Ellen Craft's “Spanish” Masquerade: Racially (Mis)Reading Hispanicism in Her Cross-Dressing, Feigning Disability, and Running to Sea

Abstract

An overlooked advertisement, entitled “An Incident at the South” (1849), calls attention to Ellen Craft's Spanish masquerade during her 1848 escape from American slavery. The author underscores her masculine costume, feigning disability, running to sea, and “a darkness of complexion that betokened Spanish extraction.” Despite contemporary criticism, the advertisement asserts Spanish-ness in the production history of Ellen's escape; thus the essay considers a reinterpretation of Ellen's transnational masquerades by reexamining the advertisement (1849) and in relation to her portrait (1850) and slave narrative (1860). Of emphasis is a history of hemisphere conflict – over land, at the borderlands, and at sea – during Anglo-American expansion, Spanish/Mexican displacement, and antebellum enslavement. Ellen's story is also contextualized with rising literary traditions of the mid-nineteenth century.