Henry "Box" Brown

The 1849 escape of Henry "Box" Brown, related in his vastly popular autobiography, was one of the most celebrated and inventive in all the slave narratives. With the assistance of a shopkeeper in Richmond, Virginia, Brown arranged to have himself shipped in a wooden crate to Philadelphia, where he was greeted by members of the local abolitionist community. Although many black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass disapproved of former runaways publicizing the details of their escape lest future attempts by others be thwarted, Brown parlayed his unusual experience into celebrity on the antislavery lecture circuit both in the Northeast and in England where he fled after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. A talented artist, Brown even depicted his escape in an intricate panorama with which he toured. Although the last known reference to Brown was in 1864, when he was in...