started. It was eight o'clock in the evening, and they expected to
arrive in Philadelphia early the next morning. They did not know that on
the way the passengers would have to leave the cars and cross the river
Susquehanna in a ferry-boat. They had slept very little for several
nights before they left Georgia, and they had been travelling day and
night for four days. William, overcome with fatigue, and feeling that
their greatest dangers were now over, fell sound asleep on a heap of
baggage. When they arrived at the ferry, it was cold, dark, and rainy;
and for the first time during their hazardous journey the invalid found
no faithful servant at hand when the cars stopped. He was in great
distress, fearing that William had been arrested or kidnapped. He
anxiously inquired of the passengers whether they had seen his boy.
There were a good many Northerners on board, and, supposing his slave
had run away, they rather enjoyed his perplexity. One gruffly replied,
"I am no slave-hunter." Another smiled as he said, "I guess he is in
Philadelphia before now."
When they had crossed the ferry one of the guard found William still
sound asleep on the baggage, which had been rolled into the boat. He
shook him and bawled out: "Wake up, you boy! Your master has been half
scared to death. He thought you had run away." As soon as William was
enough awake to understand what had happened, he said, "I am sure my
good master does not think that of me." He hastened to explain to Mr.
Johnson how he happened to be out of the way. He was received with a
great leap of the heart; but the passengers only thought that the master
was very glad to recover his lost property. Some of them took a
convenient opportunity to advise William to run away when they reached
Philadelphia. He replied, "I shall never run away from such a good
master as I have." They laughed, and said, "You will think differently
when you get into a Free State." They told him how to proceed in case he
wanted to be free, and he thanked them. A colored man also entered into
conversation with him, and told him of a certain boarding-house in
Philadelphia, the keeper of which was very friendly to slaves who
wanted their freedom.
On Christmas-day, just as morning was about to dawn, they came in sight
of the flickering lights of Philadelphia. William procured a cab as
quick as possible, hurried their baggage into it, and told the driver to
take them to the boarding-house which had been recommended to them.
While Ellen had been obliged to act the part of Mr. Johnson, she had
kept her mind wonderfully calm and collected. But now that she was on
free soil she broke down with the excess of her emotions. "Thank God,
William, we are safe, we are safe!" she exclaimed; and sinking upon her
husband's breast, she burst into a passion of tears. When they arrived
at the boarding-house, she was so faint she had no further occasion to
act being an invalid. As soon as a room was provided, they entered and
fastened the door. Then kneeling down side by side, folded in each
other's arms, with tears flowing freely, they thanked God for having
brought them safely through their dangerous journey, and having
permitted them to live to see this happy Sabbath day, which was
Christmas-day also.
When they had rested and refreshed themselves with a wash, Ellen put on
her womanly garments and went to the sitting-room. When the landlord
came at their summons, he was very much surprised and perplexed. "Where
is your master?" inquired he; and when William pointed to his wife, he
thought it was a joke; for he could not believe she was the same person
who came into the house in the dress of a gentleman. He listened to
their singular story with great interest and sympathy. He told them he
was afraid it would not be safe for them to remain in Philadelphia, but
he would send for some Abolitionists who knew the laws better than he
did. Friends soon came, and gave them a hearty welcome; but they all
agreed that it would not be safe for them to remain long in
Philadelphia, and advised them to go to Boston. Barclay Ivens, a
kind-hearted Quaker farmer, who lived some distance in the country,
invited them to rest a few weeks at his house. They went accordingly.
But Ellen, who had not been accustomed to receive such attentions from
white people, was a little flurried when they arrived. She had received
the impression that they were going to stay with colored people; and
when she saw a white lady and three daughters come out to the wagon to
meet her, she was much disturbed, and said to William, "I thought they
were colored people." "It is all the same as if they were," replied he.
"They are our good friends." "It is _not_ all the same," said Ellen,
decidedly. "I have no faith in white people. They will be sending us
back into Slavery. I am going right off." She had not then become
acquainted with the Abolitionists. She had heard her master and other
Southerners talk about them as very bad men, who would make slaves
believe they were their friends, and then sell them into distant
countries. The Quaker lady saw that she was afraid, and she went up to
her and took her very kindly by the hand, saying: "How art thou, my
dear? We are very glad to see thee and thy husband. We have heard about
thy marvellous escape from Slavery. Come in and warm thyself. I dare say
thou art cold and hungry after thy journey." Ellen thanked her, and
allowed herself to be led into the house. Still she did not feel quite
safe in that strange place, away from all her people. When Mrs. Ivens
attempted to remove her bonnet, she said, "No, I thank you. I am not
going to stop long." "Poor child!" said the good Quaker mother, "I
don't wonder thou art timid. But don't be afraid. Thou art among friends
who would as soon sell their own daughters into Slavery as betray thee.
We would not harm a hair of thy head for the world." The kindly face and
the motherly tones melted the heart of the poor frightened fugitive, and
the tears began to flow. They stayed several weeks in that hospitable
house, and the son and daughters took so much pains to teach them to
read and write, that before they left they could spell a little, and
write their names quite legibly. They were strongly urged to stay
longer, and would have done so had they not been very desirous to be
earning their own living. When they left this excellent family it seemed
like parting with near and dear relatives.
In Boston they were introduced to William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell
Phillips, Francis Jackson, Rev. Theodore Parker, and other good men, who
had for years been laboring for the emancipation of the slaves. The
fugitives made a favorable impression on strangers at first sight. They
both looked intelligent and honest. William had a very manly air, and
Ellen was modest and ladylike in her manners.
Their marriage in Georgia had been, like other slave marriages, without
a certificate; therefore they were desirous to have the ceremony
performed again, with all the forms of law, now that they were in a free
land. They were accordingly married by the Rev. Mr. Parker, at the house
of a respectable colored citizen of Boston, named Lewis Hayden. Mr.
Crafts was employed at his trade, and his wife obtained work as a
seamstress. They lived in Boston two years, during which time they
established an excellent character by their honest industry and correct
deportment. They earned a comfortable living, and might have laid by
some money if circumstances had permitted them to remain in
Massachusetts.
But in 1850 the Congress of the United States, under the influence of
slaveholders, passed a very wicked act called the Fugitive Slave Bill.
There was in Boston at that time a celebrated lawyer named Daniel
Webster. He wanted to be President of the United States, and for many
years no man had been able to get elected to that office unless he
pleased the slaveholders. He accordingly used his great influence to
help the passage of the bill, and advised the people of Massachusetts to
get over their scruples about hunting slaves. He died without being
President; and I hope God forgave the great sin into which his ambition
led him. By that cruel act of Congress, everybody, all over the country,
was required to send back fugitive slaves to their masters. Whoever
concealed them or helped them in any way became liable to a year's
imprisonment and a fine of a thousand dollars, besides paying the price
of the slave. In all the Northern cities there were many honest,
industrious colored people who had escaped from Slavery years before,
and were now getting a comfortable living. Many of them had married at
the North and reared families. But when slaveholders gained this victory
over the conscience of the North, they were compelled to leave their
business and their homes, and hide themselves wheresoever they could.
Mr. and Mrs. Crafts had many zealous friends in Boston, but the friends
of the slaveholders were more numerous. For some time past, Southerners
had been rather reluctant to hunt slaves in Massachusetts, because the
public opinion of the people was so much opposed to Slavery, that they
found it a difficult and disagreeable job. But after the passage of
that unrighteous bill, they and their pro-slavery accomplices at the
North became more bold.
One day, while Mr. Crafts was busy in his shop, he received a visit from
a man by the name of Knight, who used to work in the same shop with him
in Georgia. He professed to be much pleased to see William again, and
invited him to walk round the streets and show him the curiosities of
Boston. Mr. Crafts told him he had work to do, and was very busy. The
next day he tried again; but finding Mr. Crafts still too busy to walk
with him, he said: "I wish you would come to see me at the United States
Hotel, and bring your wife with you. She would like to hear from her
mother. If you want to send letters to Georgia, I will take them for
you." This was followed by a badly spelled note to Mr. Crafts, informing
him that he was going to leave Boston early the next morning, and if he
wanted to send a letter to Georgia he must bring it to him at the hotel
after tea. Mr. Crafts smiled that he should think him silly enough to
walk into such an open trap. Mr. Knight had told him that he came to
Boston alone; but when he questioned the hotel-servant who brought the
note, he was told that a Mr. Hughes from Georgia accompanied him. Mr.
Hughes was a notorious slave-catcher, and the jailer of Macon. Mr.
Crafts continued to work at his shop; but he kept the door locked, and a
loaded pistol beside him.
Finding that his intended victim was too much on his guard to be caught
by trickery, Mr. Hughes applied to the United States Court in Boston and
obtained a warrant to arrest William and Ellen Crafts as fugitive
slaves. This produced tremendous excitement. The Abolitionists were
determined that they should not be carried back into Slavery. They had
people everywhere on the watch, and employed lawyers to throw all manner
of difficulties in the way of the slave-hunters, whose persons and
manners were described in the newspapers in a way by no means agreeable
to them. The colored people held large meetings, and passed various
spirited resolutions, among which was the following: "_Resolved_, Man
wills us slaves, but God wills us free. We will as God wills. God's will
be done." Two hundred of them armed themselves and vowed that they would
defend William and Ellen Crafts to the death. Mr. Crafts said very
calmly, but very resolutely, that they should never take him alive.
Hughes the slave-catcher swore: "I'll have 'em if I stay in Boston to
all eternity. If there a'n't men enough in Massachusetts to take 'em,
I'll bring men from Georgia." Merchants in Boston, thinking only of
their trade with the South, sympathized with those men engaged in such a
base calling; and the United States officials did all they could to help
them. But though they received countenance and aid from many influential
men in Boston, those hirelings of Slavery could not help feeling ashamed
of their business. They complained that the boys in the streets hooted
after them, and that wherever they made their appearance, people called
out, "There go the slave-hunters!" They heard that the Abolitionists
were preparing to arrest them and try them as kidnappers; and the number
of colored people who watched their movements with angry looks made them
wish themselves back in Georgia. During all this commotion, the conduct
of Mr. Crafts excited universal admiration. He was resolute, but very
calm. If there had been any law to protect him, he would have appealed
to the law, rather than have harmed a hair of any man's head; but left
defenceless as he was among a pack of wolves hunting him and his
innocent wife, he was determined to defend his freedom at any cost.
Ellen was secretly conveyed out of the city. Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray
Loring of Boston were excellent people, always kind to the poor and true
friends to the oppressed slaves. They spent their summers in the
neighboring town of Brookline. A Boston physician, who was an
Abolitionist, carried Ellen to their house in the evening. Mr. and Mrs.
Loring were both absent from home for a few days, but a lady who was
staying in the house received her with great kindness. She stayed there
two days, assisting the lady very industriously and skilfully with her
needle. Her mind was full of anxiety about her husband, whom she had
left in the city exposed to the most fearful danger. She was very
wakeful through the night, listening to every noise. As soon as she
became drowsy, she would wake with a sudden start from some bad dream.
She dreamed that she and William were running from the Georgia
slave-catcher, and that Daniel Webster was close behind them, pointing a
pistol at them. It was a sad thing that a man of such intellectual
ability as Mr. Webster, and with so much influence in society, should
make such bad use of his great power that he haunted the dreams of the
poor and the oppressed. Ellen rose in the morning with a feeling of
weariness and a great load upon her heart. But she kept back the tears
that were ready to flow, and was so quiet and sweet-tempered that she
completely gained the hearts of her protectors. Early the next evening,
the same friend who carried Ellen from the city brought her husband to
her. He also had been sleepless, and was worn down with fatigue and
anxiety. They were advised to retire to rest immediately, to remain in
their room with the door locked, and be careful not to show themselves
at the window. They followed these directions, and the lady was hoping
they would both have peaceful and refreshing slumber, when Ellen came to
say that her husband wanted to speak with her. She found him standing by
the fireplace looking very sad, but with a dignified calmness that
seemed to her truly noble in the midst of such dreadful danger. As she
entered he said, "Ellen has just told me that Mr. and Mrs. Loring are
absent from home. If we should be found in his house, he would be liable
to imprisonment and a heavy fine. It is wrong for us to expose him to
this danger without his knowledge and consent. We must seek shelter
elsewhere." The lady replied: "Mr. Loring would feel troubled to have
you leave his house under such circumstances. He is the best and kindest
of men, and a great friend of the colored people." "That makes it all
the more wrong for us to bring him into trouble on our account, without
his knowledge," replied Mr. Crafts. Ellen had kept up bravely all day,
but now her courage began to fail. She looked up with tears swimming in
her handsome eyes and said: "O William, it is so dark and rainy
to-night, and it seems so safe here! We may be seen and followed, if we
go out. You said you didn't sleep last night. I started up from a little
nap, dreaming that Daniel Webster was chasing us with a loaded pistol. I
thought of all manner of horrid things that might be happening to you,
and I couldn't sleep any more. Don't you think we might stay here just
this one night?" He looked at her with pity in his eyes, but said, very
firmly, "Ellen, it wouldn't be right." Without another word she
prepared to go, though the tears were falling fast. The lady, finding
his mind too fixed to be changed by her persuasions, sent a guide with
them to the house of Mr. Philbrick, a worthy, kind-hearted gentleman,
who lived about half a mile off. She herself told me the story; and she
said she never felt so much respect and admiration for any human beings
as she did for those two hunted slaves when she saw them walk out into
the darkness and rain because they thought it wrong to endanger, without
his consent, a friend of their persecuted people. She felt anxious lest
the slave-catcher or his agents might seize them on the road, and it was
a great relief to her mind when the guide returned and said Mr.
Philbrick received them gladly.
After a few more days of peril they were secretly put on board a vessel,
which conveyed them to England. They carried letters which introduced
them to good people, who contributed money to put them to school for a
while. Their intelligence, industry, and good conduct confirmed the
favorable impression made by their first appearance. In 1860, Mr. Crafts
published a little book giving an account of their "Running a Thousand
Miles for Freedom." They have now been living in England fifteen years.
By their united industry and good management they earned a comfortable
living, and laid by a little, year after year, until they had enough to
buy a small house in the village of Hammersmith, not far from the great
city of London. There they keep their children at the best of schools,
and pay taxes which help to support the poor in the country which
protected them in their time of danger and distress.
The honesty, energy, and good sense of Mr. Crafts inspired so much
respect and confidence in England, that the Quakers and other
benevolent people, who wish to do good to Africa, also merchants, who
want to open trade with that region, sent him out there with a valuable
cargo of goods, in November, 1862. The mission he is performing is very
important to the well-being of the world, as you will see by the
following explanation.
Africa is four thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the United
States. It is inhabited by numerous tribes of black people, each tribe
with a separate government. These tribes vary in degrees of intelligence
and civilization; but they are generally of a peaceable and kindly
disposition, unless greatly provoked by wrongs from others. Where they
are safe from attack they live in little villages of huts, and raise
yams, rice, and other grain for food. They weave coarse cloth from
cotton, merely by means of sticks stuck in the ground, and in some
places they color it with gay patterns. They make very pretty baskets
and mats from grasses, and some of the tribes manufacture rude tools of
iron and ornaments of gold. But a constant state of warfare has hindered
the improvement of the Africans; for men have very little encouragement
to build good houses, and make convenient furniture, and plant grain, if
enemies are likely to come any night and burn and trample it all to the
ground. These continual wars have been largely caused by the
slave-trade. Formerly the African chiefs sold men into Slavery only in
punishment for some crime they had committed, or to work out a debt they
had failed to pay, or because they were prisoners taken in war. These
customs were barbarous enough, but they were not so bad as what they
were afterward taught to do by nations calling themselves Christians. In
various countries of Europe and America there were white people too
proud and lazy to work, but desirous to dress in the best and live on
the fat of the land. They sent ships out to Africa to bring them
negroes, whom they compelled to work without wages, with coarse, scanty
food, and scarcely any clothing. They grew rich on the labor of these
poor creatures, and spent their own time in drinking, gambling, and
horse-racing. Slave-traders, in order to supply them with as many
negroes as they wanted, would steal all the men, women, and children
they could catch on the coast of Africa; and would buy others from the
chiefs, paying them mostly in rum and gunpowder. This made the different
tribes very desirous to go to war with each other, in order to take
prisoners to sell to the slave-traders; and the more rum they drank, the
more full of fight they were. This mean and cruel business has been
carried on by white men four hundred years; and all that while African
villages have been burned in the night, and harvests trampled, and men,
women, and children carried off to hopeless Slavery in distant lands.
This continual violence, and intercourse with such bad white men as the
slave-traders, kept the Africans barbarous; and made them much more
barbarous than they would otherwise have been. Such a state of things
made it impossible for them to improve, as they would have done if the
nations called Christians had sent them spelling-books and Bibles
instead of rum, teachers instead of slave-traders, and tools and
machinery instead of gunpowder.
Of all the African chiefs the King of Dahomey is the most powerful. He
sends armed men all about the country to carry off people and sell them
to Europeans and Americans. In that bad way he has grown richer than
other chiefs, and more hard-hearted. Benevolent people in England have
long desired to stop the ravages of the slave-trade and to teach the
Africans better things. The dearth of cotton in the United States,
occasioned by the Rebellion of the planters, turned the attention of
English merchants in the same direction. It was accordingly agreed to
send Mr. Crafts to Dahomey to open a trade, and try to convince the king
that it would be more profitable to him to employ men in raising cotton
than to sell them for slaves. He was well received by the King of
Dahomey, who shows a disposition to be influenced by his judicious
counsels. This is a great satisfaction to Mr. Crafts, desirous as he is
of elevating people of his own color. Numbers who were destined to be
sold into foreign Slavery are already employed in raising cotton in
their native land. Wars will become less frequent; and the African
tribes will gradually learn that the arts of peace are more profitable,
as well as more pleasant. This will bring them into communication with a
better class of white men; and I hope that, before another hundred years
have passed away, there will be Christian churches all over Africa, and
school-houses for the children.
Mr. Crafts sold all the goods he carried out in the first vessel, and
managed the business so well that he was sent out with another cargo. He
is now one of the most enterprising and respected merchants in that part
of the world; and his labors produce better results than mere money, for
they are the means of making men wiser and better. How much would have
been lost to himself and the world if he had remained a slave in
Georgia, not allowed to profit by his own industry, and forbidden to
improve his mind by learning to read!
Mr. M. D. Conway, the son of a slaveholder in Virginia, but a very able
and zealous friend of the colored people, recently visited England, and
sent the following letter to Boston, where it was read with great
interest by the numerous friends of William and Ellen Crafts:--
"LONDON, October 29th, 1864.
"A walk one pleasant morning across a green common, then through a
quiet street of the village called Hammersmith, brought me to the
house of an American whom I respect as much as any now in Europe;
namely, William Crafts, once a slave in Georgia, then a hunted
fugitive in Massachusetts, but now a respected citizen of England,
and the man who is doing more to redeem Africa from her cruel
superstitions than all other forces put together. He lately came
home from Dahomey, the ship-load of goods that he had taken out to
Africa from Liverpool having been entirely sold. The merchants who
sent him are preparing another cargo for him, and he will probably
leave the country this week. His theory is, that commerce is to
destroy the abominations in the realm of Dahomey. He is very black,
but he finds the color which was so much against him in America a
leading advantage to him in Africa. Ellen, his wife, told us that
she was too white to go with him. He was absent on business in
Liverpool, and thus, to my regret, I missed the opportunity of
seeing him. There was a pretty little girl, and three unusually
handsome boys. They all inherit the light complexion and beauty of
their mother. We found Mrs. Crafts busy packing her husband's trunk
for his next voyage. She showed us a number of interesting things
which he had brought from Africa. Among them were birds of bright
plumage, a belt worn by the Amazons in war, a sword made by the
Africans, breastpins, and other excellent specimens of work in
metals. I remembered that years ago the sight of similar things
inspired Clarkson with his strong faith in the improvability of the
African race.