Americans generally love tales of resourceful and courageous pioneers and immigrants who set out for a better life despite the challenges and dangers of a new frontier. But we don’t often hear of parallel stories of those enslaved people in the American South who escaped to the North or another country. Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo makes a significant contribution to the study of the slave narrative, not just by recounting the infamous account of the escape of Ellen and William Craft from slavery, but by situating that event in terms of the historical and cultural events of the times and interweaving themes of race, justice, identity, and gender. Also the author of The Great Divorce (a book that examines a 19th-century scandal that involved a divorcing couple, the Shaker religion, and child custody laws), Woo not only recreates the Crafts’ escape but animates their world with its profusion of researched detail.
Ellen and William Craft had been born into slavery in Macon, Georgia but escaped to the North in 1848 through an inspired ruse: Ellen, who could easily pass as a White person, hid her gender by putting on clothes befitting a wealthy plantation owner. In addition, she put her arm in a sling so she could avoid having to produce a signature on the several travel documents and reservations that were needed to complete their four stage journey North. William, on the other hand, posed as her own slave and fawned over her to reduce the contact she would have with other Whites---any recognition of their ruse would be their death sentence.
This ruse challenged all kinds of taboos of the day--those against women cross-dressing, mixed-race couples, departures from the traditional roles of husband and wife, and a person “passing” as a different race. They ingeniously inverted the power dynamics of the times to escape to freedom. Once they reached Boston, they were taken in by the community of abolitionists and former escapees. After that, they became full-time abolitionists by sharing their story on the lecture circuit and by publishing a book of their escape, titled Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, in 1860. Ilyon Woo shows the reader how their escape, publication, and commitment to the Abolition lecture circuit contributed to the events leading up to the Civil War.
The notoriety of their heroism infuriated people in the South, and after the passage of The Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, that notoriety moved Ellen Craft’s former “master,” Robert Collins, to send agents to capture them. When a wealthy abolitionist offered to purchase their freedom from Collins, he refused. What was important to Collins wasn’t the money, it was rather the subversion of the standard power structures of the times that the Crafts’ high profile escape had undermined. Although the agents were foiled, that attempt showed the Crafts that they were not safe. Consequently, they left for England to carry on their work in the anti-slavery movement before eventually returning to the United States after the Civil War.
The Crafts’ journey became not only a political tool for the abolition movement but also a part of the wider genre of slave narratives so popular at the time. This genre stands apart from accounts of journeys that tell of leaving troubled times, conquering adversity, and finding success because those accounts of “hard times on the prairie” do not aspire to challenge the status quo. While a primary goal of slave narratives was to inspire and instruct other enslaved people on seeking freedom, slave narratives also sought to expose the horrors and cruelties of life in bondage. Just as the Crafts’ own account of their escape does this, Woo’s book also aims to preserve the historical truth of the times.
In this book, Ilyon Woo’s premier skill as a researcher makes the Crafts’ story and Master Slave Husband Wife shine. Having sleuthed through a multitude of sources (newspapers, diaries, letters, legal documents, and other archival materials and digital resources), Woo vividly animates the world in which the Crafts lived, explaining not only how they lived their lives but the dangers of entrenched racism they faced at every turn. Her wide-scale approach lets the reader better appreciate the scope of the Crafts’ accomplishments and the role of slave narratives in preserving the historical truth of a dark part of American history.
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Reading for the November 15 meeting.
November 15:
Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Milissa L. Sevigny. It was a New Yorker Best Book of 2023