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Synkron master slave1/31/2024 And he comes, and he actually checks the cars of the train, and their hearts are beating, and they don't know what's going to happen. And they learn later that he's had this strange intuition that something is off. They look outside, and there's a cabinetmaker from the shop where William works. William has found his place in the - what's called a Negro car. WOO: I think I might even point to the very beginning, as soon as they get to the train station. INSKEEP: What was the most terrifying moment of their escape? And this is the world in which the Crafts seize upon their own freedom. I mean, in some ways it's very much like our era, where everything feels like it's changing so rapidly. And with it there is an information revolution. There's a transportation revolution going on with trains and steamboats and people moving at pieces they couldn't have even imagined before. And America's borders are expanding with the end of that Mexican-American war. I mean, even beyond America, there are democratic revolts going on all over the world in Europe, and America is celebrating that. There are all these revolutions going on. WOO: It was an incredibly tumultuous time, as you know from your own research. What was America like at that moment in 1848? And it's basically all the states of the entire Eastern Seaboard from Georgia northward. INSKEEP: You put a map in the book here, which I'm looking at, and it's got a line showing their escape route. And she gradually learns throughout the journey how to harness that fear and how to be the master that people want to see on the road. They thought they could be captured at any time, but there were certain crises moments that really brought this out. INSKEEP: Because she would be terrified all the time. And it's also hiding her feeling, especially with the eyes covered up as well. So it's hiding both the lack of hair on her face that would give her away. I picture, like, an ACE bandage kind of thing that she's wrapped around. And she has poultices that she wears on her face. And then she has glasses that hide her eyes. She's made her own pants because she's very small, and she has a vest and a jacket. WOO: All the accoutrements of gentlemanhood in this period - she has a double-story hat, as they call it. And that role of the slave is performed by her husband, William. She dons the outfit of a wealthy white male enslaver who is disabled and thus is all the more dependent on the services of her slave. And from him, she had inherited a very light complexion, so she's actually the one who disguises herself as a master. ILYON WOO: Ellen was the daughter of her first enslaver. The writer Ilyon Woo reconstructs their escape in her new book, "Master Slave Husband Wife." It was 800 miles to Philadelphia in the free state of Pennsylvania, but Ellen and William Craft made a plan to travel by train and boat in disguise. In 1848, in the slave state of Georgia, a husband and wife decided to escape. We have the story of a divided nation - not divided as we know now, but divided between states that banned slavery and states that embraced it.
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