Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

William and Ellen are transferred from home to home, kept safe by their new friends. In Boston, they find refuge, but they are determined to continue to share their story. At Faneuil Hall in Boston, the Crafts prepare to lecture at the 17th annual convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. The convention is divided, with some advocating for peaceful measures of protest and others claiming that it is time to act with force. The divisions only dampen the collective effort of the group. William Wells Brown steps on stage, prepared to unify the room with a single story: the story of William and Ellen Craft.

Brown carefully tells the story of William and Ellen, inviting the audience to see them as they are: two industrious and faithful people. Brown invites the crowd to affirm their resolve to help the Crafts and others like them, and the crowd erupts into calls of affirmation. Because of the Crafts, the resolutions that had divided the convention for days are quickly passed.

Robert Collins and Ira Taylor read about William and Ellen in the paper. Although Collins has a reputation to uphold and is a strict believer in upholding order, he decides not to pursue justice against William and Ellen. His financial constraints and personal business keep him too busy to chase after the couple. Woo suggests that Collins may have also been influenced by his wife, who still held Ellen in high regard.

As figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau travel around New England for the lecture circuit, William and Ellen share their story in crowded halls, filled with Black and white listeners. In New Bedford, Ellen tells her side of the story alone for the first and last time. Ellen’s light skin is treated as a spectacle by onlookers, but her resolve has profound effects. When white audiences see her, they are forced to confront humanity's collective nature and responsibility to end slavery.

While on the lecture circuit, the Crafts meet and work with Henry “Box” Brown and Frederick Douglass. Suffering from inflammatory rheumatism and personal troubles, Douglass emphasizes his anger and frustration with slow-moving American abolitionists. At Faneuil Hall, Douglass makes a bold statement, declaring that he would welcome the news that enslaved people in the South have revolted against enslavers: “The time for rising up ha[s] come” (182).

William and Ellen take up residence in the heart of Boston. William begins his cabinetmaking and furniture business and runs an advertisement in the paper. Ellen learns upholstery from a local woman and sells her work to wealthy buyers.

Meanwhile, two stories captivate the country’s attention: the murder of a Harvard professor and the case of Sarah Roberts, a five-year-old girl who was forced to walk each morning past five other schools because of segregation. These two cases establish “reasonable down” and lay the groundwork for important cases like Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

On Capitol Hill, the House and Senate are entirely divided over how to manage slavery and the continued problems of the Fugitive Slave Act. Daniel Webster, a Massachusetts statesman, offers the final word, arguing that a compromise is needed: Slavery needs to be approached with limitations so that it will eventually die out, but he also argues that the North has a responsibility to uphold the Constitution and the Fugitive Slave Act. Webster proposes that every Northern citizen has an obligation to return fugitives from slavery to the South. The Crafts meet with other activists to develop a plan of action.

The Compromise of 1850 resounds across the country. For William and Ellen, the compromise is a new threat. Now Robert Collins can steal the couple back into slavery with the full support of the law. Under the compromise, every Northerner is required to support the Fugitive Slave Act, and every Black person in the United States is in danger. After the announcement, Black men and women leave in droves, sparking the beginning of a mass exodus of approximately 20,000 people from the United States. However, the Crafts decide to stay and continue to fight.

At the African Meeting House in Boston, William and four other leaders open a meeting to plan. The men assert the important roles that Black men and women played during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 and recall the revolutionary cry, “GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!” (209). The crowd resolves to do whatever it can to resist actions taken under the Fugitive Slave Act. Meanwhile, two men make their way from Macon to Boston in pursuit of William and Ellen.

Robert Collins feels a deeper calling in his pursuit of the Crafts rather than personal revenge. He sees their capture as the first step toward upholding the Union and believes that reclaiming the now infamous couple may assist him in his pursuit of a political career. Willis Hughes and John Knight are employed to find William and Ellen and return them to Macon.

While John Knight locates William, whom he knew from the cabinetmaking business he worked for, Willis Hughes visits the courthouse to secure a warrant for the couple’s arrest. However, he runs into multiple roadblocks, with each public servant sending him to someone else. Frustrated, Hughes finds the home of a federally appointed commissioner, hoping to secure the warrant he needs, but the commissioner tells him to make the arrest first and seek him out afterward. At William’s store, William is immediately on high alert when he sees Knight and keeps one hand on his pistol under the workbench. Knight invites William to visit him at his hotel and catch up, but William sees through this plan.

Frustrated by his stopped efforts, Hughes reaches out to Daniel Webster, who directs him to Colonel Seth J. Thomas, a lawyer with a great reputation. Thomas serves as an attorney to Hughes and Knight, but Thomas runs into the same problems that Hughes had earlier. Meanwhile, the Vigilance Committee learns of the plan to take the Crafts and meets to devise a plan. White attorney activists put pressure on the judge to deny warrant requests. Thomas sets up a private meeting with the judges and secures the warrant needed to arrest William and Ellen.

The commissioner’s wife, who acts out her own private rebellions against her husband and the racist laws of the nation he serves, warns Ellen that the warrant has been granted. Both Ellen and William go into hiding, each at separate homes.

Hughes and Knight soon learn that their difficulty has only just begun. No one seems eager to capture William and Ellen or enact the Fugitive Slave Act. The news of Hughes and Knight spreads throughout Boston, and members of the Vigilance Committee and other activists fill the streets. People keep watch for the two men, and police officers refuse to look for William and Ellen. The warrant is debated and sent back for corrections. That night at the African Meeting House, 200 people sign a pledge to defend the couple with their lives.

Just as they are about to pursuit William and Ellen in earnest, Knight and Hughes are arrested for slander with a bail of $10,000. The Georgians are insistent that they will not be thwarted. Their bail is paid, but posters with the two men’s faces are spread across town.

William continues his resolve to kill or be killed. He refuses to run: “Our people have been pursued long enough” (231). Daniel Webster writes to William and tells him that if he submits peaceably to being captured, then Webster himself will buy the couple’s freedom. William refuses. He visits Ellen and takes him with him to a new hiding place.

As soon as Hughes and Knight leave their hotel, they are pelted with rotten eggs and stones by people on the streets. They are arrested again, this time for conspiring to kidnap. Their bail is paid again, but when they leave the courthouse, they are confronted by a mob of 2,000 people. The mob follows their carriage for many miles. When the crowd leaves, the driver—scared by what he has experienced—refuses to drive them any further. Hughes and Knight are confused. When they left Macon, they were heroes. In Boston, they are villains.

At their hotel, Hughes and Knight are visited by many who wish to see them leave Boston. Hughes visits the marshal’s office, but the two men are arrested for smoking publicly. This time, they wait for their bail to be paid without traveling to the courthouse. Later, they are visited by Theodore Parker, a rebel preacher who encourages the men to avoid the violence that will occur if they continue in their pursuit of William and Ellen. Knight returns to Macon, and Hughes travels to New York City, waiting to hear from Collins.

William and Ellen return to Boston, but they stay with friends rather than in their own home. Robert Collins, recently elected as a delegate in the Georgia convention, learns that Knight and Hughes have been unsuccessful. Tired of waiting, Collins writes to President Millard Fillmore.

President Fillmore gives orders for troops to be deployed to Boston. William and Ellen must make a swift decision. William Wells Brown encourages the couple to come to England to continue their advocacy work. This solution would mean that William and Ellen could continue to fight to end slavery while avoiding returning to the South.

Before they leave for Europe, William and Ellen are legally married in a private ceremony on November 7. The preacher gifts them with a Bible and a knife and suggests that they will need both in the journey ahead.

William and Ellen embark on a new journey. This time, they will travel to Portland and then Canada. From there, they will travel to England. Upon receiving Collins’s letter, President Fillmore responds that the authorities in Boston did not do anything that violated their duties to the Constitution. Hughes returns to Macon. When Collins learns that the Crafts have left the country, he calls off his search.