Harriet Tubman Just Became a One-Star General, More Than 150 Years After Serving With the Union Army

Harriet Tubman has been posthumously recognized as a one-star brigadier general in Maryland’s National Guard. At a ceremony on Veterans Day, officials in the abolitionist’s home state honored her military service during the Civil War.

“Today, we celebrate a soldier and a person who earned the title of veteran,” said Maryland Governor Wes Moore at the event, per the Associated Press. “Today, we celebrate one of the greatest authors of the American story.”

Tubman is best known as the legendary Underground Railroad conductor, but she also served as a spy, scout, nurse and cook for the Union Army.

Military officials, local leaders and community members attended the ceremony, which included a military band and a flyover by the Maryland Air National Guard. Tubman’s great-great-great-grandniece, Tina Wyatt, received the commissioning proclamation on her behalf.

“She came into the Civil War, into the bowels of slavery, after having freed herself, to be able to free others, and to be able to fight for the Union … but mostly to free the enslaved that were there and then to let them fight,” said Wyatt, as reported by CNN’s Dawn Sawyer.

Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1822, Tubman demonstrated her bravery and defiance beginning at a young age. When she was 13, she witnessed the escape of another enslaved individual and refused to help the enslaver in the man’s capture. The enslaver attempted to throw a two-pound weight at the freedom-seeker, but he missed and struck Tubman in the back of her head, fracturing her skull. For the rest of her life, as she led enslaved individuals to liberty, she suffered from painful headaches and seizures.

In the fall of 1849, Tubman escaped after learning she was scheduled to be sold, ultimately making her way alone to freedom in Philadelphia. She would spend the next decade freeing her friends and family, traveling about a dozen times to Maryland to act as a guide. Tubman ultimately led about 70 people to freedom and instructed another 70 on how to seek freedom independently.

When the Civil War broke out, Tubman volunteered as a cook and medic. She eventually started working as a scout and spy, creating a sprawling network that collected intelligence for the Union and plotted to undermine the Confederacy.

“She raised her hand to join the Union Army as both a soldier and a spy because she believed that if you want to change a flawed system, you have to be willing to fight for it,” said Moore at the ceremony, per the Hill’s Cheyanne M. Daniels.

On June 1, 1863, the Raid on Combahee Ferry made Tubman the first American woman to oversee military action in a time of war. Using information gleaned from her spy network, Tubman worked with Colonel James Montgomery to free more than 750 men, women and children from enslavement on the rice plantations along the Combahee River.

After the war, Tubman struggled to collect compensation for her military service. In a pension application filed around 1898, she described her three years as a “nurse and cook in hospitals” and as “commander of several men (eight or nine) as scouts during the late war of the rebellion.” At the time, she was receiving only a small pension as the widow of Union veteran Nelson Davis. But in 1899, Congress passed legislation that raised Tubman’s pension to $20 a month for her work as a nurse, which she received until her death in 1913.

“Harriet Tubman’s military service was defined by her bravery, wit and dedication to doing what is right, and it truly stands as an example for all veterans to emulate,” says Major General Janeen L. Birckhead, head of the Maryland National Guard, in a statement. “I am so proud that her legacy will officially be tied to the Maryland National Guard, as she was born here, lived here and served here just like our soldiers and airmen.”

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Olatunji Osho-Williams is an intern with Smithsonian magazine.