Harriet Tubman and Delaware

Harriet Tubman's freedom routes carried her through the state of Delaware on multiple journeys north, making the state a critical passage in one of American history's most consequential escapes from slavery. Tubman traveled from Dorchester County, Maryland through Delaware and onward to Philadelphia, threading through a landscape of marshes, woodland, and small towns that lined the Delmarva Peninsula. Today, Delaware preserves that legacy through monuments, parks, and heritage trails that commemorate Tubman's role and the Delawareans who aided her passage.

Background: The Delmarva Peninsula and the Underground Railroad

The Delmarva Peninsula—a landmass shared by Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia—shaped the geography of the Underground Railroad in ways that are difficult to overstate. The region's marshy terrain, dense forests, and winding waterways both hindered and sheltered freedom seekers who moved through it. The Chesapeake Bay area had first functioned as a gateway through which slave traders transported Africans into the colonies; in the antebellum era, its back roads and tidal creeks became a route to liberation instead.

Tubman was born into enslavement on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a landscape that forms the southern portion of the Delmarva Peninsula. No location better commemorates her origins than her birthplace, which sits squarely on this peninsula that Delaware shares with its neighbors to the south. The shared geography meant that Delaware was not incidental to Tubman's journeys—it was a necessary corridor between the slaveholding South and the relative safety of Philadelphia.

Tubman's Route Through Delaware

Tubman made her own initial escape from enslavement in 1849 and subsequently returned south numerous times to guide others to freedom. Her routes are documented as passing from Dorchester County northward through Delaware before reaching Philadelphia, which served as a waypoint on the broader Underground Railroad network stretching further into the free states and into Canada.

The overland journey through Delaware was dangerous. The state occupied a legally ambiguous position in the antebellum United States—it was a slave state that nonetheless had a substantial free Black population, particularly in Wilmington. This complicated status made Delaware's towns and countryside a place of both peril and possibility for freedom seekers. Slave catchers operated in the region, and those caught faced return to enslavement and severe punishment. Tubman navigated this terrain repeatedly, moving people through it under cover of darkness and relying on a network of sympathizers who provided shelter, food, and guidance.

The path that Tubman traveled has since been formalized as the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, a heritage driving route that follows the general corridor of her journeys from the Eastern Shore through Delaware and onward. The byway threads northeast to Wilmington, Delaware's largest city and a significant node on the Underground Railroad network.

Thomas Garrett: Delaware's Underground Railroad Stationmaster

Perhaps no figure in Delaware history is more closely associated with Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad than Thomas Garrett. Garrett was a Wilmington-based Quaker abolitionist who operated among the most active and well-documented stations on the Underground Railroad in Delaware. He worked in close collaboration with Tubman across her numerous rescue missions, providing shelter, resources, and passage for freedom seekers who came through Wilmington.

Garrett was a Delaware native whose involvement in the Underground Railroad was no secret to authorities at the time. He was tried and convicted under the Fugitive Slave Act and had his property seized as a result of his activities. The prosecution did not deter him. Garrett continued his abolitionist work openly until the end of the Civil War.

The partnership between Tubman and Garrett represented a significant operational link in the Underground Railroad's eastern corridor. Tubman relied on Garrett's Wilmington station as a key stop before guiding freedom seekers northward into Pennsylvania. Their relationship was documented through correspondence and has been recognized by historians studying the Underground Railroad in the mid-Atlantic region.

Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park, Wilmington

The most prominent monument to this shared history in Delaware is Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park, located along the Riverfront district in Wilmington. The park commemorates both Harriet Tubman and Thomas Garrett, pairing their names in recognition of the collaboration that brought freedom to dozens of enslaved people during Tubman's rescue missions.

The park sits along Wilmington's Riverfront corridor, a redeveloped stretch of the Christina River that has become a cultural and recreational center for the city. Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park is positioned across the street from the Riverfront Market, integrating the memorial into the active public life of the waterfront district.

The park features sculptures and commemorative elements honoring both figures. It functions as a public green space as well as an educational site, inviting visitors to reflect on the history of the Underground Railroad and on Wilmington's specific role within that network. Travel guides covering Wilmington consistently list the park as a significant cultural destination and recommend it as part of any visit to the city's riverfront area.

The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway in Delaware

The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway is a multi-state heritage route that follows the landscape Tubman traversed during her freedom missions. The byway begins in the heart of Dorchester County on Maryland's Eastern Shore and moves northeast through Delaware before continuing into Pennsylvania.

In Delaware, the byway connects sites associated with the Underground Railroad and terminates or passes through Wilmington, where Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park serves as the city's anchor memorial on the route. The byway is designed to allow visitors to trace the route by car while stopping at interpretive sites along the way, connecting the physical landscape to the human history that unfolded across it.

The broader byway passes through a region where the natural environment—the waterways, the dense vegetation, the flat terrain of the Delmarva Peninsula—remains recognizable from the antebellum era. The marshy, wooded Chesapeake Bay region that Tubman navigated on foot, often at night and in harsh weather, is accessible today to travelers seeking to understand the geography of that journey.

Delaware's Broader Civil War and Abolitionist Context

Delaware's relationship to slavery and the Civil War was layered and often contradictory. As a border state that remained in the Union during the Civil War, Delaware nonetheless retained legal slavery until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. The state's politics and demographics were divided, with a strong slaveholding interest in the southern counties and a significant free Black community centered in Wilmington and New Castle County.

Thomas Garrett's prominence in Wilmington illustrated how Delaware's Quaker and abolitionist traditions co-existed with legal slavery within the same state. His open defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act in a slave state underscored the tensions that defined Delaware's antebellum character.

Delaware communities have recognized the importance of this history in various ways. The annual Chautauqua tent show held in Lewes, a coastal community at the southern end of Delaware, has featured the Civil War era as a focus, offering performances and educational programming tied to the history of the period. Such programming reflects Delaware's ongoing engagement with a history that includes both complicity in slavery and active resistance to it.

Legacy and Commemoration

Harriet Tubman's connection to Delaware is embedded in the state's landscape, its public monuments, and its heritage tourism infrastructure. The naming of Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park places both Tubman and a Delaware figure at the center of Wilmington's public memory, ensuring that the collaboration between the Maryland-born freedom conductor and the Delaware abolitionist remains visible to residents and visitors alike.

The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway extends that commemorative framework beyond any single monument, offering a geographic narrative that allows travelers to follow the physical path of liberation. For Delaware, the byway reinforces the state's place within a larger regional history—not merely as a stop along the way but as a site where the Underground Railroad had depth, infrastructure, and committed participants.

Tubman's journeys through Delaware were acts of tremendous risk, undertaken repeatedly across years of rescue missions. The state she passed through was not neutral ground—it was a legal slave state with active enforcement of slave-catching laws. That she and Thomas Garrett operated effectively within it, guiding people to freedom across the Delaware landscape and onward to Philadelphia, remains a central chapter in the history of American resistance to slavery.

See Also

• Thomas Garrett
• Underground Railroad in Delaware
• Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park
• Wilmington, Delaware
• Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway