“Do you ever remember having to light a fire on September the fifteenth in Macon?”
She laughed.
“I’ll never get used to what they call weather here in Boston,” he continued. “If there’s as much snow this winter as there was last, I just might write Dr. Collins and tell him to come get me.”
“Oh, William! If you can joke about it, you must be feeling like a free man.”
“I always felt like a free man,” he said, suddenly serious.
She knew that was true.
“Do you miss Macon?” he asked her after a long pause.
“Oh, I miss spring not coming in March,” she answered quickly.
William chuckled. “It’s May up here before the grass turns green. The slaves already got the cotton planted by then.”
Ellen nodded. “And I can’t get used to how much people hurry about up here.”
There was another long pause before William asked gently, “Do you miss being a slave?”
She looked at him sharply, her cheeks flushing with—anger? embarrassment? hurt?
“That sounds awful, doesn’t it?” she said finally, her voice barely a whisper. “How could somebody miss being a slave? But sometimes I feel like I’m not anything. I’m not what I was, but I don’t know who I am. Does that make any sense, William? Please say it does.”
He reached across the short space between their rocking chairs and took her hand. “That’s not the same as wanting to be a slave again. You know, there are some nights I sit here in this chair, reading, and suddenly I—I feel like everything is so new that I don’t know what I’m doing or why. I read the most recent essays by Mr. Emerson and I read Mr. Garrison’s Liberator newspaper, and there’s so much I don’t understand. Why, it takes me an hour to read what any schoolchild would read in ten minutes. But I don’t confuse all those feelings with wanting to be in slavery again.”
She squeezed his hand. “No, I guess I don’t either. But it was simpler then.”
After Ellen went to bed, William placed another log on the fire and pulled his rocking chair closer to its heat. The book lay closed on his lap.
Two years. He didn’t know if Ellen should have recovered fully by now. How did one measure such? During the first months after their escape Ellen had scarcely been able to get out of bed for more than a day or two at a time. She cried for no apparent reason and couldn’t stop. Gradually the episodes of crying lessened, and they moved to Boston.
Neither of them had anticipated the excitement the story of their escape elicited. They found themselves being asked to churches and antislavery meetings to tell their story. They met many of the famous people of the antislavery crusade, men like Wendell Phillips, Samuel May, the Reverend Theodore Parker, and women like Lydia Maria Child and Maria Weston. He and Ellen were also famous now, he supposed.
Certainly their names had helped when he decided to open a store. He smiled to himself as he thought of the lettering on the window: “New and Second-Hand Furniture, 62 Federal Street, W. Craft, Prop.” That was something! With Ellen doing seamstress work at home, they lived very well for two people who had been in slavery a mere two years before.
He had seldom thought about Macon since leaving. There was too much to learn, too many people whose friendships he wanted to cultivate. But Ellen was still suspicious of whites, though only he knew how uncomfortable she was eating at the same table with them when they were invited for dinner. After each dinner Ellen was silent for days afterward. It wasn’t long before William began refusing the invitations, accepting only one for every five they received. Left to himself, he would’ve been out every night.
He knew that escaping slavery was not the same as becoming a free person. Sometimes he stopped by Lewis Hayden’s clothing store and talked about things like that with him and the other fugitive slaves who congregated there.
“This freedom is like breathing new air,” Lewis said once, pulling absentmindedly at the corners of his mustache. “I remember after me, my wife, and my baby escaped from slavery in Kentucky. Just the thought that I could do anything I wanted to, when I wanted to, and how I wanted to almost scared me to death at first. I could do anything I wanted!” He chuckled. “But first I had to know what I wanted to do. That’s what freedom is. Knowing what you want to do.”
William remembered sharing Lewis’s words with Ellen, but she had acted as if she hadn’t heard him. Something had happened to her during the four days of their escape, and he couldn’t imagine what. He knew only that they had not had the child they had talked so much about while in slavery.
“Give her time,” Lewis told him one afternoon when William sat crying in the back of Hayden’s clothing store.
“But it has been almost two years!” William protested through his tears.
“And how much time is that when a person is trying to feel the shape of freedom?”
II
As befitted the owner of a clothing store, Lewis Hayden was always impeccably dressed. The smooth skin of his brown face appeared almost velvety surrounded by the neatly trimmed full beard and mustache. His light brown eyes carried a pleasant expression, friendly but not so cordial that one would presume to slap him on the back in greeting or call him by his first name. That was an honor he extended to few. Though black and an escaped slave, Hayden had become as much a gentleman as any white Bostonian and moved quite comfortably in the parlors of those who considered their blue blood a birthright.
Lewis’s birthright was to be the leader of the Boston black community. From his office in the back of his clothing store at 107 Cambridge Street in the West End, he listened to and helped solve the problems that were brought to him continually. Those with personal problems, or without jobs or places to live, eventually found their way to the man whose reputation for honesty was so great that his word was like a code of law.
Lewis kept an especially watchful eye on the six hundred fugitive slaves living in Boston. They were his kinspeople, and their problems were his. He understood what it was to suddenly, at the happiest of moments, begin crying. Was there a day when he did not think of his son, who had been sold away from him, that son he would never see or hear of again? The fugitive slave lived with a suffering that time could not ease, a pain that would never recede into memory.
That was why most fugitives passing through Boston eventually found their way to the back door of Lewis’s store or to his house on Southac Street. He did not have to imagine their terror at being in a strange land and totally dependent on strangers. He did not have to imagine their loneliness in the face of a future so huge that it threatened to engulf and swallow them.
It was almost dusk on the evening of September 18, 1850, when he closed the store and settled at his desk to go over the account books. He had scarcely gone down one column of figures, however, before there was a soft knocking at the back door. He was not surprised. It seemed that whenever he had time to go over the accounts, a fugitive appeared, saying, “The Committee in New York sent me,” or “Fred Douglass sent me.”
But when he opened the door and peered out, he was surprised to see the short, stocky figure of Rev. Theodore Parker.
“Rev. Parker,” Lewis said, opening the door and admitting the white man.
“Good evening, Mr. Hayden.”
If Lewis was the leader of the black community, Theodore Parker was his equivalent among many antislavery whites. Outspoken and controversial, he was pastor of a church with seven thousand members. More important to Lewis was Parker’s role as a leader of the Vigilance Committee, which patroled the streets constantly on the lookout for slave hunters.
“What brings you here at this hour?” Lewis asked, offering the minister a chair.
“Thank you,” Parker responded, sitting down. He removed his hat to reveal a bald head that seemed too large for his body. “I presume then that you haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?”
“The news has come over the telegraph.”
“No!” Le
wis exclaimed. “No! I don’t believe it!”
Parker nodded. “I’m afraid so. President Fillmore has signed the Fugitive Slave Bill.”
The Fugitive Slave Bill was one section of the Compromise of 1850, making it a federal crime to assist or hide a fugitive slave. Anyone caught doing so could be fined $1,000 and sentenced to six months in jail. In addition that person had to pay the slave’s former owner $1,000 for each slave he or she helped escape.
Lewis slammed his fist on the desk. “We are now officially a nation of slave owners!”
Parker smiled wryly. “Well, the President has to enforce that law first.” He patted his coat pocket, where Lewis knew he carried his pistol. “There’ll be no fugitives taken out of Boston. I promise you that.”
“Well, we must increase our patrols immediately.”
Parker nodded and stood to go. “I’ve already given the word. If the President wants to declare war on freedom, I think we can give him a fight he won’t forget.”
The next morning the chill clear air of approaching autumn was filled with the sounds and smoke of exploding cannons. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The city of Boston was celebrating the signing of the Fugitive Slave Bill. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! One hundred times the cannons rattled the windows of aristocratic homes on Beacon Hill, and the greatness of America was toasted. One hundred times the cannons rattled the windows of the frame homes and rooming houses in the West End, where fugitive slaves were emptying bureau drawers and stuffing clothes into cardboard valises.
There was a small crowd waiting for Lewis when he opened his clothing store, and within an hour the store was so crowded one would have thought he was having the most spectacular sale of the decade. In an odd way that was true, but it was the men and women grasping at Lewis’s arms who were suddenly for sale. They were mere things again that could be taken back into slavery on the word of any white person who knew or suspected. Now they were sorry that they had, perhaps in a moment of weakness, confided in the white person for whom they worked or with whom they were friendly. Could they trust that white person to keep silent now? The fugitives dared not think that there might be some fellow blacks whom they shouldn’t have trusted.
“Keep your eyes open and your ears clean,” Lewis repeated many times that day. “If you see any suspicious person, report it to a member of the Vigilance Committee. We will not allow anybody to be taken back into slavery.”
They believed Lewis. He was in as much danger as they. However, some of the slaves were not so reassured by his words that they were willing to risk a knock on their doors in the middle of the night or being arrested as they walked to work one morning. They packed and wanted to be off to Canada as quickly as possible. Lewis knew that the cellars of his store and home were going to be full.
Members of the Vigilance Committee visited the fugitive slaves over the next several days, reassuring those who were willing to risk staying and helping those who wanted to leave. One evening when William returned home from his store, he found Ellen standing in front of the fireplace, jabbing at a log with the poker as if it were a half-live and dangerous animal.
“Ellen?” he said, concerned, going over to her.
“You tell your white friends to stay away from me!” she yelled, whirling around.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What happened?” He reached out to touch her, but she moved away, flinging the poker to the hearth.
“Some white lady from the Vigilance Committee was just here. What does she mean telling me not to be afraid?” Ellen affected a Boston accent and continued. “‘Mrs. Craft, you have many white friends in Boston who will lay down their lives for you and your husband.’” Ellen glared at William. “I’m so tired of your northern white friends telling me that they’re my friends. What makes them think they can be my friends? Friendship is easy when you’re born free and white. If she wants to be my friend, then when the slave hunters come for us, she can go to Macon in my place and I’ll move into her big fine house.”
“Nobody’s going to take us back to Macon,” William put in.
“No?” Ellen screamed. “And what makes you think that? Or have you forgotten that I was the one who didn’t want us traveling all over Massachusetts telling the story of our escape? New Bedford, Northboro, Marlboro, Worcester, and a lot of other funny-named places. Churches were so filled that sometimes I was afraid somebody would push baby Jesus out of Mary’s lap on the stained-glass windows so they could have a seat.”
“Now, Ellen—”
“Don’t you ‘Now, Ellen’ me, William Craft! You enjoyed standing up there and being the big brave man for the white folks! They didn’t come around afterward and stare at you like you were some freak. ‘Why, you can’t tell her from a white woman.’ ‘I don’t believe she was ever a slave. How could a woman that white have been a slave?’ You didn’t hear them, William. Our friends! Well, give me my enemies! At least they know a nigger when they see one.”
“Ellen!”
“Ellen!” she repeated sarcastically. “Ellen’s name has been in every newspaper in the South by now, because Ellen couldn’t convince her husband that we’d be better off living anonymously. By now every white person in Macon knows where we are. If you don’t think that somebody is going to come up here looking for us, you’re wrong! With this new law, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that anybody can do to save us. Nothing!”
The scream that came from her body was like the shriek of a rare and gentle animal caught in a hunter’s trap. William moved to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away and, sobbing, ran to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
III
Early on the afternoon of October 25, 1850, Ellis Loring, a lawyer and member of the Vigilance Committee, was seated in his office when a note was delivered to him.
Messrs. Charles Hughes and John Knight just left with warrants for the arrest of the Crafts.
The note was unsigned, but Ellis knew it was from a young man whom the Vigilance Committee had strategically placed as a clerk to Judge Levi Woodbury.
Quickly Loring put on his coat and hat and took his carriage to Lewis Hayden’s clothing store.
The Reverend Theodore Parker was returning from a trip to Plymouth that afternoon. As he approached the door of his home on Exeter Place, the door opened and his wife, Lydia, ran to meet him.
Before Parker could smile at this unaccustomed greeting, Lydia placed a folded note in his hand.
Committee meeting now.
—LH
He folded the note and put it in his pocket. Then he looked at his wife and chuckled. “I should’ve known it was something like that. You’ve never run out to greet me.”
She kissed him lightly. “And deny myself the pleasure of peeking between the curtains like some schoolgirl to watch you come up the walk? Never. Now, hurry!”
Ellen was finishing the seam on a gown when there was a knock at the door.
“Who could that be in the middle of the afternoon?” she muttered to herself.
The knock came again, more insistent this time.
“Just a minute,” she called out, laying the dress carefully on the table. “Who’s there?” she asked, cautious now as she approached the door.
“Rev. Parker,” came the response.
Ellen opened the door. “What brings you here?” she wanted to know. “William is at the store.”
“May I come in?” The minister smiled.
Ellen stood aside reluctantly and he walked in, removing his hat.
“I’m very busy now,” Ellen said curtly.
“I apologize for disturbing you, Mrs. Craft, but my wife asked that I stop by for you. She has a dress that is in dire need of immediate repair and she claims that there is no one in Boston who can match the quality of your work.”
Ellen allowed herself a stiff smile. “Well, why didn’t she send the dress with you? I can’t leave just like that.”
Rev. Parker took her hand and looked at her seriously. “I’m afraid that ther
e is no choice, Mrs. Craft.”
Ellen caught the change in his tone, and she gasped. “You don’t mean—”
“My carriage is waiting,” Rev. Parker interrupted. “We must hurry.”
The tears spilled from Ellen’s eyes and rolled down her face.
“We don’t have time to go to your house,” Lewis told William as the two hurried through the alley.
“Won’t take but a minute,” William insisted. “You’re sure Ellen’s safe?”
“I told you. Rev. Parker took care of her personally. By now she is already at his house.”
“Good. Good. I hear he keeps a loaded pistol on his desk.”
Lewis chuckled. “Right next to a vase of flowers,” he said, hurrying to keep up with William as he turned down another alley. “Where’re you going?”
“First thing I did after I rented the store was to find a back way from there to my house. Just in case. You understand.”
Lewis understood. No one knew the back alleys of Boston like the fugitive slaves. They knew escape routes from any building they might be in.
“So Charlie Hughes and John Knight think I’m mighty important, huh?”
“Did you know them?” Lewis asked.
“Know them! Charlie Hughes is one of the worst slave catchers in Georgia. And John Knight was the man my master hired me to when I was still a boy. He was the one almost caught us at the railroad station the morning we left Macon. I should’ve known he wouldn’t rest satisfied.”
They were approaching the back of William’s house. They looked around, and seeing no one, William slipped quickly through a door in the fence. In a moment he had returned. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t mean to pry, William, but what was so important?”
William opened his coat and Lewis saw the two pistols stuck in his belt.
“One is for Charlie Hughes and one is for John Knight. Now, where are they staying?”
This Strange New Feeling Page 10
