CHAPTER II.

THE FUGITIVE.

It was on Monday, September 3, 1838, that the great purpose, which had been cherished for more than a dozen years, amid many changes in place and fortune, was carried out with complete success. It was many years before the fugitive told how he escaped. He was often tempted to give this additional charm to his lectures and editorials, but he would not resort to this easy way of conquering those slanderers who said that he had never been a slave. He kept his lips firmly shut, partly because he meant to save those who had assisted him from punishment, and partly because he was determined to have this path to freedom remain open to his brothers and sisters still in bondage. He knew that if no accounts of the escape of a slave who let himself be nailed up in a box, and sent North by rail, had been published, there might have been a thousand "Box Browns" a year. Such secrets were often printed, and it was not the slave who read them, but the master. Fortunately there was, at least, one enemy of slavery who was wise enough to fight her with silence as well as speech. His secret was not told in print before 1872.

His plan was, in the first place, as already men

tioned, to work for three weeks so diligently and profitably as to avert all suspicion. He succeeded so well that, on the second Saturday night, he paid over, as the result of that week's work, nine dollars to his master. The latter was so delighted that he actually presented him with the generous sum of twenty-five cents, bidding him make a good use of it. We shall see that he did. He had already saved up seventeen dollars, and by the end of the third week all his preparations were made. The laws of Maryland required every free negro to carry papers describing him accurately and to pay liberally for this protection. Slaves often escaped by borrowing papers from a friend, to whom the precious documents would be returned by mail. Whenever a colored man came with free papers to the railroad station to buy a ticket, he was always examined carefully enough to insure the detection of a runaway, unless the resemblance was very close. Our hero was not acquainted with any free negro who looked much like him; but he found out that passengers who paid on the cars were not scrutinized so minutely as those who bought tickets, and also that sailors were treated with peculiar indulgence by the conductors. The dominant party was doing all it could to encourage the shipping interest, and rapidly reducing the tariff. The cry of "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights" meant in this instance" Free Labor and the Rights of the Slave."

Among his friends was a sailor who was of much darker hue than he was himself, but who owned a protection, setting forth his occupation, and bearing the sacred figure of the American eagle. This was borrowed; sailors' clothes were purchased, and, on

Monday morning, the fugitive jumped on the train just as it started. His baggage had been put aboard by a friendly hackman. He was greatly troubled, for, as he wrote to his master, ten years later, “I was making a leap in the dark. The probabilities, so far as I could by reason determine them, were stoutly against the undertaking. The preliminaries and precautions I had adopted previously, all worked badly. I was like one going to war without weapons-ten chances of defeat to one of victory. One in whom I had confided, and one who had promised me assistance, appalled by fear at the trial hour, deserted me." "However, gloomy as was the prospect, thanks be to the Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed, at the moment which was to determine my whole earthly career, His grace was sufficient: my mind was made up."

His anxiety increased in consequence of the harshness with which the conductor questioned other passengers in the negro car. The sailor, however, was addressed kindly and told, after a mere glance at the protection, that it was all right. Thus far he was safe; but there were several people on the train who would have known him at once in any other clothes. A German blacksmith looked at him intently, and apparently recognized him, but said nothing. On the ferry boat, by which they crossed the Susquehanna, he found an old acquaintance employed, and was asked some dangerous questions. On they went, however, until they stopped to let the train from Philadelphia pass. At a window sat a man under whom the runaway had been at work but a few days before. He might easily have recognized him, and

would certainly have had him arrested; but fortunately he was looking another way. The passengers went on from Wilmington by steamer to Philadelphia, where one of them took the train for New York. and arrived early on Tuesday. In less than twentyfour hours the slave had made himself a free man. It was but a few months since he had become twenty

one.

He was astonished at "the dazzling wonders of Broadway," and so full of joyous excitement that, as he wrote at once to a friend-we can guess what friend-in Baltimore, he felt as if he had escaped, like Daniel, from a den of lions. That very day, however, he met another fugitive, whom he had known in Baltimore as "Allender's Jake," and was told that they were both in deadly peril. The city was full of Southerners returning home. Many of the colored people could be bribed into betraying a runaway. All their boarding-houses were closely watched, and the new comer must not think of looking for work upon the wharves. In fact, the danger of recapture was even greater then in New York, than after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. seemed closed against the stranger. home, no friends, no chance of work, and he was likely soon to be out of money, although his first night in New York was passed in the open air, where he slept amid piles of barrels. He felt all the more

Every door
He had no

alarmed because he had never before taken the full responsibility of looking after himself.

At last he was obliged to tell his story to a sailor who looked good-natured, and he took him at once to his own house, and then to that of the Secretary of

the New York Vigilance Committee, Mr. David Ruggles. Here he was sheltered for several days, during which time Anna Murray came on from Baltimore and became his wife. She could not have been married to him according to the laws of Maryland. He stated afterwards, in a letter to Captain Auld, that "Instead of finding my companion a burden, she was truly a help-mate."

The children of this marriage were Rosetta, born June 24, 1839; Lewis Henry, October 2, 1840; Frederick, March 3, 1842; Charles Remond, October 24, 1844; and Annie, March 22, 1849. The certificate, as given in his "Narrative," is dated September 15; but this was Saturday, which was the day on which he traveled to New Bedford and found workmen busy on the wharves. The wedding took place, I understand, on Friday, September 14.

The bridegroom had heard of New Bedford as a place where he might be able to work at his trade. Accordingly the newly-married couple set out thither, on the day of the ceremony, by steamer, and in conformity with the system then universally enforced against people of color in the United States, spent the night on the deck. A stage-coach took them from Newport to New Bedford, but they had no money to pay for breakfast or to the driver, and he took possession of their baggage, which included three music books. What a wedding journey!

The entire trip from Baltimore to New Bedford occupied less than two weeks. The fugitive had changed his name from Bailey, first to Stanley, and then, before his marriage, to Johnson, and he soon made a final change. He had been recommended to