I felt my eyes swelling as if they would burst from their sockets;

"I felt my eyes swelling as if they would burst from their sockets; and the veins on my temples were dreadfully distended with pressure of blood upon my head."

Henry ‘Box’ Brown...

Henry Brown was a slave born and raised in Virginia. After seeing his wife and children sold to an owner in a different state, a devastated Brown became determined to escape slavery. 

He came up with a daring plan to ship himself in a wooden crate to Philadelphia. He did it with the help of a freed slave and a white shopkeeper.

On March 3, 1849, Brown squeezed him into a small wooden crate labeled “Dry Goods.” After a harrowing, 27-hour journey, Brown arrived at the Philadelphia home of abolitionist James McKim.

However, less than a year later, Brown was o to flee to England after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. He returned in 1875 after starting a new family.