Central to the story of William and Ellen Craft’s journey from enslavement to freedom is the risk of being forced to return to the South. When they reached Philadelphia, a free city, William and Ellen recognized the fragility of their liberty. Their enslavers, Ira Hamilton Taylor and Robert Collins, could still legally take them back to the South, where they would be abused or sold for their disobedience. No law protected them from being kidnapped and trafficked back into a life of physical, spiritual, and emotional bondage. In fact, the laws were designed to support their return to slavery.

The reality of their situation caused William to adhere to a single principle: kill or be killed. William was determined that he would rather die than return to Georgia, where he would be tortured and stripped of the freedom he had risked everything to obtain. William and Ellen’s fears were justified. Under the fugitive slave laws, the Crafts still legally belonged to their enslavers in the South, even while residing in a free city. For those enslaved individuals who purchased their freedom or made their way across the ocean, the fear brought on by the fugitive slave laws never fully disappeared.

In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” including a description of American soil as the “land of the free.