DISGUISED IN DAYLIGHT

<p>One couple. One thousand miles. Four days to outrun a nation built on chains.</p><p>December 21 1848 Macon Georgia. In a cramped attic above a cabinet shop Ellen Craft twenty-four light-skinned illiterate and enslaved sews a gentleman's coat by candlelight. Her husband William twenty-two a skilled cabinetmaker forges passes and builds a mahogany traveling case with a false bottom. By dawn Ellen is Mr. William Johnson a deaf one-armed planter with green spectacles and a white sling. William is his valet. Their destination: Philadelphia. Their weapon: love.</p><p>They board trains steamers and ferries under the noses of slave-catchers and bounty hunters.</p><ul><li>Macon to Savannah: Central of Georgia Railway 4:00 a.m.</li><li>Savannah to Charleston: Steamer Gen. Clinch. The purser eyes Ellen's sling.</li><li>Charleston to Richmond: 480 miles of rail. A slave trader at breakfast.</li><li>Richmond to Washington: Potomac ferry iced over.</li><li>Washington to Philadelphia: Final 180 miles. Christmas morning 1848 4:17 a.m. First free breath at Mother Bethel AME.</li></ul><p>Every whistle is a heartbeat. Every mile a miracle.</p><p>Boston 1849-1850. Tremont Temple: 2000 weep as Ellen speaks unable to read. The Liberator front page: Never was a tale more thrilling. Fugitive Slave Act 1850. Georgia deputies storm Boston. The Crafts flee in a coffin aboard the Cambria surviving an Atlantic storm.</p><p>London 1851-1868. Lady Byron's townhouse: Ellen learns to read and write in six months. Craft & Co.: William imports slave-free goods 20000 pounds profit. Anti-slavery tours: 30000 copies of Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom sold. Civil War: 100000 pounds sent to Union camps Ellen's letters in the Lincoln Papers. Five free-born children: Hope (1849) Charles (1852) Brougham (1854) William Garrison (1854) Alfred (1859).</p><p>Georgia 1868-1900. Woodville Cooperative Farm: 1800 acres their former master's land 15000 dollars cash. Woodville School: 500 freedchildren by 1869. KKK arson 1871 and 1872: school burned twice. Ellen's reply: We plant again. 1874: stone schoolhouse rises unburnable. 1000 graduates by 1880. Ellen dies 1897 pneumonia age 71. William follows 1900 heart failure age 76.</p><p>Spanning seven decades three continents and two Reconstruction arsons Disguised in Daylight is resurrection. Primary sources: Ellen's primer Liberator pages Freedmen's Bureau reports Cambria manifest listing one coffin cargo. Maps and images: 1848 rail route Boston safe houses Woodville ruins (1874) Ellen's 1851 daguerreotype. Modern pilgrimage: 2024 Christmas Eve Amtrak journey retracing every mile led by great-great-granddaughter Dr. Ruth Hope Hill.</p><p>Love outran the chains. Ellen Craft's final letter December 1 1900.</p><p>Perfect for fans of The Underground Railroad Twelve Years a Slave Master Slave Husband Wife. Includes timeline (1824-1900) cast 12 public-domain images hyperlinked endnotes 3 annotated maps. Lexile 1080L. Ideal for AP U.S. History African American Studies college seminars.</p>