From This Day Forward

by Cokie Roberts

  Harriet successfully boarded the ship and sailed to Philadelphia and freedom. Finally. From Philadelphia, she took a train to New York and went in search of her daughter. Ellen’s situation was not as advertised; she wasn’t going to school and was being treated as a servant rather than a family member. Of course, the little girl couldn’t do anything about her circumstances, so Harriet chose to stay in New York, where she could keep an eye on her daughter. That was just fine with the woman Ellen was living with; once Harriet got a job, she started supplying the clothes and shoes her daughter needed. Fortunately for the runaway, she got work as a nursemaid for a sympathetic Englishwoman with a new baby, who had no objection to her visiting Ellen regularly. One of those visits almost spelled the end of Harriet’s freedom. A Southern relative was visiting the family, spied the fugitive, and wrote to the doctor of her whereabouts. Fortunately, the children in the family found out about it and warned Harriet. The Englishwoman then arranged for her and Ellen to go to Boston, where slave owners dared not tread. There followed an almost idyllic period for Harriet Jacobs. Her son had been sent to Boston to live with Harriet’s brother, who had run away from his master on a trip north years before. Now she had her daughter there as well. She was able to get work as a seamstress and send her children to school. But then her benefactress, the Englishwoman, died, and her husband, Mr. Bruce, begged Harriet to accompany him and the baby to England. She felt she owed him that much. So she arranged for her children’s education and housing and left them again.

  England was an eye-opener for the fugitive slave. She kept comparing the situation of impoverished Englishmen with that of American slaves, and the English came out far ahead. “The father, when he closed his cottage door, felt safe with his family around him. No master or overseer could come and take from him his wife, or his daughter…. The relations of husband and wife, parent and child, were too sacred for the richest noble in the land to violate with impunity.” The English better than the Americans? Unthinkable to the Northern ladies who were the targets of Harriet Jacobs’s work! Grandparents were still handing down tales of the Revolution to their grandchildren. When she returned from England, Harriet went back to Boston, but before long the Bruce family needed her again. There was a new wife and a new baby.

  Going back to New York was now fraught with danger because the Fugitive Slave Act had been passed, empowering federal marshals to capture runaways and return them to their masters, and penalizing anyone who assisted the slaves. When word reached Harriet that the old doctor knew her whereabouts and his emissaries were headed her way, the new Mrs. Bruce found the courage to use her own baby as a form of protection. She arranged for her nursemaid to take the baby with her to friends, figuring that anyone who found Harriet would have to return the baby; then the family might be able to help the fugitive. After about a month in the country, the coast was clear for Harriet and the baby to return to New York, but the situation remained precarious even after the news arrived that the old doctor had died. His daughter, Harriet’s real owner, now married, seemed just as insistent on reclaiming her slave. She and her husband made their own trip to New York; Harriet and the baby made another escape. But Mrs. Bruce had had enough; she arranged to buy Harriet from the North Carolina family once and for all.

  That should have been good news for Harriet Jacobs. It was not. She couldn’t stand the idea that she was a piece of property to be bought and sold: “A human being sold in the free city of New York! The bill of sale is on record and future generations will learn from it that women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion.” Still, it was a relief. And when Harriet Jacobs arrived at the Bruce doorstep, she quickly learned that she was now free. Legally. That to her was the end of the story. It wasn’t the usual ending of a story aimed at women, a romance where the heroine lived happily ever after, but it was a happy ending even so. “Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. My children and I are now free!”

  Ellen and William Craft: A Daring Escape for a Life Together

  The Crafts’ tale, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, sold as a suspense story when it was published in England in 1860. And it does read like a good mystery. But there’s no mystery in the two central themes of the tale: the couple’s abhorrence of slavery and their attachment to each other.

  Both Crafts grew up in Macon, Georgia. Ellen’s first master was her father; her mother was his slave. Because she looked so much like the children of the family, the mistress was eager to get Ellen out of the house, so, at age eleven, the little girl became a wedding present for the mistress’s daughter. William Craft’s first master decided he needed new slave stock, so he sold off William’s aged parents, separating them after many years of marriage. Then, when the master started speculating in cotton, he mortgaged William and his sister to a bank, which eventually auctioned them off to the highest bidders. William was bought by a cabinetmaker. He and Ellen had grown up knowing each other, as slaves would in a town the size of Macon. Eventually they fell in love, but the young slave woman refused to get married.

  William later explained Ellen’s resistance to matrimony: “My wife was torn from her mother’s embrace in childhood, and taken to a distant part of the country. She had seen so many other children separated from their parents in this cruel manner, that the mere thought of her ever becoming the mother of a child, to linger out a miserable existence under the wretched system of American slavery, appeared to fill her very soul with horror; and as she had taken what I felt to be an important view of her condition, I did not, at first, press the marriage, but agreed to assist her in trying to devise some plan by which we might escape from our unhappy condition, and then be married.” But “after puzzling our brains for years,” they could see no way to maneuver through one thousand miles of slave territory to a free state, so they finally decided to ask their masters’ permissions to be married. Once wed, they decided to “settle down in slavery, and endeavor to make ourselves as comfortable as possible under that system.” That’s what they did until December 1848, when Craft concocted a clever scheme to make their break for freedom. Once they decided on it, only eight days later they succeeded.

  The fact that Ellen was almost white, and that William could work extra for money in his job in the cabinet shop, made the daring plan possible. The basic plot was simple: she would disguise herself as a man in need of medical care in the North; he would be the slave accompanying his invalid “master.” Ellen thought the scheme was silly; she couldn’t imagine that she could carry it off. But the more she thought about it, the more she wanted out. So she told William that she would try to do her part if he would buy her costume. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, he went to different parts of town at different times to buy everything his wife needed, except trousers, which she made. As a ladies’ maid in a city house, Ellen had a room of her own where she was able to keep all of her new things hidden.

  Slaves were often given a few days’ vacation at Christmas-time. After all, masters didn’t have to fear that they could go anywhere. No public transportation would carry them without their masters, and Georgia was too far south to worry about walking to freedom. William and Ellen each went to their owners for permission to take some time off so no one would go looking for them right away. Their masters gave them passes allowing them to travel, though neither was able to read the documents. That made Ellen realize that she couldn’t write either, and wouldn’t be able to register in hotels. They solved that problem by putting her right arm in a sling. Once she had donned the full costume, William thought her smooth face might also be a problem. So they put a poultice under her chin and tied a handkerchief around it. Ellen worried that traveling with men would make her nervous. For that problem a pair of tinted glasses to cover her eyes did the trick. Then William cut off his wife’s hair and “found that she made a most respectable looking gentleman.”

  Before dawn they said a quick prayer and he peered ou
t of her room, urging her on: “Come my dear, let us make a desperate leap for liberty!” But she “burst into violent sobs, and threw her head upon my breast. This appeared to touch my very heart, it caused me to enter into her feelings more fully than ever.” They knew that if they were caught, they would not only be severely punished, they would probably never see each other again. But Ellen mustered her courage and each of them crept out of the house and went off in different directions to the train station. It was December 21,1848. William went directly to the “colored” car; Ellen bought tickets and went to the “white” one. The cabinetmaker came looking for them, “having presentiments that we were about to ‘make tracks for parts unknown.’” But the train left the station before he spotted his slave. It was the first of many close calls.

  A friend of the family Ellen worked for sat down next to her, and she was afraid he’d recognize her voice. So, in addition to being bandaged at the face and hand, she became deaf as well. Fortunately, the man got off the train before long, while the Crafts went on to Savannah, where they boarded a steamer for Charleston. Think of it, these were people who couldn’t read or write, who had never been out of small-town Georgia, and now they were braving travel by land and sea through the slave states with detection likely at any time. On ship, Ellen went to bed early to avoid conversation, while William made a fresh poultice and explained his “master’s” illness. They made it safely to Charleston, and for all their trepidation, they still couldn’t resist going right to the lions’ den—registering at the hotel frequented by that champion of the slave system, Senator John C. Calhoun. It was such a bold act that they loved telling about it. The fugitives had planned to take a ship directly from Charleston to Philadelphia, but discovered it didn’t run in the winter, so they had to make the trip in many stages, sailing first to Wilmington, North Carolina. When they reached the dock, the ticket taker refused to sign for “the master” whose arm was in a sling, and it looked like the couple might be stranded in Charleston. Then a young man who had been with them on the boat from Savannah showed up, somewhat the worse for wear with brandy, and vouched for “the gentleman.” Crisis averted.

  From Wilmington, the travelers had to catch a train to Richmond, Virginia. A family on the train became concerned about the state of William’s “master,” and gave the slave a ten-cent piece, telling him to be attentive. With some irony, Craft reports, “I promised that I would do so, and have ever since endeavored to keep my pledge.” Richmond meant a change of trains, this time to a ship’s landing a little beyond Fredericksburg. On that train “Mr. Johnson,” the name Ellen had taken, got into a conversation with a woman traveler. The woman kept talking about her slave, Ned, who had surprised her by running away. “Did he have a wife?” “Johnson” asked. Oh yes, it turned out, a sickly wife whom the woman had sold to someone in New Orleans, where the warm weather would do her good. “I suppose she was very glad to go South for the restoration of her health?” inquired “Johnson.” Oh no, the slave had gone on about leaving Ned and the baby, which surprised her owner because “July” was such a faithful servant. As the woman sang the praises of the slave, “Johnson” finally asked, “As your ‘July’ was such a very good girl, and had served you so faithfully before she lost her health, don’t you think it would have been better to have emancipated her?” “No, indeed I do not!” came the reply. The woman then launched into a tirade about the evils of freeing slaves. It was a story aimed right at women who would pity separated lovers, women who might take up the cause of abolition.

  Next came a steamer to Washington, D.C., and then a train to Baltimore, the last slave port. It was Christmas Eve, and Philadelphia, the first stop in free territory, was within reach. But at the Baltimore train station, a major glitch developed. An officer, “a full-blooded Yankee of the lower order,” demanded that William and his “master” get off the train, saying, “It is against my rules to let any man take a slave past here, unless he can satisfy them in the office that he has a right to take him along.” In terror, they went into the office and learned that they would not be able to go farther, even though they had tickets to Philadelphia. The Crafts had no idea what to do; they were petrified that anything they said would give them away. But the other passengers clucked at the “Yankee officer” for unnecessarily hassling an invalid on Christmas Eve. And when the conductor of the train from Washington arrived and said that the pair had traveled together from there, the officer relented and allowed them to board. Christmas and freedom were in sight.

  On the “colored” car, William received a good deal of advice about how to escape from his “master” once he reached Philadelphia. Though he insisted that he would not abandon so kind a master, Craft stored the information the other passengers gave him, including the address of a boardinghouse run by an abolitionist. Miraculously, early Christmas morning, they reached their goal: they arrived in Philadelphia. Exhausted, Ellen grabbed his hand: “Thank God, William, we are safe!” Then she burst into tears. She cried so long and hard that she really was weak when they arrived at the boardinghouse, so the “invalid” went right to his room. After she recovered, Ellen shed her men’s clothing, joined William in the sitting room, and asked to see the landlord. The bewildered man demanded of Craft, “Where is your master?” When William pointed to Ellen, the landlord sternly insisted, “I am not joking, I really wish to see your master.” They told him their fantastic story, finally convincing him they were telling the truth. The landlord told them they would be safer outside of the city and arranged for them to stay with a family of Quakers up the Delaware River. Though Ellen was wary of white people, the family members won her over when they offered to teach the fugitives the fundamentals of reading and writing. When the Crafts left three weeks later, they could write their names.

  Free at last! That’s what the couple believed after the move to Boston. After all those years of slavery, a few days of frightening playacting and they were now able to live together and support themselves. And for a little while they led a normal married life—he set up shop as a cabinetmaker, she as a seamstress. But when President Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, William’s and Ellen’s masters took out arrest warrants and sent federal marshals to collect their slaves. The good citizens of Boston took exception to the law, and harassed the marshals, who ended up sneaking out of town. By then the Crafts’ story was well known, and their friends concluded that they had become such symbols for fugitive slaves that they’d be safer if they left the country altogether. Not a minute too soon, they decided to go to England.

  When the Georgia masters learned how the U.S. marshals had been treated in Boston, they wrote President Fillmore demanding that he enforce the law, to show his good faith toward the South. The president instructed a military force to go to Boston to assist in the arrest of the fugitives. Since the officers watched the port vigilantly, the Crafts were forced to go by land to Halifax, in hopes of getting a ship to England from there. They first traveled to Portland, Maine, then on to St. John’s, New Brunswick, where they waited two days for a steamer to take them to Windsor, Nova Scotia. At the hotel there, one of the workers was a fugitive slave who told them his story. Soon after he was married, his bride was sold away from him and he never heard of her again. He finally escaped to St. John’s, where he stayed single for many years, but eventually he met and married a woman there. One day, walking down the street, he saw someone who looked familiar; he passed her, then they both turned around and he realized it was his long-lost wife. “Dear, are you married?” were her first words. When he answered yes, she “hung her head, and wept.” He then took her to meet his new wife, who was also a fugitive slave. And they decided he would stay with her, but give the first wife a weekly allowance, “as long as she requested his assistance.”

  The Crafts went on to Windsor, but they learned that moving north, even to Canada, did not remove them from racial problems and prejudices. William wasn’t allowed to ride inside the coach to Halifax because he was
black; the driver forced him to ride on the top in the rain. The coach broke down several miles out of Halifax, and after the passengers trudged through the mud into town, the couple discovered that their ship had already sailed for Liverpool. A few miserable weeks later, after a good deal of difficulty getting a room in Halifax and a place on the ship because of race, the Crafts finally left for England. The voyage was none too pleasant, and Ellen stayed sick for several weeks after they arrived in Liverpool. Even so, they were happy. Their thousand miles to freedom was more like two thousand miles with the Atlantic Ocean thrown in. But they had made it. They were finally well and truly free, and they were together.

  The vast majority of slaves never could say that. It took a war, not a daring escape, to make them free. But once emancipation came, what did they do? They got married, legally. With the help of the Freedman’s Bureau, or on their own, former slaves made their unions legal. The vows they had taken before God and neighbor, they now made legitimate before the state. Because, finally, they could.

  NOTE: The narratives in this chapter are taken from The Civitas Anthology of African American Slave Narratives, edited by William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Civitas/Counterpoint, 1999).

  Chapter Three

  OUR LIVES

  LEAVING HOME

  NEWLYWEDS IN NEW YORK

  You’d think that we were facing a big decision: where to live as we started our married life together. After all, we both had good jobs, but in different cities. Steve was a reporter on the city staff of the Times in New York, and Cokie was producing and anchoring her own show, Meeting of the Minds, at the NBC affiliate in Washington. But we never talked about it. This was 1966, and like most couples in that era we simply assumed that the man’s job was more important. Cokie would quit, move to New York, and start over. But first, there was the honeymoon.