University of Virginia Library

14. The Ways of Fugitives
By REV. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE (1850)

THERE were many people in the slave states, even slave holders, who were willing to secrete fugitives if paid enough for doing it. This I learned from a colored

woman who was famous for having got off many fugitives from the South. She helped so many hundreds to escape that they called her "Moses."She once passed an evening at my house and gave us an account of her methods. She said she first obtained enough money, then went to Maryland, where she privately collected a party of slaves and got them ready to start. She first satisfied herself that they had enough courage and firmness to run the risks. She next made arrangements so that they should set out on Saturday night, as there would be no opportunity on Sunday for advertising them, and they would thus have that day's start on their way north. Then she had places prepared where she knew she could be sure that they could be protected and taken care of, if she had the money to pay for that protection.

When she was at the North she tried to raise funds until she got a certain amount, and then went south to carry out this plan. She always paid some colored man to follow after the person who put up the posters advertising the runaways, and pull them down as fast as they were put up, so that about five minutes after each was up it was taken away. She seemed to have indomitable courage herself, and a great deal of prudence.

She told me that once when in Baltimore, she found a negro cook, a Woman who had suffered very much, who had had her children taken from her and sold, and who was determined to escape. She wanted Moses to help her. Moses replied, "If you are willing to come with me, I will take you across the Delaware."So they went upon a steamer which was to sail from Baltimore to Delaware.

When they were aboard she told the woman to stay in one part of the boat, by one of the outside guards, and she herself went to the clerk and asked

for two tickets to the place she wished to go. He looked at her and said, "I do not know whether we can let you have them. You will have to wait a little while."

She went back very much alarmed. She knew that if there was any investigation made it would be found that this woman was a slave, and she would be seized. She went and sat down by the side of the woman, and the woman said, softly, "Have you got the tickets ? "Moses made no reply. "I looked straight at the water,"she said, "and a great darkness came over me. All at once everything brightened again, and I saw a great light which glowed all over the river. 'Yes, I have got them now, I am sure of it,' I replied."

After a little while the clerk came to her and said, 11 Here, Aunty, are your tickets,"and she succeeded in escaping with the woman through Delaware to New Jersey.

Ellen Crafts was a very light mulatto woman, who would easily pass for white. She was nurse in a family in South Carolina, and did not think of escaping. She was married to a man darker than herself. But on one occasion her mistress intended to go North, and wanted to take this colored nurse. Ellen Crafts had a little babe of her own. She was expecting to take her infant with her, till her mistress said, "You don't think that I am going to have that child with me. No, indeed."So the little babe was left behind, and died during its mother's absence.

When Ellen got home she made up her mind to escape. It took her a good while to make her plans. At last she determined to disguise herself as a young

Southern gentleman and take her husband as a body servant. In order that it might not be seen that she had no beard she professed to have great suffering from her teeth, and had a poultice put round her face. In order that she might not be asked to write she put her right arm in a sling, as though an injury had befallen it. So they got off together one morning.

They reached Baltimore safely, although she noticed in the train a gentleman who bad often seen her at her master's house. When she got to Baltimore she had to meet the difficulty of getting out of a slave state into a free one, for which a special pass for her servant was necessary. She had none of course, but she assumed the haughty airs of a Southerner, and when they declined to give her a ticket for her servant, she said, "Why, what can I do? You see my arm; you see my face in this condition! I must have him to take care of me."So by perseverance she succeeded, and they arrived finally in Boston.

The master of William Crafts heard that he was in Boston, and sent on papers to have him arrested under the fugitive slave law. It was understood that he was to be arrested, and he was prepared to defend himself. He said he would kill the United States marshal if he attempted to arrest him.

Then it was arranged that he should be taken to the house of Ellis Gray Loring at Brookline, Mass. Mr. Loring happened to be away, and the honorable nature of Crafts was seen when he found that Mr. Loring was not at home. He asked to see Mrs. Loring, and said to her, "I cannot stay when your husband is away.""Oh,"said Mrs. Loring, "Nothing would

suit him better than to have you stay.""' That may be so,"said Crafts, 11 but he does not know that I am here, and if anything bad happens to you or to him, I shall feel that I have done, very wrong."It was with difficulty that he was at last persuaded by Mrs. Loring to remain.