He Sent Himself via Mail to Be Free From Slavery
Tags: Culture, History, Equality, Life Lessons, Race

He Sent Himself via Mail to Be Free From Slavery

The story of Henry Box Brown

Illustration of the escape of Henry Brown. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Henry Brown was born in 1816, on a plantation called Hermitage in Louisa County, Virginia, United States of America (USA). In 1831, When his current master died, Henry was separated from his parents and siblings, and his entire family was sold.

At the age of fifteen, he was sent to work in a tobacco factory in Richmond. There, his life changed completely when he met a girl called Nancy, who used to work at a neighboring plantation.

They dated for a while, and with the permission of their respective masters, the couple obtained permission to marry. Within their limited possibilities and resources, they had happy years with their three children.

But in 1848, when Nancy was expecting her fourth child, Henry received the news that his wife and three children had been sold to a slave trader. Desperate, he begged the master not to do such an act of cruelty, however, his request was not attended. Powerless, he could only weep when 350 slaves, including his wife and children, left for North Carolina.

An escape plan

After several months of mourning the loss of his family, Brown decided that he would get his freedom, no matter what it cost, after all, he had nothing left to lose. The blueprint was as strange as it was brilliant: Brown decided he would mail himself to Philadelphia, a stronghold of abolitionists. However, for the plan to work, he needed the help of two accomplices: one to send him, and the other to remove him, when he reached his destination.

Through James Caesar Anthony, a former slave who had achieved freedom, Henry met Samuel Alexander Smith, a supporter of the abolitionism cause in Richmond. Henry gave Samuel eighty-sixty dollars to take care of the escape preparations, including contacting the Philadelphia Abolitionist Society, so that one of its members would accept the sending of the fugitive slave.

On March 23, 1849, they placed Henry Brown in a box lined with thick cloths, with some food and a bottle of water. The box was over one meter long, sixty centimeters wide, and fifty centimeters high, the box was covered with tissue and had only one hole, to ensure that Brown did not die of suffocation. He had to endure a total of twenty-seven hours inside it.

The box was sent to James Miller McKlim, director of the Philadelphia Abolitionist Society, through the Adam Express Company. In the shipment documentation, it was stated that the box contained textile products. It was a painful twenty-seven-hour journey that started by wagon, continued by train, to finally reach the destination on a steamboat.

In addition to the obvious discomfort of the trip, Henry also suffered from the negligence of the porters who rarely respected the recommendation of the labels that said: “handle with care” and “this side up” box, several times the conveyors turned the box upside down or handled it roughly. Brown remained motionless and avoided detection. But before dawn on March 25, brown would be finally free, in that day, James Miller McKlim, William Still, Professor Cleveland, and Lewis Thompson opened the box in Philadelphia.

A new journey

Due to the success of the plan, Samuel Alexander Smith tried to free more slaves from Richmond in a new shipment to Philadelphia on May 8, 1849, however, he was discovered, arrested, and sentenced to six years in prison.

Henry didn’t find his wife Nancy, and their children again. Tracking his family was practically impossible after the family’s emancipation. He tried to find them for a long time, but without any success.

Henry “Box” Brown became an icon of abolitionism, participating in conventions and lectures in favor of the liberation of slaves. In 1850, after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, for fear of being returned to its former owner, he fled to London, where the abolitionist struggle continued.

He published two versions of his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, the first, written with the help of Charles Stearns and in line with the expectations of the slave’s narrative genre, was published in Boston in 1849. The second was published in Manchester, England, in 1851.

In England, he married a woman named Jane Floyd. He was finally able to live a free life with his three children and his wife. He died in 1897, in the city of Toronto, Canada.