Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War

National Archives Museum
Online

Author Edda L. Fields-Black will describe the Combahee River Raid during the Civil War and Harriet Tubman’s role in it. Hired by the Union Army, Harriet Tubman ventured into the heart of slave territory—Beaufort, SC, to live, work, and gather intelligence for a daring raid up the Combahee River to attack the major plantations of Rice Country, the breadbasket of the Confederacy. Edda L. Fields-Black—herself a descendent of one of the participants in the raid, shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. Using documents, including Tubman’s U.S. Civil War pension file, bills of sale, wills, marriage settlements, and estate papers from planters’ families, Fields-Black brings to life the story of intergenerational, extended enslaved families. Joining the author in conversation will be Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.

Programs and the Black History Featured Document Display are made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of Verizon.