Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery

by William Craft, Ellen Craft, Barbara McCaskill (Introduction)

Overview

In 1848 William and Ellen Craft made one of the most daring and remarkable escapes in the history of slavery in America. With fair-skinned Ellen in the guise of a white male planter and William posing as her servant, the Crafts traveled by rail and ship—in plain sight and relative luxury—from bondage in Macon, Georgia, to freedom first in Philadelphia, then Boston, and ultimately England.

This edition of their thrilling story is newly typeset from the original 1860 text. Eleven annotated supplementary readings, drawn from a variety of contemporary sources, help to place the Crafts’ story within the complex cultural currents of transatlantic abolitionism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820340807
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	03/15/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

William Craft (Author)
WILLIAM CRAFT (1821–1900), with his spouse Ellen Craft (1826–1891), returned to the United States after the Civil War. For the rest of their lives, often at great personal risk, the Crafts worked to improve conditions for African Americans in the South.

Ellen Craft (Author)
ELLEN CRAFT (1826–1891), with her spouse William Craft (1821–1900), returned to the United States after the Civil War. For the rest of their lives, often at great personal risk, the Crafts worked to improve conditions for African Americans in the South.


BARBARA McCASKILL is a professor of English at the University of Georgia, coorganizer of the Genius of Phillis Wheatley Peters Project, and associate academic director of the Willson Center for Humanities&Arts. She is the coeditor of Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877–1919 and author of Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory (Georgia). McCaskill edited and wrote an introduction to the 1860 memoir Running A Thousand Miles for Freedom: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (also Georgia).

Editorial Reviews

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom is the most significant fugitive slave narrative to come out of Georgia. I know of no other account that provides as riveting an account of an actual escape experience. It offers so much more in its treatment of gender and racial role-reversals, of husband-wife and master-slave relations, and of abolitionist activity on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.

Georgia Historical Quarterly

"Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom is the most significant fugitive slave narrative to come out of Georgia. I know of no other account that provides as riveting an account of an actual escape experience. It offers so much more in its treatment of gender and racial role-reversals, of husband-wife and master-slave relations, and of abolitionist activity on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.”--Georgia Historical Quarterly

From the Publisher