Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero

by Kate Clifford Larson

The essential, “richly researched”* biography of Harriet Tubman, revealing a complex woman who “led a remarkable life, one that her race, her sex, and her origins make all the more extraordinary” (* The New York Times Book Review ).
 
Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history—a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. Now, in this magnificent biography, historian Kate Clifford Larson gives us a powerful, intimate, meticulously detailed portrait of Tubman and her times. Drawing from a trove of new documents and sources as well as extensive genealogical data, Larson presents Harriet Tubman as a complete human being—brilliant, shrewd, deeply religious, and passionate in her pursuit of freedom. A true American hero, Tubman was also a woman who loved, suffered, and sacrificed.
 
Praise for Bound for the Promised Land
 
“[ Bound for the Promised Land ] appropriately reads like fiction, for Tubman’s exploits required such intelligence, physical stamina and pure fearlessness that only a very few would have even contemplated the feats that she actually undertook. . . . Larson captures Tubman’s determination and seeming imperviousness to pain and suffering, coupled with an extraordinary selflessness and caring for others.” — The Seattle Times
 
“Essential for those interested in Tubman and her causes . . . Larson does an especially thorough job of . . . uncovering relevant documents, some of them long hidden by history and neglect.” — The Plain Dealer
 
“Larson has captured Harriet Tubman’s clandestine nature . . . reading Ms. Larson made me wonder if Tubman is not, in fact, the greatest spy this country has ever produced.” — The New York Sun

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American History, Race, Biography Memoir, Womens

440 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2003

About the author

Kate Clifford Larson is a bestselling author of critically acclaimed biographies including Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero and Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter. Her latest work, Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer tells the remarkable story of one of America's most important civil rights leaders of the 20th century. Praised for her research and insights as a biographer, Larson digs deep into Hamer’s history, uncovering her family roots, personal life, and reclaims Hamer’s faith as a centerpiece of her survival and appeal. Larson accessed recently opened FBI records, secret Oval Office tapes, new interviews, and more, to reveal never before seen details about Hamer’s life. An award-winning consultant for feature film scripts, documentaries, museum exhibits, and public history initiatives, Larson is frequently interviewed by national and international media outlets. Dr. Larson is a Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center Visiting Scholar.

Reviews

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beyond Myth: Lessons from Studying Tubman…

Preamble:
--Social activism can be broken down into 3 steps (referencing Vijay Prashad):
i) Theory
ii) Organization
iii) Practice
…Also referencing Prashad, the imperialist mindset assumes “theory” comes from the West’s ivory towers, whereas the Global South only create guerilla manuals (detailing the “practice” of survival). Prashad’s project has been to amplify the “theory”/“organization” of the Global South/periphery:
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism

…Similarly, I’ve always wanted to dig deeper into figures like Harriet Tubman (mythologized for their “practice” while any “theory” gets obscured) to challenge our intellectual bias towards privileged theorists/history written by the conquerors. Tubman’s lack of privilege (“illiterate former slave”) is such a stark contrast to ivory tower theorists.
--Thus, I read 2 biographies together:
i) This 2003 book by Larson, building the historical foundations:

Still, racial and gender proscriptions have muted and reconfigured Tubman's place in the collective memory, making her suitable for children's biographies but not as a subject of serious historical inquiry. Though the myth has served the varied cultural needs of black and white Americans over time, the obscurity in which the details of her life have remained until now is a deeply troubling reflection of the racial, class, and gender dynamics of our nation. Though Harriet Tubman's life is the material of legend, it is more remarkable in its truth than fiction—the essence of a real American hero.

ii) Tiya Miles’ 2024 Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People: adds a creative, interpretive layer.

Highlights:

1) Theory, Organization, Practice:
--The strength of this biography is building enough historical foundations immediately surrounding Tubman so we can tease out theory/organization/practice:
i) Methodist evangelical influence on black community; free black women preachers were influential, taking advantage of being dismissed as less of a threat by slaveholders. Tubman stood out in daring to return home to free more slaves, using tricks like disguising as an old woman.

They told him that Tubman had the “charm.” The “whites can't catch Moses,” they told Brown, “cause you see she's born with the charm. The Lord has given Moses the power.” Tubman also believed she had the “charm”—her devout faith in God's design and power through her gave her the strength and courage to carry on when all seemed lost.

ii) Other forms of organization include commercial seamen/watermen, who were hubs for communication to learn about freedom in the North, etc. I’m reminded of The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution:

By tracking the colliding worlds of buccaneers, military deserters, and maroon communards from Venezuela to Virginia, Scott records the transmission of contagious mutinies and insurrections in unparalleled detail, providing readers with an intellectual history of the enslaved.

iii) On organization, we must of course consider the process that led to the “Underground Railroad”:

Runaways found assistance in Maroon and Native American communities, in a few states in the North that ended slavery within their borders in the years after the Revolution, and even among some groups in the South opposed to slavery. […] People who participated in this clandestine operation were known as “agents,” “conductors,” “engineers,” and “stationmasters,” terms that mirrored positions on actual railroads.

iv) Black women activism:

[…] the chained slave woman was in reality the victim of a double oppression: race and gender. Many free black women organized or joined antislavery societies, some of which had a mixed racial membership, but racism prevailed in these societies as well. […] Indeed, the arguments of white women, which at times centered so much on gender oppression, were too narrowly focused for many black women, whose work on racial, economic, and educational improvement, in addition to aiding freed slaves, demanded their immediate attention. [Indeed, Tubman also had the responsibility of taking care of family: The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values]

v) Tubman in the Civil War:

A cook and a laundress one day, a spy the next, Tubman continuously reinvented herself, adapting to and accommodating the immediate requirements of wartime crises with stunning success.

On June 1, 1863, Tubman became the first woman to plan and execute an armed expedition during the Civil War.

vi) Surrounding theories at the time include abolitionists (including classical republican)/Quaker/free speech/women’s rights/nonviolence, etc.:

Based on classical republican ideology, abolitionists envisioned a society rooted in an active citizenry that placed the common good ahead of private gain. […] Home and family represented goodness, a place where mothers and fathers imparted moral influences on their children. For abolitionists, slavery presented a particularly egregious moral, physical, and spiritual dilemma. Slavery violated the slave family through selling of family members away from one another; it also promoted physical assaults on female slaves by their white masters, thus corrupting the slave owner and his family as well. The potential depravity of the human mind and body led many women abolitionists, in particular, to argue that the unlimited power of one man over another was morally and spiritually unacceptable, that it led to sin, both physical and moral.

vii) Tubman’s theory?

At a time when literacy was a marker for class status and intelligence, many whites viewed Tubman's illiteracy as a liability. Fortunately for Tubman, her spirituality allowed her to claim respectability and authority. Yet even later biographers have downplayed attention to Tubman's intellectual life in deference to a highly mythologized tradition that stresses Tubman's spiritual life, verging on the supernatural. The possibility of an intellectual tradition rooted outside of literacy has been lost in the perpetual retelling of the Tubman myth.

…thus, it’s much easier finding theory by contemporaries like Frederick Douglass (My Bondage and My Freedom) and later pioneering sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois. The book concludes with the heated debates on suffrage between Douglass (prioritize black male vote) vs. Susan B. Anthony/Elizabeth Cady Stanton (prioritize white female vote), where Tubman’s theory belonged to a synthesis (Tubman’s support for the National Association of Colored Women). Tubman, now in her seventies, was “enjoying renewed public acclaim by the mid-1890s”. Tubman died at 91… what a life!

2) Structural Context:
--Different lenses (ex. microscope vs. telescope) start with limiting assumptions in order to better focus on a particular level of analysis. Thus, biographies (focused in individual micro-level) have difficulty integrating structural macro-level context.
--I always want to start with the big picture, esp. when learning about a past which I’m less familiar with. Tools include:
i) Historical materialism: I provide a checklist here: A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium
ii) Systems analysis:
-Thinking In Systems: A Primer
-World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction
iii) Geopolitical economy:
-The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
--Thus, the bits and pieces in this Tubman biography only give us a vague sense of the ebbs and flows of Tubman’s times. I would have to piece together the effects of capitalist markets (labour/raw materials/industrial goods/land/money), ex. all-year slave-labour export markets (tobacco) transitioning into seasonal wage-labour (grain/timber) in the 1790-1800s… the push and pull of social movements, ex. abolition and reactionary counters; conflicting religious movements… geopolitical rivalries, ex. British vs. US, etc.
-The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
-Empire of Cotton: A Global History

,,,for the rest of the review, see: Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much more to Harriet Tubman than her heroic escapades as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. For instance, I had no idea that she counseled John Brown, or that she worked as a nurse in service of the Union Army (American Civil War), or that she fought for the inclusion of African-American women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. The lady was an activist before the term ‘activist’ was ever coined—and yet historical accounts of her accomplishments have been edited and re-edited and manipulated to make them more palatable for white audiences.

Outside of a plethora of children’s books, this was probably the first serious attempt to document the life of Harriet Tubman since Earl Conrad gave it his best shot in 1943. Kate Larson is a gifted writer and biographer and she captures the depth and complexity of Tubman’s remarkable story without sensationalizing it or burying it under a mountain of platitudes. Four Stars.

[Ashley Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely necessary read for anyone. Also gobsmacked to find out Dorothy Sterling's FREEDOM TRAIN, which I adored as a kid, wasn't quite nonfiction. WHY WOULD YOU FICTIONALIZE SOMEONE'S LIFE AND STILL MARKET IT AS NONFIC?? Ugh. But I guess it kind of explains why so many Harriet Tubman books are for juvenile readers rather than adults?

Regardless, this one was excellent. People deserve to know about Harriet's time as a nurse and spy during the Civil War, her fight for women's rights, the poverty that she dealt with for much of her later life, and the home for the aged that she opened and then resided in for the last years of her life. People need to remember that she had a full life and wasn't limited to being an escaped slave or one of the most famous conductors of the Underground Railroad. She contained multitudes.

[Sonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

― “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
― Harriet Tubman at a suffrage convention, NY, 1896

These days, it seems that the word ‘hero’ suffers from overuse. It’s more than a little bit overdone. It’s not uncommon to hear people classed as ‘heroes’ because of their occupation: teachers, nurses, police, firefighters, and the military are frequently labeled ‘heroes’ solely because of their jobs. Looking online, I also found farmers, veterinarians, scientists, social workers, activists, computer scientists, and stay-at-home moms referred to as heroes. It is such a ridiculously overused word that it has become little more than shorthand for accomplishment. However, not all accomplishments are heroic accomplishments. The word ‘hero’ has been so overused that it's losing its meaning. True heroes are rare. To give the word ‘hero’ value again, we should refuse to use it lightly.

The textbook definition of a hero is a person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially someone who voluntarily risks or sacrifices their life for others. In her book, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero, historian Kate Clifford Larson (Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter) doesn’t hesitate to call Harriet Tubman a hero. If anybody deserves to be called a hero, it is Harriet Tubman. She risked her life to return to her home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore numerous times to rescue relatives and friends from slavery, some 50 people in all. She was a master of disguise, sometimes disguised as an old man. On a couple occasions, she encountered people who knew her, including her slave owner Edward Brodess, without detection.

Until three biographies of Harriet Tubman were published in 2003 and 2004, there had not been a book-length adult biography of the extraordinary woman known as “Moses” in nearly sixty years (since Earl Conrad's Harriet Tubman in 1943). The majority of books written about her over that time were children’s books—at least 30 of them. The explanation for the lack of biographies for this amazing woman is somewhat simple. Most of the information about Tubman was based on stories passed down orally for generations. Like most slaves, Tubman was uneducated and could neither read nor write. For many of our American historical figures, we have correspondence, diaries and other historical records from which to draw. While working on a doctoral dissertation, Larson drew upon a store of valuable new documents such as court records, contemporary local newspapers, wills and letters, legal transactions, as well extensive genealogical research. Larson reveals Tubman as a complex woman— intelligent, shrewd, deeply religious, and passionate in her pursuit of freedom. She gives Tubman the intimate, detailed biography she deserves.

Growing up in southeastern Virginia, I don’t recall learning anything about Tubman in my history classes. That’s not necessarily surprising. Virginia’s state government adopted a policy of Massive Resistance in the 1950s (within my lifetime) to block the desegregation of public schools mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court. But there’s more to Harriet Tubman’s story than we learned in school—no matter what state you’re from. I was surprised at the many things I learned about this woman. Born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Tubman refused to spend her life in bondage. She began having seizures following a traumatic head injury. As she was doing errands when she was around 12 years old, an overseer hit her in the head with a two-pound weight after she refused to help restrain a field hand who had left his plantation without permission. She suffered severe trauma from the event and experienced headaches and seizures for the rest of her life.

― “The weight broke my skull and cut a piece of that shawl clean off and drove it into my head. They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next.”
― Harriet Tubman

In her early 20s, Harriet Tubman left her family to escape to Philadelphia. There she became the first and only female fugitive slave to work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. She was so successful in leading slaves to freedom that the state of Maryland put a $40,000 bounty on her head. Before long, fellow slaves and Northerners began referring to Tubman as 'Moses' because of how many people she led to freedom. She worked tirelessly behind the scenes to raise money to continue her work and support fugitive slaves.

When the Civil War broke out, Tubman returned to the South to serve as a scout, to nurse the wounded, to recruit freed blacks for the Union Army, and to spy for the Northern army. She was so successful in these efforts that she was often called “General” Tubman. Sadly, she was never adequately compensated for her work. Even after the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, this remarkable woman continued to work for social justice and to provide for the indigent among her. In the 48 years that she lived after the end of the Civil War, Tubman devoted her final years to family, public speaking, and assorted social causes.

While Larson’s biography provides much interesting information about an individual deserving of recognition, Larson’s prose never quite equals Tubman’s achievements. Still, this is a work of history deserving of our attention. There’s so much more to Harriet Tubman than we learn in school.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up alongside Catherine Clinton’s Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, and wound up choosing this book instead, though the reality is both are somewhat dry. Larson adapted this book from her graduate thesis, and while it’s pretty readable on the whole and I appreciated her more comprehensive analysis (and inclusion of maps), there are some repetitive and abstract passages that put me in mind of academic writing. Unfortunately it seems like there isn’t a great adult biography of Tubman out there; amusingly, both biographers emphasize that there had been no adult biography of her since the 1940s, then published their own in the same year!

Despite the relative dearth of information about Tubman’s personal life (both authors engage in a lot of “might have felt” type speculation), I did learn a lot from reading this book; both authors rightly identify that Tubman has become a quasi-mythological figure about whom we don’t actually know that much. She was born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in probably the early 1820s (Clinton devotes some time to the arguments behind the various potential birth dates, while Larson just pegs it at 1822 and moves on), and was “hired out” beginning apparently around age 5-7 to perform work for various families, who seem to have been mostly abusive. In adolescence she was struck by a piece of metal an overseer threw at a fleeing slave and suffered a serious head injury that was likely the cause of health problems throughout her life, including sudden sleeping spells. (Larson’s best guess is that Tubman had temporal lobe epilepsy; Clinton’s is narcolepsy.) However, she stuck around until 1849, when her slaveowner died, creating concerns about being sold south (which had already happened to two of her sisters). Then she struck out for Philadelphia, and later made many trips back to rescue relatives, friends, and others who wanted to go, working with the Underground Railroad. Although Maryland bordered “free” states, Tubman became active around the time the Fugitive Slave Act came into effect, meaning fugitives had to flee to Canada before they could truly be safe. She ferried her brothers, parents and many others there, most of whom seem to have eventually relocated to upstate New York.

Tubman was also active during the Civil War, the highlight being her leading a Union raid in South Carolina to burn some plantations and rescue about 750 slaves, though she also spent a lot of time nursing, cooking, and laundering for cash. Before that she was also a strong supporter of John Brown and his Harpers Ferry raid. She never learned to write but was reportedly an excellent public speaker, and used that to raise money for various causes: Underground Railroad excursions, helping freedmen get on their feet, women’s suffrage, and later in life, starting a home for the elderly and poor. She never had enough money, probably because she wanted to help everyone she met, and usually had about 6-8 needy people living in her house at once on top of her family. She married twice, first as a slave to a local freedman (who didn’t feel like leaving Maryland) and second to a much younger veteran. She probably never had children of her own, though a bizarre episode involving her “kidnapping” a young girl from a well-to-do free black family in Maryland leads both authors to speculate that this was perhaps her daughter, left behind when she fled slavery. (She then passed the kid on to some wealthy white friends to educate.) She was very religious, believed God spoke to her and sometimes impressed others with her prophetic powers.

There’s also a lot of interesting information about the times here: as you might expect, the reality of 19th century slavery in Maryland seems to have been both more lenient (there was a fair amount of absenteeism, people running away temporarily and then returning, and people hiding out to avoid being sold, all apparently carried on without life-altering consequences) and more cruel (young children being hired out to live away from their families, and abused and underfed while there) than our common stereotypes would have you believe. The discussion of the increasing racism in the years after the Civil War, in the interest of national reconciliation, is also interesting. Before this book I hadn’t thought about rendering speech phonetically as potentially a form of condescension/racism, but Larson is convincing on that point, showing how later editions of the biography printed during Tubman’s life and at her request rendered her speech in an increasingly phonetic and folksy way, playing into stereotypes of black people while simultaneously playing down the brutality of slavery.

At any rate, I certainly learned from this book though I can’t claim it to be among the most engaging of nonfiction I've read. Of the two adult bios currently available it seems to me the better one. And at just 295 pages of text in hardcover (followed by more than 100 pages of endnotes etc.), it's not the time commitment the overall page count might have you believe.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero" by Kate Clifford Larson is an excellent biography of Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman was one of the most important 19th Century Americans and is in the pantheon of heroic individuals. Larson has produced a fine, well-researched book covering every phase of Tubman's life.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in U.S. History, slavery, or heroic lives.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Notes:
Audiobook:
Narrated by: Pam Ward
Length: 12 hours and 26 minutes
Unabridged Audiobook
Release Date: 2015-11-12
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

[Nathanial]

Kate Clifford Larson investigates the complicated history of a complicated person. Her work studies the history of Tubman studies as much as it studies the person herself. While painting compelling pictures of Tubman's life, she also discribes the difficulty of locating primary sources such as letters, court records, property deeds and interview texts that would lend credibility to any one account. As if that's not enough, she also demonstrates the elisions and conflations in previous biographies (both those contemporary with Tubman's life and those that came after) that narrowed and restricted the popular view of this passionate, strong, and religiously devoted person. All the same, the book is very convincing in so far as it relates to the effects of racism, classism and sexism in erasing lives from history.

But CAN I JUST TELL YOU what an amazing person Harriet Tubman was? Even with the spotty records and accounts, what hard data we do have is just simply astounding. You probably know a lot about her time as "The Moses of the South," ferrying slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. But did you also know about her time as a scout for the Union Army? Or her work building a hospital and hospice for former slaves in the North? I didn't!

[Sam toer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike many books about Tubman, “Bound for the Promised Land” by historian Kate Clifford Larson is free from the many myths and legends woven of racial and gender stereotypes. It is Tubman’s definitive biography on which the movie “Harriet” was based. Drawing from a trove of new documents and sources as well as extensive genealogical research, Larson reveals, in meticulous details, Tubman as a complex woman—brilliant, courageous, shrewd, deeply religious, and passionate in her pursuit of her freedom and the freedoms of other. It is A magnificent book about a fierce fighter. I highly recommend both the book and the movie on which it is based.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book at the gift shop attached to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Museum on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where Tubman was born and enslaved. The amount of work Larson did to unearth and assemble the details of Tubman’s life, particularly the early years, is seriously impressive. I spent almost as much time reading through the endnotes as I did with the main text to discover where she found the information. This book is a fantastic, in-depth resource that covers the full scope of Tubman’s life and accomplishments, including her lesser known feats as a Civil War spy and nurse, women’s suffrage activist, and humanitarian. An amazing life, now well chronicled in this work of rigorous scholarship.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

When we were camping this summer we went to Ausable Chasm to hike around this beautiful canyon carved by the Ausable River. As we parked the car we notices a house marked as The North Star Underground Railroad Museum. This really intrigued me. When we bought our 1848 Home in Upstate NY I really hoped to find evidence that it had been a stop along the route from the South to Canada on the RR. There are other homes in the area that were,but we never found any sign of it here.
After hiking the gorge, we visited the museum which is quite small but very enlightening. we watched a video about the abolitionist activities that were been prevalent in that area. (in fact when we went to church in Lake Placid that Sunday, we ended up being right down the road from John Brown's home and burial site) I found this book in the little shop at the museum and appreciated learning more about 'Minty', Harriet Tubman (we had studied her in the 2nd Grade ELA common core curriculum) what a strong woman she was! Fought for the rights of African Americans and women of all races. She served the country that condoned the enslavement of her people as a spy and a nurse during the Civil War in the course of which she brought nearly 100 slaves out of slavery.

" I was the conductor on the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say---I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this book. So much of what I learned in school about Harriet Tubman just barely scratched the surface of who she really was. I had no idea about her seizures; that she was BFFs with John Brown; that she worked for the Union as a nurse and spy and was a later suffragist. I feel rather cheated, school!

[Jeremiah Gumm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched biography of a true American hero, who for too long has been more myth than reality.

[Sugarpuss O'Shea · Rating 2 out of 5]

**2.5 Stars**

This book wasn't easy to get through, not because of the subject content, but because of the dry, lackluster, scholarly-style writing. This work was originally a dissertation, which was then expanded into a book. Had I known that going in, I would've taken a pass. Just once, I wish that researchers would turn to actual writers before they bring their findings to the general public. They do such a disservice to both their body of work as well as their subject. That being said.....

If you can get through the first 3 chapters, this book manages to actually start focusing on Harriet & her exploits. What an unbelievable woman. She was tough as nails with a heart of gold. The world needs more heroines like her. She needs to be remembered & honored as the fierce, clever, strong, & formidable force that she was.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A welcome biography for adults of Harriet Tubman, one that attends the historiography of Tubman (and the myth-making) and also illumines her life, perseverance, and resilience, and how she challenged and changed America. Particularly new to me was her Civil War efforts and post-war work to try and create a more equitable and dignified America for all. Lots of material to discuss, including the myth vs history aspects, Tubman's choices personally and politically, and the changes in society where she lost her agency again and was used as a symbol. Every American should get to know this Tubman, who will soon be on our twenty dollar bills - you'll understand better just how much she deserves that honor, as a leader of the America created through the Civil War.

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book!
The author's focus on Harriet and her community was beautifully done.
I can not reccomend this biography highly enough.

[Tamyka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned a lot about Harriet Tubmans life in the military and her activism and philanthropy after the war.

[Addalai B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched and written. Tubman was a truly incredible woman. I especially appreciated the first half of the book’s context leading up to her escape and trips on the Underground Railroad. I didn’t know she led a raid during the civil war as a scout and spy and that she partnered closely with two famous black regiments over several years even though she was never fully paid for her efforts. Her relationship with famous suffragists later in life was also new but makes so much sense. The color around people like Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, John Brown, and others drew me in. Two shortcomings: the second half of the book did sprinkle interpretation where I think she could have let source material speak for itself a bit more. I’m also disappointed in the little mention and dismissal of Tubman’s deep faith to the point of irony later in the book. Tubman grew up in and around strong black Methodist churches and spoke openly about her faith. I’d be curious to learn more about the history of the churches (especially slave v free) in Maryland in the mid 1800s.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an academic biography, meant as an addition to the history and not necessarily as popular nonfiction. So there’s a little work to do to build the narrative arc for yourself, and not get bogged in the “begats.” But it’s worth it. What a fucking badass. I knew it loosely from just America mythology osmosis, but the details make it even larger. She was 27 when she ran and the rest of her life is a true hero epic. Thank God she wasn’t lost to history during reconciliation. Well worth reading.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strong 3 stars, could have given 4, but I tend to be a tough grader and there wasn't much that I felt was Earth shaking.

Well written and enjoyable, provides more history than I actually expected. Also talked about the history of the legacy.... Which is where the book too off. Learning about6 what she did and how she did it was good.

Learning that her legacy was almost lost or forgotten was insightful on our national conscious.

[Amie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic biography. Tubman herself was illiterate, and so there is always a risk that the information will focus more on the (literate) whites who wrote about their experiences with here. But Larson did a fantastic job taking at the records available from whites, while focusing her story on Tubman’s world, that of enslaved person.

5 stars, fully recommend.

[Kayla Brizzell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned soo much about not only her story but the general history of the time period!

[Priscilla Herrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin? I loved this book!

I am impressed with the research Larson has done. Many of us think we know all about Harriet Tubman, yet so much of what we believe is based on myth and early biographies that were written from a particular point of view. Larson has done a prodigious amount of digging into existing records of all sorts, and has developed a fuller understanding of this amazing woman. Where Larson conjectures what might have happened in a given instance, she explains the facts she was able to determine and the basis for such conjecture.

But this is more than a mere recitation of facts and conjecture - the story reads more like a novel. Tubman's years as a conductor on the Underground Railroad and her many trips back to Maryland to rescue her family and friend from slavery are the best known part of Tubman's life story. But Larson also provides, in great detail, Harriet's achievements as both a nurse and a spy for the Union Army, and as a teacher of "contrabands"- those formerly enslaved people who escaped to the protection of the Union Army. After the war, Tubman continued to care for freed men, women and children, collecting money and clothing and food and providing health care services, as well as caring for and supporting her own family including her now elderly parents.

And if this weren't enough service for a single lifetime, Tubman was also an advocate for women's suffrage, speaking at rallies and conventions and negotiating with both white suffragettes and Black abolitionists to include voting and other civil rights for women as formerly enslaved men were being enfranchised.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes an amazing true story, and especially to those who are interested in the intersectionality of women's rights and the rights of persons of color.

[Karina Mendoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

For racist and oppressive reasons, African American historical figures are seldom presented with the graceful attention to complexity and respect that Kate Clifford Larson pays to Harriet Tubman in “Bound for the Promised Land.” Larson captures the many landscapes: physical, emotional, socioeconomic, and political landscapes that fostered the U.S.’s dependence on enslaving human beings for economic gains and that fostered the drive in everyday Americans to resist this barbaric practice.

Larson does an amazing job in writing such a comprehensive, engaging, and lively biography! I can’t stress enough her ability to weave together the pieces that made Tubman such a remarkable woman! On the one hand, Larson presents the historical contextualization that brings forth the narrative and, on the other hand, she presents the rare biographical details that weave in and out of the narrative that in many ways create the historical picture that we come to understand as Antebellum Period.

Most importantly, Larson does a superb job in helping the reader catch a glimpse at the force that is Harriet Tubman: a strong Black woman, a shrewd, a war hero, a feminist, and an American hero.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Suddenly I became aware of something moving toward me through the grass. So smoothly did it glide and with so little noise. I was frightened! Then reason conquered fear and I knew it was Aunt Harriet, flat on her stomach and with only the use of her arms and serpentine movements of her body, gliding smoothly along. Mother helped her back to her chair and they laughed. Aunt Harriet then told me that that was the way she had gone by many a sentinel during the war. Seeing the swaying grass, she was mistaken for an animal or in the dim flicker of the camp fire, she appeared as a small shadow." -- Alice Brickler on an incident in 1910, when Tubman was 88 and unable to walk

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly researched, a bit dry though it is a biography of an historical person about whom little is really known. I would have loved to read a more detailed account of her actions during the Civil War. Thanks to my friend who loaned me her book.

[Maya B · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the movie and I was anxious to read this. I felt like I was reading a textbook. I'm going to read another book about Harriet

[Ashley Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I typically consider myself a "read anything and everything" type reader, I often struggle with non-fiction. It's often hard for me to stay engaged on large informational dumps unless the subject is something seriously fascinating or something I'm trying to learn.

With that being said, I have to give credit where credit is due. It's truly amazing on how much information was collected and relayed about a person that was born in the early 1820's. A person that was considered property and records outside of purchases scarcely exist. Sure, some of it is speculation and guesswork, some of it was even possibly exaggerated or embellished on early attempts of a biography of her life, but a lot of effort went in to picking facts from myth in this.



Overall the information given in this book is extremely academic and often reads similar to a textbook. There's a lot of focus on lineage of Harriet's family and various slave owners. Nothing inherently wrong with that, just makes for a dry read in certain portions.

After about the third chapter, you dive into the early life of Harriet and the horrors she endured. She received a traumatic brain injury at a young age after a refusal to give up another fugitive slave after being hit with a two pound lead weight. She was plagued with the after effects of this injury until the day she died.

This woman had everything stacked against her and still lead many of her friends and family to freedom with a disregard to her own freedom and safety. Wild stuff. It's clear why she has been such an important and celebrated woman in history.



Well worth the read.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid biography of a fascinating figure that goes beyond elementary-school level mythmaking.

One of the only Tubman biographies aimed at adults (as opposed to most that are aimed at elementary school students), Larson's biography marshals an impressive array of primary sources and scholarship to present a life that deserves more than children's books. While Tubman's life is fascinating and she is deservedly known primarily for her contributions to the Underground Railroad, her struggles as a slave, confidante of John Brown, Union scout (including leading a raid in South Carolina), spy, and nurse all make for fascinating reading.

Larson describes Tubman's life story as "malleable" insofar as different groups used or mythologized her for different purposes. Obviously, abolitionists found value in her story but later in life, Tubman's story found purchase among elements of the suffragist movement in their quest for voting rights for women (I say "elements" because there was a definite split among female suffragists with a sizable number seeking to exclude blacks from their efforts).

The one real critique is that Tubman's post-war life feels condensed. She lived until 1913 but those 50 years take up a comparatively smallish portion of the book. It's a minor criticism and insofar as Tubman's post-war life was primarily just that of a woman trying to make her way with all the obstacles (minor and major) that people face rather than momentous events, it's weirdly appropriate, but still unfortunate.

Overall, "Bound for the Promised Land" is an outstanding biography that paints a far more complete picture than the children's coloring books that dominate the shelves.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very enlightening history, not only of Harriet Tubman, but of life and race relations in upstate New York and Canada after the end of the Civil War, and the suffragist movement as it built momentum into the 20th century. Tubman was part of all that but not many people know about her history after she freed 70 slaves from her home state of Maryland. Yes, 70 - the exaggeration of 300 came from Sarah Bradford's book about her, first published in 1869 and reissued in 1886 in a version made palatable to post-reconstruction whites. Larson straightens out the record - in great detail, maybe too much for some, but I think it needed doing. I used to wonder how my aunt, who gave me a book called A Treasury of Hero Stories containing one about Tubman, could reconcile hooking me on her with my aunt's history of being not only DAR but also ADC and a Confederate to the end. (Her daughter used to say that she was 50 years old before she realized that "damnyankee" was two words.) Now I get it. A distortion of Tubman's personality (somewhat similar to what happened to Josiah Henson, the original Uncle Tom) occurred in the little that was written about her before Earl Conrad's trailblazing biography which was published by Carter G. Woodson in 1943 after being turned down by numerous publishers for numerous racist reasons. So Auntie probably never knew that Harriet was a friend and supporter of John Brown...

Where to even start? I'm happy that I read this AFTER going to the Tubman Underground Railroad Museum in Cambridge, Maryland, her home town. This is an astonishingly effective interactive museum, for adults and children. The conditions of her life come alive through old photographs, audio clips, songs, videos, and more ordinary exhibits of things like the two-pound weight that hit the teenage Harriet by accident and left her with seizures, headaches, but also a connection to God that she depended on for guidance. It must have been real because it never let her down, she never lost a passenger on her underground trains.

She was born in 1822, the fifth of nine children, and her parents were both slaves, owned by two different masters, which meant that family life necessitated walking from one farm to another, one work place to another - and when you are in Dorchester County you realize that these were not just pleasant little hikes. Her father was a skilled timber man and builder and Harriet grew up chopping down enormous trees and hauling them with oxen to the waterfront to be shipped off to Baltimore and made into ships. She did other things too, like trapping muskrat to be sold for their fur - in the winter, in the icy water, with no protection. I could go on...you need to go and see...google it...

She left her family reluctantly in order not to be sold away from them - planning to come back and free the rest of her family. She brought many away, including her parents eventually, but never succeeded in freeing her sister or her sister's children and finally gave up after her sister had died. She tried to get her husband John Tubman to come away with her but he'd found another woman and wouldn't leave. She had to keep a low profile in the North, even after Emancipation, because emancipation was in name only and there were still slave catchers working for the money they could get to entrap slaves who had escaped to the North. First she went to Canada, but then came back to Aurora, New York, when she brought her parents out of slavery. She knew they would never feel at home in Canada, being already quite old - but it was a risky move.

Once established in Aurora, a community of protectors grew up around her and she was able to farm in a small way to earn money which she always spent on the needy who would come to her for help. Her extended family included many "adopted" in this way - some took advantage of her, some did not, but she turned no one away. I've skipped over her Civil War record as a nurse, a spy for the Union, and a general who directed the Combahee River raid which freed 756 slaves, avoiding land mines and three Confederate forts to bring out whole families, wading to the boats with their children and belongings in their arms. And she received precious little compensation for any of this - women didn't count too much - even though she kept requesting equal pay with men for the work she had done.

She worked with the earliest suffragists in the 1890s and around the same time, turned her home into a retreat for aging African-American women, supporting this by making bricks, selling eggs, doing all sorts of things, even though she was getting pretty old herself. Sadly enough, the later generation of suffragists weren't told about her, so she was forgotten to a great extent as a contributor to this freedom movement. She died in 1912, age 91, without seeing women's suffrage become a reality.

There is so much more that could be told! My only criticism of this biography is a small one - it recounts the web of relationships between the slave families themselves, their Dorchester owners, and their histories in great detail. Not a fault but sometimes tough to follow. For that reason I was glad I had been there, because I could visualize things. Nonetheless it was extremely interesting - slavery on the eastern shore of Maryland had a different flavor because of these family groupings which were somewhat more lasting than in the deep South for instance, and because of the primacy of work in the forests and on the water, which gave some slaves a vision of a broader world.

The very least that the USA can do is put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. Too bad that she was never given the monetary reward and the appreciation that she should have received - except from discriminating people like Frederick Douglass who also grew up on the eastern shore and knew quite well that Harriet had gone through much worse trials than he, to much less fanfare and acclaim. And the very least we can do is learn about her now...

[Holly Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harriet Tubman is my hero. Her undaunted faith, her fearlessness, her steadfastness and her hope are evidence that what the world often despises at weak is truly secret strength. The author put so much thorough research into this book. She didn’t just tell HT’s “Underground Railroad Conductor” and “Civil War Spy” story, she also tells of Harriet’s service to her local community, her grief and health concerns, and her participation in the suffrage movement with SBA. She even covers the mundane and quieter periods of Harriet’s life to tell the story of human Harriet, not just Harriet the legend.
Stylistically, the writing was a little too academic-y for me, but the reliability of the research and the thoroughness of the book still merit 5 stars.
Lastly, I appreciated the assessment of the white suffragists’ failure to recognize the significance Harriet’s contribution, something that many of us white feminists today STILL have yet to appreciate.