Troublemakers in Trousers by Sarah Albee

Author:Sarah Albee [Albee, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Published: 2022-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

George Sand.

CHAPTER 14: FROCKS AND BONDS

Ellen Craft

1826–1891

Crafty Costume

Early in the morning of December 12, 1848, a slight, sickly-looking young white gentleman arrived at a train station in Macon, Georgia. He bought two tickets, one for himself and one for his enslaved manservant. The train was bound for Savannah, Georgia, roughly two hundred miles east. The young man’s right arm was in a sling. His jaw was bound in a bandage and tied at the top of his head, suggesting that he had a terrible toothache. He wore green-tinted spectacles, as though the light bothered his eyes. He directed his enslaved servant to stow the luggage, and then he boarded a first-class train car. His servant, a dark-skinned man in his mid-twenties, had to sit in a car designated for Black people.

The young white man settled in at a window seat as the train moved out of the station. An older white man entered and sat down, wishing the younger man “a very fine morning.” No reply. The second man repeated his greeting, but again received no reply. Was the younger man hard of hearing?

“I will make him hear!” the second man said, and bellowed, “It is a very fine morning, sir!”

At last the young man turned stiffly, muttered a “yes,” and went back to looking out the window. The older man turned in amusement to the other passengers in the car and loudly announced that he would “not trouble that fellow any more.” The rest of the passengers chatted among themselves until the train got to the next stop, where the older man got off.

As it turned out, the bandaged-up young man could hear just fine. And he wasn’t ill. Nor was he even a young man. She was a young woman, and her real name was Ellen Craft. Ellen was a light-skinned enslaved woman about twenty-two years old. She was disguised as a wealthy white man.

She was also, in that moment, utterly terrified, because she knew the older guy who’d sat down next to her. He was good friends with the man who enslaved her, Robert Collins. The man had known her for most of her life and had just had dinner at the Collinses’ house the night before. Luckily the green-tinted glasses she wore had hidden the panicky expression in her eyes, and the man hadn’t recognized her.

And who was the enslaved man who had boarded the train with Ellen? His name was William Craft, and he was her husband. Together they were embarking on a bold—some would say foolhardy—plan to escape slavery and flee to the North, a journey of more than a thousand miles.

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