"I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land..."
Harriet Tubman
conductor on the Underground Railroad
Sarah Hopkins Bradford was a white abolitionist who was a fan of Harriet. When Harriet faced financial difficulties following the Civil War, Sarah wrote a biography to help support the aging hero. This biography is supposedly based on interviews with Harriet. However, Harriet's voice is clearly filtered through Sarah's. Sarah chose to represent Harriet's speech in writing by attempting to transcribe her dialect. She also significantly revised many of Harriet's "direct" quotes in a second edition of the biography. Because the dialect is not from Harriet's pen (and maybe not even from her mouth), we did not preserve it for her quotes.