black people serving in the navy in the civil war

Tubman went on other expeditions and kept gathering intelligence. About 100 of the Black men rescued that day joined the Union Army. Between enabling such a massive escape and burning and pillaging plantations, Tubman’s expedition dealt a major military and psychological blow to the confederacy. Along the route, they stopped at several spots to rescue more than 700 enslaved people. Tubman led 150 soldiers on three federal gunboats up South Carolina’s Combahee River for a surprise attack on the plantations of prominent secessionists, using intelligence she gathered from enslaved people to bypass hidden confederate torpedoes.

In 1863, she became the first and only woman to lead a military expedition during the Civil War, to resounding success. But despite being unable to read herself, Tubman gathered intelligence for the Union army, organizing scouts to map territories and waterways and pinpoint the location of Confederate troops and ordnance.

In 1862, she traveled to a Union camp in South Carolina, to help formerly enslaved people who had taken refuge with Union troops, and to work as a cook and a nurse. But once the Civil War started in 1861, Tubman used her skills as a spy and expedition leader for the Union Army. Harriet Tubman, best known for her courage and acumen as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, led hundreds of enslaved men, women and children north to freedom through its carefully prescribed routes and network of safe houses.

Black people serving in the navy in the civil war