COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War

WINNER of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History 

Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman's legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground Railroad, gave instructions on getting to freedom to scores more, and went on to live a lifetime fighting for change. Yet the many biographies, children's books, and films about Tubman have less to say about a crucial chapter of Tubman’s life: during the Civil War, hired by the Union Army, she ventured into the heart of slave territory--Beaufort, South Carolina--to live, work, and gather intelligence for a daring raid up the Combahee River to attack rice plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry, a breadbasket of the Confederacy.