Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom is a retrospective account written twelve years after the events it describes, shaped by the conventions of the slave narrative genre, aimed at a specific political audience, and attributed on the title page to William. Ellen’s individual voice in the narrative is present but partial: she speaks in the conversations William reconstructed, she is described through his eyes, her interior experience of four days in disguise is mediated through his later telling.
What she thought about the disguise beyond her initial reluctance — what it felt like to inhabit a white male persona for four days, to be addressed as sir, to be treated with the deference that whiteness and maleness commanded in 1848 — is not in the record in any substantial way. Scholars who have written about her have worked with what is available: the open letter of 1852, occasional references in contemporary abolitionist accounts, William’s reconstructed dialogue. The specific phenomenology of what she experienced is largely inaccessible.
The question of authorship — how much of the 1860 narrative was shaped by Ellen versus William — is similarly unresolved and probably unresolvable without documents that may not exist. What scholars have established is that treating the narrative as William’s alone misses what Ellen contributed to the partnership in every other aspect of their life, and probably misses something about the narrative as well.
The libel case and its outcome are also incompletely documented in the accessible record. William accused his accusers of lying. He went to court. He lost. The records of the case — the specific accusations, the evidence presented, the legal reasoning of the verdict — are not described in detail in the sources consulted here. It’s possible that more detailed archival work would produce a clearer picture; it’s also possible that a fuller picture would not change the basic outlines of what happened.