The box itself was constructed to specifications that balanced concealment with survival. Three feet long, two and a half feet deep, two feet wide. Lined with baize — a coarse cloth. One air hole, drilled in and positioned to allow some air flow. A small amount of water. A few biscuits. Just enough to keep a man alive if the box was handled right and the journey was not too long.
The box was also labeled: “This Side Up” and “Handle With Care.” The labels were not always obeyed.
## March 23, 1849: The Sealing
The night before the escape, Brown did something to ensure he would not be called to work on the morning of March 23. He burned his hand with sulfuric acid — severe enough damage that he would be excused from the factory floor. The practical calculation was precise and the pain was real. He was willing to do that to himself to gain one morning’s freedom of movement.
On March 23, he was folded into the box. The lid was nailed shut. He was strapped inside. The box was handed off to the Adams Express Company, a commercial freight carrier, addressed to the office of Passmore Williamson at the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia.
He had water. He had biscuits. He had air — barely. He had a small tool, reportedly, that he could use to bore additional holes if the air ran out. What he did not have was any guarantee of anything.
The route from Richmond to Philadelphia in 1849 was not a single unbroken line. It involved multiple handoffs, multiple modes of transport, and multiple moments when the box would be loaded, unloaded, transferred, and loaded again. Brown later described, in the accounts he gave, what it was to be inside during those handoffs — the sudden jolts, the swings, the moments of not knowing which way the world was oriented.