After the Civil War, contemporaries of Harriet Tubman’s maintained that she has all of the qualities of a great leader: coolness in the face of danger, an excellent sense of strategy, and an ability to plan in minute detail.

(A) Tubman’s maintained that she has
(B) Tubman’s maintain that she had
(C) Tubman’s have maintained that she had
(D) Tubman maintained that she had
(E) Tubman had maintained that she has

OA is D. I did not realize that 2 items of the past are used, so simple past and past perfect have to be used.
Thanks.

use of apostrophes in A to C - out.
D: after the civil war, contemporaries of Harriet Tubman testified of the qualities she was known for before the war.
She possessed several qualities of a great leader, hence the use of "had."
(D) is the best choice.
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1. Contemporaries of Tubman’s is double possessive and wrong; It should be either contemporaries of Tubman or Tubman’s contemporaries.

2. Past tense verbs -maintained and had(possessed) -are required to describe a simple past event

So D
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Error Analysis
(A) Tubman’s maintained that she has
She is not a possessive pronoun. Hence can to refer to Harriet Tubman’s
The sentence is in past - hence 'has' is not correct

(B) Tubman’s maintain that she had
She is not a possessive pronoun. Hence can to refer to Harriet Tubman’s

(C) Tubman’s have maintained that she had
She is not a possessive pronoun. Hence can to refer to Harriet Tubman’s
The original sentence used simple past - "maintained" (action completed). There is no reason to change simple past to present perfect- have maintained (there is no evidence that opinion of contemporaries is maintained in present)

(D) Tubman maintained that she had - CORRECT

(E) Tubman had maintained that she has
Use of past perfect "had maintained" is incorrect. There is no two related events in past.
The sentence is in past - hence 'has' is not correct
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After the Civil War, contemporaries of Harriet Tubman maintained that she had all of the qualities of a greater leader: coolness in the face of danger, an excellent sense of strategy, and an ability to plan in minute detail.

Correct aswer must be (D) for the highlighted errors in the other options....
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Hi rakesh22,

Thank you for your question. To tackle this question, let's look at the two main differences between each answer:

1. Tubman's / Tubman
2. she had / she has

If we start by looking at how each answer begins, we see that there is a difference between Tubman's / Tubman. By saying "contemporaries of Harriet Tubman's," it means that these are contemporaries of something Tubman owns or has - not Tubman herself. Therefore, we can rule out answers A, B, & C because the extra 's changes the meaning.

Now that we have it narrowed down to two possible answers, let's look at how they stack up to #2 on our list:

(D) Tubman maintained that she had
This is the CORRECT answer because it uses the past tense "she had," which indicates that she died, which is true.

(E) Tubman had maintained that she has
This is INCORRECT because it uses the present tense "she has," which indicates that Harriet Tubman is still alive somehow. She is not, so using present tense doesn't make logical sense.
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