Nearly 160 years later, Harriet Tubman was honored for her military service on Veterans Day.

CNN
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A boy scout. A spy. A nurse. An advocate. These were just a few of the titles used to describe a famous freedom fighter and former enslaved woman who spent her life fighting for others at a commissioning ceremony in Maryland.

The Maryland National Guard and Gov. Wes Moore posthumously named Harriet Tubman a one-star general in the Maryland Army National Guard on Monday. The ceremony, commemorating her service in the Union Army during the Civil War, was held near her birthplace at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park Visitor Center.

“This is a person who was among the greatest Marylanders we have ever known and someone who was willing to risk her own freedom, her own safety, her own life to save others. That is patriotism. This is heroism,” Moore said, acknowledging the significance of honoring Tubman on Veterans Day.

John A. Andrews, the governor of Massachusetts during the Civil War, recruited Tubman into the Union Army shortly after the war began. Tubman was the first African-American woman to serve in combat for the U.S. military.

She initially acted as a liaison between Union commanders and fugitive slaves and helped recruit them into the military. She then worked as both a nurse and a spy, commanding her own group of spies and leading an expedition that resulted in the freeing of over 700 slaves.

After the war ended, Tubman was denied military benefits by the United States
Government. More than 20 years later, she received a widow’s pension for her second husband’s military service.

Maj. Gen. Janeen L. Birckhead, the commanding officer of the Maryland National Guard, hosted the ceremony to formally recognize Tubman’s military service and named her a brigadier general.

“On behalf of the Maryland National Guard, I am proud to call Brig. General Harriet Tubman is among the best of us,” Birckhead said. “With courage and selflessness, Harriet Tubman nobly advanced the survival of the Union and the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The decision received unanimous support from both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly, said state Delegate Edith J. Patterson. After speeches from political leaders, Birckhead placed the symbolic rank around the neck of Tina Wyatt, Tubman’s three-times-great-grandniece.

“She came into the Civil War, into the bowels of slavery, having freed herself so that she could free others and fight for the Union…but most of all, to free the enslaved people there and then let them fight “,” Wyatt said as she accepted the honor.

Tubman was born into slavery in 1820 as Araminta “Minty” Ross and grew up on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. She was one of 11 children.

As a five-year-old child, she was rented to a neighboring family. When she was 12 years old, Tubman was hit in the head with a heavy metal weight while trying to help an escaping slave. The injury caused her to suffer from sleep disturbances for the rest of her life, at times losing consciousness without warning.

Tubman decided she would escape around 1850 after learning that she and two of her brothers were about to be sold. The siblings set out together, but fearing what would happen if they were caught, their brothers turned back. According to an 1886 biography by Sarah Bradford, Tubman continued the journey to Philadelphia alone.

In 1850, Tubman began her famous work on the Underground Railroad, first organizing the escape of her sister Mary Ann and her family. In 1857, Tubman returned to Maryland and freed her parents. Tubman is said to have made at least 17 additional trips to the South over the course of her life.

Tubman became a legend to many people who heard about her travels and became known as the Moses of her time. Whispers spread among the plantation owners about a mysterious Moses who offered great rewards for their capture.

Tubman made her final trip to Maryland in November 1860, around the time Abraham Lincoln was elected president. She died in 1913 at the age of 92.

In 2016, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced plans to place a portrait of Tubman on the front of the $20 bill. In 2021, the Biden administration said it was “exploring options to expedite the release of abolitionist $20 bills” after the Trump administration delayed the move originally initiated by President Barack Obama.

If Tubman appears on the $20 bill, he would be the first African American to appear on a U.S. banknote.

Monday’s memorial service will be the first time Tubman will be officially recognized for her military service.