Kingshead Hotel, Hortlepool, Dec. 20th, 1850.
Dear Douglass:ー
You will have seen that the press of this country has been unsparing in its denunciation of the "Fugitive Slave Bill." Of the many acts of cruelty and injustice committed by the American Legislature against the colored people of the United States, none has done so much to crown them with infamy, and to cause the people of this country to detest and abhor the American character, as the enactment of this new law.
It is an ancient fable, that the eruptions of Aetna were produced by the restless movements of the giant Enceladus, who was imprisoned beneath. As the monster turned on this side, or stretched his limbs, or struggled, the conscious mountain belched forth flames, fiery cinders, and red-hot lava, carrying destruction to all who dwelt upon its fertile sides.
The slave power of the United States is the imprisoned giant of the new world; and its constant struggles for more power, have and will cause eruptions of evil to the people, in comparison with which the flames, the fiery cinders, and red-hot lava of the valcano, are trivial and transitory. "The Fugitive Slave Bill," and its consequences, is the all-absorbing topic for conversation in this country.
Within the last three weeks, I have attended several meetings upon the subject of the fugitive slave bill. Sir John Fife presided at the meeting in Newcastle; in Shields, the Mayor was in the chair. The Sunderland meeting was presided over by one of the oldest and most venerated of its citizens. At all of these meetings, stringent resolutions were passed in favor of the anti-slavery movement, and against the fugitive bill. The minds of the people of England were never in a better state to hear the question of American slavery discussed than at the present time.
President Fillmore's message has come to hand, and his approval of the new law, and his seeming determination to see it enforced, is to some extent claiming the attention of the public. What words can tell the inhumanity, the atrocity, of that doctrine which, from exalted office, commends such a law to the favor of Christians, as the deliberate counsel and practical wisdom of a great and enlightened nation? What indignation from all the world is not due to the government that puts forth its powers and strength to execute such an obnoxious law?
But I did not sit down to write a long letter; my only object was to give you some little account of the CRAFTS. I received letters from Boston some days since, informing me of their flight from that city, and their intended visit to this country. My connection with William and Ellen, on their getting out of slavery, two years since, and their attendance upon my meetings in Massachusetts, caused our New-England friends to suppose that on reaching this country, they would find me out. A Few days ago, while in Newcastle, I received information, in an indirect way, that the Crafts had arrived at Liverpool, and were at Brown's Temperance Hotel, where you, and I, and many more of the American abolitionists have made their homes, on reaching Liverpool. I immediately wrote to William Crafts, telling him that if I could be of any service to him, it would give me the greatest pleasure. Yesterday's post brought me the following reply, written in his own handwriting:
Brown's Hotel, Liverpool, Dec. 18, 1850.

My dear BrownBrown, William Wells

William Wells Brown (c. 1814-84) was born a slave in Lexington, Kentucky, but escaped to freedom in Ohio in 1834, taking the name Wells Brown from a Quaker man who aided his escape. After settling in Cleveland, he worked on a Lake Erie steamboat, from which he helped many fugitive slaves escape to Canada. In the 1840s he moved his family to New York, where he began lecturing for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1843-49). Brown was active in universal reform movements advocating temperance, women's rights, and prison reform. Brown studied medicine informally, but chose to remain active in reforms instead of committing to professional medical practice. In 1847, Brown published his first book, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, and moved to Boston. From 1849 to 1854 he traveled and lectured in Europe, meeting many prominent figures and publishing two more books: Three Years in Europe; Or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met (1852) and Clotel; Or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), the first novel known to be written by an African American. After friends in England purchased his freedom in 1854, he returned to the United States to continue his work in the abolitionist, temperance, woman suffrage, and prison reform movements. He also wrote four books about African American history, including The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, which appeared in 1863 and ran through ten editions in three years. During the Civil War, Brown joined Douglass in recruiting blacks for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. Lib., 12 January 1855; London Lancet, 6 December 1884; R. J. M. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers: The Lives of Six Nineteenth-Century Afro-Americans (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), 45, 48, 95-96, 101-02; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 35, 42, 50-51; DAB, 3:161; DANB, 71-73. :ー
Yours of the 16th came duly to hand, for which you have my best thanks. I need not inform you that I was pleased on getting your letter, but I should have been much more so, to have seen you. We will come to you, but we cannot leave Liverpool until Thursday next, as Ellen is not very well. Hoping to see you in a few days, I remain yours most truly,
Wm. Craft.

When I met with William Craft, two years ago, he scarcely knew one letter from another. And although he has had to labor for his living since his escape, the composition of his letter does his head more credit than the one sent to him by the slaveholder Hughes, while in pursuit of this noble fugitive in Boston. I don't know what will be their plans, as I have not yet seen them. But as I have lying before me an invitation to visit Scotland, I have but little doubt but that Wm. and Ellen Craft will accompany me, and that Edinboro', the capital of the land of Burns, will be the first to give a welcome to Wm. and Ellen Craft, the first fugitive slaves who have landed in this country, chased from the land of their birth by Webster's fugitive slave law.
The people generally are deeply interested in the history of Wm. and Ellen Craft, and it is not at all unlikely that the fugitive slave bill has added one more mouth-piece to the anti-slavery agitation. The hearty and enthusiastic welcome that these two fugitives will get at the hands of the people of Great Britain, will cause the cheeks of the Americans to mantle with shame, if they are not entirely lost to everything of the kind.
When I left Boston, in July, 1849, for this country, the Crafts accompanied me to East Boston to see me off. And as the steamer had left the wharf, I saw among the last visible objects, in the crowd, on the wharf, the white handkerchief of Craft waving in the breeze, above the heads of those around him, bidding me farewell. I hoped at that time, that I should soon return and find him at his own home, as I had left him. But the Crafts were too noble specimens of our race to be permitted to dwell in peace and quietness, after the passage of the fugitive slave law. The people of the North should no longer boast of their independence of the slave power. And, instead of the people of Boston pointing to the Bunker Hill Monument, and boasting of the heroic deeds of their fathers, they should pull it down, and erect upon its ruins a monument to Webster, and engrave upon it in characters not to be mistaken. "No protection here for the oppressed." When I heard of the passage of the fugitive slave bill, I had some faint hope that the people there would protect those who had fled to that city for safety. But when I heard of the flight of the Crafts, I gave up all hopes of the fugitives being safe on any soil over which the "stars and stripes" float. But I must bring this hasty letter to a close. And before doing that, I must make a single reference to the reception given to our friend George Thompson by the Bostonians.
Those in this country who understand the position of the political affairs in America, look upon the disturbance in Faneuil Hall as the last and crowning act of infamy of the defeated Whig party of Massachusetts. But this will cause this noble friend of the slave to be more and more admired in this country. I understand a testimonial is to be presented to Mr. Thompson on his return to England.