The idea for the box is generally attributed to Brown himself, in the accounts he later gave. He had been praying and thinking since Nancy’s sale. The story he told was that the idea came to him as a kind of revelation — that he would ship himself north, as freight, sealed and sent. Whether this was inspiration in the moment or a plan assembled gradually, he knew immediately that executing it would require help.
His first confidant was James Caesar Anthony Smith. Smith was a free Black man, a fellow member of the choir at First African Baptist Church. He was in a position to move more freely than Brown was, and he was willing to take enormous risks to help. Smith introduced Brown to Samuel Alexander Smith — no relation — a white shoemaker and occasional gambler who had agreed to help Brown escape, for a fee.
Samuel Smith’s willingness to help carried its own complications. He was not an abolitionist by conviction. He was, in fact, himself an enslaver. His participation in Brown’s escape was transactional — he was paid $86, which represented more than half of Henry Brown’s total savings of $166. Whether his motives were purely financial or included some other rationale, the historical record does not establish. What it establishes is that he agreed, and that he traveled to Philadelphia before the escape to make arrangements with the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society — specifically with James Miller McKim, who would later be waiting at the other end.
The committee in Philadelphia included McKim, William Still — a free Black man who was himself a crucial Underground Railroad coordinator and who later wrote a comprehensive history of the escape network — and Passmore Williamson, a Quaker merchant deeply involved in antislavery work. Williamson’s address was where the box would arrive.