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

Central to the story of William and Ellen Craft’s journey from enslavement to freedom is the risk of being forced to return to the South. When they reached Philadelphia, a free city, William and Ellen recognized the fragility of their liberty. Their enslavers, Ira Hamilton Taylor and Robert Collins, could still legally take them back to the South, where they would be abused or sold for their disobedience. No law protected them from being kidnapped and trafficked back into a life of physical, spiritual, and emotional bondage. In fact, the laws were designed to support their return to slavery.

The reality of their situation caused William to adhere to a single principle: kill or be killed. William was determined that he would rather die than return to Georgia, where he would be tortured and stripped of the freedom he had risked everything to obtain. William and Ellen’s fears were justified. Under the fugitive slave laws, the Crafts still legally belonged to their enslavers in the South, even while residing in a free city. For those enslaved individuals who purchased their freedom or made their way across the ocean, the fear brought on by the fugitive slave laws never fully disappeared.

In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” including a description of American soil as the “land of the free.” The irony of Key’s lyrics within the context of slavery reveals the segregated nature of American freedom and the persistent ideologies that upheld systemic racism. Fugitive slave laws are older than the founding of the United States. In 1643, the New England Articles of Confederation declared that any enslaved person who escaped into a different jurisdiction had to be returned.

Then, in 1793, shortly after the end of the American Revolutionary War, Congress determined that the freedom they had wrenched from the hands of British forces did not belong to everyone. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 declared that any person who escaped from forced labor could be seized and returned. Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution also made it a crime to assist anyone attempting to run away from a life of slavery.

The Fugitive Slave Act impacted everyone. Black people who carried papers authenticating their freedom were still at risk of being kidnapped and transported to the South for forced labor. Enslaved people contemplating escape were often held in place by fear. Southern enslavers made examples of those who were returned, and the risk of this extreme violence weighed heavily. As Northern states changed their attitudes toward slavery, the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act waned. In 1842, the Supreme Court case Prigg v. Pennsylvania relinquished state authorities of their obligation to enforce the act, requiring the federal government to carry out the recapture of enslaved persons. States like Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island made it illegal for state authorities to carry out the duties of the act.

Prigg v. Pennsylvania increased tension in the divided country, causing some to call for secession. Southern enslavers felt that the North was ignoring their rights and the sanctity of the Constitution, while Northern abolitionists decried the evils of slavery. William and Ellen, whose escape to the North was widely publicized, stood in the middle of this argument.

Then, in 1850, Congress made a monumental decision: The Compromise of 1850, spearheaded by senators Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas, banned slavery in the new California territory while doubling down on the Fugitive Slave Act. Senator James Murray Mason crafted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which penalized state authorities for failing to uphold fugitive slave laws and stripped enslaved persons of the right to trial. Once more, Southern enslavers had the power to declare that any Black person in the North was a fugitive without question. The failure of the United States government to recognize its own hypocrisy, touting freedom for all while repeatedly denying liberty to some, motivated William and Ellen to advocate for the three million individuals still enslaved.