(SLAVERY) Newspaper report on the escape of Henry Box Brown

Sale 2663 - Lot 397

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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(SLAVERY.) Newspaper report on the escape of Henry "Box" Brown from slavery, on the front page of an issue of the Hagerstown Herald of Freedom. 4 pages, 25 x 17½ inches, on 2 detached sheets; minor wear and toning. Hagerstown, MD, 13 June 1849

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Under the headline "The Running of Slaves--The Extraordinary Escape of Henry Box Brown" is an abstract of his remarkable story, as he told it to the Boston Anti-Slavery Society and reported in the Boston Traveller. Brown gives the dimensions of the box in which he was mailed from Richmond to Philadelphia: "exactly three feet one inch long, two feet wide, and two feet six inches deep." He recounts the rough handling of the package, as it was dropped and rolled down a hill. Despite being marked "This side up with care," he was twice placed upside down for long enough that he feared for his life: "My eyes were swollen almost out of my head, and I was fast becoming insensible when the position was changed." Finally he arrived in Philadelphia, where an abolitionist "knocked on the box and asked, 'Is all right here?' 'All right,' echoed from the box."