Chapter Eight - The Price of Power

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Price of Power

SHE SERVED HER country.
She led troops, freed hundreds, and risked her life.

And when it was over?

They barely paid her.

After the Civil War, Harriet Tubman returned to a nation that was more than happy to cheer her legend, but far less eager to compensate the woman behind it.

The government didn’t recognize her as an official soldier.
No rank. No real compensation. No soldier’s pension.

She spent decades petitioning for the compensation she was owed.
She sent letters, gathered affidavits, and told her story over and over.
Still, rejection. Delay and bureaucracy.

For a time, her only steady income came from selling homemade root beer and pies out of her house in Auburn, New York.

This wasn’t just an oversight. It was racism. It was sexism. It was a country that praised heroes in public and abandoned them in private.

She had done everything right.
And still, she had to fight to be seen.

But Harriet Tubman didn’t beg.

She kept moving.

She opened her home to the elderly and poor. She turned it into a refuge. She gave her land, her time, and what little money she had to people who had less.

Even as her health declined, plagued by headaches and dizziness from her childhood injury, she stayed active and committed.

But she never forgot the insult.

She had served the Union, led a war raid, and done what most men never dared. But when the country cashed its victory checks, it left her off the ledger.

Because that’s the price of power, especially for a Black woman.
You fight. You lead. You win.
And then they try to forget.