Slavery’s sojourners: The trans-Atlantic crossing of William and Ellen Craft (1850 – 1869)

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in the United States made even the free territory of the northern states unsafe for escaped slaves. Slaves could be captured and returned to the South at any time without benefit of trial. By late September of 1850 America was no longer a place where any black person could live safely. William and Ellen Craft were two such slaves, who chose – with the help of Trans-Atlantic abolitionists – freedom in temporary exile. Moving out of Boston, through Canada and across the Atlantic, they arrived in Liverpool late in 1850. They toured Scotland and England at various intervals, appearing publicly with William lecturing both for the Abolitionist cause and for the Uplift of their race. In 1861, William published a book (Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom), Uncle Tom’s Cabin draws on their experience, and they are often mentioned in critical and social commentary of the day. William and Ellen Craft represented the dark-side of the American socio-political identity to a self-consciously newly emancipated Britain. Slave narrative emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as a popular autobiographical genre in which escaped slaves recounted their literal and emotional journeys from slavery to freedom. Authors of slave narratives were primarily concerned with gaining adherents to the abolitionist cause by convincing white readers of their intelligence and humanity – and, by extension, the intelligence and humanity of all enslaved black Americans. Although they had Agents, in both Canada and Britain who, under the banner of abolitionism, acted on their behalf, the mechanisms with which Ellen inveigled freedom for both herself and her husband – her passing as white and cross-dressing as a man – are the very actions, not people, that brokered their freedom. Here, transgressive tropes of passing and transvestitism acted as brokers in the abstract. The paradox in this exchange is that once their freedom was thus brokered and they were safe inside British borders, they both: submitted to a type of re-enslavement in the re-enactment of their narrative on the lecture circuit; and they consciously transgressed class boundaries by appearing to assimilate into the prescriptive hegemony of the aspiring middle-classes. The later was reflected in their choice of address, schooling, social circle, and business interests. This paper is interested in addressing both their re-enslavement and transgression on this side of the Atlantic. Specifically, and for example, I argue that Ellen’s performance of and identification with the idea of ‘The True Woman’ or the ‘Cult of the True Woman’ brokered an empowerment and an increase in status from which a middle-class identity could be construed. Also, that William’s performance of their private pain in lecture halls for the abolitionist cause re-inscribed slavery on their public bodies.