“Go On or Die”?: Historical and Ethical Analysis of Harriet Tubman’s Authoritarian Rule to Shoot Feeble Fugitive Slaves

Abstract Harriet Tubman’s life has attracted the attention of disability scholars because she suffered from a disability while serving on the Underground Railroad. In this paper, I utilize historical and ethical methods to grapple with an ethical quandary in a small portion of her narrative, particularly her authoritarian rule regarding shooting weakened fugitive slaves who considered returning to slavery. Was Tubman, a former slave who had been abused by slaveholders, being insensitive toward feeble fugitive slaves under her direction? Was her threat inconsequential in lieu of her overall abolitionist feats and since she never shot anyone and was ultimately effective at leading passengers to freedom? While Tubman pragmatically employed the threat of violence to help lead enslaved Blacks to freedom, her rule to shoot weakened fugitive slaves who turned back problematically condoned corporal punishment, an assimilationist method slaveholders employed to control Blacks and to whip and shape them according to their will. Because Tubman employed the threat of violence to inspire weakened runaways to keep moving forward and not return to slavery parallels many African American Christian parents’ affirmation of whipping Black youth to deter them from going down the wrong paths and from succumbing to the criminal justice system in our 21st-century society where white supremacy looms large, I consider the ethical lessons African American parents, especially of disabled children, can learn from this challenging part of her narrative.