Read Part One HERE
In this post I will continue to look at a woman named Ellen Craft. She lived from 1826 - 1891. Soon after the Crafts arrived in the North, having travelled all the way from Macon, abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison encouraged them to recount their escape in public lectures to abolitionist circles in New England. They moved to the well-established free black community in the north side of Beacon Hill in Boston, where they were married in a Christian ceremony.
During the next two years, Ellen and her husband made numerous public appearances to recount their escape and speak against slavery. Because society generally disapproved of women speaking to public audiences of mixed gender at the time, Ellen typically stood on the stage while William told their story. However, an article of 27 April 1849, in the abolitionist paper, the Liberator, reported her speaking to an audience of 800-900 people in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which increased penalties for aiding fugitive slaves and required residents and law enforcement of free states to co-operate in capturing and returning formerly enslaved people to their owners. A month after the new law took effect Collins sent two bounty hunters to Boston to capture Ellen and her husband. These two men then travelled to Boston where they were met with resistance on the part of both black and white Bostonians. Abolitionists in Boston had formed the bi-racial Boston Vigilance Committee to resist the new Slave Bill; its members protected the Craft by moving them around various "safe houses", until they could leave the country.
Read Part One Hundred And Fifty-Four HERE
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