Ellen planned to take advantage of her appearance to
pass as white while the pair traveled by train and boat to the North; she dressed as a man since, at the time, it was not customary for a white woman to travel alone with an enslaved man. She also faked illness to limit conversation, as she was prevented from learning to read and write with the threat of death because she was enslaved. William was to act as a personal servant. During that time, slaves frequently accompanied their owners during travel, so the Crafts did not expect to be questioned. To their surprise, they were detained, but only temporarily. An officer had demanded proof that William was indeed Ellen's property. They were finally let on the train due to sympathy from passengers and the conductor. Their escape is known as the most ingenious plot in fugitive slave history, even more ingenious than that of "
Henry Box Brown." She wore her right arm in a sling to hide the fact that she could not write. They traveled to nearby Macon for a train to
Savannah. Although the Crafts had several close calls, they successfully avoided detection. On December 21, they boarded a
steamship for Philadelphia, in the free state of Pennsylvania, where they arrived early on the morning of
Christmas Day. Their innovation was in escaping as a pair, though Ellen's bravery and genius made their escape successful. Historians have noted other enslaved women who posed as men to escape, such as
Clarissa Davis of Virginia, who dressed as a man and took a New England-bound ship to freedom;
Mary Millburn, who also sailed as a male passenger; and
Maria Weems from the District of Columbia, who as a young woman of fifteen, dressed as a man and escaped. Soon after the Crafts arrived in the North, abolitionists such as
William Lloyd Garrison and
William Wells Brown encouraged them to recount their escape in public lectures to abolitionist circles in New England. They moved to the well-established
free black community on the north side of
Beacon Hill in
Boston, Audiences were intensely curious about the young woman who had been bold in the escape. In 1850, Congress passed the
Fugitive Slave Act, which increased penalties for aiding fugitive slaves and required residents and law enforcement of free states to cooperate in capturing and returning them to their owners. The act provided a reward to officers and simplified the process by which people might be certified as slaves, requiring little documentation from slave catchers. Commissioners appointed to hear such cases were paid more for ruling that a person was a slave than not. A month after the new law took effect, Collins sent two
bounty hunters to Boston to capture the Crafts. Willis H. Hughes and John Knight traveled north from Macon intending to capture William and Ellen Craft; upon arriving in Boston, they were met with resistance on the part of both white and black Bostonians. Abolitionists in Boston had formed the biracial
Boston Vigilance Committee to resist the new Slave Bill; its members protected the Crafts by moving them around various "safe houses", such as the Tappan-Philbrick house in the nearby town of
Brookline, until they could leave the country. The two bounty hunters arrived in Boston on October 25, 1850, and, after resistance from the locals, fled south after being warned on October 30 that their safety in Boston could not be assured. Collins even appealed to U.S. President
Millard Fillmore, asking him to intervene so he could regain his "property". Fillmore agreed that the Crafts should be returned to their owners in the South and authorized the use of military force if necessary to take them. ==Flight and life in the United Kingdom==