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.