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Nearly 200,000 African Americans fought in the Civil War. Most fought in segregated Army units, but some served successfully as spies for the Union. The disregard most Confederate leaders had for African Americans would become a major vulnerability, exploited by those living among the Confederates who were able to collect information while operating in plain sight. Union leaders such as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Generals George Sharpe and Grenville Dodge offered high praise for their achievements.
Harriet Tubman was one such Union spy. Long honored and remembered as one of the iconic conductors of the Underground Railroad, Tubman escaped slavery and risked her life countless times to smuggle other enslaved people to the North and Canada in the pre-war years. Far less known is her wartime intelligence support to the Union Army.
Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts
Shortly after hostilities began, Tubman was recruited by John Andrew, the abolitionist governor of Massachusetts, to assist Union forces occupying coastal South Carolina. There, Tubman provided medical and other care for the many escaped enslaved people that flocked to Union lines. Tubman recruited a number of them to act as river pilots and scouts in activities designed to undermine local Confederate support. She and her scouts collected intelligence that enabled Union Army forces to liberate enslaved African Americans and destroy goods and property of local plantation owners. Tubman accompanied one such raid in June 1863 up the Combahee River, South Carolina, joining a newly-formed South Carolina regiment comprised of the formerly enslaved. The Combahee Raid was a success, destroying buildings holding harvested crops on several plantations and freeing more than 750 African Americans from slavery, many of whom would go on to join the Union Army.
From left: Harriet Tubman; Combahee River Raid, 1863; Colonel James Montgomery; A map showing the Combahee River in South Carolina; Enslaved African Americans in Beaufort, South Carolina
Colonel James Montgomery, who led the Combahee Raid, would later describe Tubman as “a most remarkable woman, and invaluable as a scout.” Another Union Army officer, Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, recommended a military pension for Tubman after the war, noting she conducted “many a raid inside the enemy’s lines, displaying remarkable courage, zeal, and fidelity." In 1899, after much campaigning, Tubman was granted an increase to her widow’s pension—her husband, Nelson Davis, had fought in the war—for her work as a nurse during the war. In further recognition of her service during the war, she received military honors at her funeral in 1913.
Harriet Tubman's formal request for benefits for her wartime service; The Congressional bill authorizing additional compensation to Harriet Tubman for her wartime service