The Right to Lead: Learning Leadership Through Character and Courage by John C. Maxwell

Author:John C. Maxwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Personal Success, Personal Growth, Leadership, Success, Self-Help
ISBN: 9781404189423
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2009-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

Tubman made her way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, via the Underground Railroad, a secret network of free blacks, white abolitionists, and Quakers who helped escaping slaves on the run. Though free herself, she vowed to return to Maryland and bring her family out. In 1850, she made her first return trip as an Underground Railroad “conductor”—someone who retrieved and guided slaves out with the assistance of sympathizers along the way.

A Leader of Steel

Each summer and winter, Tubman worked for the funds she needed to make return trips to the South. And every spring and fall, she risked her life by going south and returning with more people. She was fearless. And her leadership was unshakable. It was extremely dangerous work, and when people in her charge wavered, she was strong as steel, knowing that escaped slaves who failed would be beaten and tortured until they gave information about those who had helped them. So she never allowed any people she was guiding to give up. “Dead folks tell no tales,” she would tell a faint-hearted slave as she put a loaded pistol to his head. “You go on or die!”

Between 1850 and 1860, Harriet Tubman guided out more than three hundred people, including many of her own family members. She made nineteen trips in all and was very proud of the fact that she never once lost a single person under her care. “I never ran my train off the track,” she once said, “and I never lost a passenger.” Southern whites put a $12,000 price on her head—a fortune at that time. Southern blacks simply called her Moses. By the start of the Civil War, she had brought more people out of slavery than any other American in history—black or white, male or female.

Increasing Respect

Tubman’s reputation and influence commanded respect, and not just among slaves who dreamed of gaining their freedom. Influential northerners of both races sought her out, such as Senator William Seward, who later became Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, and outspoken abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglas. Tubman’s advice and leadership were also requested by John Brown, the famed revolutionary abolitionist. Brown always referred to the former slave as “General Tubman,” and was quoted as saying she “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.”

A Test Of Leadership

Harriet Tubman would appear to be an unlikely candidate for leadership, because the deck was certainly stacked against her. She was uneducated. She lived in a culture that didn’t respect African Americans. And she labored in a country where women didn’t even have the right to vote yet. Despite her circumstances, she became an incredible leader.

From The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

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