Before she left [Boston]... she had several interviews with Captain Brown, then [1859] in Boston. He is supposed to have communicated his plans to her, and to have been aided by her in obtaining recruits and money among her people. At any rate, he always spoke of her with the greatest respect, and declared that "General Tubman," as he styled her, was a better officer than most whom he had seen, and could command an army as successfully as she had led her small parties of fugitives.

Her own veneration for Captain Brown has always been profound, and since his murder, has taken the form of a religion. She had often risked her own life for her people, and she thought nothing of that; but that a white man, and a man so noble and strong, should so take upon himself the burden of a despised race, she could not understand...

... she laid great stress on a dream which she had just before she met Captain Brown in Canada. She thought she was in a "wilderness sort of place, all full of rocks and bushes," when she saw a serpent raise its head among the rocks, and as it did so, it became the head of an old man with a long white beard, gazing at her "wishful like, just as if he were going to speak to me," and then rwo other heads rose up beside him, younger than he, and as she stood looking at them, and wondering what they could want with her, a great crowd of men rushed in and struck down the younger heads, and then the head of the old man, still looking at her so "wishful."

John Brown

Harriet Tubman

This dream she had again and again, and could not interpret it; but when she met Captain Brown, shortly after [April 1858], behold, he was the very image of the head she had seen. But still she could not make out what her dream signified, till the news came to her of the tragedy of Harper's Ferry, and then she knew the two other heads were his two sons.

She was in New York at that time, and on the day of the affair at Harper's Ferry [1859/10/16], she felt her usual warning that something was wrong--she could not tell what. Finally she told her hostess that it must be Captain Brown who was in trouble, and that they should soon hear bad news from him. The next day's newspaper brought tidings of what had happened.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Compare their fates. Tubman relied on such dreams and visions to guide her Underground Railroad journeys, freeing dozens from slavery over ten years. She was never caught. Brown, white, idealistic and direct, lasted one day.

SOURCE: Harriet Tubman: the Life and the Life Stories by Jean Humez, p. 242. Primary source: "Harriet Tubman", article by Franklin B. Sanborn in Boston Commonwealth, 1863/7/17.

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