###Henry Box Brown's Postal Escape
Virginia to Pennsylvania, 1849 — To escape slavery, Henry Brown squeezed into a tiny wooden crate and shipped himself over 350 miles to a free state.
Devastated after his wife and children were sold away, enslaved tobacco worker Henry Brown resolved to escape to the North. He paid a shoemaker and a free Black man to build a wooden shipping crate measuring exactly three feet long, two and a half feet deep, and two feet wide.
On March 23, 1849, Brown squeezed inside with a small water bladder and a tool to bore extra air holes. Nailed shut and shipped as dry goods via the Adams Express Company, the box was transported by wagon, railroad, steamboat, and ferry.
For 27 hours, Brown endured the agonizing, pitch-black journey. When the crate finally arrived at the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, the lid was pried off. Brown burst out of the tiny box and stood up a completely free man.
Henry Box Brown's Postal Escape — Virginia to Pennsylvania, 1849