The slave who was sent by mail
Richmond, Virginia, USA, 1830. Henry Brown, a 15-year-old slave, started working on a tobacco plantation. One day he recognized Nancy, another slave who worked in the next section. After a brief courtship and, of course, with the consent of both owners, they married. In 1848 the couple had three children and the fourth was on its way. But Nancy and her three sons were sold to a merchant slave and the four were taken to North Carolina. Because he had nothing to lose, Henry Brown then decided to free himself at all costs.
He thought of a curious plan: it would be mailed to Philadelphia. The slave needed an accomplice at the point of departure and at the goal of the shipment. In Richmond, he contacted abolitionist Samuel Alexander Smith through a former slave who had conquered freedom. He gave Smith $86 to cover all the expenses of the operation and asked him to talk to the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society for one of its members to accept the shipment.
On March 23, 1849, Henry Brown entered the box, one meter long, half wide and nearly one meter high. Issuer Smith sent the package via the Adams Express company and on behalf of James Miller McKim, president of the Philadelphia Association. The trunk was lined inside with a thick fabric to cushion the shocks and Brown took a few cookies and a bucket of water filled on a 27-hour journey by chariots, trains and steamships. In the early morning of March 25, McKim and other members of the association opened the box and the first words of free Brown were “How are you, gentlemen?”
From then on, he was called Henry Box Brown. It became an icon of abolitionism and started lecturing back and forth. When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, Brown went to London for fear of being returned to the Virginia tobacco section. In England, although he initially maintained his abolitionist activity, years later he abandoned militancy and started working in more productive work (hypnotizing and prestidigising). He married again to a British woman, whom he critiqued harshly, because Brown never tried to find his family, even though he had raised as much money as to buy everyone’s freedom. Anyway, whether he liked others or not, Henry Brown had the freedom to do what he wanted.
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