From the moment they met, William and Ellen Craft shared a dream: to build a family and raise children who would know nothing but freedom. But as enslaved people in the American South, this precious hope felt impossibly out of reach. Their yearning for liberty, and the right to call their own children their own, fueled a plan so bold, so daring, it would become one of the most legendary escapes in the history of the Underground Railroad. This is the incredible true story of a wife and husband who risked everything, with Ellen Craft disguising herself as a white man and William posing as her enslaved attendant, to claim their American story of freedom from slavery.
Imagine the tension as Ellen’s long hair fell to the floor, the first step in a shocking transformation that defied the cruelest aspects of slavery. Every mile on their journey from Macon, Georgia, was a perilous gamble, with William and Ellen Craft facing watchful eyes and the constant threat of capture. This powerful historical narrative reveals not just the incredible ingenuity of their elaborate disguise — from a bound arm to a “toothache” bandage — but also the profound courage it took to leave everything behind for the promise of a life unchained. Join Our American Stories to hear this extraordinary account of determination, love, and the unyielding human quest for freedom.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 2: Ellen’s teeth chattered as she pulled the thin blanket around her shoulders.
Speaker 3: She was cold and terrified.
Speaker 2: In the dim glow of a single candle, she sat on a stool and watched her husband, William, emerge from the darkness with a pair of scissors.
Speaker 3: And his right hand.
Speaker 2: “Are you sure of this?” William asked. Ellen ran a hand through her long black hair. Her hair was her glory, her pride, and without it she would wear shame upon her head.
Speaker 3: But she had no choice. It had to be done.
Speaker 2: “The Lord would understand, I’m sure.” She felt William’s hand, a gentle tugging, as he took up her hair. “The first cut,” he warned. Ellen heard the metallic snip and felt another tug, like a fish on the end of a line. Already her head felt lighter, so strange, so foreign. She tried to hold back the tears as her long black hair fell to the floor. So begins the escape of Ellen and William Craft, one of the most incredible escapes in the history of the Underground Railroad. Ellen attempted an escape from Macon, Georgia, by pretending to be a white man while her husband, William, posed as her slave, and one of the first steps in this transformation was asking her husband to cut her hair. Ellen Craft’s skin was as white as her master, Major James P.
Speaker 3: Smith.
Speaker 2: That’s because Major Smith was also her father. Her mother was a mixed-race slave, so that made Ellen a slave no matter what the color of her skin may be. Slavery followed the lineage of the mother. But Ellen couldn’t escape by pretending to be a white woman. A woman could not travel with a male slave, so if her husband was going with her, she had to pretend to be a white man. In addition to cutting her hair, Ellen wore a top hat and men’s pants, which William purchased locally. William was a woodworker hired out in Macon and allowed to keep a portion of his earnings. However, a major obstacle remained. It was customary for travelers to register their names in the visitors’ books at hotels, as well as in the Custom House Book at Charleston, South Carolina, but Ellen could not write. Ellen’s solution was to bind her right arm in a sling and ask officers to sign for her. She also decided to wrap a poultice around her chin like a toothache bandage to hide her smooth, beardless face. She would tell people she was suffering from rheumatism. As a finishing touch, she wore green-tinted glasses to conceal her feminine eyes. Ellen grew up in Clinton, Georgia, not far from Macon. Her half-sister, Miss Eliza Cromwell Smith, was ten years older. Eliza and Ellen had the same father, but different mothers, and that made all the difference in the world. Eliza’s mother, Mrs. Smith, was white, so Eliza was free. Sometimes visitors to the house would see Ellen running around the yard and assume she, too, was one of the free Smith children, creating the most awkward of moments. Mrs. Smith was difficult and domineering. When Eliza married the wealthy Doctor Collins from Macon, Mrs. Smith gave eleven-year-old Ellen the news as a wedding present. A wedding present. Her sister took Ellen with them to Macon, putting distance between them and the indomitable Mrs. Smith, but the move also separated her from her beloved mother. In Macon, Ellen met her husband, William, who later wrote their escape narrative, “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.” As William put it, “it is true our condition as slaves was not by any means the worst. But the mere idea that we were held as chattels and deprived of all legal rights, the thought that we could not call the bones and sinews that God gave us our own; but above all the fact that another man had the power to tear from our cradle, the newborn babe and then scourge us if we dared to lift a finger to save it from such a fate haunted us for years.” William called this division of parent and child “the poisonous dagger of separation.” Because of the ever-present threat of separation, Ellen would not agree to have children until they were free. So as Christmas of 1848 approached, William came up with an audacious plan for Ellen to pass herself off as a white man while he pretended to be her slave. To set the escape in motion, William and Ellen each obtained passes to be away for a few days at Christmas, a practice often allowed by masters in Macon. Then on September twenty-first, 1848, the night before their escape, William cut Ellen’s hair square at the back of the head. When she put on her complete disguise, William said, “I found that she made the most respectable-looking gentlemen.” When it came time for them to start, he said, “we blew out the lights, knelt down, and prayed to our Heavenly Father mercifully to assist, as He did His people of old,
Speaker 3: to escape from cruel bondage.”
Speaker 2: At the Macon train station, Ellen boarded the whites-only car, while William rode in the baggage car where slaves and free blacks were relegated. Peering through the window of the baggage car, William was shocked to see a man who worked alongside at the woodworker’s shop. This man appeared to be searching for someone on the train, fully believing
Speaker 3: we were caught.
Speaker 2: William said, “that I shrank into a corner, turned my face from the door, and expected in a moment to be dragged out, as the Lord’s mercy would have it.” The bell rang before the cabinetmaker could peer into the baggage car, and the train moved off. William breathed a sigh of relief, but not Ellen. As the train took off for Savannah, she faced a problem of her own. Ellen was terror-stricken to see Mr. Cray, an old friend of her master, enter the train car and sit down next to her. Mr. Cray had dined with the family of Ellen’s master the night before. “It’s a fine morning, sir,” Mr. Cray said to Ellen. Ellen just stared out the window. She didn’t turn, didn’t move, didn’t answer. She prayed for Mr. Cray to go silent. “I said, ‘It’s a very fine morning, sir.’” Probably the entire coach
Speaker 3: heard those words.
Speaker 2: A man in the road directly in front of them laughed, and Ellen sensed growing agitation. To Mr. Cray, “You’re wasting your breath, Mistress,” said the man in the next row. “I think the poor guy’s mostly deaf.” Ellen felt a gentle tap on her shoulder, and she knew she had to respond in some way, so she turned and looked directly at him.
Speaker 3: “Yes, it is. Yes, it is.”
Speaker 2: Then she turned back to the window and resumed staring out. Mr. Cray gave up talking to her. From that point on, she had passed her first test.
Speaker 3: When the train
Speaker 2: reached Savannah, Ellen and William boarded a steamer to Charleston. While Ellen excused herself to retire to the cabin, William went to the kitchen to warm the flannels and treat them with opodeldoc, a foul-smelling medicine, standard treatment for someone with rheumatism. William and Ellen needed to keep up appearances. The steward said there was no place for slaves or free blacks to sleep, so William paced the deck until he climbed a mound of cotton and curled up near the ship’s funnel. In the morning, Ellen had breakfast in a saloon with the other gentlemen—people she would be serving under normal conditions. Because of Ellen’s sling, William cut up her food. “You have an attentive slave,” noted the ship’s captain. “If you want to sell that slave, I am your man. Just name your price. If it isn’t out of the way, I will pay for him with hard silver dollars.” “I don’t wish to sell, sir,” Ellen said, deepening her voice. “I cannot get on well without him.” When Ellen said “thank you” to William for cutting her food, a military officer leaned across the table. “You’ll excuse me, sir, for saying, but I think you are very likely to spoil your slave by saying ‘thank you’ to him. The way to make him toe the mark is a storm of him like thunder.”
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Doug Peterson tell the story of William and Ellen Craft. They were pulling off, well, one of the great masquerades of all time, to pursue their freedom. When we come back, more of this remarkable story here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of William and Ellen Craft. And telling the story is Doug Peterson. He’s the author of The Vanishing Woman, the novel about the Crafts’ escape, one of the greatest escapes in the history of the Underground Railroad. Let’s pick up where we last left.
Speaker 2: When William and Ellen arrived in Charleston, the plan was to take another steamer directly to Philadelphia. Imagine their shock when they found that the vessel didn’t run to Philadelphia during the winter, so they headed for the Custom House near the wharf to buy tickets to
Speaker 3: Wilmington, North Carolina.
Speaker 2: When the customs man handed the tickets to Ellen, he pointed to the register and commanded her to sign her name and pay the dollar duty for her slave. “I’m unable to do it,” Ellen said, motioning toward her sling. “Fie!” The customs man slapped his hand palm down on the register opened in front of Ellen. Then a voice spoke up—a familiar voice. “What’s the problem here? I know this man.” Ellen saw with surprise that the voice belonged to the young military officer from the steamboat.
Speaker 3: “You see his arm in a sling?”
Speaker 2: The officer said, “You have eyes, don’t you?” “You mean you know this fellow?” the customs man asked, softening in the presence of the two officers. “He’s Mr. Johnson, of course, Mr. William Johnson. I know his kin like I know a book, so I suggest you let him through if you know what’s good for you.” Ellen had introduced herself on the steamboat as William Johnson. Then the captain of all people stepped forward and volunteered to sign for Ellen. The customs man finally backed down, and the Crafts continued their journey to freedom. After the steamboat reached Wilmington, Ellen and William took the train to Richmond, Virginia. Several passengers lavished comfort on Ellen because of her rheumatism, encouraging her to lie down while the ladies used their extra shawls to make a pillow for her head. In Richmond, Ellen nearly lost her composure when an elderly lady spotted William on the train station platform and shouted, “Bless my soul, there goes my boy, Ned!” The lady was certain that William was her escaped slave, but Ellen quickly corrected the mistake and the old woman withdrew her claim. The real trouble didn’t arise until they reached Baltimore, the last slave port of any
Speaker 3: note on their route.
Speaker 2: “On arriving there, we felt more anxious than ever, because we knew not what the last dark night would bring forth,” William later wrote. “It is true we were near the goal, but our poor hearts were as if tossed at sea.” According to William, they were particularly watchful at Baltimore to prevent slaves from escaping into Pennsylvania, which is a free state. After William helped Ellen onto the train carriage, a full-blooded Yankee rushed up to him, tapped him on the shoulder, and demanded,
Speaker 3: “Where are you going, boy?”
Speaker 2: “To Philadelphia, sir,” William replied. “But what are you going there for?” “I’m traveling with my master, who is in the next carriage, sir.” “Well, I calculate you had better get him out and be mighty quick about it, because the train will soon be starting. It is against my rules to let anyone take a slave past here unless he can satisfy them in the office that he has a right to take him along.” William was terrified that they were going to be stopped so close to freedom, but as he put
Speaker 3: it, “it soon occurred to me
Speaker 2: that the good God, who had been with us thus far, would not forsake us at the eleventh hour.” The conversation attracted the attention of other passengers, who thought the officer was burdening a poor, invalid gentleman. Emboldened by the support of the crowd, Ellen said, “I bought tickets in Charleston to pass us through to Philadelphia, and therefore you have no right to detain us here.” For a few minutes, perfect silence prevailed; this officer had the power to throw them into prison. Suddenly the bell rang for the train to leave.
Speaker 3: All at once,
Speaker 2: the officer thrust his fingers through his hair and said, “I really don’t know what to do.” “I calculate it’s all right if you board,” and Ellen darted for the train before the man could change his mind, and before the train could leave without them.
Speaker 3: The next stop: Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: By the time they pulled into the Philadelphia station, the full light of Christmas morning had crept across the land. He stood in the doorway and looked down into the crowd for anyone who might be searching for two runaway slaves from Georgia. Then he took the plunge and walked into freedom. As William said in his narrative, “We poured out our heartfelt gratitude to God for His goodness in enabling us to overcome so many perilous difficulties in escaping out of the jaws of the wicked.” William and Ellen had reached freedom and they soon departed for Boston, where they would put more distance between themselves and the nearest slave state. But they weren’t entirely out
Speaker 3: of the jaws of the wicked.
Speaker 2: In 1850, Congress passed a Fugitive Slave Bill, which required citizens in the Free States to assist in returning fugitives back to the South. Anxious Bostonians met at the African Meeting House on October fourth and organized a League of Freedom. Lewis Hayden was elected President and William Craft became Vice President. While many fled to Canada, William refused to flee Boston because, as he put it, “Our people have been pursued long enough.
Speaker 3: If I can’t live here and be free, I will die.”
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Ellen’s master, Mr. Collins, sent two slave hunters from Macon to Boston to nab William and Ellen and drag them back to slavery. The slave hunters were Willis Hughes, the Macon town jailer, and John Knight, the man who once worked in the woodshop alongside William. William was stunned when Knight showed up out of the blue at his Boston cabinetmaker’s shop, acting as if they were old friends reunited. Knight asked William if he could take him on a tour of Boston, but William didn’t fall for the ruse, so Knight invited William and Ellen to meet him at the United States Hotel where he was staying. Again, they didn’t fall for it. When the Crafts didn’t show up at the hotel, Knight and Hughes went off in search of a judge or United States Commissioner who would issue a warrant for their arrest. Boston’s Vigilance Committee sprang into action, putting obstacles in the path of the slave hunters. Two lawyers had Hughes and Knight arrested for slandering William Craft. The slave catchers were soon freed on bail, but the Vigilance Committee was only getting started. The committee had Knight and Hughes arrested again and again for slandering Ellen, for damaging William’s business, for smoking in the streets, for carrying concealed weapons, for driving too fast, right sterling. Every time they were arrested, they were bailed out by pro-slavery friends, but once they were back on the streets of Boston, members of the Vigilance Committee hounded them. This led to a dramatic climax when the slave hunters arrived at the Hayden house only to find two kegs of gunpowder on the front porch. “I’ll blow us all up before we let you take William Craft back into slavery,” Hayden told the slave catchers. To prove his intentions, Hayden lit a torch and held it perilously close to the kegs of gunpowder. That night, the two slave catchers gave up and were soon on a train back to Macon, Georgia. William and Ellen Craft had survived for now. Robert Collins appealed to President Fillmore to get the Crafts back, and when the newspaper said the President was sending troops to Boston, William and Ellen decided to lead the country. In the throes of winter, they traveled to Canada, putting them out of reach of the slave hunters. From there they sailed to Liverpool, England. In England, they became celebrities of a sort, meeting with writers, entertainers, and even a famous astronomer who let them view the solar system through his telescope. They had certainly come a long way from Macon, Georgia. Him and Ellen finally settled in Ockham, a small English village, where they learned to read and write.
Speaker 3: Ellen also became pregnant. Three years earlier, they had
Speaker 2: escaped from Macon because Ellen would not give birth to a child in slavery.
Speaker 3: But now they received their greatest reward.
Speaker 2: “This was what it was all for,” she told William before she gave in to the tears. His name: Charles Estlyn Phillips Craft. The names were given in honor of the friends who had helped them along the way. William and Ellen returned to America in 1869 after nineteen years in England. They rented a farm, the Hickory Hill Plantation in South Carolina, and started a school. But in 1870, the Ku Klux Klan burned down their hou
Discover more real American voices.
