The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia

ca. 1850

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

Henry Brown, eventually to be known as Henry "Box" Brown, was a Richmond slave who shipped himself "in a Box 3 feet long, 2—1/2 ft. deep, and 2 ft. wide" to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. In this drawing, the original of which was published in Brown"™s 1849 memoir, the artist captures the moment of unboxing, with a variety of figures including noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass looking on. A somewhat comic yet sympathetic portrayal of the culminating episode in the flight of slave Henry Brown "who escaped from Richmond Va. in a Box 3 feet long, 2-1/2 ft. deep and 2 ft. wide." In the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, the young Brown emerges from a crate as several figures, including Frederick Douglass (holding a claw hammer at left) look on. Details of Brown's escape, whereby he had himself shipped via Adams Express from Richmond to Philadelphia, were widely publicized in a narrative of his ordeal published under his own name in 1849. The box itself became an abolitionist metaphor for the inhumanity and spiritual suffocation of slavery. It is shown on an undated broadside published in Boston (Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Broadside Collection, portfolio 65, no. 16).