Tubman had a $40,000 “dead or alive” bounty on her head
This figure was made up as in the October 3, 1849 advertisement for the return of Minty (as Tubman was known) and her brothers Ben and Harry, their mistress offered $100 for each of them if caught outside of Maryland. At the time, slaveholders did not know that Tubman was helping and instructing people to escape. “To put this in perspective, the US government offered $50,000 for the capture of John Wilkes Booth, who murdered President Lincoln in 1865. $40,000 is equivalent to several million today, and for that, she would have been captured, and every newspaper in the nation would have posted that advertisement,” writes Harriet Tubman Biography.
