Ellen Craft in Disguise. Five Hundred Thousand Strokes for Freedom. London:
W. & F. Cash, 1853.
Our guest blogger today is Cottey College student Carmen Key. Thanks Carmen!
At eleven
years old, Ellen Craft was given as a “gift” to her half-sister in 1837. The
daughter of a biracial mother and a wealthy slave owner, Ellen’s fair-skin
ensured her an in-house servant position which made her privy to conversations
about the city she was in that would later help guide her to freedom. Moreover,
her light skin would be the power behind her idea to disguise herself as a
white male slave owner traveling with her slave (Ellen's husband, William) to
Pennsylvania for health reasons. Ellen had no choice in what family she would
be born into. She had no control over being born into slavery. However, Ellen
had barely left her teen years behind before she decided to take control of her
life even if it meant losing it.
At twenty
years old Ellen and her husband William decided that they would do what no one
had ever done. They would escape slavery not by the Underground Railroad or by
shipping themselves to a free state like Henry "Box" Brown. Ellen
decided that they would hide in plain sight. So, with her arm in a sling to
prevent the awkwardness of being asked to sign anything along the way (slaves
were not allowed to learn to read or write) and her face wrapped partially in
gauze to keep her accent a secret, Ellen and her husband, who was also a slave,
took the first step of their daring four-day escape to the North where they
could live free. They had nothing but their wits and the Good Lord to bring
them through and fortunately, that was enough!
Ellen
Craft and her husband William made it to the North and because of their great
escape, they quickly became famous to freemen and abolitionists alike. Their
journey to freedom was lauded as a sensational feat and within months they were
speaking at antislavery conventions and other abolitionist events. They shared
the stage with the likes of Frederick Douglass and Wendell Phillips. Often it
was William who spoke but it was Ellen who became the star. Their story was
widely reported in mainstream newspapers and the articles emphasized Ellen’s
primary role in the escape. One account reprinted as far away as Honolulu,
Hawaii, reported that “not once did Ellen’s courage fail, nor her inimitable
and unapproachable endurance and perseverance give way.” Abolitionist W.W.
Brown declared her “truly a heroine.”
The
British Friend 7 (March 1849): 65.
The Crafts
probably would have settled into Boston life; Ellen raising children and
working as a seamstress while her husband made furniture except for the passage
of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This law would require northerners to assist
southern slave owners to recapture runaways. Unfortunately, this meant that those
who had escaped to the North were no longer safe there and this, of course, included
Ellen and William. Soon agents arrived in Boston looking for the couple. In
fact the very first warrants issued under the new law were for the arrest of
the Crafts because they and their story were so famous. President Millard
Fillmore even threatened to send in the army to capture the pair. Newspapers
across the country reported on the episode, reminding everyone of their daring
escape from Georgia just two years ago.
Ellen and William Craft. Liberator photo files.
Ellen wisely took refuge at famed abolitionist Reverend Theodore Parker’s home while her husband was kept safe at black activist, Lewis Hayden’s house. They were under heavy protection as not only were these homes guarded, but the owners threatened to respond with explosives before they would ever give up the Crafts. The abolitionists were able to harass the agents out of town, but Ellen knew she and her husband needed to leave. Soon after, they journeyed to London. Ellen Craft and her story were already known in England. She was invited to important events (such as a special viewing of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851) and was visited by famous people. Newspapers in the U.S. covered these events and apparently that pushed someone to make up the story that Ellen was unhappy with her freedom. In the fall of 1852 editors across the South printed an article claiming that Ellen Craft was asking to return to the family she had escaped from. Ellen responded with a statement for the newspapers:
I write these
few lines merely to say that the statement is entirely unfounded, for I have
never had the slightest inclination whatever of returning to bondage; and God
forbid that I should ever be so false to liberty as to prefer slavery in its
stead. In fact, since my escape from slavery, I have gotten much better in
every respect than I could have possibly anticipated. Though, had it been to
the contrary, my feelings in regard to this would have been just the same, for
I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than be a slave for the best
man that ever breathed upon the American continent.
--Anti-Slavery Advocate, December
1852
The Crafts
lived in Great Britain for nearly twenty years, raising their five children.
After the American Civil War, they returned to the U.S. educated and having
worked hard on behalf of abolitionism. They ultimately started a school
specifically for freed slaves in Georgia, which was their home state. Ellen had
made her escape to return and prepare other freed slaves for life with no
boundaries. Ellen died in 1891 and William in 1900.
Even today Ellen Craft remains a celebrity. Deadline reports that a Hollywood movie is in the works. Ellen’s fans reach far and wide as her roots in the South, escape to the North, and years overseas garnered her undisputed fame in many places. William and Ellen authored a book about their journey, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, though it was published under his name only. Historians have concluded that Ellen contributed and the book is now attributed to them both. After all, Ellen was the true heroine of the story.
Sources and Further Reading
“Boston Minister Tried for
Inciting Riot” MassMoments. https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/boston-minister-tried-for-inciting-a-riot.html
Brusky, Sarah. “Ellen Craft”
Voices from the Gap. 2009. https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/166136/Craft%2c%20Ellen.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Craft, William [and Ellen]. Running
a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from
Slavery. London: William Tweedie, 1860. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Running_a_Thousand_Miles_for_Freedom/C50TAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
McCaskill, Barbara. “Ellen Craft: The Fugitive Who Fled as a Planter.”
In Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times, edited
by Ann Short Chirhart and Betty Wood, 82-105. Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 2009.
“Story of Ellen Crafts.” Polynesian
[Honolulu, HI], October 27, 1849. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015408/1849-10-27/ed-1/seq-4/#date1=1849&index=7&rows=20&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&words=CRAFTS+ELLEN&proxdistance=5&date2=1849&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=%22Ellen+Craft%22&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
“William and Ellen Craft: Fugitives from Slavery.” The British Friend 7 (March 1849): 65-66. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_British_Friend/YgUFAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22ellen+craft%22&pg=RA1-PA65&printsec=frontcover
“William and Ellen Smith Craft Photo Album.” Avery Research Center at
the College of Charleston. https://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:39896?tify={%22panX%22:0.541,%22panY%22:0.616,%22view%22:%22info%22,%22zoom%22:0.495}
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