In 1844 New Orleans was riveted by a dramatic trial: A slave claimed that she was really a free immigrant who had been pressed into bondage as a young girl. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe Sally Miller’s fight for freedom, which challenged notions of race and social hierarchy in antebellum Louisiana.
We’ll also try to pronounce some drug names and puzzle over some cheated tram drivers.
oss
v. to signify, indicate, or make known to somebody that something is the case
mensk
n. honor, dignity, reverence
eximious
adj. distinguished, eminent, excellent
serein
n. a fine rain falling from a cloudless sky
Momentous flights are sometimes marked by a “water salute” in which an aircraft passes under plumes of water sprayed by firefighting vehicles.
Here U.S. Air Force fire trucks salute a KC-135 Stratotanker, marking the final flight of Col. Corey Martin, commander of the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing, in Kyrgyzstan in 2013.
The American bomber Lady Be Good left North Africa for a bombing run over Italy in 1943. It wasn’t seen again until 15 years later, when explorers discovered its broken remains deep in the Libyan desert. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll review the strange history of the lost aircraft and trace the desperate last days of its nine crewmen.
We’ll also climb some twisted family trees and puzzle over the Greek philosopher Thales’ struggles with a recalcitrant mule.
Georgia slaves Ellen and William Craft made a daring bid for freedom in 1848: Ellen dressed as a white man and, attended by William as her servant, undertook a perilous 1,000-mile journey by carriage, train, and steamship to the free state of Pennsylvania in the North. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll follow the couple’s harrowing five-day adventure through the slave-owning South.
We’ll also discover the best place in the United States to commit a crime and sample the aphoristic poetry of Danish mathematician Piet Hein.
In 1848, Ellen and William Craft resolved to flee slavery, but they needed a way to get from Macon, Ga., to the free states in the north. William could never travel such a distance alone, but Ellen’s skin was fair enough that she could pass for white. So she disguised herself as a white male cotton planter attended by William, her slave. (She had to pose as a man because a white woman would not have traveled alone with a male slave.) The two asked leave to be away for the holidays, the illiterate Ellen bound her arm in a sling to escape being asked to write, and they departed on Dec. 21. Over the next four days:
On Dec. 25, after a journey of more than 800 miles, they arrived in Philadelphia:
On leaving the station, my master — or rather my wife, as I may now say — who had from the commencement of the journey borne up in a manner that much surprised us both, grasped me by the hand, and said, ‘Thank God, William, we are safe!’ then burst into tears, leant upon me, and wept like a child. The reaction was fearful. So when we reached the house, she was in reality so weak and faint that she could scarcely stand alone. However, I got her into the apartments that were pointed out, and there we knelt down, on this Sabbath, and Christmas-day, — a day that will ever be memorable to us, — and poured out our heartfelt gratitude to God, for his goodness in enabling us to overcome so many perilous difficulties, in escaping out of the jaws of the wicked.
The Crafts went on a speaking tour of New England to share their story with abolitionists, then moved to England to evade recapture under the Fugitive Slave Act. They returned only in 1868, when they established a school in Georgia for newly freed slaves.