It Happened on the Underground Railroad by Tricia Martineau Wagner

Author:Tricia Martineau Wagner [Wagner, Tricia Martineau]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Globe Pequot Press
Published: 2015-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

THIS SIDE UP

Henry Brown’s Mail Delivery

1849

At the age of thirty-four, and upside down in a fetal position, Henry Brown was ready to be born into a new life. It was a tight fit, folding his five-foot-eight, two-hundred-pound frame into a claustrophobic wooden crate. The blood pressure in his head and the sweltering heat was almost unbearable. His muscles were cramping, and the lack of fresh air in his dark enclosure was making him light-headed. And yet, it would all be worth it if only he could be released into freedom.

Henry Brown had been born the first time around 1815 on a slave plantation in Louisa County, Virginia. In 1830 when his master died, he had seen his family split apart, divvied up among his master’s heirs. Henry was hired out to work in a tobacco-manufacturing plant in Richmond, Virginia, at age fourteen. He was allowed to keep a portion of his earnings, enabling him to later provide a modest house for his wife, Nancy, and their three children. Though he was given preferential treatment, it never made up for the pain of having been separated from his family during his childhood. Eighteen years later, he was to suffer the pain of separation yet again.

Henry returned home from the tobacco factory for lunch one day to find his wife and children missing. He was stunned to learn they had been put on the auction block, sold, and imprisoned until their departure the next day. His wife’s owner, Mr. Cotrell, had previously promised not to sell Henry’s wife or their children if Henry paid him $50 a year. Cotrell collected the money and broke his promise. When Henry begged to buy his own family, he was told, “You can get another wife.”

A bewildered Brown watched in abject horror as 350 dejected souls filed by, heading toward their new home in North Carolina. Five wagonloads of anguished children wailed for their parents. Henry’s eldest child called for him with outstretched arms. His wife of twelve years was led along in a chain gang like an animal, stupefied with a rope around her neck. Henry stood engulfed in grief—stripped of his manhood, deprived of the ability to rescue, provide, and care for his family.

Henry Brown was incensed at the injustice of losing his family. He vowed to run away and retrieve them, but first he had to let time pass so as not to bring undue attention upon himself. Five months later, with little left to lose, Henry decided to make a break for freedom. A bold plan came to him: “The idea suddenly flashed across my mind of shutting myself up in a box, and getting myself conveyed as dry goods to a free state.” He only needed to survive the journey.

Henry consulted with Samuel A. Smith, a white shoe dealer in Richmond, whom he could trust to help execute the plan. Smith traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Henry’s behalf to make the necessary arrangements with the Vigilance Committee, a branch of the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society established to assist runaway slaves.

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