« Reply #1235 on: July 10, 2011, 03:20 PM »
A few posts back I put up some educational links about a spy network working for the Union known as The Black Dispatches. I noticed those links are no longer working. so as not to loose the information I'm going to do a series on these who these people were, what they did and how they did it.
The South's inability to grant the slave a human status with regard to intelligence and a desire to be free proved to be a major mistake.
Robert E. Lee said it best...
"The chief source of information to the enemy," Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, said in May 1863, "is through our negroes."
These unsung Civil War heroes were often successful, to the chagrin of Confederate leaders who never thought their disregard for blacks living among them would become a major tactical weakness.
Harriet Tubman
Quote
When it comes to the Civil War and the fight to end slavery, Harriet Tubman is an icon. She was not only a conductor of the Underground Railroad, but also a spy for the Union.
In 1860, she took her last trip on the Underground Railroad, bringing friends and family to freedom safely. After the trip, Tubman decided to contribute to the war effort by caring for and feeding the many slaves who had the fled the Union-controlled areas.
A year later, the Union Army asked Tubman to gather a network of spies among the black men in the area. Tubman also was tasked with leading expeditions to gather intelligence. She reported her information to a Union officer commanding the Second South Carolina Volunteers, a black unit involved in guerrilla warfare activities.
After learning of Tubman's capability as a spy, Gen. David Hunter, commander of all Union forces in the area, requested that Tubman personally guide a raiding party up the Combahee River in South Carolina. Tubman was well prepared for the raid because she had key information about Confederate positions along the shore and had discovered where they placed torpedoes (barrels filled with gunpowder) in the water. On the morning of June 1, 1863, Tubman led Col. James Montgomery and his men in the attack. The expedition hit hard. They set fires and destroyed buildings so they couldn't be used by the Confederate forces. The raiders freed 750 slaves. (More about this at the bottom of this post)
The raid along the Combahee River, in addition to her activities with the Underground Railroad, made a significant contribution to the Union cause. When Tubman died in 1913, she was honored with a full military funeral in recognition for work during the war.
NOTE:
Harriet Tubman was a strong and much sought after escaped slave and abolitionist. During one of her speeches a man yelled out, "Old woman!!! I don't think no more of you than I do a flea!!!" Harriet Tubman responded, "I may be just a flea, but at least I'll keep you scratchin'"
And that she most certainly did! Moving from a slave, to nursing Union solders, to running the Underground Railroad, to being the first woman in American history to be asked to plan and lead a military action against the enemy, to having full military honors at her funeral.
A little trivia about Harriet Tubman's raid up the Cumbahee river.
During this mission she was second in command to Col. James Montgomery himself.
Contemplate that for a moment. An uneducated black female ex slave being second in command to a Colonel.
Here is what a Confederate report said of the raid:
The enemy, said a Confederate report on the raid, seems to have been well posted as to the character and capacity of our troops ... and to have been well guided by persons thoroughly acquainted with the river and country. Unwittingly, the report was praising the work of slaves working for Tubman.
Conformation that Harriet Tubman was the first woman in american history to devise and lead a successful military mission:
Reporting on the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, Brigadier General Rufus Saxton said, This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid, and under whose inspiration. it was originated and conducted.
Tubmans spies added to the heroic chronicles of the Black Dispatches.
She was a huge flea.
