Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory

Barbara McCaskill

University of Georgia Press, 2015 - Biography & Autobiography - 132 pages

The spectacular 1848 escape of William and Ellen Craft (1824-1900; 1826-1891) from slavery in Macon, Georgia, is a dramatic story in the annals of American history. Ellen, who could pass for white, disguised herself as a gentleman slaveholder; William accompanied her as his "master's" devoted slave valet; both traveled openly by train, steamship, and carriage to arrive in free Philadelphia on Christmas Day. In Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery, Barbara McCaskill revisits this dual escape and examines the collaborations and partnerships that characterized the Crafts' activism for the next thirty years: in Boston, where they were on the run again after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law; in England; and in Reconstruction-era Georgia. McCaskill also provides a close reading of the Crafts' only book, their memoir, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, published in 1860.

Yet as this study of key moments in the Crafts' public lives argues, the early print archive--newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, legal documents--fills gaps in their story by providing insight into how they navigated the challenges of freedom as reformers and educators, and it discloses the transatlantic British and American audiences' changing reactions to them. By discussing such events as the 1878 court case that placed William's character and reputation on trial, this book also invites readers to reconsider the Crafts' triumphal story as one that is messy, unresolved, and bittersweet. An important episode in African American literature, history, and culture, this will be essential reading for teachers and students of the slave narrative genre and the transatlantic antislavery movement and for researchers investigating early American print culture.

Contents

• Introduction The Crafts and the Memory of Slavery: 1
• One The Thrilling Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Georgia: 14
• Two Bostons Glorious Fugitives: 34
• Three Running a Thousand Miles in England: 55
• Four The Boston Libel Trial of William Craft: 75
• Epilogue A Story to Pass Down: 87
• Notes: 93
• Bibliography: 107
• Index: 127

About the author

BARBARA McCASKILL is a professor of English at the University of Georgia, codirector of the Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative, and associate academic director of the Willson Center for Humanities & Arts. She is the coeditor of Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877-1919 and author of Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory (Georgia). McCaskill edited and wrote an introduction to the 1860 memoir Running 1,000 Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (also Georgia).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory; A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication
• Author: Barbara McCaskill
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2015
• ISBN: 0820347248, 9780820347240
• Length: 132 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / General; Social Science / Popular Culture; Social Science / Slavery