Harriet Tubman: Former slave who risked all to save others

Tubman, a slave and later prominent abolitionist who has been chosen as the face of the new $20 bill, had escaped a plantation and was partway through a near-90 mile journey from Maryland to Philadelphia, and from bondage to freedom. She left the plantation, in Dorchester County, Maryland, in September and travelled by night. Her exact route is unknown, but she probably walked along the Choptank river and journeyed through Delaware, guided by the North Star.

Years later, she recalled the moment she entered Pennsylvania: “When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” In the years that followed, Tubman returned again and again to Maryland to rescue others, conducting them along the so-called “underground railroad”, a network of safe houses used to spirit slaves from the South to the free states in the North.

READ MORE: BBC.com