Frederick Douglass warned Americans that they must earn their liberty through struggle.

This struggle would take many forms. It “may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.”

Such struggles are necessary because “[p]ower concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Douglass’s words fanned the flames in the hearts of leaders of the Abolitionist Movement.

Sojourner Truth and Harriett Tubman were two leaders of this struggle to free the slaves.

Sojourner Truth struggled primarily in the moral realm.

She traveled the land like an Old Testament prophet, proclaiming the Truth of the LORD.

For a biblical “forty years,” she preached. Sinners who loved slavery hated her. Saints who hated slavery loved her.

For example, Harriett Beecher Stowe never forgot the sight of this former slave. Stowe described Sojourner Truth as a gaunt, misty-eyed woman wearing a gray dress, a white turban and a sun bonnet, standing calm and erect, like “one of her native palm trees waving alone in the desert.”

Stowe recalled, “She seemed perfectly self-possessed and at ease; in fact, there was almost an unconscious superiority in the odd, composed manner in which she looked down on me.”

Meanwhile, Harriett Tubman struggled primarily in the physical realm.

She escaped from slavery using the Underground Railway at the age of 25. Utterly determined to win her liberty and the liberty of others, she explained:

“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one or two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.”

Amazingly, Harriett Tubman returned to the South again and again to lead others to freedom along the Underground Railway. On her 19 trips to the South, she freed more than 300 slaves.

The rewards for her capture reached $40,000. Nevertheless, she persevered.

One abolitionist said, “She deserves to be placed first in the list of American heroines.” Another ranked her with Joan of Arc.

Unfortunately, the struggles of Sojourner Truth and Harriett Tubman were not nearly enough to win liberty for the slaves.

That moral and physical struggle—the Civil War—would be the bloodiest in American history.

That struggle would not end until the South lay prostrate.

That struggle would not end until the slaves were free!

“Free at last!!! Free at last!!! Thank God Almighty!!! They were free at last!!!”

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This blog is based on passages in my book Visions of America, at pages 66-67,133,149 (first published in 2004, together with Visions of the Church). For the supporting sources, please see the endnotes to those pages of my book.

For more of my thoughts inspired by Juneteenth, please read “Juneteenth: George Washington”, “Juneteenth: Frederick Douglass Learns To Read”, “Juneteenth: Frederick Douglass Denounces America’s Hypocrisy”, “Juneteenth: Harriett Beecher Stowe Writes Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, and “Juneteenth: Frederick Douglass Urges an Earnest Struggle for Liberty”.

For my thoughts on related themes, please read my blogs “Raising the Star-Spangled Banner—Americans”, “Racism Is America Gone Astray”, “The 500-Year Marathon To Overcome Racism”, “The ‘United States’ Compared to ‘America’”, “George Washington Refuses To Become a King”, “Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—Unifying Americans”, “Martin Luther King, Jr.—Restoring Hope and Giving a Vision”, “Nationalism Is Patriotism Gone Astray”, “How Do We Build a Civilization That Is Good—That Is Very Good?”, “We Need Inspiring Visions of a Bright Future. Why?”, “Speaking Up”, “Irresistible Hurricanes of the Holy Spirit”, “Parking Cars”, “St.  Francis of Assisi Made the Way of Jesus Great Again”, “Hypocrisy: Taking Away What You Gave”, “Pandemic Wisdom: Visions of America”, and “Pandemic Wisdom: Scattering the Church”.