The man she would become had a name: William Johnson.
## What the Passes Required
To leave Macon legally, even for a short holiday, they needed passes from their respective enslavers. Getting the passes without revealing the plan required a specific kind of performance in itself. Both managed to obtain them under the cover of requesting time off for the Christmas holiday — a period when some enslaved people were customarily given a few days of relative freedom. William’s pass was signed by his cabinetmaker employer. Ellen’s came from the Collins household.
They could not read the passes. They held documents authorizing their temporary movement and had no idea exactly what was written on them. This was the terror of their situation compounded: they were dependent on papers they could not verify.
Wednesday, December 21, 1848 was the departure date. The plan had been conceived approximately eight days earlier. Eight days to assemble a disguise, secure the passes, rehearse the roles, and commit to a plan that, if it failed at any point, would result not just in the return to slavery but in punishment severe enough that it might make slavery look different from the inside, darker, more absolute.
Ellen was afraid. This is recorded, in several places. She had nightmares in the final nights before departure. She told William she did not think she could go through with it. What she felt about becoming someone else — about wearing a man’s clothing, about passing as white in a formal, public, legally documented way rather than in the ambiguous manner of her ordinary existence — was something she appears to have processed mostly in private. William comforted her. The decision, ultimately, was hers to make and she made it.