Authors: Betty DeRamus
Federal Union,
“The Boston Excitement,” November 26, 1850, Vol. XXI, No. 25, Milledgeville, Ga.
Federal Union,
“The Beginning of the End,” December 3, 1850, Vol. XXI, No. 26, Milledgeville, Ga.
Finkelman, Paul, ed.
Articles on American Slavery.
New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc. In Vol. 6,
Fugitive Slaves,
R.J.M. Blackett writes that Boston’s black community was only 2,000 people in 1848
but had four churches and a number of social and benevolent groups. It also, he points
out, had a history of uniting against slave catchers and protecting fugitives.
Fox, Jack F., comp.
The 1850 Census of Georgia Slave Owners.
Baltimore: Printed for Clearfield Company, Inc., by Genealogical Publishing Co.,
Inc., 1999.
Fredrickson, George M.
William Lloyd Garrison.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall Press, 1968. On page 143, Garrison’s 1842 speech
is quoted: “We affirm that the Union is not of heaven. It is founded in unrighteousness
and cemented with blood…. Slavery is a combination of Death and Hell and with it the
North have made a covenant and are at agreement…. Divorced from Northern protection
it dies; and with that protection, it enlarges its boundaries, multiplies its victims,
and extends its ravages.”
Freedman, Florence.
Two Tickets to Freedom: The True Story of Ellen and William Craft, Fugitive Slaves.
New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1971. She writes that Ellen’s new master in Macon
owned 62 slaves and 10,000 acres of farmland.
“The Fugitive Slave Bill and Its Effects,” in
Five Hundred Thousand Strokes for Freedom, A Series of Anti-Slavery Tracts, of Which
Half a Million Are Now First Issued by the Friends of the Negro.
Leeds Anti-Slavery Series, No. 32, orig. pub. 1853. Reprint, Miami: Mnemosyne Publishing
Co., 1969.
The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims.
New York: The American Anti-Slavery Society, 1861. On page 46, a story appears about
a fourteen-year-old white girl, daughter of Mr. Samuel Godshall of Downingtown, Chester
County, Pa., who was seized by town men and a plaster put upon her mouth. She was
taken in a carriage toward Maryland, but the men put her out in a secluded part of
the country, threatening to kill her if she made any alarm. The tract notes that “It
was supposed the kidnappers mistook her for a mulatto girl, but discovering their
blunder, dismissed her.” On page 29 is the story of the mistakenly arrested waiter,
Patrick Sneed.
Garison, Webb. “The Saga of William and Ellen Craft Still Stirs the Emotions,”
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution,
December 25, 1988.
Genovese, Eugene D.
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made.
New York: Vintage Books, 1976. The book quotes Ellen’s owner, Robert Collins, who
claims that Negroes are inherently tyrannical and that without their masters’ mediation
husbands often would abuse family members.
Georgia: A Guide to Its Towns and Countryside.
Compiled and written by workers of the Writers Program of the Work Projects Administration
in the State of Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1940. The book asserts
that the Klan first began operating in Georgia in the spring of 1868, spreading terror
by acts of violence.
Georgia Journal and Messenger,
“The Fugitive Slave Case in Boston,” November 6, 1850, Vol. XXVII, No. 32, Macon,
Ga.
Georgia Journal and Messenger,
“The Boston Excitement,” November 13, 1850, Vol. XXVIII, No. 33, Macon, Ga.
Georgia Journal and Messenger,
“Letter from the President,” November 20, 1850, Vol. XXVIII, No. 34, Macon, Ga.
Georgia Journal and Messenger,
“Letter from Dr. Robert Collins,” June 25, 1851, Vol. XXIX, No. 63, Macon, Ga.
Gordon, Asa H.
Sketches of Negro Life and History in South Carolina,
2nd ed. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1971.
Grimé, William Ed.
Ethno-Botany of the Black Americans.
Algonac, Mich.: Reference Publications, Inc., 1979.
Grimke, Archibald. “Anti-Slavery Boston.”
The New England Magazine,
New Series, Dec. 1890, Vol. III, No. 4.
Heglar, Charles Joseph. “Rethinking the Slave Narrative: Domestic Concerns in Henry
Bibb and William and Ellen Craft,” an abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department
of English, University of South Florida, December 1996. Copyrighted by Heglar, 1997.
Hine, Darlene Clark.
Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-construction of American History.
Brooklyn, N.Y.: New York: Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1994.
Hine, Darlene Clark, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds.
Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia,
Vol. I, A–L. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1993.
Hoffman, Charles, and Tess Hoffman.
North by South: The Two Lives of Richard James Arnold.
Athens, Ga.: The University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Hunsinger, Lou, Jr. “The Underground Railroad in Lycoming County.”
The Williamsport Sun-Gazette,
April 24, 2003.
James, Edward T., ed.
Notable American Women, A–F. 1607–1950,
Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.
James, Thomas, Rev. “Wonderful Eventful Life of Rev. Thomas James.” Rochester, N.Y.:
Post Express Printing Company, 1887. This pamphlet includes an account of the Crafts’
escape. James describes Ellen Craft as a woman “who had hardly a tinge of African
blood in her veins and who could not in color be distinguished from a white person.”
Jones, Thomas C., ed.
The Graphic Story of the American Presidents.
Chicago: J. G. Ferguson Publishing Co., 1968.
Kaufman, Polly Welts, et al.
Boston Women’s Heritage Trail: Four Centuries of Boston Women.
Gloucester: The Curious Traveller Press, 1999. Gives the address of abolitionists
Lewis and Harriet Hayden as 66 Philips Street. The Haydens initially sheltered the
Crafts in Boston. It also gives some background on the African Meeting House at 8
Smith Court, where several abolitionists, including the Crafts, spoke.
Kinzer, Stephen. “Leading Charleston to Its Past.”
The New York Times,
Tuesday, August 14, 2001.
Lamb, Yvonne Shinhoster. “Epiphany in Savannah.”
The Washington Post.
August 3, 1998.
The Liberator,
July 27, 1849. Contains an ad for William Craft’s Boston furniture store.
The Liberator,
June 24, 1851. Letter from William Wells Brown to William Lloyd Garrison about the
Crafts in Scotland.
The Liberator,
June 24, 1851, contains a letter about the Crafts written by William Wells Brown:
Dear Mr. Garrison:
I am sure that you will feel an interest in the welfare of our friends, Wm. and Ellen
Craft. William has probably already informed you of the safe arrival of himself and
wife in England. Although I had been informed by letters from Boston that our friends
were coming to this country, I was not made acquainted with their plans, if indeed
they had any. A few days after the arrival of the Crafts in Liverpool, I received
information that they were in search of me. I immediately wrote to them, telling that
I should be glad to serve them, if I could, in any way, and forthwith made arrangements
to give our friends a warm reception at the place where I was then lecturing. But
intelligence came that Ellen was very ill, and we had to defer the reception meeting.
Ellen, however, so far recovered in a few days as to permit William to leave her and
join me, which he did at Newcastle.
I had just been invited by the Smeals, Patons and Wighams to visit Scotland, and I
wrote immediately to know if they would like the presence of the Crafts; and was glad
to get an affirmative reply.
We came on to Edinburgh, and had the first meeting on Monday evening. It was a meeting
of the Edinburgh Emancipation Society, at which William Craft told, for the first
time in this country, the story of his escape from slavery. The audience were very
deeply interested in the history of our friend and especially the part which related
to his escape from Boston. The natural eloquence and simplicity with which Wm. Craft
narrated the story of his wrongs, created a deep feeling of hatred against the ‘peculiar
institution.’…
There is a general feeling of hatred here to the Fugitive Slave Bill, and every body,
as far as I am able to hear, look upon Mr. Webstor [
sic
] as the originator of this most abominable law, and his connection with and support
of it has brought a lasting shame upon him, and I think that the efforts of the friends
of the slave in America were never more highly appreciated in this country than at
this time….
Yours, right truly.
Wm. Wells Brown,
Commons Hotel,
Edinburgh,
Jan. 3, 1851
Lutz, Tom, and Susanna Ashton.
These “Colored” United States: African American Essays from the 1920s.
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. On page 100, historian E. Franklin Frazier
notes, in an essay titled “Georgia, or the Struggle Against Impudent Inferiority,”
that “Georgia, with 414 victims to her shame, led the country in lynching and burning
Negroes from 1889 to 1921.”
McBride, B. “Directions for Cultivating the Various Crops Grown at Hickory Hill,”
Southern Agriculturist and Register of Rural Affairs
(1828–1839), April 1830.
McCaskill, Barbara, associate professor, English, University of Georgia, letter to
author, May 17, 2002, about some of the reasons for the appeal of the Crafts’ story.
They stood out, she pointed out, because their story was so well documented and because
people identified with their desire for a Christian marriage and free children.
———. “Yours Very Truly: Ellen Craft—the Fugitive as Text and Artifact,”
African American Review,
Vol. 28, No. 4, 1994.
Nutley, Buzz. “Macon, Ga., Is Ripe with Peaches, African-American History.” Pittsburgh:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
February 11, 2001. “81 miles south [of Atlanta], on Interstate 75, lies a jewel of
Georgia. Its name is Macon.” He talks about his visit to the Tubman African-American
Museum on Walnut Street, named for Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman.
Among other things, the author notes learning about “Ellen Craft, a mulatto who dressed
up as a man to smuggle her husband, who posed as her slave, out of Georgia.”
Osofsky, Gilbert, ed.
Puttin’ on Ole Massa: The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown and
Solomon Northup.
New York: Harper & Row, 1969, p. 28. This book’s introduction describes men who escaped
by making wigs out of horses’ manes to disguise themselves as women or who wore false
beards, passed for white as did Ellen Craft, tied themselves under trains, escaped
on sleighs, or smeared dust from graves or red pepper on themselves to throw off the
bloodhounds tracking them. See also pp. 18–21, on which it is pointed out that most
slaves on plantations lacked any knowledge of the world outside and “had never heard
of Europe, did not know their own states…numbers of slaves had been encouraged to
believe the Yankees were cannibals who looked upon them as tasty morsels….” Under
the circumstances, the Introduction notes, even to dream of escaping called for “imagination,
independence, cunning, daring and a sense of self-pride. It required…seeming most
satisfied at the moment they were most discontented.”
Parker, Theodore.
The Trial of Theodore Parker for the “Misdemeanor” of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against
Kidnapping, before the Circuit Court of the United States at Boston, April 2, 1855,
with the Defense of Theodore Parker, minister of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational
Society in Boston. Orig. pub. Boston, 1855. Reprinted New York: Negro Universities,
1970. On page 147, he tells his version of the Craft story.
Quarles, Benjamin.
Black Abolitionists.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. Quarles called Brown’s charging admission
for talks “an almost unprecedented practice.”
Rochester North Star,
February 2, 1849. Contains William Wells Brown’s quote about the Charleston hotel
where the Crafts stayed.
Siebert, Wilbur H.
The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom.
New York: Macmillan, 1898. On page 197, the book notes that “Deacon Allen Sidney,
an engineer on his master’s boat, which touched at Cincinnati, had a poor opinion
of Canada because he had heard that ‘nothin’ but black-eyed peas could be raised there.’
William Johnson, a fugitive from Virginia, had heard the Detroit River was over 3,000
miles wide and a ship starting out in the night would find herself in the morning
‘right whar she started from.’”