Page:Women of distinction.djvu/112

66 speaks of the deeds of tins wonderful woman Moses as follows:

Just outside of the limits of the city of Auburn, N. Y., stands an unpretentious little house surrounded by a motley yet picturesque collection of tiny cabins, sheds, pens and kennels. This modest home shelters a varying crowd of lame and halt and blind widows, orphans and wayfarers, all dependent for care and support upon an old black woman, whose heroic deeds in plague-stricken camps and on bloody battle-fields as scout and spy, as deliverer of her people, and defender of the oppressed, have made for her a name as worthy of being handed down to posterity as Grace Darling's, Florence Nightingale's or Jean D'Arc's.

This woman, a full-blooded African, thick-lipped and heavy-eyed, with the signs of her seventy years set fast in deep wrinkles and stooping shoulders, has, perhaps, done more than any single individual to free her nation and hasten the "crash of slavery’s broken locks." After making her own escape by almost superhuman efforts from slavery, taking her life in her own hands, she returned to the South nineteen times, bringing back with her nearly four hundred slaves to the land of liberty. At the beginning of the war she was sent to the South by Governor Andrew of Massachusetts to act as scout and spy for our own armies. She was a trusted friend and confidante of John Brown, who drew up his constitution at her house, and who used to refer to her as General Tubman.

This woman was a personal friend of Thomas Garrett, Garrett Smith, Wendell Phillips, Fred. Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison, who delighted to introduce her to a cultured Boston audience as his foster-sister, Moses. When in Concord she resided with the Emersons, Alcotts, Whitneys, Manns, and other well-known families, who respected and admired her as one of the most extraordinary persons of her race. "Harriet" encountered great trial and vexation while guiding fugitives to the land of freedom. Once she went into the town