Prompt 1: The “Moses” image of Tubman has appealed to many Americans over the years partly because of its biblical and religious overtones; even today, Christian education companies like Nest produce videos that depict Tubman as a Christian. (Notice that in this video Tubman drops to her knees and prays when she arrives in the North. It’s also another interesting example of the mythic UGRR.) You could use your post to discuss the various images of Tubman as a “saint” or a “seer.” For example, using evidence provided in the book, compare Tubman’s piety and religious beliefs to the Christianity practiced by many of her early admirers like Bradford. Was Tubman’s Christianity like Bradford’s?
Tubman is presented as a “saint” to even modern day admirers when looking back at the materials that the 18- and 1900s have left America, due to the sheer amount of Christian values associated with her as well as her stories about her talks with God.
Bradford helped with this saintly image when she described Tubman: “she had never known the time, I imagine, when she did not trust Him, and cling to Him, with an all-abiding confidence. She seemed ever to feel the Divine Presence near”. Tubman’s Christianity was different from Bradford’s Christianity, and she acknowledges this when she said “Hers was not the religion of a morning and evening prayer at stated times, but when she felt a need, she simply told God of it, and trusted him to set the matter right”. So Tubman followed the ways of the south when it came to style of worship, which the strictly Protestant Bradford struggled to understand, but she was a Christian through and through and Bradford did her best to present her as such.
It seems Bradford also had a hard time with the idea of Tubman speaking directly to God and Him replying to her, but she did not omit it from her book, and thus it remains in American memory as a part of who Tubman is. Sernett even describes Bradford as “show[ing] both admiration and suspicion” when it came to Tubman’s “chats with the Lord”, but she so admired Tubman and her works that she allowed it to be part of the published work about her.
“These…uniquely personal experiences of the inner self” that Tubman had were passed on by both Bradford and those ex-fugitives that told others about the “charm” that Tubman had. The idea of this “charm”, that kept “de whites” from catching Moses when she was bringing slaves up to the North leans more toward the image of ‘seer’ than ‘saint’ but I think there is still a religious quality to the idea of it. God was the one protecting Moses, and so she felt that He would keep her from being found, so to her, it was still a religious thing, rather than some supernatural protection or ability that she had.
Harriet Tubman was a saint to those in her time, with visions from God and saintly actions. Today we still remember her as so because of Bradford’s inability to leave those crucial descriptions from her novel.