can we have an emancipation proclamation for the reproductive rights of women, and…?

“Repro­duc­tive Jus­tice” is becom­ing a pre­ferred term over the polar­ized terms “pro-​choice” and “pro-​life.” Many peo­ple who iden­tify as “pro-​life” do want abor­tion to be avail­able— such a dichotomy doesn’t do jus­tice to the com­plex­ity of most people’s view on abor­tion. But, while State leg­is­la­tures are intro­duc­ing and pass­ing bills that are increas­ingly restric­tive, includ­ing attempts to declare “per­son­hood” at con­cep­tion; there is more than a “war on women” going on, these are efforts to enslave us through our bod­ies and the sperm of what­ever man impreg­nates us, whether or not it was planned or consensual.

The move­ment for repro­duc­tive jus­tice is a broad and inter­sec­tional move­ment that addresses many of the prob­lems that aren’t cov­ered in the lan­guage of “choice” that so many peo­ple effec­tively do not have, and it’s empha­sis on sex/​gender bina­ries is unnec­es­sar­ily lim­it­ing. We need that move­ment, but we need some­thing also more fun­da­men­tal to our free­dom. We need eman­ci­pa­tion from any author­i­ties’ attempt to reg­u­late our preg­nant or poten­tially preg­nant bod­ies, and from efforts to legally dis­crim­i­nate against any­one on the basis of sex­ual pref­er­ence, or sex­ual or gen­der iden­tity. Our bod­ies, our sex­u­al­ity, and our sexual/​gender iden­tity should not, in a free coun­try, be reg­u­lated by government.

Though not sec­ondary to issues of sex­ual pref­er­ence and iden­tity, attempts in State leg­is­la­tures to limit abor­tions and abor­tion providers to the degree that abor­tion can be elim­i­nated and out­lawed is a direct chal­lenge to Roe vs. Wade and con­sti­tutes repro­duc­tive con­scrip­tion and slavery.

How is it that these State law­mak­ers can threaten what has been deter­mined a Con­sti­tu­tional right to abor­tion? The Supreme Court gave them the right to reg­u­late abor­tion after decid­ing Roe vs. Wade, as if women were on a totem in which State law­mak­ers and other author­i­ties ‘above’ them can restrict women’s access to abor­tion and limit it in insid­i­ous ways that are hap­pen­ing in at least 20 states, right now. Which means what? Women aren’t per­sons, or women are per­sons sub­or­di­nate to the fetus in their bod­ies? The State owns our uteri?

In some states bills have been intro­duced and some passed that would not make excep­tions for incest or rape, so that on top of a woman’s body being con­scripted into full-​term preg­nancy, a woman’s/teen’s/girl’s life and body is made sub­or­di­nate to rapists. Mak­ing an excep­tion for a mother’s life is pre­sented as proof that these law­mak­ers care about women. It’s more likely that this is a polit­i­cal con­ces­sion to some­thing that could hurt their effort to make abor­tion com­pletely ille­gal and give Con­sti­tu­tional rights to the fetus.

On top of giv­ing States the right to limit women’s access to abor­tion, “pri­vacy” is a half-​baked argu­ment. The issue is free­dom, lib­erty, auton­omy, and the full sta­tus of cit­i­zen­ship that does not give any­one the author­ity to take legal con­trol of our repro­duc­tive deci­sions or to impede our abil­ity to use the con­tra­cep­tive meth­ods of our choice to pre­vent preg­nancy and end preg­nancy for what­ever pur­poses we declare. We owe no one our uterus or the pro­duce of it at any stage of pregnancy.

What we need is a Uni­ver­sal and Fed­eral Repro­duc­tive Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion which rec­og­nizes the right of all women and females who are capa­ble of preg­nancy to be given full rights to our own bod­ies and our repro­duc­tive capac­ity, and that allows unfet­tered free­dom to exer­cise sex­ual pref­er­ence and gen­der iden­tity with­out hin­drance. A Supreme Court that rules on any­thing less is stat­ing a will­ing­ness to allow State and Fed­eral author­i­ties to con­trol women and oth­ers who do not toe the line of entrenched patri­ar­chal, het­ero­sex­ual, cis-​gendered con­cep­tions of “nor­mal­ity” or “decency” in order to exer­cise social con­trol over peo­ple who want and should not be denied equal pro­tec­tion under the law.

The free­doms of sex­ual pref­er­ence, repro­duc­tive choices, and sex­ual iden­tity of born per­sons is nec­es­sary to per­sonal secu­rity, and the bless­ings of lib­erty for adults and oth­ers given a legal right to con­sent to sex­ual activ­ity. Any author­ity that shall legally act to repress or deny repro­duc­tive and sex­ual free­dom of born cit­i­zens who are enti­tled to give con­sent, and any adult cit­i­zen, is fail­ing to uphold this free­dom and is lay­ing claim to the sex, sex­u­al­ity, and repro­duc­tive capa­bil­ity in indi­vid­u­als in a man­ner which is tyran­ni­cal and con­sis­tent with slav­ery and social apartheid.

Any author­ity that fails to pros­e­cute the vio­la­tions of sex­ual and/​or repro­duc­tive choice by force, is in vio­la­tion of the rights of born per­sons and is sup­port­ing the crim­i­nal actions of those who usurp them through coer­cion or force.

Cold War Secrecy and Broken Arrows

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Atomic Energy Act Pre­vents Declas­si­fi­ca­tion of Site of 1958 Bro­ken Arrow Nuclear Weapons Acci­dent

Air Force Chief of Staff Said Bomber Con­fla­gra­tion in Morocco Involved Nukes – “One of Those Things”

The Cold War ended sev­eral decades ago, but the U.S. gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to keep secrets from that era under lock and key. Some secrets remain valid, but some of the secrecy serves no use­ful pur­pose. One point­less secret con­cerns a Jan­u­ary 1958 nuclear weapons acci­dent that took place at a U.S. Air Force base in Morocco. A recent U.S. Air Force declas­si­fi­ca­tion deci­sion about the acci­dent reminds us about the endur­ing unnec­es­sary secrecy. The Air Force exempted the loca­tion of the acci­dent, cit­ing the Atomic Energy Act to jus­tify the secrecy notwith­stand­ing the depar­ture of nuclear weapons and the U.S Air Force from Morocco nearly fifty years ago. Rec­og­niz­ing that such secrecy is obso­lete, the pres­i­den­tially appointed Pub­lic Inter­est Declas­si­fi­ca­tion Advi­sory Board has made use­ful rec­om­men­da­tions that could cor­rect it…

On 31 Jan­u­ary 1958, a B-​47 bomber on ground alert, loaded with a nuclear weapon, caught on fire on the run­way at the U.S. air base at Sidi Sli­mane. The fire destroyed the bomber and left a hole on the run­way, but there were no casu­al­ties. That the entire base had to be evac­u­ated and the area around it was put on “alert” reached the read­ers of The New York Times on 2 Feb­ru­ary 1958 in a small story head­lined “H-​Bomb Dan­ger Denied: Burn­ing of B-​47 at U.S. Base in Morocco Causes Stir.”…

…The Defense Depart­ment cited the inci­dent on 31 Jan­u­ary 1958 not­ing that the B-​47 was mak­ing a sim­u­lated take­off when one of the wheels failed and a fuel tank rup­tured when the plane hit the sur­face. The con­ven­tional explo­sives on the weapons did not det­o­nate but the melt­down of the bomb’s plu­to­nium pit caused con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the area around the fire and on one of the fireman’s cloth­ing. The burn­ing of a nuclear weapon made the acci­dent a “Bro­ken Arrow” (the high­est cat­e­gory short of an acci­den­tal nuclear explo­sion). The Defense Depart­ment did not iden­tify the loca­tion but Nor­ris cor­rectly sur­mised that the inci­dent took place at Sidi Slimane.

male GYNs, rape, and rape culture

In her blog post The male gyne­col­o­gist: Tips to con­nect with female patients, Suzanne Hall, MD recounts her expe­ri­ence men­tor­ing a “younger male physi­cian” in mar­ket­ing to increase his patient vol­ume. After say­ing that the major­ity of young women today pre­fer to see women OB/​GYNs and that “some” call this “reverse dis­crim­i­na­tion,” she describes this as “patient pref­er­ence,” then asks

Where does this leave the male gyne­col­o­gist? espe­cially in a cur­rent mar­ket­ing cli­mate pro­mot­ing the “female only” OB/​GYN practice?

She gave him boil­er­plate advice about com­mu­ni­ca­tion and fol­low­ing through on med­ical duties, then says this would show that “he gets it” and that “he gets them.” I get that she’s talk­ing about a male col­league that she appears to like and trust, but I think that her bar is set too low. She’s not respon­si­ble for the com­ments in that thread, but I hope she takes some cues from them. Many of the com­ments were the por­trait of rape cul­ture— they denied that there is a rape cul­ture and that a doc­tor would rape a patient.

A com­ment say­ing that a woman who has been sex­u­ally abused or raped might not be com­fort­able see­ing a male gyne­col­o­gist was voted down five times. Accord­ing to most of the peanut gallery, women who want to see a female gyne­col­o­gist are dis­crim­i­nat­ing against men— think about the men! And it’s male gyne­col­o­gists that need to pro­tect them­selves from women mak­ing false alle­ga­tions of rape. It’s a won­der male GYNs see women patients at all— they need a chap­eron to pro­tect them­selves.

A quick lit­tle search brings up this this and this and
this.

And check this out.

For 3 weeks, four to five times a day, I was asked to, and did, per­form pelvic exam­i­na­tions on anes­thetized women, with­out spe­cific con­sent, solely for the pur­pose of my edu­ca­tion,” writes Barnes. “To my shame, I obeyed.”

My ques­tion is why would a man in the Twenty-​first Cen­tury, when there are no quo­tas for women in med­ical school, want to be an OB/​GYN? If you think that’s a rad­i­cal ques­tion then per­haps you’ll take a male gynecologist’s word for the need to ask this question.

sciences: conservationists, synthetic biologists, and environmental degradation

Genetically_Engineered_Mosquitosmos­qui­tos genet­i­cally engi­neered to con­trol dengue fever

Garage biotech: Life hacker by Heidi Led­ford at nature.com

Would-​be ‘bio­hack­ers’ around the world are set­ting up labs in their garages, clos­ets and kitchens — from pro­fes­sional sci­en­tists keep­ing a side project at home to indi­vid­u­als who have never used a pipette before. They buy used lab equip­ment online, con­vert web­cams into US$10 micro­scopes and incu­bate tubes of genet­i­cally engi­neered Escherichia coli in their armpits. (It’s cheaper than shelling out $100 or more on a 37 °C incu­ba­tor.) Some share pro­to­cols and ideas in open forums. Oth­ers pre­fer to keep their labs under wraps, con­cerned that author­i­ties will take one look at the gear in their garages and label them as bioterrorists.

The ques­tion of whether or not bio­hack­ers may be pro­duc­ing and not con­tain­ing inva­sive species is not lim­ited to the garage. In a National Geo­graphic arti­cle, Can We Save the World by Remix­ing Life?, the author describes the work of syn­thetic biol­o­gists as being “…grander in scope than most genetic mod­i­fi­ca­tion, which involves mod­estly chang­ing a few genes.”

In the sci­en­tific quest to restore degra­dated land and pre­vent deser­ti­fi­ca­tion, the ques­tion of whether or not we should be engi­neer­ing arti­fi­cial species and intro­duc­ing them into an envi­ron­ment is not a set­tled ques­tion. Con­ser­va­tion­ists and ecol­o­gists are inti­mate with the his­tory of unin­tended con­se­quences and dis­as­trous out­comes of inter­ven­tions. Unlike other tech­nolo­gies, engi­neered organ­isms can repro­duce on their own and their effects might last for­ever. Some syn­thetic biol­o­gists, how­ever, think that “It would be equally hubris­tic to claim that these prob­lems are so com­plex that no new tech­nol­ogy could con­tribute to a solu­tion.” Syn­thetic biol­o­gists may see engi­neered organ­isms that might be effec­tive “lan­guish­ing in devel­op­ment limbo,” while con­ser­va­tion­ists are con­cerned with the dan­gers these organ­ism might present to other life forms, to the genetic code of other life forms, and to us.

While con­ser­va­tion­ists are con­ser­v­a­tive in their out­looks, syn­thetic biol­o­gists have tended to be zeal­ously opti­mistic, work­ing prob­lem back­wards like engi­neers, with­out much con­cern for unin­tended con­se­quences. Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary work has changed the way some syn­thetic biol­o­gists work and has encour­aged them to develop safe­guards and mod­el­ing to address con­tain­ment of these organ­isms, to edu­cate them­selves about unin­tended con­se­quences, and to con­sider the poten­tial for their genet­i­cally mod­i­fied organ­isms to harm envi­ron­ments and humans.

Per­haps, by hav­ing con­ser­va­tion­ists and syn­thetic biol­o­gists work together, the dis­ci­pline and cau­tion of the con­ser­va­tion­ists, and the cre­ativ­ity of the bio­log­i­cal engi­neers will com­bine to lead to wiser pro­to­cols for the study, devel­op­ment, deploy­ment, mon­i­tor­ing, and con­tain­ment of syn­thetic organ­isms that might actu­ally solve prob­lems well enough.

psychological abuse and its disconnects

shaming

Signs of Emo­tional Abuse

For sur­vivors of tor­ture, it is not uncom­mon for the vic­tims to con­sider the psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse to be worse than the phys­i­cal abuse. Accord­ing to Stephen Soldz in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Tor­ture is Tor­ture… a study of

279 Bosn­ian, Croa­t­ian and Serb tor­ture sur­vivors showed that the indi­vid­u­als who suf­fered psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse had the same rates of depres­sion, PTSD, and social and work-​related prob­lems as oth­ers who had endured beat­ings, burn­ings, sex­ual abuse and other forms of phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment at the hands of their captors.”

Dis­count­ing the effects of psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse has been used by the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, for instance, to deny that it was tor­ture; and more com­monly the effects of psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse has been denied its effects in every­day life. For peo­ple to assume that because a per­son— espe­cially a child— who is not phys­i­cally abused isn’t or hasn’t been abused is to deny real harm and give a pass to the abuser. This also lends itself to the label­ing of the psy­cho­log­i­cally and emo­tion­ally dis­turbed as hav­ing a brain dis­ease or dis­or­der, because there seems to be no rea­son for the per­son to be suf­fer­ing. When a per­son labels them­selves so, or agrees with the label given them, then all of the psy­cho­log­i­cal work of chal­leng­ing the abuse in order to rec­og­nize the abuse and to defend them­selves from it ceases.

In Signs of Emo­tional Abuse by Maria Bog­dano at Psych Cen­tral she asserts that this abuse can hap­pen in any kind of rela­tion­ship and that

The abuser projects their words, atti­tudes or actions onto an unsus­pect­ing vic­tim usu­ally because they them­selves have not dealt with child­hood wounds that are now caus­ing them to harm others.

In order to deter­mine if a per­son has been psy­cho­log­i­cally abused she rec­om­mends ask­ing a series of ques­tions in five categories

1) Humil­i­a­tion, degra­da­tion, dis­count­ing, negat­ing, judg­ing, criticizing

2) Dom­i­na­tion, con­trol, and shame

3) Accus­ing and blam­ing, triv­ial and unrea­son­able demands or expec­ta­tions, denies own shortcomings

4) Emo­tional dis­tanc­ing and the “silent treat­ment,” iso­la­tion, emo­tional aban­don­ment or neglect

5) Code­pen­dence and enmeshment

I’ve no doubt that many peo­ple would rec­og­nize such behav­ior in part­ners, friends, bosses, and co-​workers; and that most abusers won’t. A per­son can­not defend them­selves from this kind of abuse as long as they can’t iden­tify it or see them­selves as being deserv­ing of it and/​or of being the cause of it. In a soci­ety in the habit of vic­tim blam­ing, bul­lies roam free and their vic­tims can too eas­ily be labelled as men­tally ill and given a label that results in their words and expe­ri­ences being dis­counted, espe­cially by men­tal health professionals.

The view that vic­tims of abuse have dys­func­tional brains/​minds and react inap­pro­pri­ately to the way they are treated can be as oppres­sive as the abuse itself and more emo­tion­ally crip­pling because it is a prog­no­sis of life­long dis­abil­ity that must be treated with med­ica­tions that don’t address the real pain and its causes, and that often have effects worse than the suf­fer­ing itself. It also gives psy­chi­a­trists the power to legally define peo­ple in bind­ing and stig­ma­tiz­ing ways, explain­ing away all their suf­fer­ing as a glitch in their brains, and giv­ing the men­tal health estab­lish­ment exces­sive pow­ers to exer­cise con­trol over any­one to whom they’ve given a label, which is an abuse in and of itself that also gives abusers an excuse to blame the vic­tim for their own abuse and to deny their own abu­sive behavior.

Once you’ve been labeled with a men­tal ill­ness, every neg­a­tive affect you have is likely to be attrib­uted to your men­tal ill­ness and attribut­ing any of your dis­turbed states to psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse or trauma in the pres­ence of a psy­chi­a­trist is likely to be labeled as “lack­ing insight.”

Some­one once said that psy­chi­a­try used to “brain­less,” but with the rise of bio-​bio-​bio psy­chi­a­try, it has become mind­less. I agree.

race and perceptions of criminality

While a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas, which has noto­ri­ously racist and misog­y­nist fra­ter­ni­ties, I saw first-​hand how the police refuse to pros­e­cute the crim­i­nal activ­ity and nui­sance of rich, young white men. From shoot­ing out the kitchen win­dows in the stu­dent hous­ing coöper­a­tive I lived in, to launch­ing large blocks of ice at peo­ple walk­ing on the other side of the street from a cat­a­pult on their roof*, stretch­ing sev­eral lay­ers of plas­tic wrap across a street between stop signs form­ing an invis­i­ble bar­rier that could seri­ously injure bicy­clists**, to all night par­ties with loud music dur­ing mid-​terms and finals; the police would not intervene.

Dur­ing one par­tic­u­larly loud and late party, a mem­ber of my house called the police and reported a loud party at our house. The police were there in min­utes. My house­mate thor­oughly cas­ti­gated the police offi­cers for their fail­ure to answer sev­eral pre­vi­ous calls about the party at the fra­ter­nity house across the street, and their gen­eral neg­li­gence to do any­thing about the fra­ter­ni­ties’ behav­ior. She was told that that the young men would call their fathers and the most likely thing to come of it would be the offi­cers being chas­tised. Some­times their fathers were lawyers or judges.

Every woman I knew in that house knew not to walk by their houses dur­ing wild par­ties, because of the sto­ries they heard about women being pulled off the side­walk and gang-​raped. Rape cul­ture in fra­ter­ni­ties is well known. It was wise for us to pro­tect our­selves from them. Clearly, they thought them­selves in a class above every­one else and enti­tled to do what­ever they pleased with peo­ple they per­ceived to be of a lower class than them­selves, and though it entertaining.

* One of these was launched at me. I had not seen them on the roof. It exploded vio­lently in front of me and looked, at first, like glass. Then I looked in the direc­tion it came from and saw the cat­a­pult on the roof and sev­eral of them laugh­ing. Had it hit me, I would have been seri­ously injured and would likely have suf­fered from enough brain dam­age to end my life as a stu­dent if not end my life in a coma.

** I wit­nessed this myself. There was a police offi­cer stand­ing there watch­ing. I walked up to him and pointed out the obvi­ous that that was dan­ger­ous— espe­cially threat­en­ing for bicy­clists— and asked him why he wasn’t stop­ping it. He shrugged his shoul­ders and walked away from me.

study: exercise boosts cognition

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How Exer­cise May Boost the Brain by Gretchen Reynolds at The New York Times

Two new exper­i­ments, one involv­ing peo­ple and the other ani­mals, sug­gest that reg­u­lar exer­cise can sub­stan­tially improve mem­ory, although dif­fer­ent types of exer­cise seem to affect the brain quite dif­fer­ently. The news may offer con­so­la­tion for the grow­ing num­bers of us who are enter­ing age groups most at risk for cog­ni­tive decline…

… for the most robust brain health, it’s prob­a­bly advis­able to incor­po­rate both aer­o­bic and resis­tance train­ing. It seems that each type of exer­cise “selec­tively tar­gets dif­fer­ent aspects of cog­ni­tion,” she says, prob­a­bly by spark­ing the release of dif­fer­ent pro­teins in the body and brain.

But, she con­tin­ues, no need to worry if you choose to con­cen­trate solely on aer­o­bic or resis­tance train­ing, at least in terms of mem­ory improve­ments. The dif­fer­ences in the effects of each type of exer­cise were sub­tle, she says, while the effects of exer­cise — any exer­cise — on over­all cog­ni­tive func­tion were profound.

When we started these exper­i­ments,” she says, “most of us thought that, at best, we’d see less decline” in mem­ory func­tion among the vol­un­teers who exer­cised, which still would have rep­re­sented suc­cess. But beyond merely stem­ming people’s mem­ory loss, she says, “we saw actual improve­ments,” an out­come that, if you’re waf­fling about exer­cis­ing today, is worth remembering.

Black Dispatches: black spies of the Civil War

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The Civil War: Black Amer­i­can Con­tri­bu­tions to Union Intel­li­gence

Black Dis­patches” was a com­mon term used among Union mil­i­tary men for intel­li­gence on Con­fed­er­ate forces pro­vided by Negroes. This source of infor­ma­tion rep­re­sented the sin­gle most pro­lific and pro­duc­tive cat­e­gory of intel­li­gence obtained and acted on by Union forces through­out the Civil War. In 1862, Fred­er­ick Dou­glass wrote:

The true his­tory of this war will show that the loyal army found no friends at the South so faith­ful, active, and dar­ing in their efforts to sus­tain the gov­ern­ment as the Negroes-​. Negroes have repeat­edly threaded their way through the lines of the rebels expos­ing them­selves to bul­lets to con­vey impor­tant infor­ma­tion to the loyal army of the Potomac.

The best known of these Pinker­ton agents was John Sco­bell, recruited in the fall of 1861… Sco­bell is cred­ited with pro­vid­ing valu­able intel­li­gence on Con­fed­er­ate order of bat­tle, sta­tus of sup­plies, and troop morale and movements.

Mary Tou­vestre, a freed slave, worked in Nor­folk as a house­keeper for an engi­neer who was involved in the refit­ting and trans­for­ma­tion of the USS Mer­ri­mac into the Vir­ginia, the first Con­fed­er­ate iron­clad war­ship. Over­hear­ing the engi­neer talk­ing about the impor­tance of his project, she rec­og­nized the dan­ger this new type of ship rep­re­sented to the Union navy blockad­ing Nor­folk. She stole a set of plans for the ship that the engi­neer had brought home to work on and fled North. After a dan­ger­ous trip, she arrived in Wash­ing­ton and arranged a meet­ing with offi­cials at the Depart­ment of the Navy.

William A. Jack­son was a slave hired out by the year to Pres­i­dent Davis as a coach­man. His first doc­u­mented report was on 3 May 1862, when he crossed into Union lines near Fred­er­icks­burg, Vir­ginia. As a ser­vant in the Davis house­hold, he was able to observe and over­hear the Con­fed­er­ate President’s dis­cus­sions with his mil­i­tary lead­er­ship. While no record remains of the spe­cific intel­li­gence he pro­duced, it appar­ently was valu­able enough to cause Gen­eral McDow­ell to tele­graph it imme­di­ately to the War Depart­ment in Washington.

Mary Eliz­a­beth Bowser, was part of a Union spy ring known as “the Rich­mond under­ground,” directed by Eliz­a­beth Van Lew, whose fam­ily was well respected and well con­nected socially in Rich­mond. While not hid­ing her Union loy­al­ties, Van Lew affected behav­ior that made her appear harm­less and eccen­tric to Con­fed­er­ate author­i­ties. After the war, she trav­eled to Wash­ing­ton and obtained all the offi­cial records from the War Depart­ment related to her activ­i­ties and destroyed them. Thus, details on Bowser’s spe­cific activ­i­ties are sparse.

Har­riet Tub­man: In late May, Gen. David Hunter, com­man­der of all Union forces in the area, asked Tub­man to per­son­ally guide a raid­ing party up the river. On the evening of 2 June, Tub­man led Mont­gomery and 150 of his men up the river past Con­fed­er­ate picket lines. In a swift raid, tak­ing the Con­fed­er­ates by sur­prise, the Union forces destroyed sev­eral mil­lion dol­lars worth of Con­fed­er­ate sup­plies and brought back more than 800 slaves and thou­sands of dol­lars in enemy prop­erty. By this action alone, Tubman’s con­tri­bu­tion to the Union cause was sig­nif­i­cant. When Tub­man died in 1913, she was hon­ored with a full mil­i­tary funeral as a mark of respect for her activ­i­ties dur­ing the war.