#2 and #1, people. #2 and #1! Much <3 ❤️
Lest we forget (or never get taught).
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The 5 Most Badass Ways People Escaped from Slavery
From Cracked.com
(follow the link for #4 and #5, and for the additional colorful comments Cracked makes in the middle of #1, #2, and #3 below)
By Alex Hanton · July 12, 2013
It’s almost tragic that the most badass escaped slave story most people know is Django Unchained. Because in real life, not only did slaves frequently escape, but they often did it without help from free whites, and without murdering several hundred people. Instead, what they had was cleverness and the audacity to try ridiculous plans that by all rights should never have worked.
#3) Henry “Box” Brown Mails Himself to Freedom
In 1849, Henry Brown was determined to escape his miserable life on a Virginia plantation. But how? Safety was hundreds of miles away, and he wasn’t a young man anymore. Brown decided to get creative. And by that we mean, for the third straight entry, the escapee used a scheme that would seem too ridiculous for a cartoon.
First, he had a carpenter friend make up a wooden box 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, which the 5-foot-8-inch, 200-pound Brown somehow squeezed himself into as though he was playing some sort of horrifying human Tetris. Then he had two other friends carry the box down to the offices of the Adams Freight Company and have it “conveyed as dried goods” to Philadelphia. Seriously, you read that right. Henry Brown mailed himself to freedom.
Of course it wasn’t quite that easy. The biggest problem came when postal workers ignored the large “This Side Up” signs plastered all over the box and stacked Brown with his head facing down. Since Brown couldn’t let anyone know he was in the crate, he was forced to remain standing on his head like that for 20 minutes, until he could be sure he was alone. Brown later claimed that the experience almost killed him and that he was barely able to cling to consciousness long enough to save himself, which does tend to overshadow the equally impressive fact that he somehow managed to right himself without getting out of the box.
Not one to miss a chance to rub it in, Brown immediately adopted “Box” as his new middle name and embarked on a hugely lucrative lecture tour while supporters of slavery fumed impotently. This also infuriated prominent abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, who wanted Brown to keep the details of his escape a secret so they could encourage other slaves to escape the same way. So while we’ve got to give Brown props for his badassery, we can’t quite forgive him for potentially depriving us of a past where the Civil War never happened because every slave in the South simply mailed himself to liberty.
2) Eliza Harris Leaps Across the Ice
In 1838, a woman subsequently known as Eliza Harris escaped from slavery with her baby grandchild. Racing on foot through the snow, she could hear the barking of dogs behind her as her pursuers gained ground. Reaching the Ohio River, she was forced to pause. Despite the vicious cold, the river was not frozen solid, but was chock-full of thin, fast-moving ice floes.
This was the point where most people would give up and turn back, or, accepting their fate, perhaps would pick up one of the smaller ice chunks and attempt to throw it like a Frisbee. Fortunately, Eliza Harris was not most people. Instead she strapped the baby to her back, climbed out onto the ice, and leaped from floe to floe across the river like it was a goddamned Mario level.
And when we say ice floe, if you’re picturing big, stable icebergs like a polar bear might frolic on during a breath mint commercial — think again. This was more like trying to jump from a bucking surfboard onto a moving shark if both those things were made of wet ice. Eliza slipped several times during her crossing and would have been swept away if not for a fence post she was carrying to steady herself. She eventually made it to the other side. It was so badass that a slave catcher who had been lying in wait for her on the other side just helped her up and pointed her in the direction of safety.
Now when you’ve just done something so awesome that one of the worst human beings in the world decided to help you out, you could probably be forgiven for taking it easy for a while. Eliza, on the other hand, simply headed straight back South and, despite the huge reward that had been put on her head, succeeded in liberating her other five grandchildren. Her incredible story eventually made it back to the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, who based the climactic scene in her famous anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin on her escape across the ice. The book’s heroine is named Eliza in her honor.
1) Robert Smalls Hijacks a Confederate Ship
In 1862, the Confederate naval vessel Planter cast off from its mooring in Charleston and expertly navigated through the heavily mined harbor. Passing beneath the guns of Fort Sumter, the Planter’s captain, in his trademark white naval jacket and straw hat, cheerfully waved to the guards before giving the secret signals that prevented them from blowing his ship out of the water.
The same guards were probably a little surprised when the ship carefully waited until it was out of reach of the guns before immediately turning north and heading for the Union. You see, the man in the captain’s uniform waving to the guards was in fact a slave named Robert Smalls. And he was stealing the shit out of the Planter.
At the start of the war, Smalls had found himself as one of the many slaves forced to work in the Confederate Navy. Not missing the bitter irony that he was somehow expected to fight against his freedom, he immediately began planning how to escape in the most audacious manner possible. First, he took the opportunity to memorize the signals needed to get past the fort. He also made sure to remember where the mines were in the harbor, which wasn’t hard because he’d laid most of them himself. And of course he also stole every single Confederate naval secret he could lay his hands on.
Amazingly, Smalls managed to keep from cackling hysterically during all this, because his white crew mates were so taken in with the deception that they decided to trust him to stay alone on the boat while they went to get drunk. Smalls immediately gathered 12 other slaves and their families and staged his famous defection to the Union, who were grateful enough to give him permanent command of the Planter, making him the only black captain of the war. He became a hero in the North and played a big part in persuading Abraham Lincoln to allow slaves to join the armed forces.