The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as “his” slave. In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North. Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher. With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. And now, ladies and gentlemen, a man who likes to read books through osmosis,

I'm your host, Chris Voss. Welcome to the show, folks. It's wonderful to have you. And be a part of the big family. Isn't it nice to sit down with the Chris Voss Show family and feel the warmth, the love, part of that whole community of the Chris Voss Show? We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. I can never say that enough because I mean it.

I mean it from the depth Voss Show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. I can never say that enough because I mean it. I mean it from the depth of my heart. I'm lonely and I have nothing better to do all day than just spend time with you guys on a podcast and bring you brilliant minds. Brilliant minds. One of them is not mine on the show. That's why we have guests so we can have the smart people on the show. Today we have

an amazing guest and she's going to be talking about this amazing portion of history. You're going to learn a lot because the important thing about history is what we, if we, one thing man does not learn, one thing man can learn from his history is that man does not learn from his history. Something to that effect

that I always say. In the meantime, as always, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Put your arm around them, hold their phone and force them to subscribe to the Chris Voss Show. Don't force them. That's just a joke, people. But tell them to go to YouTube.com forward slash Chris Voss, Goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss, LinkedIn forward slash Chris Voss.

All the Chris Voss properties on LinkedIn. There's a whole mess of them. She is the author of the newest book that came out January 17, 2023, Master, Slave, Husband, Wife, An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom. Ilion Wu is on the show with us today. Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me on.

Thanks for coming on. We really appreciate it. And give us your dot coms, wherever people can find you on the interwebs, please. Sure. It's ilionwu.com. That's I-L-Y-O-N-W-O-O.com. There you go. And so what motivated you to want to write this book?

Well, simply put, William and Ellen Craft. They came out with a story, a narrative in 1860. And this was a signed reading for a seminar that I was taking at Columbia University on the literature of passing. And, you know, it's one of those reading experiences that just stays with you, that, you know, I can remember the moment of being in the library. And I remember, of course, the adventure, the, you know, the great escape. But I also really, it's the voice that sat with me all this time. And this voice was telling me things I had never heard before, and I was ready to follow it anywhere. So who were these folks?

The title of the book, Master, Slave, Husband, Wife, and a Journey, I believe, Where They Escaped Slavery. Who are these folks? Yes. Well, the folks are Ellen Craft and William Craft. They are an enslaved couple from Macon, Georgia. And Ellen is the daughter of an enslaved woman named Maria and her first enslaver. So her first enslaver was also her father. And from him, she inherited a very light complexion. And when she decided, along with her husband, to make this escape from slavery, she used that complexion, her ability to pass for white, as part of her disguise. So when we're talking about master-slave in the title,

we're talking about Ellen impersonating a master and William playing the role of her slave. She dresses herself as a rich, wealthy, white man, and a disabled man who would all the more need the services of her slave. And that is a role performed by William. Oh, wow. And they use this getup, lack for a better word, to escape the South? Yes. So, you know, as an enslaved couple,

their movement is completely curtailed, right? All the bridges are watched. They have to go, they can only travel with a written pass from their enslavers. And so there's really no good way for them to be able to leave Macon. They have no autonomy. And what they do is they use this ingenious disguise

so that they can get on a train in Macon, Georgia, and take that train for over 1,000 miles to freedom. Wow. So they have to go through all sorts of different mechanisms and checkpoints, basically. Back then, there was all sorts of i mean technically the police were started in america to be police where they would you know uh they would capture escape slaves and and return them to their their places at least that's my understanding

um and so and so they have to you know deal with all this as they go through and it sounds like a really amazing, brilliant disguise. Oh, absolutely. I mean, when Ellen first puts on this disguise, they're hiding in the cabin that she inhabits behind her enslaver's home. They are in this cabin. It's four in the morning. She puts on her shirt. She puts on her vest. She puts on these these pants that she's actually made the jacket. You know, she's dressed up from from shoes to hat. And William has just cut her hair. And then she stands back for a moment. And he's he basically says, you make a great gentleman. You look like a gentleman. Yeah. And this is an incredible risk that they're taking because if they're found out, if they're caught, if they're returned to whoever their slaveholder is, the penalties can be grievous.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, so when William has to go to the train station, he passes right by the court square where he's seen people captured, failed escapees. He's seen them, you know, just in chains and brutalized. And in that same square, actually, he himself had been auctioned as a child. So there are all these dangers. There's physical punishment. There's separation from each other. There's being sold. And there are also dangers to those they leave behind. Wow.

And that can make all the difference. Did they have kids they left behind or anything, or was it just the two of them? They don't report on having had any children. They don't seem to have had any children during this time. Although there are accounts that suggest that Ellen may have had a child when she was in slavery. And, of course, that can't be corroborated. And the crafts themselves don't speak of having had any children in slavery.

But it's one of the things that I explored in my research in this book. Wow. And so how hard was it to dig into depth, find the journey? Did they keep a journal? How hard was it to go through some of this research? It was difficult, but it was also made much easier by the fact that they themselves were storytellers. So they wrote a narrative, as I mentioned, but they also spoke their story all the way across New England. So once they get out of bondage in the South and they land in the North, at that point, they could have gone to Canada. They could have changed their names and kind of quietly disappeared and started new lives in a safer place. But they don't do that. They tell their story all the way across the North and newspapers are

following their story and reporting on this. So we have a lot more from them, you know, with the combined reporting and with their own narrative than in many such cases. And at the same time, there was much that they didn't tell. They either couldn't or wouldn't tell. That's interesting. And so they kind of become almost like little celebrities having escaped from, they do this in 1948, they go from Georgia to the north, and then something happens in 19, or I'm sorry, 1850.

Well, the story does feel very present, so I can understand getting some of those dates mixed up. Yes. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 passes. So there has been a Fugitive Slave Act before this, but Southerners are really upset that there is not really any accountability there, that it's too hard to actually enforce it. But in 1850, a powerful new Fugitive Slave Act passes. And this one, you know, scholar Ibram Kendi calls it as something having octopus powers. And it enables enslavers like the Crafts to reach over into states and be empowered as never before to re-enslave these people just based on eyewitness testimony. So the crafts have no ability to testify or to fight back. If somebody claims them as their slaves, there's nothing that they can do.

And the enslavers can go straight. They can bypass state and local officials, and they can appeal to federally appointed commissioners. Not only that, but any ordinary citizen, it's said that every good citizen is required, if called upon, to essentially become part of the slave hunting team. They can raise a posse. And if you're called upon, you have to go and you have to go help recapture these people or face prison and exorbitant fines, really high fines. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second.

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And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com now back to the show wow it just it like forces citizens to go be bounty hunters to to find these folks it does and in fact if you do the opposite if you try to help these people you you are also you also face incredible punishment um prison, and a lot of money. So they escape 1,000 miles to the north. They get away. They end up in, I guess, New England? Yes.

And then this new Fugitive Slave Act comes out in 1850, and they've got to escape again. Where do they go from there? Well, at that point, it's no longer safe to be in the United States of America. It's not been enough to escape the South. I'm not sure it still is. For anybody, including me. This is a joke. Yeah.

Well, I've got family in the South, too. So we won't speak ill of the South. No, I'm just talking about America in general. I might go to Canada. you know, better health insurance. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of talk of Canada. There has been over the last couple of years as well. Yeah.

But the, so when they arrive in the North, it's not like they're suddenly free. They don't suddenly cross this magical line and then, you know, the chains are broken. They are still legally enslaved in the North. And I think that's one of the things that really interested me in the writing of the book and the pursuit of this history is that, you know, we have a tendency to divide ourselves and say, all right, this is South, this is North. But we were really one nation at that time, for better or for worse. And so, especially with the passage of this law that was part of the Compromise of 1850 and meant to kind of unify us and save the Union, everybody was implicated. Everyone was.

And this is kind of interesting. This is the first time I've heard about the Fugitive Slave 1850 uh abraham lincoln doesn't take office till 1861 i'm wondering if this is one of the things that helped to propel his presidency because i'd be kind of pissed off i'd be like i don't want to go hunt people down i got farming to do and you know it's 18. I got farming to do and kids to raise. And I got better things to do than, you know, get on a horse and go right around trying to find people. And, you know, for the slave trade, I don't really care about. But, you know, I mean, I suppose attitudes and opinions are different back then. But seriously, though, I mean, I wouldn't be forced to do something I don't want to do.

I don't want to go, you know, you got to join a thing and we're going to go ride around on horses for a while. And I'm just like, I don't know, man. That doesn't sound like fun to me. I'll stay here at the farm and do stuff. But I think that's interesting because within what is it? 11 years Abraham Lincoln takes

the presidency. And then of course we take a turn at freeing slavery and different things. So this is really interesting. And then of course we take a turn at, uh, freeing slavery and different things. Uh, so this is really interesting. And so they, there's, it says here,

uh, on the, on the book data, there's three epic journeys that can, that they go on. Do I have all three of them? Uh, that we've kind of teased out.

Yes. I mean, the first one we could even talk about a bit more because that's the one, that's the one they really cover in their book. So the three epic journeys are first they go from Macon, Georgia. They travel those thousand miles to Philadelphia. And then they go to – they're originally intending to go to Canada, but instead they go on this abolitionist lecture circuit tour for another thousand plus miles. That was actually really interesting where I

mapped them all over New England. I put little pinpoints down on every place they stopped. And previously, I remember scholars saying, well, this really seems like a crazy route. They're going everywhere. They're zigzagging. Why are they doing this? William Wells Brown, who's this incredible self-emancipated person, but also a best-selling author and speaker who takes them on this journey, he's the one who's planning all this. And people are saying, well, Brown, what is he thinking going back and forth? But actually, if you plot those points, they're actually following the railroad tracks. So not only does the railroad help them go from Macon to Philadelphia, it helps them on their tour all over New England, where they spread their story. And there's a real power of storytelling here that's going on.

You see, it is a real shift from 1848 to 1861. And self-emancipated people like William Allen Craft have a huge part in that in transforming public opinion. Because it's one thing when you're told, right, that these horrible things are happening to people. It's another when you're seeing somebody right in front of you who's experienced this. And for a lot of white audiences, it was especially shocking to see Ellen Kraft because she looked white. So they were able to identify with her and be pulled into this anti-slavery cause as never before.

Yeah, and so they're helping spread the story of what's going on in the South and how it's going and the horrors of what's going on down there. and how it's going, uh, and the horrors of what's going on down there. It's kind of like the same sort of thing that, uh, like you said, seeing they're, they're seeing these people in person giving a witness testimony. Um, it's kind of like the same sort of thing where, you know, people weren't really into civil rights until they saw, you know, the dogs and the hoses turned on people in Birmingham in the sixties and people saw the horror of it and on TV and, and that brought it home to people where they're like, well, this isn't right.

And, uh, so I think it was extraordinary. They did that. I'm, uh, it's interesting the effect that this had before, uh, Abraham Lincoln and, and maybe, uh, had some interest in getting him elected and changing this sort of stuff. Did they inspire other people to escape, or were they mostly able to just tell their story in the North? I imagine any sort of printing of their story was squashed in the South. Yeah, that's really interesting.

I don't know of a specific example. I do know, though, that some people, including Frederick Douglass, were troubled by their telling their story in this much detail. And that once you have that escape method publicized, it prevents other people from being, well, actually doesn't prevent them from taking this route, but it enhances their danger. And that's exactly what happened with another self-mancipated man who fled bondage around the same time, Henry Box Brown. So he's a man who had himself mailed in a box, in a shipping container from Virginia all the way up to Philadelphia. He had himself nailed into this, and it was a brutal journey. And when he came out and when the crafts came out, and they actually take the stage together with Douglas.

Wow. And Douglas is saying, you know, you're telling, you're giving away this method. And around that time, there is actually another effort to escape by box. And these two people actually are caught. Wow. It's extraordinary, the danger that you take. I mean, people don't really think about the empathy of it, of how much danger you're in.

And to travel 1,000 miles, and we're talking, we're not talking like you got in the car and you drive and, I don't know, 1,000 miles. What is that, like 20 hours or something? That must have took them quite a lot of time to travel from Georgia 1,000 miles out by foot or horse or rail. How did they, did they walk it or did they? They must have walked pieces of it actually later when they escape to canada they do have to walk seven miles in the mud and it's terrible but that's another journey

that that's a journey where sort of everything that could go wrong did go wrong and they were much luckier on on the first leg but they so they started by train. They also took a steamboat. In fact, the journey was supposed to be much shorter than it was. They were supposed to start in Macon and then take the train to Savannah and then take a steamship to Charleston. And then from Charleston, there was another steamer that went straight to Philadelphia. The problem is when they arrived in Charleston, it's wintertime. It's almost actually exactly a hundred. They might've been in Charleston on this day, 173 years ago. But

anyway, they arrive in Charleston and they have one last leg to go, they think. And they're going to buy tickets that will take them all the way to the north and then they learn that the ship has stopped running that it's the winter season now so they can't go that way they and and not only that but they learned that on the last the last journey out there had been another man who had sealed himself in a box going back to the box and he was caught the the The ship was stuck there for too long and he had to just make his way out of his box. And, you know, because of that, the port of Charleston was watched that much more carefully. So in a way, they were kind of relieved when they learned later, wow, that could have been really bad if we had tried to escape there and gotten caught. But instead of taking this one single ride to the north now they have to go it's called the overland route and they're following basically the the males and they they have to travel with

the male making all these different stops and i mean i can't even imagine stopping so many times i have trouble just like transferring trains you know like on the subway. And I'm like directionally very challenged. But they didn't have a map. They didn't have literacy. They had so many strikes against them, and yet they managed to figure it out. Yeah, they didn't have GPS or any maps or any of the formula. I mean, in the whole time, you're kind of in a state of terror or heightened awareness where you've got to keep your act on that you're putting up so that you can maintain your disguise. And you're probably walking a lot.

And as you mentioned, maybe in winter or in the outdoors, like I say, you're not in the comfort of a vehicle or, or something most times. And, uh, so it's a hell of a journey and it takes, it takes time. How, how did, how long did it take from the cover of that track? Was it a month or? They left on December 20th and they arrived on Christmas Eve. But one thing I would add actually is that they did travel in style. That's what made this journey so different from many of the others that we hear about, is that they didn't have to, you know,

go through forests and walk for miles and miles on end. They actually took the best technology of their day. They wrote it all. Ellen Craft, you you know was in first class she had pretty good seating especially when she got to uh virginia and maryland maryland the trains improve william was stuck in a different car and what's called the negro car and he was stuck with the baggage and um at one point actually i mean this story just has so many twists and turns.

You really just can't make it up. And I'll just give you one example. They're almost, it's like the last leg of their journey. They're almost to Philadelphia. And they stop at the Susquehanna River. And they don't know that there's this last change that they're going to make. But the train can't cross the water. The water flows,

the ice flows are just too much. And so what happens is the passengers disembark and they take a ferry, but the luggage is shuttled over with the ferry as well in the entire luggage cart. I don't know if I'm making sense here but so william is with the luggage and he's fallen asleep because so many days have passed when when they're you know when they're running and they you know they're they've had to plan the journey they've stayed up to perfect their costume everything they've been on heightened alert day after day and now they think we're almost to to Philadelphia. And so he falls asleep and he falls like dead asleep and they roll over the whole luggage cart. He does not check on Ellen and Ellen is terrified now because he's just gone.

He's sleeping, but she doesn't know this and he's gone. And so she has to make this decision. What is she going to do? Is she going to make this decision. What is she going to do? Is she going to travel on without him? Is she going to try to wait? You know, she has the tickets. He does not. She has no money because they've just transferred it to him, actually,

because they think they're so close that she's more likely to get robbed as a wealthy white man than he is. Wow. She is so brave in this moment when she decides to move on. Wow. And I imagine they finally hook up and find each other. I guess otherwise the story would be a little different, I guess.

Yeah, it would be tragic. But, yes, exactly. He's sleeping, and when somebody actually wakes him up, and they're like, your master was scared stiff about losing you. He was sure that you'd run off. And William's thinking to himself, I don't think she thought that I was going to run off. And I think he actually says this. And it's one of the really ironic lines of the story because he says things that are true. She would never think that I'd run off. That's actually true. But they don't believe him.

They're like, no, she is just, or he, because they think she's a man. Your master is utterly terrified and thinks that you are fleeing. Wow. That's crazy, man. What do you hope people come away from reading the book and the story that's weaved in it? That's a wonderful question. I hope that more people will know the crafts as the heroes that they were, as American heroes. There are people, I mean, their memory, the memory of the crafts has been cherished and kept, especially by their descendants who are still living today.

And there are scholars who know their story, but they don't have the same kind of name recognition as, say, Douglas or even Henry Box Brown, who I previously mentioned. And I would like the world to know better their name. There you go. And to understand them as the incredibly courageous American heroes that they were. Yeah. And sharing their message and spreading it, even though it probably hurt others from coming, probably brought quite a light on what was going on with slavery

and the issues that were present there, and just made it so that maybe, you know, hopefully it led to the overthrowing of slavery, at least with what Lincoln tried to do. After that, of course, his assassination, they did the Jim Crow laws, but reverse course for the next 50, 100 years. It's just insane, the path of this country. But it's important we learn our history so that we know

how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. It's been really enlightening to have you on. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun. There you go. And give us a.coms wherever you want people to find you on the interweb so people can get to know you better. Sure. It's Ilyan Wu at I-L-Y-O-N-W-O-O.com. There you go. Order the book, folks, wherever fine books are sold, Master, Slave, Husband, Wife, An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, out January 17th, 2023.

Order it for the new year, and it'll be a great read set for the upcoming new year. The smarter you can be, the better you are. That should be a saying I should put on a shirt. The Chris Voss Show. The smarter you are, the better looking you are. I don't know. Anyway, folks, thanks for tuning in. Go see all

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