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

William and Ellen awake in the early morning in Macon, Georgia, four days after making a life-changing decision. Ellen carefully puts on men’s clothes. William packs the hair she recently cut from her head so that it is not left behind as a clue. When Ellen looks at herself in the mirror, she sees someone else: “[S]he is a sick, rich, white young man” (10). The couple kneels and prays together. Then William travels through Macon to board a train while Ellen, wearing clothes belonging to her enslaver, walks in a different direction.

William travels quickly through Macon to reach a train to Savannah by seven o’clock. The first half mile of William’s journey feels the longest. He carries a paper with him, approving his travel to visit a dying relative. Without the pass, William would be subject to lashings and would then be returned to his enslaver, Ira Hamilton Taylor. Since Ellen’s enslaver has many connections in the North, William and Ellen planned to escape to Canada, beyond the reach of her enslaver’s influence. William makes it to the train and hopes Ellen is safe.

Ellen spends three hours in Macon before boarding the same train as William. She moves through the city as a free white man, avoiding certain streets where she might be recognized. Finally, she makes her way to the train station to buy two tickets, one for herself and one for her enslaved companion.

Woo contemplates what Ellen’s thoughts may have been during her final hours in Macon and suggests that she may have turned toward the house of Major James Smith, her mother’s enslaver and Ellen’s biological father. Since Ellen looked so much like her father, Smith’s wife insisted that Ellen be gifted to her half-sister, Eliza Collins, as a wedding present. Dr. Robert Collins, the new husband of Eliza, founded a women’s college that would later be called Wesleyan College. Ellen, however, was denied access to learning. This was a great motivator for her to escape. Woo explains that Ellen would have felt strange wearing men’s clothes; she would not have been accustomed to moving without skirts or a girdle.

At the station, William waits in the car designated for Black travelers. He is determined that he will not return to captivity: “He himself had resolved to kill or be killed, rather than be captured” (21). At this point during their journey, either William or Ellen carries a pistol. Neither ever reveals where they acquired the weapon.

On the train, both William and Ellen face familiar faces who they fear will discover them. The cabinetmaker who granted William the pass to travel worries that he may have made a mistake, so he searches the cars for William. However, he fails to search William’s car, and he leaves with the assurance that he was worrying over nothing. Using the money William had carefully saved, Ellen, pretending to be a white man named Mr. Johnson, purchases a first-class seat for herself and a seat for William. She finds herself next to a man who knows her enslaver and dined at their house the night before. Ellen pretends to be deaf, and the man soon leaves. The train starts, and Ellen and William travel together, each in a different car.

William was born into slavery on September 22, 1823. His parents were enslaved by a young man named Hugh Craft, a shrewd businessperson who was just beginning to make a name for himself when William was born. Craft was well-liked by all who knew him, and his flourishing business led him to move his family from Milledgeville to Macon.

When William’s parents were in their forties, Craft noticed their slowing movements and promptly sold them. William was frustrated by Craft’s alleged religion, which he felt was a misrepresentation of true Christianity. Craft apprenticed William as a cabinetmaker to increase his value. When Craft’s businesses began to fail, affected by the drop in cotton prices and the Panic of 1837, the loan Craft took out on William and his younger sister defaulted.

William and his sister, Eliza, were sold separately in Macon. William was forced to watch his sister dance on the platform while men bid for her. She left with a new enslaver, and William was not granted permission to say goodbye to her. A local man named Ira Hamilton Taylor purchased William for $1,750 and established an arrangement with the cabinetmaker. William could hire himself out for money and pay his enslaver a yearly sum.

William and Ellen travel through Georgia on a train run by enslaved laborers. Woo suggests that it is likely that William would have visited the first-class car to check on his ailing enslaver. Ellen listens to the conversations of the men around her and contemplates how—like her father and enslaver who came to Georgia in pursuit of a new life—she is daring to design her own destiny.

Ellen was a survivor. She had lived through tuberculosis, a disease that few escaped from. Maria, Ellen’s mother, gave birth to her when Maria was only 18. James’s wife hated Ellen because she knew she was the daughter of her husband. The genetics that caused her enslaver’s wife to hate her were the same genetics that enabled her to travel with William under the guise of enslaver and enslaved.

James Smith’s wife sold Ellen to her daughter, Eliza, and her husband, Dr. Robert Collins. Records indicate that Eliza was kind toward Ellen and protected the secret of her history. Dr. Collins was a forward-thinking man who founded a women’s college and envisioned a city with running water and new technologies. However, Collins wrote a pamphlet called Essay on the Treatment and Management of Slaves. In this short publication, Collins suggests that enslaved workers prefer discipline and strong will in their enslavers and that the enslaved are lucky to have their positions: “There is no country […] where the negro race have such security for a wholesome living, as the slaves in the United States” (51).

Despite Collins’s attitude, Ellen had a contrasting example before her. Ellen’s aunt lived with her enslaver illegally as spouses; the couple had 10 children and lived together in the countryside. The law forbade her husband from emancipating her, but the couple later moved to Massachusetts where Ellen’s aunt could be free.