COMBEE

Starred review from November 1, 2023
On June 2, 1863, Union forces largely comprised of formerly enslaved Black soldiers led by veteran white officers followed Harriet Tubman and her ring of scouts, spies, and river pilots up the Combahee River in Low Country South Carolina to raid rice plantations and liberate the enslaved workers. Who were these freed people? And how did they come to form the unique Gullah Geechee culture of the region? Historian Fields-Black, whose great-great-great grandfather fought in the raid, dug deep into the federal government's Civil War-era pension files and other primary sources to find out and to construct a comprehensive tour de force of historical discovery. This invaluable chronicle of an extraordinary journey of service, sacrifice, and courage gets to the core of what freedom really means. Fields-Black puts her heart into vividly documenting the lives and society of enslaved people, using every means possible, including the letters and records of the planters who held them in bondage. She notes just how rare and dangerous it was for those who escaped slavery to return to liberate friends and loved ones, which is why Harriet Tubman gets top billing in this epic story. With an extensive cast of characters, dramatic action, and findings of great significance, Combee is an exceptional work of American history.

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Starred review from January 15, 2024
Carnegie Mellon historian Fields-Black (Deep Roots) exhumes in this immersive study new information about the Combahee River Raid by Black Union troops and Harriet Tubman’s pivotal role escorting 756 enslaved people to freedom. Fields-Black, whose ancestors fought in the raid, exhaustively mines U.S. pension files, including Tubman’s, to profile many of the 300 Black soldiers who on June 2, 1863, were led by Union colonel James Montgomery into the “breadbasket of the Confederacy”—the rice plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina—where they destroyed $6 million in property and helped hundreds of enslaved people escape on Union gunboats. Fields-Black weaves into her narrative an impressive and varied array of topics, among them genealogies of the region’s plantation owners, an overview of the rice plantations’ brutal conditions, and Harriet Tubman’s early life and crucial wartime work for the U.S. Department of the South as an “indispensable spy and scout” who recruited other Black spies for the Union. As for the Combahee raid itself, Fields-Black mines the dramatic operation for enthralling detail. (When the rush of enslaved people to the shoreline became frantic, Montgomery shouted to Tubman “to sing to the freedom seekers to bring calm” and she did so to the abolitionist tune of “Uncle Sam’s Farm.”) Sprawling and kaleidoscopic, this is a marvel of deep research.

Starred review from January 19, 2024

Fields-Black's (history, Carnegie Mellon Univ.; Deep Roots) work is an incredible and distinctive book about the Civil War and the role of a Black woman, long known for her work on the Underground Railroad. She uses a multiplicity of new sources to uncover and deftly relate the story of Harriet Tubman's role as a Union Army hire. She led a group of men deep into the rivers of South Carolina and helped nearly 800 enslaved people of all ages escape enslavement from local rice plantations. No lives were lost in the process. Utilizing original documents and meticulous research, the book describes all that Tubman did in the large military Combahee Ferry Raid of 1863, which took place deep in the heart of the Confederacy. One of the participants of that raid is the author's ancestors. VERDICT A scholarly and remarkable work about enslavement and Civil War history that makes an excellent choice for reading groups and libraries. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of that era's times and experiences, and Fields-Black's connection to one of the participants makes it a personal work as well.--Amy Lewontin

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