MARYLAND ( DC News Now ) — This Veterans Day, the Maryland National Guard and Gov. Wes Moore will posthumously commission Harriet Tubman as a one-star general in the Maryland Army National Guard.
Tubman, originally named Araminta , was born in 1822 in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore. She changed her name to Harriet upon marrying free man John Tubman in 1844. Later, when her enslaver died and she was set to be sold, she escaped.
She spent the next several years making trips to Maryland to rescue her friends and family, who were still enslaved. According to the National Park Service, it is estimated that she also instructed around 70 others, helping them escape to freedom.
According to the Maryland National Guard, during the Civil War, she was the first Black woman to serve the U.S. military in combat, working as a spy, scout, nurse and cook for the Union Army.
Tubman provided intelligence to the Union Army about the movement, locations, ammunition depots and supply lines of Confederate troops during scouting and spying missions. She was also the first woman to lead an armed military assault that freed over 750 enslaved people and destroyed a Confederate agricultural area, according to a Maryland National Guard press release.