the interim, the Adams continued upriver to the Combahee Ferry crossing site. As the ferry came into view, the Union troops saw a party of Confederate cavalry crossing the ponton bridge, heading towards their headquarters. Montgomery ordered Captain Brayton, the artillery commander, to open fire. Brayton’s crews began to shell the bridge with the Adams’ guns, which greatly accelerated the cavalry troopers’ pace.
William C. Heyward, a Confederate colonel and local planation owner, witnessed the approach of the Adams and noted it avoided the torpedoes that were emplaced on the approach to the bridge. He told his overseers to get the “hands” into the woods and soon had to flee his home as well.
Reaching the ferry, Montgomery ordered Union troops to disembark to destroy the bridge and set it ablaze. Despite that obstacle’s removal, the Adams was prevented from continuing by pilings that blocked the river. They would not reach their ultimate target—the railway bridge—further upriver.
The Rebel pickets dispersed and headed off to the plantations to warn of the coming of the Union troops. As result, little opposition was thrown up to impede the Union forces. Montgomery landed the last infantry company under Captain Hoyt on the east side of the river. They proceeded to march along the banks towards Green Pond and Heyward’s property.
At the same time, Captain Brayton’s detachment landed on west side and began their work in earnest. Only a token reserve was left on the boats as all the available riflemen were sent out as skirmishers. That seemed to confuse the Confederate defenders as to the size of the invasion force. Very few Rebel patrols chose to engage the Union forces and those that did were quickly persuaded to break off their sorties.
For fifteen miles along the Combahee, from Field’s Point to the ferry crossing, most of the property near the river was set ablaze. The Union soldiers, often with the help of the slaves, destroyed the plantations’ growing and gathered crops, outbuildings, and cotton warehouses. They also destroyed the floodgates to the rice fields, which ruined the harvest.
Most painfully for the Confederates, Montgomery’s men burned the plantation owners’ homes. One owner lost his library and over $10,000 worth of books in the blaze. Two of Colonel Heyward’s prized horses were confiscated. Pointedly, the slave quarters were left intact.
Many slaves who witnessed the raid ran to the water’s edge and pleaded to be taken on board. Since the object of the mission was to confiscate contraband, their wish was granted. Some were reluctant, however; they were as wary of Union soldiers as they were of the Confederate. Tubman related in her later memoir that she
“tol' de soljers to take der caps off an' let de people see der wooly heads, but some uh dem slaves stil dint trust us, even if we was black like dem. So I stood on de prow uh de boat an' I sang to em. Dat did de trick an' dey all come on da boats.”
Loaded to the gunwales with soldiers, over 700 former slaves, and horses, chickens, and pigs, the Adams and the Weed turned downriver and headed for the coast. Not all the slaves could be rescued and many were left on the riverbank—a sad sight for the members of the expedition as they floated downstream.
The boats stopped only to pick up the detachments left behind at Tar Bluff and Field’s Point, whose men had been fully engaged throughout the day fending off Confederate forces trying to dislodge them. Again, the guns of the Adams and the Weed spoke and Captains Carver and Thompson’s troops were able to disengage and board the ships for the withdrawal. Not a single Union soldier was lost in the operation.
Upriver, smoke rose in plumes from the smoldering ruins of plantations and mills. Confederate reinforcements arrived late to find at least four fine plantation houses burned along with several million dollars worth of equipment and crops destroyed, not to mention the loss of their precious slave labor. The Union steamboats were long gone. South Carolina’s “Rice Kingdom” lowlands along the Combahee were devastated.
The Confederate military leaders and local Southern citizens were incensed. They were mortified that “a parcel of negro wretches, calling themselves soldiers, with a few degraded whites” were able to “march unmolested, with the incendiary torch, to rob, destroy, and burn a large section of country.” In his report on the Union raid, the Confederate Inspector General noted:
The enemy seem to have been well posted as to the character and capacity of our troops and their small chance of encountering opposition, and to have been well guided by persons thoroughly acquainted with the river and the country.
It was Tubman and her “field agents” who made the success of Montgomery’s operation possible. It was a threat the Confederates recognized too late, and they paid dearly for it.
Although Montgomery’s raids did little to change the tactical situation around Savannah (it would not fall to the Union until Major General Sherman’s arrival in December 1864 at the conclusion of his epic “March to Sea”), his willingness to destroy and confiscate civilian property signaled a new and “ungentlemanly” form of warfare later referred to as “total war.” In his report of 3 June 1863 to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Major General Hunter stated: “This expedition is but the initial experiment of a system of incursions which will penetrate up all the inlets, creeks, and rivers of this department.”
Several days later, Montgomery’s 2d South Carolina was joined by a new unit, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw for another expedition, this time to raid Darien, Georgia. Transported up the Altamaha River by five transports with two sections from the 3d Rhode Island Artillery, the Northern force arrived off Darien on 11 June 1863. The Union guns shelled the town, and this was followed by the landing of Union soldiers at the town’s wharves. Despite no resistance being offered or even Confederates soldiers being present, Montgomery ordered the town looted and burned. Colonel Shaw, new to Montgomery’s style of warfare protested the order. Montgomery answered that Southerners “must be swept away by the hand of God.”
Montgomery, who was a true abolitionist and as a leader of black troops who were outlaws in the eyes of the Confederates, felt himself and his unit “not bound by the rules of regular warfare.” It was an opening salvo of what Major General Sherman would later call the “hard hand of warfare.” Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard called the burning of Darien “vandalism,” but not everyone shared his view. While we do not know Harriet Tubman’s thoughts on the burning of Darien, Frederick Douglass said simply “whoever sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”
On 18 July 1863, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and 272 black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts were killed, wounded, or declared missing during the misguided frontal assault on Confederate stronghold at Fort Wagner on Morris Island. Colonel Montgomery resigned his commission and returned to Kansas in 1864. He died there in 1871. Harriet Tubman survived the war. She died on 10 March 1913 and was buried with full military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York. In February 1864, the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Volunteer Infantry became the 33d and the 34th United States Colored Infantry Regiments.
Montgomery’s raid up the Combahee met General David Hunter expectations. It also served to free numerous slaves, many of whom joined the ranks of 2d South Carolina Volunteers. Overall the raid showed the value of operations characterized by speed, surprise. and violence of action - a mission that was enabled by good local intelligence and a daring commander.
by James Stejskal, On Point, Vol 24, Issue 4.