What remains uncertain:
His exact birth year. His parents’ names. The names of his children by Nancy. The fate of Nancy, the children, and the fourth child she was carrying when sold. Whether he made private efforts to locate or recover his family after the escape. The precise date discrepancy between March 23-24 (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Virginia) and March 29 (NPS) for the journey — the former is more consistently sourced. The exact duration of the journey, which sources give as either twenty-six or twenty-seven hours. The precise authorship conditions of the 1851 narrative, which was titled ‘Written by Himself’ but produced through collaboration given his illiteracy. The full content of his private thoughts and feelings across any period of his life. The nature of his relationship with Jane Floyd before their marriage. What he did between 1889 and his death in 1897.
What is not in dispute:
He climbed into that box. He survived it. He emerged and sang. He built a life that outlasted the institution that had owned him by thirty-two years. He was not the box. He was the man who chose to use it, and who lived a long, complicated, and fully human life on the other side of it.
## The Dimensions Still Matter
Three feet long. Two feet wide. Two and a half feet deep.
These numbers appear in the 1849 Stearns narrative and have been verified against the accounts of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee members who received the box and saw it in person. They are not estimates or approximations; they are the documented measurements of the actual box.