About the book
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and
Ellen Craft from Slavery was published in London by William Tweedie
in 1860 and reprinted in 1861.
This work is the narrative of William and Ellen Craft’s escape
from slavery as told by William. Both children of slaves, Ellen was the
child of a white slave master.
This first person
account as written by William tells how Ellen, literate (in spoken English)
and light-skinned, disguised herself as a white gentleman seeking treatment
for rheumatism in Philadelphia. William accompanied her as a servant and
slave. The two made their way north from Macon, Georgia to Savannah,
then to Charleston, Wilmington, North Carolina, Washington, D. C., Baltimore,
and finally to Philadelphia, where they arrived on Christmas Day.
They then relocated
to Boston where Quakers offered them a refuge for two years. While there,
both worked in trades long familiar to them, William as a cabinet maker
and Ellen as a seamstress. After the Fugitive Slave Law enabled slave hunters
to pursue them even in free states, they continued north to Main, Nova
Scotia, and on to Newfoundland. This odyssey eventually took the two to
Liverpool and finally to London, England, where they met publisher William
Tweedie and convinced him to publish their story.
At the time this work was
published (1860), the Crafts were living in England with their sons. The
book includes many anecdotes about slavery and freedom for Blacks, revealing
stark likenesses in mind-sets in the South and the North.
The text in this work is
from the book’s first printing and has been republished as a short run
limited edition by Old Mountain Press.
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