. Around the time Harriet was born, Denmark Vesey recruited thousands of supporters in a plan to kill the whites in Charleston, South Carolina. But he was betrayed and hanged. The peace was further threatened in the August of 1831 when Harriet was about 11 years old. In Harriet’s neighboring state of Virginia, Nat Turner led a band of black men in killing 57 white men, women, and children. They began late on a Sunday night, slaying Turner’s master and his family in their bedrooms. And they continued through the night and the next day, killing every white person they found. It took three U.S. Army regiments to stop them and Nat eluded pursuers for two months before he was arrested and hanged in November. To slave holders this news was a nightmare come true. In areas where whites retaliated, fifty-five blacks were killed without a trial. But the dream of deliverance lived on.In 1846 Dred Scott, a slave living in St. Louis, Missouri, sued to prove that he, his wife, and his two daughters were legally entitled to their freedom. After being tried several times the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856. The following year, the Court rejected Scott’s claim concluding that blacks, even when free, could never become citizens of the United States. In September of 1850, the same year that Harriet escaped, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed. It allowed anyone the right to capture any black person and send them back to the South. This law caused the Underground Railroad to tighten security. It created a code to make things more secret. It also sent the escaping slaves into Canada instead of the “North” of the U.S. In 1861 the Civil War had begun.Harriet Tubman responded eloquently to the historical events that she has become famous for being involved in. Escaping slavery when she was 28 , she did so out of fear of being traded to a plantation further South, which was almost positive death fo...
