Frederick Douglass

by Booker T. Washington

CHRONOLOGY

1817— February. Born on a plantation at Tuckahoe, near the town of Easton, Talbot County, on the eastern shore of Maryland; the exact date not known. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was the slave of Captain Aaron Anthony, the manager of the estate of Colonel Edward Lloyd. 1825— Sent to Baltimore to live with Hugh Auld, a relative of his master. 1833— Returns to Maryland and becomes the slave of Thomas Auld, at St. Michaels, Talbot County; while here he has an encounter with the Negro slave-breaker, Covey. 1836— First attempt to run away results in his being sent back to Baltimore where he is apprenticed by Thomas Auld to William Gardiner of Fells Point, to learn the trade of ship-calker. 1838— September 3d. Makes his escape from Baltimore, reaching New York the next day. September 15th, according to the marriage certificate, possibly a day earlier, he marries a free colored woman, Anna Murray, who on receiving the news of his escape follows him to New York. They are directed to New Bedford, Mass., by Anti-Slavery friends where Douglass begins his life as a freeman. He changes his name from Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, to Frederick Douglass. 1841— August 11th. Makes his first speech before an Anti-Slavery convention and becomes a lecturer in the Anti-Slavery cause. 1842— Participates in the campaign for equal rights in Rhode Island during the “Dorr Rebellion.” 1843— Takes part in the campaign of “A Hundred Anti-Slavery Conventions”; his hand broken in a fight with a mob at Pendleton, Indiana.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

CHAPTER I
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, THE SLAVE

The life of Frederick Douglass is the history of American slavery epitomized in a single human experience. He saw it all, lived it all, and overcame it all. What he saw and lived and suffered was not too much to pay, however, for a great career. “It is something,” as he himself said, “to couple one’s name with great occasions, and it was a great thing to me to be permitted to bear some humble part in this, the greatest that had come thus far to the American people.”

Tradition says he was of noble lineage, but of this there is no written record. Frederick Douglass was born in the little town of Tuckahoe in Talbot County on the eastern shore of Maryland, supposedly in the month of February, 1817. The exact date of his birth was made the subject of diligent search by him in the days of his manhood and freedom, but nothing more definite than the month and year could be established. He gleaned so much as this, he says, “from certain events, the date of which I have since learned.”

In the early life of this child of slave birth, there were several incidents that seemed to mark him for a high destiny. The very pretentiousness of the name he bore, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was a possible indication of something unusual and promising in his appearance and demeanor. Though it is not known who was his father, it is fortunate that, out of the many uncertainties of his lowly origin, a reasonably clear outline of the personality of his mother has come to light and has been preserved. We cannot know her name or pedigree. The slave-child saw little of his slave-mother, but he made a great deal of this little. His references to her were frequent in his writings and public addresses, and they all indicate the pride and love of a heart true to its primal instincts.

While he was a child, his mother was employed on a plantation, a distance of twelve miles from Tuckahoe. Her only opportunity of seeing her son was by walking the distance after her day’s work, to return to the field of her labors by dawn of the next day. To use his own language: “These little glimpses of my mother obtained under such circumstances and against such odds, meagre as they were, are indelibly stamped upon my memory. She was tall and finely proportioned; of dark and glossy complexion, with regular features; and among slaves she was remarkably sedate and dignified. She was the only slave in Tuckahoe who could read.” That she was a woman of marked superiority, and that her child inherited from her much that raised him above the other slaves among whom he lived, can be easily believed. When he had grown to manhood and while reading Prichard’s Natural History of Man, he found in the features of “King Rameses the Great” a strong resemblance to his mother. There were four other children, one boy named Perry and three girls. So far as is known, the brother and sisters showed none of the marks of superiority that distinguished Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.

Whatever training Frederick had up to eight years of age, he received from his Grandmother Bailey. It was in her cabin that he was born, and it was by her that he was cared for and nourished. He was very fond of this grandmother and has paid an affectionate tribute to her memory. She was a woman of strong character and of unusual intelligence. There were many things that she could do uncommonly well, such as gardening, and her good luck in fishing was proverbial. She was also famed as a fortune-teller and as such was sought far and wide by all classes of people. Because of her intelligence and natural gifts, she was allowed many privileges and a great deal of liberty; in her old age she was amply provided for by her master, and saved from hard toil. Judging from his frequent and fond references to his grandmother, young Douglass had better care and more attention than the ordinary slave-child; he probably had plenty to eat, and was taught good manners. Whatever it was possible for an impressionable mind to gain from contact with a strong and vigorous nature, the lad received from this unusual woman.

Until he was seven years of age, young Fred felt few of the privations of slavery. In these childhood days, he probably was as happy and carefree as the white children in the “big house.” At liberty to come and go and play in the open sunshine, his early life was typical of the happier side of Negro life in slavery. What he missed of a mother’s affection and a father’s care, was partly made up to him by the indulgent kindness of his good grandmother.

The owner of Fred and of his mother, grandmother, sisters, and brother, was Captain Aaron Anthony. He was the proprietor of several plantations and about thirty slaves near Tuckahoe. But Captain Anthony was something more, and this fact became important in the subsequent history of young Frederick Bailey; he had the distinction of being the manager of the vast estate of Colonel Edward Lloyd, who belonged to one of the foremost families of Maryland, and who owned between twenty and thirty plantations with over one thousand slaves. His home was on a plantation situated about thirty-five miles southeast of Baltimore and on the banks of the Wye River, the mansion and its surroundings being typical of the splendor and power of the wealthy slave-holder. When young Douglass first gazed upon all these signs of wealth, he says: “I became impressed with the baronial splendors of the Lloyd mansion and the princely mode of living; the vast army of enslaved men, women, and children; the completeness of the government that made it almost impossible for any of these slaves to escape; the subordination of my own master; the great number of mechanics that were skilled in all the trades, and the tutors from New England that were hired to teach the Lloyd children.”

Near the mansion stood the plain but commodious home of Fred’s master, Captain Anthony. The Anthony family consisted of Mrs. Lucretia Anthony, the wife; Richard and Fred Anthony, sons; and an only daughter, Lucretia, who became the wife of Captain Thomas Auld.

When Fred was between seven and eight years of age, his grandmother was directed by her master to take her grandson to the Lloyd plantation. After the boy arrived at his new home, he was put in charge of a slave-woman for whom the only name we know is “Aunt Katy.” This change brought him the first real hardship of his life. As an early consequence of it, he lost the care and guidance of his grandmother, his freedom to play, good food, and that affection which means so much to a child. When he came under the care of Aunt Katy, he began to feel for the first time the sting of unkindness. He has given a very disagreeable picture of this foster-mother. She was a woman of a hateful disposition, and treated the little stranger from Tuckahoe with extreme harshness. Her special mode of punishment was to deprive him of food. Indeed he was forced to go hungry most of the time, and if he complained, was beaten without mercy. He has described his misery on one particular night. After being sent supperless to bed, his suffering very soon became more than he could bear, and when everybody else in the cabin was asleep, he quietly took some corn and began to parch it before the open fireplace. While thus trying to appease his hunger by stealth, and feeling dejected and homesick, “who but my own dear mother should come in?” The friendless, hungry, and sorrowing little boy found himself suddenly caught up in her strong and protecting arms. “I shall never forget,” he says, “the indescribable expression of her countenance when I told her that Aunt Katy had said that she would starve the life out of me. There was a deep and tender glance at me, and a fiery look of indignation for Aunt Katy at the same moment, and when she took the parched corn from me and gave me, instead, a large ginger-cake, she read Aunt Katy a lecture which was never forgotten. That night, I learned, as never before, that I was not only a child but somebody’s child. I was grander on my mother’s knee than a king upon his throne. But my triumph was short. I dropped off to sleep and waked in the morning to find my mother gone, and myself again at the mercy of the virago in my master’s kitchen.”

There is no record of another meeting between mother and son. She probably died shortly afterward, because if she had been within walking distance, he certainly would have seen her again. Her memory in his child’s mind was always that of a real and near personality. When he became older, and conscious of his superiority to his fellows, he was wont to say: “I am proud to attribute my love of letters, such as I may have, not to my presumed Anglo-Saxon father, but to my sable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother.” Thus, after his mother died, his vivid imagination kept before him her image, as she appeared to him that last time he saw her, through all his struggles for a fuller and freer life for himself and his race.

With the loss of his mother and grandmother, he came more and more to realize the peculiar relation in which he and those about him stood to Colonel Lloyd and Captain Anthony. His active mind soon grasped the meaning of “master” and “slave.” While still a lad, longing for a mother’s care, he began to feel himself within the grasp of the curious thing that he afterward learned to know as “slavery.” As he grew older in years and understanding, he came also to see what manner of man his master was. He described Captain Anthony as a “sad man.” At times he was very gentle, and almost benevolent. But young Douglass was never able to forget that this same kindly slave-holder had refused to protect his cousin from a cruel beating by her overseer. The spectacle he had witnessed, when this beautiful young slave was whipped, had made a lasting and painful impression upon him. Vaguely he began to recognize the outlines of the institution which at once permitted and, to a certain degree, made necessary these cruelties. It was at this point that he began to speculate on the origin and nature of slavery. Meanwhile he became, in the course of his life on the plantation, the witness of other scenes, quite as harrowing, and the memory mingled with his reflections, and embittered them.

During this time an event occurred which gave a new direction and a new impetus to the thoughts and purposes slowly taking form within him. This event was the successful escape of his Aunt Jennie and another slave. It caused a great commotion on the plantation. Nothing could happen in a Southern community that excited so many and such varied emotions as the escape of a slave from bondage:—terror and revenge; hope and fear, mingled with the images of the pursued and the pursuers, with speculation in regard to the capture of the fugitive, and with prayers for his success in the minds of the slaves.

Young Douglass had begun to feel the burden of slavery and already had a dim consciousness of its fundamental injustice, but up to this point, he had known no other world than this immense plantation, and no other people than these masters, overseers, and slaves. His horizon was further enlarged and his imagination quickened by talking with certain Negroes on the Lloyd plantation, who could recall the event of their being brought from far-off Africa in slave-ships. Speaking of his own state of feeling at this time, he says: “I was already a fugitive from slavery in spirit and purpose.”

From now on his quick and comprehending mind saw and suffered things that formerly never affected him. The hard and sometimes cruel discipline, toil from sunrise to sunset, scant food, the stifling of ambitions,—all these began now to be perceived and felt, and the impression they left sank into the soul of this rebellious boy. He saw a slave killed by an overseer, on no other charge than that of being “impudent.” “Crimes” of this nature were committed, as far as he could see, with impunity, and the memory of them haunted him by day and by night.

Thus far Douglass had not felt the overseer’s whip. He was too small for anything except to run errands and to do light chores. Of course, he had been cuffed about by Aunt Katy; he says he seldom got enough to eat and he suffered continually from cold, since his entire wardrobe consisted of a tow sack. He was fortunate, however, in having two friends, who often saved him from the pangs of hunger, and who now and then gave him a word of kindness. One was young Daniel Lloyd, of the “great house,” and the other, Miss Lucretia, his master’s daughter. This lady seems to have had a real fondness for the boy, and would often give him something good to eat and at times caress him in such a way as to recall to his mind the few blessed moments he had known with his mother. Young Lloyd also often protected him from the impositions of other boys.

To show how far the lad had advanced in his thinking, it is well to quote his own words on this point: “I used to contrast my condition with that of the blackbirds, in whose world and sweet songs, I fancied them so happy. Their apparent joy only deepened the shadows of my sorrow. There are thoughtful days in the lives of children, at least there were in mine, when they grapple with all the primary subjects of knowledge, and reach in a moment conclusions which no subsequent experience can shake. I was just as well convinced of the unjust, unnatural, and murderous character of slavery when nine years old, as I am now (1881). Without any appeal to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, I came to regard God as our Father, and condemned slavery as a crime.”

When Fred became nine years old, the most important event in his life occurred. His master determined to send him to Baltimore to live with Hugh Auld, a brother of Thomas Auld. Baltimore at this time was little more than a name to young Douglass. When he reached the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Auld and felt the difference between the plantation cabin and this city home, it was to him, for a time, like living in Paradise. Mrs. Auld is described as a lady of great kindness of heart, and of a gentle disposition. She at once took a tender interest in the little servant from the plantation. He was much petted and well fed, permitted to wear boy’s clothes and shoes, and for the first time in his life, had a good soft bed to sleep in. His only duty was to take care of and play with Tommy Auld, which he found both an easy and an agreeable task.

Young Douglass yet knew nothing about reading. A book was as much of a mystery to him as the stars at night. When he heard his mistress read aloud from the Bible, his curiosity was aroused. He felt so secure in her kindness that he had the boldness to ask her to teach him. Following her natural impulse to do kindness to others and without, for a moment, thinking of the danger, she at once consented. He quickly learned the alphabet and in a short time could spell words of three syllables. But alas, for his young ambition! When Mr. Auld discovered what his wife had done, he was both surprised and pained. He at once stopped the perilous practice, but it was too late. The precocious young slave had acquired a taste for book-learning. He quickly understood that these mysterious characters called letters were the keys to a vast empire from which he was separated by an enforced ignorance. In discussing the matter with his wife, Mr. Auld said: “If you teach him to read, he will want to know how to write, and with this accomplished, he will be running away with himself.” Mr. Douglass, referring to this conversation in later years, said: “This was decidedly the first anti-slavery speech to which I had ever listened. From that moment, I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.”

During the subsequent six years that he lived in Baltimore in the home of Mr. Auld, he was more closely watched than he had been before this incident, and his liberty to go and come was considerably curtailed. He declares that he was not allowed to be alone, when this could be helped, lest he would attempt to teach himself. But these were unwise precautions since they but whetted his appetite for learning and incited him to many secret schemes to elude the vigilance of his master and mistress. Everything now contributed to his enlightenment and prepared him for that freedom for which he thirsted. His occasional contact with free colored people, his visit to the wharves where he could watch the vessels going and coming, and his chance acquaintance with white boys on the street, all became a part of his education and were made to serve his plans. He got hold of a blue-back speller and carried it with him all the time. He would ask his little white friends in the street how to spell certain words and the meaning of them. In this way he soon learned to read. The first and most important book owned by him was called the Columbian Orator. He bought it with money secretly earned by blacking boots on the streets. It contained selected passages from such great orators as Lord Chatham, William Pitt, Fox, and Sheridan. These speeches were steeped in the sentiments of liberty, and were full of references to the “rights of man.” They gave to young Douglass a larger idea of liberty than was included in his mere dream of freedom for himself, and in addition they increased his vocabulary of words and phrases. The reading of this book unfitted him longer for restraint. He became all ears and all eyes. Everything he saw and read suggested to him a larger world, lying just beyond his reach. The meaning of the term “Abolition” came to him by a chance look at a Baltimore newspaper.

Slavery and Abolition! The distance between these two points of existence seemed to have lessened greatly, after he had comprehended their meaning. “When I heard the word ‘Abolition,’ I felt the matter to be my personal concern. There was hope in this word.” As he afterward went about the city on his ordinary errands, or when at the wharf, even performing tasks that were not set for him to do, he was like another being. That word “Abolition” seemed to sing itself into his very soul, and when he permitted his thoughts to dwell on the possibilities that it opened to him, he was buoyed up with joyous expectations. He tried to find out something from everybody. He learned to write by copying letters on fences and walls and challenging his white playmates to find his mistakes; and at night when no one suspected him of being awake, he copied from an old copy-book of his young friend Tommy. Before he had formulated any plans for freedom for himself, he learned the important trick of writing “free passes” for runaway slaves.

Notwithstanding his progress in gaining knowledge, his considerate master and kind mistress, his loving companion in Tommy, his good home, food and clothes, he was not happy or contented. None of these things could stifle his yearning to be free. He has aptly described his own feelings at this time in speaking of Mrs. Auld: “Poor lady, she did not understand my trouble, and I could not tell her. Nature made us friends, but slavery made us enemies. She aimed to keep me ignorant, but I resolved to know, although knowledge only increased my misery. My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty in the treatment I received. It was slavery, not its mere incidents, I hated. Their feeding and clothing me well, could not atone for taking my liberty from me. The smiles of my master could not remove the deep sorrow that dwelt in my young bosom. We were both victims of the same overshadowing evil,—she as mistress, I as slave. I will not censure her too harshly.”

But if his hopes and aspirations were excited by the vast and vague horizon which the thought of emancipation opened to him, he was, on the other hand, driven to something like despair when he considered how distant and inaccessible was this “land of freedom” of which he dreamed. The nearer and clearer appeared to him the possibility of this larger life, the more torturing became the restraints that kept him from seeking it. It was when thus pursuing in thought this phantom of a greater world although at the same time in despair of ever attaining it, that he found peace for a while in the consolation of religion. His imagination had been aroused by the preaching of a white minister, a Methodist, named Hanson. Feeling himself wretched and alone, he was in a state of mind, as so many others have been before and since, to find comfort in the thought of a kindly and overshadowing Power, a Protector to whom he might turn, in his great distress, without reserve and without misgiving. He surrendered himself completely to this new faith in God. In his search for more light, he met a lasting friend and guide in the person of a colored preacher to whom he fondly refers as “Uncle Lawson.” This good and pious old man lived very near the home of Mr. Auld. Young Douglass said of him: “He was my spiritual father. I loved him intensely, and was at his house every chance I could get.”

Douglass’s master and mistress knew that he had become religious, and though they were at that time but lukewarm in their support of the church, they respected the piety in the young slave and seem to have encouraged it. But unfortunately the boy’s interest in religion had increased his desire to read, in order to become thoroughly acquainted with the Bible. “I have gathered,” says Mr. Douglass, “scattered pages of the Bible from the filthy street gutters, and washed and dried them, that in moments of leisure I might get a word or two of wisdom from them.”

Uncle Lawson could read a little and Douglass, who went frequently with him to prayer meeting, spent much of his spare time on Sunday helping him decipher its pages. When his master learned what he was doing, he threatened to whip him if he went to Lawson’s again, but he stole away whenever he could and got his needed instruction in the simple lessons of faith.

Uncle Lawson was probably the first colored person that young Douglass had met who appreciated his longings and powers. He was also the first person who awakened in him a dim consciousness that he was destined for a public career. Speaking of this, Douglass once said: “His words made a deep impression upon me, and I verily felt that some such work was before me, though I could not see how I could ever engage in its performance.” The old preacher could go no further than to give utterance to the familiar exhortations: “Trust in the Lord, the Lord can make you free”; “Ask in faith and He will give you what you ask.” The boy’s great respect for the honesty and piety of Uncle Lawson lent these words a deep significance, and he never forgot the lessons that he learned from this simple-minded man. How important was this teaching is evidenced by Mr. Douglass’s own testimony: “Thus assisted and thus cheered on under the inspiration of the preacher, I worked and prayed with a light heart, believing that my life was under the guidance of a wisdom higher than my own. I always prayed that God would in His great good mercy and His own good time, deliver me from my bondage.” After Douglass learned how to write with tolerable ease, he began to copy from the Bible and the Methodist hymn-books at night, when he was supposed to be asleep. He always regarded this religious experience as the most important part of his education; it had the effect, not only of enlarging his mind, but also of restraining his impatience, and softening a disposition that was growing hard and bitter with brooding over the disadvantages suffered by himself and his race. He greatly needed something that would help him to look beyond his bondage and encourage him to hope for ultimate freedom.

While he was undergoing this, to him, novel religious experience, and while he was gradually being adjusted to the situation in which he found himself, there came one of those dreaded changes in the fortunes of slave-masters that made the status of the slave painfully uncertain. His real master, Captain Anthony, died, and this event, complicated with some family quarrel, resulted in Douglass being recalled from Baltimore to the plantation. This was a depressing incident in his slave-life. It is true that Mr. and Mrs. Auld were not at this time as gentle with him as when he first came to the city. He was under stricter discipline, was constantly watched, and his liberties were circumscribed in many ways that were both inconvenient and irritating. But in spite of all this he was comparatively free from the usual severities of slavery. He had many interests and many happy relationships that he was able to cultivate outside of the Auld household. He had become something of a leader among the young colored men of the city. He had taught many of them their letters. Among the white boys of his acquaintance he also had a large circle of friends, who loved him and were loyal to him. Most important of all was his affection for his religious teacher, Uncle Lawson. Through these attachments in the more complex life of the city, and the opportunities for mental and spiritual growth which they offered, he was able to throw off to a great degree the gloom and doubt of his earlier youth. He had begun to feel that he was actually preparing himself for that larger life of leadership in freedom, that had been hinted to him by Uncle Lawson. But all these happy relations were rudely severed when he was recalled to the plantation.

“It did seem,” he said, “that every time the young tendrils of my affection became attached, they were rigidly broken off by some unnatural, outside power, and I was looking away to Heaven for the rest denied to me on earth.”

CHAPTER II
BACK TO PLANTATION LIFE

When young Douglass left Baltimore to go back to the plantation, he was about sixteen years of age;—strong, healthy, and fully capable of the hard work of a field hand. But this was not the most difficult task he now had to face. Conditions that he met there were to test his character as it had never been tested before, and the trials he endured during this period profoundly influenced all his future life. For the first time in many years, he was to feel the “pitiless pinchings of hunger.” He says: “So wretchedly starved were we that we were compelled to live at the expense of our neighbors, or steal from our own larder. This was a hard thing to do, but after much reflection, I reasoned myself into the belief that there was no other way to do—and after all there could be no harm in it, considering that my labor and person were the property of Master Thomas, and that I was deprived of the necessaries of life. It was simply appropriating what was my own, since the health and strength derived from such food were exerted in his service. To be sure, this was stealing according to the law and gospel I had heard from the pulpit, but I had begun to attach less importance to what dropped from that quarter, on certain points.”

Having found a principle upon which he could justify, against the precepts of morality, the practice of stealing from his own master, in order to get enough to eat, it was not difficult to go farther and discover a warrant based on grounds quite as logical, for the habit of stealing from others beside his master, when the same necessity seemed to justify it.

“I am not only a slave of Master Thomas,” he argued, “but I am also a slave of society at large. Society at large has bound itself in form and fact to assist Master Thomas in robbing me of my liberty and the just reward of my labor; therefore whatever rights I have against Master Thomas, I have equally against those confederated with him.” It is thus that Mr. Douglass, writing years afterward, construed the argument with which the boy solved the doubts and questions arising in his mind when he found himself following the custom, prevalent among the slaves, of persistent petty stealing.

Whatever one may think of this theory as a justification for the practice, it is interesting as showing in Douglass, even as a boy, the tendency to get clear ideas in regard to his own conduct and the conduct of those about him, and to make his actions conform to some fundamental rule. A boy who was disposed to think thus clearly and to apply the test of elementary principles to the lives and actions of those about him, was already a dangerous slave. And so the summer of 1833 found Douglass more determined than ever to run away.

Meanwhile he tells us that there were several incidents which served still further to shape in his mind the view of his master and the class his master represented. About this time there was a religious revival in the neighborhood of St. Michaels, where Douglass lived. Master Thomas became converted and was afterward a devoted member and class-leader in the Methodist church. Young Douglass attended the camp-meeting, and, from his position behind the preacher’s stand, where a space had been marked off for colored people, watched the process of conversion in his master with great interest and close attention.

Another episode tended to add to the perplexity in the young slave’s mind and still further undermine his faith in the moral superiority of the master-class, and in the religion which based its justification of slavery on the fact of that superiority. To add further to his confusion, he had read somewhere, in the Methodist discipline, that “the slave-holder shall not be eligible to an official station in the church.” When he saw Mr. Auld making open confession of his sins, and afterward given official position in the church, he felt sure that a great change must necessarily come over his disposition and character. But his master’s face, Douglass said, became more stern with increasing piety, and the discipline he enforced upon his slaves was even more rigid. This was a severe test of the religious convictions of the young slave-boy. He knew that religion had made him better, kinder, and more appreciative of all that was true and beautiful. It had also given him comfort during the period of his servitude. He had looked forward, with sincere faith in the power of religion, to some marked change in Master Thomas. The resulting experience left him disappointed and confused.

At the request of an earnest and sincerely pious white man, named Wilson, Douglass had joined in an attempt to conduct a Sunday-school for young colored people. During the second meeting of this innocent company, it was violently broken up by a mob, chief among whom was his master, Thomas Auld. The men were armed with sticks and other missiles and drove away both pupils and teachers, warning them never to meet again. The only explanation given for this violent interruption of what seemed a harmless and worthy occupation, was the rough remark of one member of the party, that Douglass wanted to be another Nat Turner. The fear inspired by his unfortunate slave insurrection was responsible for much of the hardship which Negroes in the South, free and slave, were at this period compelled to endure. The memory of it hardened the heart of many a master against his slaves and made him cruel and suspicious where he would naturally have been kind and confident.

But Thomas Auld seems not to have had even this excuse for some of his acts which still further embittered the young slave, already grown critical and suspicious of all that his master did. It was not long after his conversion, Douglass says, that he began to beat the boy’s crippled and unfortunate cousin, Henny, with unusual barbarity, finally setting her adrift to care for herself. All these incidents crowded quickly upon the young slave’s mind at a time when he had already begun to test and measure the actions of his master and those about him by the principles of universal right and justice, which his study of the Columbian Orator had furnished him, and which his reflections and comparisons were steadily making more clear and definite. The effect was to render him bold and rebellious to such an extent that he soon became a fit subject to be “broken in” by some overseer, who knew how to handle “impudent” slaves.

A man named Edward Covey, living at Bayside, at no great distance from the camp-ground where Thomas Auld was converted, had a wide reputation for “breaking in unruly niggers.” Covey was a “poor white” and a farm renter. To this man Douglass was hired out for a year. In the month of January, 1834, he started for his new master, with his little bundle of clothes. From what we have already seen of this sensitive, thoughtful young slave of seventeen years, it is not difficult to understand his state of mind. Up to this time he had had a comparatively easy life. He had seldom suffered hardships such as fell to the lot of many slaves whom he knew. To quote his own words: “I was now about to sound profounder depths in slave-life. Starvation made me glad to leave Thomas Auld’s, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to Covey’s.” Escape, however, was impossible. The picture of “the slave-driver,” painted in the lurid colors that Mr. Douglass’s indignant memories furnished him, shows the dark side of slavery in the South. During the first six weeks he was with Covey, he was whipped, either with sticks or cowhides, every week. With his body one continuous ache from his frequent floggings, he was kept at work in field or woods from the dawn of day until the darkness of night. He says: “Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me in body, soul, and spirit. The overwork and the cruel chastisements, of which I was the victim, combined with the ever growing and soul-devouring thought, ‘I am a slave—a slave for life, a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom,’ had done their worst.”

He confesses that at one time he was strongly tempted to take his own life and that of Covey. Finally, his sufferings of body and soul became so great that further endurance seemed impossible. While in this condition, he determined upon the daring step of returning to his master, Thomas Auld, in order to lay before him the story of abuse. He felt sure that, if for no other reason than the protection of property from serious impairment, his master would interfere in his behalf. He even expected sympathy and assurances of future protection. In all this he was grievously disappointed. Auld not only refused sympathy and protection, but would not even listen to his complaints, and immediately sent him back to his dreaded master to face the added penalty of running away. The poor lone boy was plunged into the depths of despair. A feeling that he had been deserted by both God and man took possession of him.

Covey was lying in wait for him, knowing full well that he must return as defenseless as he went away. As soon as Douglass came near the place where the white man was hiding, the latter made a leap at Fred for the purpose of tying him for a flogging. But Douglass escaped and took to the woods where he concealed himself for a day and a night. His condition was desperate. He felt that he could not endure another whipping, and yet there seemed to him no alternative. His first impulse was to pray, but he remembered that Covey also prayed. Convinced, at length, that there was no appeal but to his own courage, he resolved to go back and face whatever must come to him. It so happened that it was a Sunday morning and, much to his surprise, he met Covey who was on his way to church, and who, when he saw the runaway, greeted him with a pleasant smile. “His religion,” says Douglass, “prevented him from breaking the Sabbath, but not from breaking my bones on any other day in the week.”

On Monday morning, Douglass was up early, half hoping that he would be permitted to resume his work without punishment. Covey was astir betimes, too, and had laid aside his Sunday mildness of manner. His first business was to carry out his fixed purpose of whipping the young runaway. In the meantime Fred had likewise fully decided upon a course of action. He was ready to submit to any kind of work, however hard or unreasonable, but determined to defend himself against an attempt at another flogging. In the cold passion that took possession of him, the slave-boy became utterly reckless of consequences, reasoning to himself that the limit of suffering at the hands of this relentless slave-breaker had already been reached. He was resolved to fight and did fight. He began his morning work in peace, obeying promptly every order from his master, and while he was in the act of going up to the stable-loft for the purpose of pitching down some hay, he was caught and thrown by Covey, in an attempt to get a slip knot about his legs. Douglass flew at Covey’s throat recklessly, hurled his antagonist to the ground, and held him firmly. Blood followed the nails of the infuriated young slave. He scarcely knew how to account for his fighting strength, and his dare-devil spirit so dumbfounded the master, that he gaspingly said: “Are you going to resist me, you young scoundrel?” “Yes, sir,” was the quick reply.

Finding himself baffled, Covey called for assistance. His Cousin Hughes came to aid him, but as he was attempting to put a noose over the unruly slave’s foot, Douglass promptly gave him a blow in the stomach which at once put him out of the combat and he fled. After Hughes had been disabled, Covey called on first one and then another of his slaves, but each refused to assist him. Finding himself fairly outdone by his angry antagonist, Covey quit with the discreet remark: “Now, you young scoundrel, you go to work; I would not have whipped you half so hard, if you had not resisted.”

Douglass had thus won his first victory and was never again threatened or flogged by his master. The effect of this encounter, as far as he himself was concerned, was to increase his self-respect, and to give him more courage for the future. He said that, “when a slave cannot be flogged, he is more than half-free.” To the other slaves he became a hero, and Covey was not anxious to advertise his complete failure to break in this “unruly nigger.” It speaks well for the natural dignity and good sense of young Douglass that he neither boasted of his triumph, nor did anything rash as a consequence of it, as might have been expected from a boy of his age and spirit.

On Christmas Day, 1834, young Douglass’s time with Covey was out. He then learned that he had been hired to a William Freeland, who owned a large plantation near St. Michaels, and by January 1st, was with his new master. Mr. Freeland was a great improvement upon Covey. He was less direct in his professions, but more humane in his manner toward his slaves. He was what was called a “kind master.” He did not overwork or underfeed his slaves and he was sparing of the lash. All this was Paradise to young Douglass, when compared with the strenuous life he had led with Covey. The effect of so much kindness was evidenced in the character of the Freeland slaves. Mr. Douglass describes them as a superior class of men and women, and he loved, esteemed, and confided in them, as with real friends, generous and true.

With these new and better conditions and with these superior companions in bondage, Douglass felt a renewal of that old impulse to do something for his fellow slaves. He naturally first turned to the thought of teaching them to read and write. He found time and spirit again to look at his library,—the blue-back speller and the Columbian Orator. He first started a Sunday-school under the trees, at a safe distance from the “big house,” gathering together some thirty young people. They were making fine progress, when, one Sunday, his former experience was repeated, and they were rushed upon and scattered. The school was again started, however, and this time Douglass seems successfully to have evaded the vigilance of his master. In addition to the Sunday-school, he devoted three evenings a week to his fellow slaves.

His leadership among all the Negroes was recognized and respected by them. This brought with it his first consciousness of that peculiar power over men, which in after-life made him so conspicuous a figure among the heroes of the Abolition struggle. The whole year at Freeland’s was spent in self-development and in the mental and spiritual improvement of his companions in bonds.

At the end of this time he learned that his services had been hired for another twelve months to Mr. Freeland. This seemed to promise good for him in the future. The Bible, the spelling book, and the Columbian Orator were read and re-read and, at each new reading, he felt an enlargement of mind and an increasing thirst for liberty. The kindness of Mr. Freeland and the pleasant companionship of the Harris brothers and other slaves, served only to increase his discontent. He liked his master and would gladly have remained with him as a free man, but he could never overcome his increasing impatience of the restraints of slavery, and, with this ambition for liberty, his troubles began. He made a solemn vow to himself that the year should not close without witnessing some earnest effort on his part to escape. This vow also included the freedom of his slave-companions, for whom he had conceived a lasting attachment. He succeeded in winning to his scheme five trusted confidants. These were John and Henry Harris, Sandy Jenkins, the footman; Charles Roberts, and Henry Bailey. Young Douglass impressed them with the perils of the undertaking. His knowledge of the difficulties of a successful escape, little as it actually was, surprised and awed them.

When he had fully determined upon his plans, he found that it would perhaps require many weeks to perfect them. His first task was to study the character, the temperament, and the various personal qualifications of the men whom he proposed to make his partners in this dangerous undertaking. He must learn whether they were proof against the sin of betrayal under all possible circumstances. Each man must cultivate an unhesitating faith in the others. Each must have unlimited courage, both physical and moral. All must learn the tricks of self-concealment, and of assumed indifference and deception. They must understand the various kinds of perils they were likely to encounter. The kidnapper, the slave-catcher, the black and white detectives, and the whole range of restraints that, like a continuous wall, hemmed in a slave, must be considered and understood. If he had hope in his heart, he must not betray it by so much as a look, in manner or in speech. Overseers were all eyes and ears and quick to suspect something was wrong if a slave seemed unusually thoughtful, sullen, or happy. They were by no means easily deceived as to the real intention of a slave planning to run away. To become an object of suspicion was merely to insure that the suspected slave would be the more closely guarded. Young Douglass fully realized the severity of the penalty that must follow failure, but he never wavered in his determination to make a dash for liberty, at any cost.

Having satisfied himself that his companions were proof against treachery and were of the right sort of mettle, he began to study the practical means of escape. There were no well-marked routes from slavery to freedom, no highways, byways, or “underground railways,” known to him at that time. Such knowledge belonged wholly to the region north of the boundary line of freedom. He had heard of slaves escaping, but how they got away and by what route was always a mystery. He had heard that there was a region called North, and that in this far haven, white and black people alike were free. He had heard of a land called Canada, but its location on maps and charts was unknown to him. He had no conception of the physical size of the world. He had seen Baltimore, St. Michaels, and the adjoining plantations; beyond this all was blank. He knew something of theology, but nothing of geography. He did not know that there were states called New York and Massachusetts. New York City was the northern limit of his knowledge. He had received vague hints that the dominion of slavery was without boundary and that even in New York, there were slave-catchers and kidnappers. But it was at this time an unknown land.

In these difficulties, young Douglass looked steadily North in the direction of the free-states, seeking some chance guidance. His habit of reasoning out things that in any way affected his status as a slave and as a man, has already been noted. Everything that he saw, or heard, or read enlarged his knowledge of life and its meaning. His stay in Baltimore had been a sort of school to him. Here for the first time, he had seen free colored people; the coming and going of ships gave him his first ideas of direction and distance; the Chesapeake Bay was a thing of wonder;—all of which awakened in him many thoughts that led him away from bondage.

While young Douglass was secretly working out his plans for escape, one of his confidants, Sandy, the footman, said to him: “I dreamed last night that I was roused from sleep by strange noises, like a swarm of angry birds; looking to see what it was, I saw you, Frederick, in the claws of a large bird surrounded by a large number of birds of all colors and sizes. They were all picking at you. Now I saw that as plain as I see you now, and honey, watch the Friday night dream; there is sump’n in it, sho’s you born, dere is indeed, honey.” Douglass confessed that the dream related to him by old Sandy disturbed him for awhile. He felt sure that his plans were seriously handicapped by unseen forces of some sort, but he soon regained his usual courage and overcame his superstitious apprehensions. The Saturday night before Easter had been fixed upon as the time for flight. A large canoe, owned by a Mr. Hamilton, had been seized and made ready for the confederates. They were to paddle down the Chesapeake Bay to its head. Douglass had already written out passes for each of the fugitives in the following form:—

“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given leave to the bearer, my servant, John, full liberty to go to Baltimore to spend the Easter holidays.—W. H.

“Near St. Michaels, Talbot Co., Md.”

On the night before the proposed flight, every possible detail had been rehearsed and arranged. The resolution of each party to the conspiracy was tested and proved firm, except that of Sandy, who, much to the disgust of Douglass, backed out. Early Saturday morning, they were all at work in the usual way. Douglass was the only one who was troubled with a presentiment of evil. He turned abruptly to Sandy, who was working near him, and said: “We are betrayed!” Within a short while his worst fears were being realized. Looking toward the “big house,” he easily discerned a stranger on horseback and an unusual stir. It was not long before he was abruptly accused of plotting to run away, and taken into custody. Thus it turned out that at the very time he had planned to be on the road to freedom, he was a prisoner bound for Easton, to be examined by a magistrate.

His companions, the two Harris brothers, were likewise accused. Henry, however, was the only one who did not tamely submit to being arrested and handcuffed. When a revolver was pointed at him by the officer, he knocked it from the man’s hands and dared any one to shoot him. The recalcitrant slave was soon overpowered, however, and all were led away.

The excitement caused by Harris’s daring revolt served one purpose, of which young Douglass’s alertness enabled him to take advantage. He adroitly threw his pass, the only incriminating evidence against them, in the fire, and by some secret sign advised the others to eat theirs with their bread on the journey, which they did.

When they were examined, each stoutly disclaimed all knowledge of plans for running away and denied that they had any intention of doing so. Notwithstanding the total lack of evidence against them, the officers and Douglass’s master were thoroughly convinced that they were plotting some wickedness. There was always something so mysterious, as well as commanding in the manner of young Douglass, that he was naturally regarded as the ringleader, when any misconduct of the slaves was complained of. His fellows in bonds treated him with a deference never shown toward any but white people. As a slave he worked well and did his full duty, but his masters always regarded him with suspicion, and something akin to fear.

The examination of the four culprits must have afforded an interesting scene. Young Douglass, though a slave in chains, as well as a prisoner at the bar, had the temerity to assume the rôle of attorney and to attempt the defense of his comrades, for whose present predicament he felt himself responsible. When Thomas Auld insisted that the evidence in hand, showing the intention to run away, was strong enough to hang in case of need, Douglass promptly replied: “The cases are not equal. If murder were committed, the thing is done, but we have not run away. Where is the evidence against us? We were quietly at work.” Douglass was confident that the only tangible evidence against them had been skilfully destroyed, and he knew also that his companions had been slyly but effectively coached as to what to say and how to act when they came before the examining magistrate.

So completely had they failed to make young Douglass and his companions convict themselves, that very shortly Mr. Freeland came to the jail and took home his own slaves, leaving Douglass still in confinement. He was glad to know that his companions had escaped punishment, but by this last separation from them he seemed to have reached the very depths of the desolation which it was the lot of a slave to experience.

Through the bars of his imprisonment, he could watch the slave-traders from Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana apparently eager to get hold of him. He could even hear them pass comments upon his size, strength, and general appearance, and make guesses as to his age. For the first time since he left Covey’s, he felt both hopeless and helpless. If he should be sold and sent down into the far South, he well knew that all chances for escape would be cut off forever.

While in this condition of dejection and hopelessness, the unexpected happened. His owner, Thomas Auld, who, in spite of Douglass’s rebelliousness, always cherished a peculiar fondness for him, ordered his release from jail, and at once decided to send him back to Baltimore to live with Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auld. In telling Fred what he intended to do, he said that he wanted him to learn a trade, and that if he would behave himself and give him no more trouble, he would emancipate him when he became twenty-five years old.

The happy assurance that he was not to be punished and that he was again to have the privileges of the city, was at first almost too much to be believed. All of his hopes for ultimate freedom were revived and his confidence in himself, which had been severely shaken by his recent failure and disgrace, was renewed. Under the circumstances, it seems to have been the only wise and practicable course his master could pursue. Mr. Freeland would not again allow him to come upon his plantation; Covey had failed to break his spirit; and his reputation as a would-be runaway and a “smart nigger” made him a desperate asset in the slave-market of Talbot County. In sending him to Baltimore to learn a trade, with a possibility of ultimate freedom, it was thought that he would be more serviceable and more tractable. Then, again, the most threatening aspect of young Douglass’s attempted flight was the daring plot to use the Chesapeake Bay. Heretofore the slaves who had succeeded in making good their escape were compelled to find a path through deadly swamps and woods, other avenues being so carefully guarded that a successful runaway was very rare. Every effort, therefore, must be made to keep the Douglass venture a secret; he must be removed as far as possible from his old plantation-life. If he had had a different master, nothing could have saved him from the slave-traders. The good-heartedness of Thomas Auld was the only thing that preserved our young hero for that larger life which he was to make for himself, and help to make for so many others of his race.

When, through the kindness of Mr. Auld, Douglass again turned his face toward Baltimore, he fully realized that the change was fraught with importance to him. He remembered that it was in this city he had caught the first suggestion that there was a life to be lived above the low levels of a slave. There, in the family of Hugh Auld, he had learned to wear clothes, had acquired good manners and the ability to read, and, for the first time, had felt, in the person of his teacher and benefactor, Mrs. Sophia Auld, the civilizing and softening touch of a superior woman’s kindness.

To his alert and observing mind, Baltimore again became a real school. It quickened his perception, and fired his imagination, and was the place, above all others, short of a free state, where he most longed to live. Hugh Auld easily succeeded in getting young Douglass apprenticed to a calker, in the extensive ship-yards of William Gardiner, on Fell’s Point. The conditions under which he had to work were very trying; he did not mind the severe labor, but he was much disturbed by the intense prejudice existing among the white boys and mechanics. During the six months that he worked with this firm, every one seemed to have license to make use of and abuse him. He was not a coward, and would quickly strike back at a man who insulted or attempted to maltreat him. Finally, however, he was assaulted by a crowd of ruffians and frightfully beaten. His face was swollen and he was covered with blood. In this condition, he reported himself to Mr. Auld, who was furious when he beheld the pitiable state of his slave. Mrs. Auld took pity upon him and kindly dressed his wounds, and nursed him until they were healed. In the meantime he was angrily withdrawn from Mr. Gardiner’s employ, and it was sought to bring to punishment the perpetrators of the assault. Auld appeared with Douglass before a magistrate, and explaining how his slave had been attacked without provocation, demanded a warrant for the guilty parties, but both were surprised and chagrined when the magistrate replied: “I am sorry, sir, but I cannot move in this matter except upon the oath of a white man.” This incident made a deep impression on Douglass. It gave him a new and vivid sense of his helplessness and dependence, and measurably increased his determination to be free at any cost.

Hugh Auld soon after became foreman in the ship-yards of Walter Price, of Baltimore. He took Douglass with him and, under his protection, Fred finished learning his trade and within one year became able to command and receive from seven to nine dollars per week, the largest wages at that time paid for such labor. All of his earnings, of course, were turned over to his master. From now onward he had no trouble in securing work. He was permitted to find his own employment and make his own arrangements or contracts for pay. This was a distinct advancement over his former condition of servitude, and was his first experience of self-direction and self-dependence.

He was soon known among the colored people of the city as a young man of singular power. His superiority of mind was recognized and, almost without being conscious of it, he became a leader. There was at that time an organization of free colored people, known as the East Baltimore Improvement Society. Although membership in this exclusive body was limited to free people, young Douglass was eagerly admitted. This was the first organization of any kind, outside of the church, to which he had ever belonged. It is probable that he had here his first opportunity to exercise his natural gift of eloquence.

But with all these improvements in his conditions of life, he was not happy. A sense of bondage, however slight, made him restless and impatient. “Why should I be a slave?” was the question that went with him night and day. He has truly said: “To make a contented slave, you must make him a thoughtless one.”

Kind treatment, liberty to come and go as he pleased and to make his own contracts for employment; mingling with freemen, as if he himself were free; the high esteem in which he was held by fellow workmen and employers, and by free people; and the promise of emancipation at twenty-five years of age, were no consolation to the heart that panted to be its own. He had already become too much of a man to remain a willing slave!

CHAPTER III
ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY; LEARNING THE WAYS OF FREEDOM

For the second time in his life, Frederick Douglass now began earnestly to study the possible means of permanently breaking his fetters. At the end of every week, when he turned his entire earnings over to his master, his sense of injustice and indignation increased. He was scarcely able to conceal his discontent. His intense longing to be free must have betrayed itself in his countenance, for very soon he noticed that he was being closely watched. The fact that he had at one time made an attempt to run away caused more or less uneasiness.

Young Douglass soon found that the difficulties of escape were quite as great in Baltimore as on the Freeland plantation. The railroads running from that city to Philadelphia were compelled to enforce the most stringent regulations with reference to colored people. Even free Negroes found it difficult to comply with them. Every one applying for a railway ticket was required to show his “free papers” and to be measured and carefully examined before he could enter the cars. Besides this, he was not allowed to travel by night. Similar regulations were enforced by steamboat companies. In addition to all these difficulties, every road and turnpike was picketed with kidnappers on the lookout for fugitive slaves. Douglass found it much easier to learn the obstacles than the aids to successful escape. The former were many and obvious; the latter were few and difficult to discover. It was impossible to profit by the experience of those who had run the gauntlet successfully, and whenever it was learned that some keen-scented slave had found a pathway to freedom, the information was carefully concealed from those in bonds. Every slave preparing to escape his fetters must act without guide or precedent, and form his own plan of deliverance.

Douglass was now convinced that he must hereafter be the arbiter of his own fortunes. He at once decided that his great need was money. The problem was how to get the necessary sum. His whole time and all of his earnings belonged to his master, and so long as this was the case the funds must still be a long way off. He finally determined to propose to his owner, Master Thomas Auld, that he be allowed to have his own time. In other words, he would agree to pay him so much a week, and all in excess of that sum he would keep as his own. This proposition merely angered Mr. Auld, who accused young Douglass of scheming to run away, and threatened him with severe punishment, if he ever mentioned such a thing again. But Douglass had too much at stake to give up. He made the same proposition to Master Hugh Auld and it was accepted. By the terms of this agreement young Douglass was to be allowed all of his time, and to make his own contracts and collect his own wages; while in return for these privileges, he was to pay his master three dollars each week, board and clothe himself, and buy his own tools.

This was a pretty hard bargain, but it meant his first step toward freedom, so he entered upon it cheerfully. From May until August, 1838, he worked for himself under the above conditions, kept all his obligations, and was able to save out of his earnings a neat sum of money. In the month of August occurred an unfortunate interruption of his plans. One Saturday night, instead of taking his wages to his master, he was persuaded to go out of town to a camp-meeting. He convinced himself that there could be no objection to this, since he had the money and purposed turning it in early Monday morning. Owing to some misunderstanding, however, he was compelled to remain one day longer than he had intended. On coming back to the city, he went directly to his master and made his payment. Instead of being indifferent to his absence, Hugh Auld was almost beside himself with rage. Addressing Douglass, he said: “You rascal, I have a good mind to give you a sound whipping. How dare you go out of the city without my leave? Now, you scoundrel, you have done for yourself; you shall have your time no longer. The next thing I shall hear of you, will be your running away. Bring home your tools at once; I will teach you how to go off in this way.”

Poor Douglass was for the moment dismayed by this very serious consequence of an innocent error of judgment. He had had his own way so long, he had begun to feel that his master’s only interest in him was the regular payment of the three dollars per week which he had been receiving during the previous four months. All his hopes for liberty had been staked on the continuance of this arrangement for a few months longer. Douglass understood the man who was now his master. He had lived with him long enough not to take his threats too seriously. Mr. Auld would have been indeed shortsighted if he had not used an occasion of this kind to impress his slave with the seriousness of taking such a liberty. Douglass did not, therefore, lose heart and as a result of this episode, he made two important resolutions. One was to go out in search of work and return to the old contract; and the other was to fix September 3, 1838, as the day of his flight from slavery.

He soon found good employment in the Butler ship-yards. Mr. Butler thought much of the young slave calker and gave him every opportunity to earn good wages. At the end of the first week, he presented to his master the whole of his earnings, amounting to nine dollars, which was accepted with evident satisfaction. For the moment Master Hugh seemed entirely to have forgotten the reprehensible conduct of only a few days before. Having thus shrewdly helped his master to recover his good temper and natural kindness, Douglass took special pains to keep him pleased and unsuspicious. The second week of his employment, he again turned over the whole amount of his wages, nine dollars. Mr. Auld was overjoyed at this earning capacity of Douglass and as an evidence of it made him a present of twenty-five cents. In the last week he worked as a slave, he gave his master six dollars.

Ever since the first trouble with Auld, he had been pushing his plans to redeem his pledge to himself that he would run away on Monday, September 3, 1838. These were anxious days and many small details had to be mastered. He must carefully avoid anything in manner or word which could excite the slightest suspicion. He had to test the fidelity of a number of free colored people whose aid, in secret ways, was very essential to him. Who these persons were, has never been revealed and in fact, it was not until many years after emancipation that Mr. Douglass disclosed to the public how he succeeded in making his daring escape. “Murder itself,” he says, “was not more severely and surely punished in the state of Maryland than aiding and abetting the escape of a slave.”

Young Douglass’s flight had not outward semblance of dramatic incident or thrilling episode and yet, as he modestly says, “the courage that could risk betrayal and the bravery which was ready to encounter death, if need be, in pursuit of freedom, were features in the undertaking. My success was due to address rather than to courage, to good luck rather than bravery. My means of escape were provided by the very means which were making laws to hold and bind me more securely to slavery.”

By the laws of the state of Maryland, every free colored person was required to have what were called “free papers” which must be renewed frequently, and, of course, a fee was always charged for renewal. They contained a full and minute description of the holder, for the purpose of identification. This device, in some measure, defeated itself, since more than one man could be found to answer the general description; hence many slaves could get away by impersonating the real owners of these passes, which were returned by mail after the borrowers had made good their escape. To use these papers in this manner was hazardous both for the fugitives and for the lenders. Not every freeman was willing to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another might be free. It was, however, often done and the confidence that it necessitated was seldom betrayed. Douglass had not many friends among the free colored people in Baltimore who resembled him sufficiently to make it safe for him to use their papers. Fortunately, however, he had one who owned a “sailor’s protection,” a document describing the holder and certifying to the fact that he was a “free American sailor.” This “protection” did not describe its bearer very accurately. But, it called for a man very much darker than himself, and a close examination would have betrayed him at the start. In the face of all these conditions young Douglass was relying upon something beside a dubious written passport. This something was his desperate courage. He had learned to act the part of a freeman so well that no one suspected him of being a slave. He had early acquired the habit of studying human nature. As he grew to understand men, he no longer dreaded them. No one knew better than he the kind of human nature that he had to deal with in this perilous undertaking. He knew the speech, manner, and behavior that would excite suspicion; hence he avoided asking for a ticket at the railway station because this would subject him to examination. He so managed that just as the train started he jumped on, his bag being thrown after him by some one in waiting. He knew that scrutiny of him in a crowded car en route would be less exacting than at the station. He had borrowed a sailor’s shirt, tarpaulin, cap and black cravat, tied in true sailor fashion, and he acted the part of an “old salt” so perfectly that he excited no suspicion. When the conductor came to collect his fare and inspected his “free papers,” Douglass, in the most natural manner, said that he had none but promptly showed his “sailor’s protection,” which the railway official merely glanced at and passed on without further question. Twice on the trip he thought he was detected. Once when his car stood opposite a south-bound train, Douglass observed a well-known citizen of Baltimore who knew him well, sitting where he could see him distinctly. At another time, while still in Maryland, he was noticed by a man who had met him frequently at the ship-yards. In neither of these cases, however, was he interfered with or molested. When he got into the free state of Pennsylvania, he felt more joy than he dared express. He had by his cool temerity and address passed every sentinel undetected and no slave, to his knowledge, he afterward said, ever got away from bondage on so narrow a margin of safety.

After reaching Philadelphia, he hurried on to New York. It took him just twenty-four hours to make the run from the slave city of Baltimore to the free city of New York. Measured by his intense anxiety, the distance and time must have seemed without end. For fifteen years he had been patiently planning to get his feet upon free soil and breathe the air of a free state. No one ever did more to free himself or to deserve the liberty into which he was now about to enter. He came to New York, his pulses throbbing with high hopes. He soon learned, however, that his stay there was not safe and that the slave-traders plied their vocation even in the free-states.

Douglass’s instinct for right action seldom failed him. Although he was totally ignorant of New York and its people, and had never heard of a “Vigilance Committee,” he had managed, in a few days after his arrival, to put himself under the protection and guidance of such influential friends of the Negro race as Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Thomas Downing, and Theodore Wright, who were at that time high officials in that extensive Underground Railway system which had already safely carried thousands of passengers from bondage to freedom.

He retained a keen remembrance of his former experiences in Baltimore and was conscious of a sense of protection in his Abolition friends; yet at the age of twenty-one years, in this new environment of freedom, he was in many respects as ignorant as a child. To what was north, or east, or west of New York, he was entirely oblivious neither did he know the kind and the condition of the people among whom he was to live and work out his destiny. Where to go, what to do, and how to use his freedom, were questions he could ask, but could not answer. It was enough, now, just to know that he was free. What was to be his relationship to these non-slave-holding people was yet to be discovered.

It is an evidence of his self-reliance and honor, as well as his loyalty to his past, that, almost the first step in his new life, was to send for his promised wife. She came to New York at once, and they were wedded by Rev. J. W. C. Pennington, a Presbyterian minister of that city. The early marriage of the young man must be regarded as an important event in his career as a freeman. It was a marriage for love and, as his wife was a woman of strong character and determination, she was able actively to assist her husband while he was seeking to establish himself in a new country. The act also made him at once a home-builder and the head of a family. Though he was poor almost to the very limit of poverty, without work, without habitation, and without friends or relationships, having nothing, in fact, but himself, which included a sound body and strong will, he went about planning and doing things as if certain that all must come out as he wished.

His newly discovered friends decided it was best for him not to stay longer in New York, and that New Bedford, Mass., was a much safer place. There he could work at his trade without danger of re-capture. He cheerfully started on his journey, though he had not enough money to pay his way. The stage-driver, plying between Newport and New Bedford, held a part of his baggage as security for his unpaid passage and when he and his wife arrived at their destination they had nothing to live on except faith. In this New England town everything was strange to Douglass, but he was not long in finding a friend, a colored man named Nathan Johnson. The latter, the first important acquaintance the refugee made among Northern colored people, had a good home, good standing in the community, and more than ordinary intelligence. He very soon discovered that Frederick Douglass was a man of superior fibre and became his firm friend.

Johnson’s house was well furnished with books and music, and bore other evidences of good taste and a cultivated mind. He was in a position to render just that kind of help which the young fugitive and his new wife needed at this time. He at once redeemed the baggage held by the stage-driver, and gave Douglass needed directions and advice as to how to get work and to establish himself.

Nathan Johnson had the further distinction of being the man who gave to the Maryland slave the name he ever afterward bore. Douglass left the South as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. His new-found friend had just been reading Scott’s Lady of the Lake, and persuaded the young man that Douglas was a name of poetic and historical significance; he was sure it would be further glorified by its new owner. With so auspicious a beginning, the refugee started out bravely to seek work and make a living for himself and his wife.

As he moved about in the New England town, he was much impressed by Northern civilization, and was greatly surprised to see white people, who while rich, educated, and powerful, were yet not slave-holders. Up to this time he had known but two classes of white people, slave-holders and non-slave-holders. The non-slave-holding white people of the South, he knew, were generally ignorant, despised, and poor; while those who owned slaves seemed to own everything else worth having. Here in New England he observed that white people were high or low according to their character, ability, and possessions. Life appeared to him larger, wider, and fuller of possibilities than he had dreamed, even in his more hopeful days down on the Eastern Shore. These impressions and the better understanding of his own condition gave him courage and made him feel equal to any task or problem. His first occupation, as a free man, was putting away some coal for Ephraim Peabody, for which he was paid two dollars. He cherished this “free money,” for it was the first he had ever earned that he could call his own. He cheerfully went from one job to another, proud as a bank president in the new dignity which freedom seemed to have conferred upon him. He accepted any kind of task he could find to do, such as sawing wood, digging cellars, removing rubbish, helping to load cargoes on ships, scrubbing out ship cabins, and the rough work in a foundry. The employment was hard and the pay small, yet it did not seem so to this newly emancipated slave. The right to dispose of his own labor, and to have and to hold all that he made was a profound and unceasing satisfaction to him.

His spare moments were given to studying and reading everything he could lay hold of. He saw from the first that his freedom could not be profitably used and protected without knowledge and the mental discipline that comes with the effort to acquire it. He was liked by everybody who employed him, because he made it a matter of principle to do all and more than his full duty in every occupation. He put as much zeal, intelligence, and cheerful industry into these common tasks as he later gave to pursuits of a more dignified character.

Young Douglass was cheered and heartened in this wholesome atmosphere of freedom,—free schools, free labor, and general fair play, to such a degree that it was a long time before he began to feel the presence and trammels of race prejudice as they existed in New Bedford and elsewhere in the North in that day. That there was a feeling against his color he learned when he attempted to follow his trade as a calker. When he sought to hire himself to a certain ship-owner at New Bedford, he was told to go to work, but when he went to the boat with his tools, the foreman informed him that every white man would quit if he struck a blow at his trade. This unexpected dénouement drove Douglass back to common labor, at which he could earn less than one-half of what he could have made as a calker. He accepted the situation in good spirit, however, feeling that the worst possible treatment in freedom was infinitely better than slavery.

He met his next rebuff when he attempted to attend one of the lectures under the auspices of the New Bedford Lyceum Association. He was refused a ticket on the ground that it was against the policy of the society to admit colored people to the lecture-room. It was not long, however, before this discrimination was done away with, since men like Charles Sumner, Emerson, Horace Mann, and Garrison, refused to speak before the organization unless the restriction was removed. The privilege of attending these meetings and hearing some of the great anti-slavery leaders was a matter of great import to Douglass. Indeed, it was the very thing he needed as a part of his education in preparation for his life work. He heard for the first time white men who were taking strong positions on the question of the abolition of slavery. The existence of an anti-slavery society and an anti-slavery movement of ever-widening extent and influence in the nation impressed him as nothing had done since he came from the South. The things for which he had secretly dreamed and yearned and struggled in Maryland were now becoming great national issues, with men of might behind them, pushing them on and seeking to make them the foremost questions of the day.

Quite as important as the privilege of hearing slavery discussed was the chance he obtained of reading William Lloyd Garrison’s paper, The Liberator. Garrison’s direct and uncompromising words came to him like a trumpet call. He began to cherish each number as second only in importance to the Bible. Heretofore he had had no one to help him reason out the philosophy of the question. What the facts of slavery were he knew by actual and bitter suffering. The words of no one could make him feel their injustice and pain more than his own experiences had made him feel them, but here, behold, was a mighty man, a prophet in his moral earnestness—a sort of Isaiah, who with inspired fervor, predicted the ultimate downfall of slavery.

The Liberator and Mr. Garrison’s words were as important to young Douglass and his intellectual development as was the Columbian Orator, which had inspired him while a slave in Baltimore. Those who knew him at once recognized his intelligence. The colored people of New Bedford were the first to discover his fluency as a speaker and to give ear to his original ideas on the question of freedom for their race. He was often called upon to speak in meetings held by colored men in the town, and in colored churches. As far as the masses of the people were concerned, however, he was still an obscure Negro laborer. There was no one except, perhaps, Nathan Johnson, who saw in this patient and cheerful toiler the promise of a public career. No men of African descent had up to this time achieved anything like distinction. A colored man might now and then be smart as a freak of nature; no one was prepared to think of his becoming great by sheer force of mind and character. But the power within this young fugitive slave and the forces without him were fast shaping themselves to call him forth and hold him up as an example to all the world.

CHAPTER IV
BEGINNING OF HIS PUBLIC CAREER

Years had passed and great changes had taken place since Uncle Lawson, the old colored preacher, who had been Frederick Douglass’s first spiritual teacher and comforter, had solemnly told him that “the Lord had a great work for him to do,” and that he must prepare to do it. These words were spoken at a time when the boy was just beginning to awaken to the vast possibilities of human life, and, dimly conscious of his own powers, was groping to find his place in the world. Douglass had never forgotten this speech. It seemed now that the prophecy of the old colored man was to be fulfilled. During the first years at New Bedford, he had been industriously preparing himself to perform the task that destiny apparently had assigned him. He had no teachers to help him in his studies, or direct him in his reading. He had no definite notion of what the future had in store for him, nor of how he was to be used “to perform the great work,” of which Uncle Lawson had spoken. The latter believed that his young protégé was to become a preacher of the Gospel, because that seemed the only possible future of the slave upon whom unusual gifts had been bestowed. But Douglass had reached the conclusion that, if any great work had been assigned him, it was in the direction of securing the freedom of the members of his race in bonds. He was faithfully preparing himself to meet the emergency that should call him into the service of that cause.

In the summer of 1841, the opportunity, long waited for, came. A great anti-slavery convention was called by William Lloyd Garrison and his friends, to meet at Nantucket. We have already seen how deeply young Douglass was impressed with Mr. Garrison’s writings in The Liberator, and it can be easily inferred that the word “anti-slavery” should have stirred him as no other word in the language of freedom. For the first time since he came to New Bedford he determined to take a holiday for the purpose of going to Nantucket and becoming as much as possible a part of the anti-slavery meeting. However ardent others might be in their interest for the convention, to him it meant everything worth living for and dying for to find the white people in a free community taking hold of the question of abolition as if their own kith and kin were in chains.

Douglass went to see, listen, and learn. This was privilege enough for one occasion. When he was sought out by a citizen of New Bedford, who had heard of him, and was asked to say a few words, he was quite startled. So frightened was he, “it was with much difficulty,” he says, “that I could stand erect or could command or articulate two words without hesitation and stammering. I trembled in every limb. I am not sure that my embarrassment was not the most important part of my speech, if speech it could be called. The audience sympathized with me and at once, from having been remarkably silent, it became much excited.”

But his embarrassment soon subsided. Parker Pillsbury, an eye-witness, says: “When the young man, Douglass, closed late in the evening, none seemed to know or care for the lateness of the hour. The crowded congregation had been wrought up almost to enchantment as he turned over the terrible apocalypse of his experience in slavery.”

If Abolition was a great cause in the minds of those astonished auditors, it became more sincerely so after the young fugitive from bondage had concluded. William Lloyd Garrison followed, and of him Pillsbury says: “I think that Mr. Garrison never before, nor afterward felt more profoundly the sacredness of his mission. I surely never saw him more deeply and divinely inspired. He said among other things, ‘Have we been listening to a thing—a piece of property, or a man?’ ‘A man,’ shouted the audience. ‘And should such a man be held a slave in a republican and Christian land?’ ‘No, no. Never, never!’ was the fervent response. ‘Shall such a man be sent back to slavery from the soil of old Massachusetts?’ Almost the whole assembly sprang with one accord to their feet and shouted, ‘No, no!’ long and loud.”

Measured by its effect on the audience and by its importance to himself and the Abolition cause, this first speech was one of the greatest Mr. Douglass ever made. Only three years out of bondage, never having been at school, wholly self-taught and coming direct from hard toil to a platform, he had been invited to speak before an audience of proud and cultured New Englanders!

The whole thing seemed so incredible and was so unexpected that those who heard him never ceased to wonder how such wisdom and eloquence could come from a slave. It was by far the most dramatic and important incident that had occurred in the anti-slavery fight up to this time.

William Lloyd Garrison was quick to discern that the cause needed this fugitive slave, more than any other man or thing, as an argument and an illustration in the further work of the anti-slavery society. Others spoke from knowledge and conviction gained by reading and study; Douglass spoke from twenty years’ experience of all the phases of slave-life. His words had the charm born of things seen, felt, and suffered. His presentation of the subject was more than argument; it was a transcript from actual life.

Immediately after the convention, John A. Collins, then the general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, went to Mr. Douglass and urged him to accept a position as one of his assistants, publicly to advocate its principles. This unexpected offer was quite as embarrassing as was the request for him to speak at the meeting. Acting upon an impulse of self-mistrust, and a sense of unfitness, he tried to refuse, but all excuses were swept aside by Mr. Collins, and finally Douglass decided to make a trial for three months.

After recovering from his first timidity, he entered the fight with enthusiasm. No one was more surprised than he at his ability to meet the expectations of the people. In the early part of his work he was accompanied by George Foster. They traveled and lectured from the same platform through the eastern counties of Massachusetts. He was frequently introduced to the audiences as a “chattel,” a “thing,” a “piece of property,” and Mr. Collins invariably called their attention to the fact that the speaker was a “graduate from an institution whose diploma was written upon his back.”

A great deal of interest was excited in the meetings that he was invited to address. Many of those who came out of curiosity to see and hear a fugitive slave went away convinced and converted to the anti-slavery cause. Douglass soon persuaded his friends and associates to think that he was too much of a man to be employed as a mere “exhibit.” At first his eloquence and success with the public both delighted and alarmed them. There began to arise a fear that his power as an orator would prove too great. It seemed well enough for him to tell the story of his servitude, but when he indulged in logic and flights of fancy and invective, it was feared that he would be considered an impostor. If slavery was such a degrading thing as this man said it was, the question naturally arose, How, then, did he acquire his accomplishments? Besides, Douglass did not give the name of his master, or the state from which he came.

All this was true enough, and the truth was somewhat embarrassing, but the people did not stop to consider the omission. Douglass was now a resident of Massachusetts; he was a slave, owned in Maryland. To state the facts about his identity would be to invite slave-catchers to New Bedford to reclaim strayed property. There was nothing for him to do but to keep the dangerous secret securely locked in his own bosom and talk down the doubts and suspicions that were now and then expressed. George Foster, Mr. Garrison, Mr. Collins, and other friends, who happened to be on the same platform with him, were always admonishing him not to appear too intelligent, too oratorical, or too logical, lest his claim of having been a slave be discredited. “Give the facts,” they said, “and we will take care of the philosophy.” “Let us have the facts only.” “Tell your story, Frederick; people will not believe you were ever a slave, if you go on in this way.” “Be yourself.” “Better have a little plantation dialect than not.” “It is not best that you should seem so learned.”

Such were the complaints and warnings that came to him from those who most admired him, during the first few months of his career as an orator. The young man could scarcely curb his impatience, so great was his moral earnestness. The thoughts which he uttered flowed so spontaneously and uncontrollably from his lips, that it seemed to him he could no more limit himself than he could stop the force of gravitation. Speaking of this embarrassment he says: “It was impossible for me to repeat the same old story month after month and keep up my interest in it. I could not follow the injunction of my friends, for I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were being presented to my mind: I could not always curb my moral indignation.”

In order to remove all doubts as to whether he was a slave, he put the facts, including the name of his master, in the possession of the Anti-Slavery Society. As soon as Phillips and Garrison knew the truth, they advised him to go on as before, for if he gave his name and that of his master, he would be in danger of re-capture,—even in Massachusetts. When he showed to Wendell Phillips a manuscript detailing the facts of his slave-life, he was advised “to throw it in the fire”; but so straightforward and earnest and effective was his work, and so rapid his development as an orator, that he soon overcame all doubts, and those who had once urged him to curb his intellectual flights learned to admire his courage, and to put a higher value on his services to the cause of Abolition. Whenever there was serious work to be done, and the best men and women were needed to combat pro-slavery policies and measures, he was eagerly sought. His name now began to be announced with those of the foremost advocates of freedom.

In the latter part of the year 1841, and in the early months of 1842, the Abolitionists were called upon for a show of strength. The appeal came from Rhode Island. The people of that state were aroused to a high pitch of interest in an effort to adopt a new constitution in place of the old colonial charter that had been in use since the Revolution. Making a new constitution was a political question and every political contest, however local in concern, afforded occasion for the pro-slavery and anti-slavery people to clash. In this Rhode Island contest, interest centred on the proposition to restrict the right of suffrage to white citizens only. The pro-slavery sentiment of this, as of other Northern states, was so strong, that there seemed to be a great likelihood of the “color line” being fixed in the supreme law of the commonwealth. To combat this danger, the anti-slavery societies massed their forces and went into the little state to dispute every inch of the ground. Stephen S. Foster, Parker Pillsbury, Abby Kelley, James Monroe, and Frederick Douglass were the advance guard. The contest here was somewhat different from the more or less peaceful work of holding public meetings in Massachusetts to create public opinion. Here was a clean-cut issue in which was involved the right of free Negroes to be full citizens in a Northern state. Under the leadership of Thomas W. Dorr, the pro-slavery forces had to be opposed by strong arguments and not by mere sentiment. There was also a decided feeling against “intermeddlers,” as Douglass and his associates were called. Meetings were held all over the state, and soon it was plain to be seen that the anti-slavery people were making progress in overcoming the “Dorrites.” It was a picturesque and dramatic campaign, the chief features of which were the conspicuous parts taken by Frederick Douglass, the fugitive slave, and Abby Kelley. Mr. Douglass says that she “was perhaps the most successful of any of us. Her youth and simple Quaker beauty, combined with her wonderful earnestness, her large knowledge and great logical powers bore down all opposition to the end, wherever she spoke, though she was before pelted with foul eggs, and no less foul words, from the noisy mobs which attended us.”

Mr. Douglass speaks in generous praise of the effectiveness of other anti-slavery advocates, who were associated with him in this campaign. He himself made a multitude of friends and added immensely to his prestige as an orator. He was received by many of the leading citizens of the state, almost as a brother. Among these new friends he gratefully mentions the Clarks, Keltons, Chases, Adamses, Greens, Eldridges, Mitchells, Anthonys, Goulds, Fairbanks, and many others.

Yet it was not all smooth sailing for the colored orator. He was frequently dragged from the cars by mobs, though his associates were always loyal to him, many of them refusing to go where he could not. This was especially the case with Wendell Phillips, James Monroe, and William A. White.

The result of the battle in Rhode Island was a complete triumph over those who had sought to abridge the suffrage. The victory was not only important, as a show of strength of the Abolitionists, but it prevented the establishment of a dangerous precedent which might have had its influence upon other states.

From Rhode Island, Mr. Douglass was called to speak in various places. At first he was not always well received, but in nearly every case, after he had once appeared, converts were made and opposition ceased. At one time when he, with Garrison, Abby Kelley, and Foster, attempted to speak in Hartford, Conn., the doors of every hall and church were closed against them, but they spoke under the open sky, to so much effect that some of their opponents had the grace to confess to a sense of shame for such action.

At Grafton, Mass., Douglass was advertised to speak alone. There was no house, church, or market-place in which he was permitted to appear. Not to be outdone, he went up and down the streets ringing a dinner-bell that he had borrowed, announcing that “Frederick Douglass, recently a slave, will lecture on Grafton Common this evening at seven o’clock.” As a result of this notice, he spoke to a great concourse of people, and as usual advanced the cause of Abolition.

In the year 1843, the movement had so far progressed that a great undertaking was announced. It was proposed to hold one hundred conventions under the auspices of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in such states as New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Mr. Douglass was selected as one of the agents to assist in the work. This was regarded as an ambitious scheme on the part of Mr. Garrison, and attracted a great deal of public attention. Among the speakers associated with Mr. Douglass in this tour were George Bradburn, John A. Collins, James Monroe, Sidney Howard Gay, and Charles Lennox Remond, the last-named a colored man of unusual eloquence.

Mr. Douglass felt very proud, as well he might, of being given so prominent a part in this important enterprise, and of being associated with men of such distinction. The wisdom of holding these conventions was soon made manifest, when it was discovered how ill-informed were the masses of the people as to the nature of the issue the Abolitionists were seeking to force upon the attention of the country.

The crusade received rather a chilly reception in the Green Mountain State. Along the Erie Canal, from Albany to Buffalo, it was more than difficult to excite any interest or to make converts. In Syracuse, the home of Rev. Samuel J. May, and where such men as Gerrit Smith, Beriah Green, and William Goodell lived, Douglass and his friends could not obtain a hall, church, or market-place to hold a meeting. Everybody was discouraged and favored “shaking the dust from off their feet,” and going to other parts. But Frederick Douglass did not believe in surrender. He was determined to speak his word for the gospel of Abolition here, even if he must do so under the open sky, as in Connecticut and Massachusetts. In the morning he began in a grove with five people present. So powerful was his appeal that in the afternoon he had an audience of five hundred and in the evening he was tendered the use of an old building that had done service as a Congregational church. In this house the convention was organized and carried on for three days. The seeds of Abolition were so well sown in Syracuse, that thereafter it was always hospitable ground for anti-slavery advocates. Mr. Douglass had a more friendly reception in Rochester, which was to be his future home. Here he found a goodly number of Abolitionists and his words made a lasting impression.

The next meeting of importance was in Buffalo. The outlook for a convention in this western New York city was so discouraging that Mr. Douglass’s associates turned on their heels and left him to “do Buffalo alone.” The place appointed was a dilapidated old room that had once been used as a post-office. No one was there at first except a few hack-drivers who sauntered in from curiosity. But Mr. Douglass went at them with great earnestness, as if they could settle all the problems that were overburdening his heart. Out of this small and unsympathetic beginning, grew a great convention. Every day for nearly a week, in the old building, he spoke to constantly increasing crowds of people who were worth talking to, until finally a large Baptist church was thrown open to him. Here the size and character of the audience were flattering. So great was the eagerness to hear him that on Sunday evening he addressed an outdoor meeting of five thousand people in the park.

At this Buffalo meeting Mr. Douglass called to his assistance a number of prominent colored speakers, such as Henry Highland Garnet, Theodore S. Wright, Amos G. Bearman, Charles M. Ray, and Charles Lennox Remond, all of powerful speech and growing influence, who held a convention of their own, at which the ex-slave made an eloquent address.

From this city Douglass continued on his way into Ohio and Indiana. The Ohio meeting, held in Clinton County, was a notable event. This was the farthest west Mr. Douglass had been as yet and he now went into the state of Indiana. This was dangerous ground, as he soon learned when he attempted to deliver his message. Here he found a mob-spirit harder to resist than any he had encountered in the East. In attempting to speak at Richmond, Ind., where Henry Clay had been heard shortly before, he received a shower of “evil-smelling eggs.” From this place he went to Pendleton, where he could find no hall or church in which to speak; but, not to be outdone, he attempted what he had successfully accomplished at Syracuse, and at other places. He had a platform erected in the woods. A large assembly of people came out to hear the colored orator, but the Hoosiers, in this part of the state, were determined not to be persuaded.

It was, as one of them rudely expressed it, a case of “no nigger speaker for us.” As soon as the meeting began, a mob of fifty or sixty rough-looking men ordered Douglass to stop. An attempt to disregard this threatening command, maddened the rioters. They tore down the platform and violently assaulted the orator and his associate, Mr. White. Seeing the danger, Douglass began to fight his way through the crowd with a club. The sight of a weapon in the hands of a Negro angered the mob still more, and they set upon him with such fury that he was felled to the ground, being beaten so fiercely that he was left for dead. Having dispersed the meeting, the men mounted their horses and rode away. Mr. Douglass’s right hand was broken, and he was in a state of unconsciousness for some time. He was unable to speak for several days, being tenderly cared for by a Mrs. Neal Hardy, a member of the Society of Friends, until his wounds were healed, but he never recovered the full use of his right hand.

Notwithstanding this rough treatment, Mr. Douglass would not allow himself to be frightened out of the state. He continued his work for a long time, and compelled a respectful and peaceful hearing. He was no coward and was not afraid of mobs. He did not stop until, according to the plans determined upon by the Anti-Slavery Society of Massachusetts, the one hundred conventions had been held. The work was accomplished, in spite of indifference, contemptuous criticism, and sometimes violent and bloody opposition.

Although it seemed at the time that not much had been achieved, the seed sown was to bear fruit when a few years later the South and North were arrayed against each other in the great struggle for the preservation of the Union.

CHAPTER V
SLAVERY AND ANTI-SLAVERY

Frederick Douglass was so much a part of the Abolition movement from 1838 to the final overthrow of slavery in the United States, that his career will be the better understood after a brief review of the condition of the country as affected by the evil during those years.

At the time of Douglass’s escape from bondage in 1838, slavery was the one great and overshadowing fact in our national life. According to the census of 1840, the number of slaves in the United States was about 2,500,000 and the number of free colored people about 300,000. The value of slave-property was upward of two billions of dollars. No other interest in the United States at that time approximated in the amount of its invested capital the sum represented in these human chattels. The labor of these slaves was to a very considerable extent the basis of American commerce and credit. Not the South alone, but the entire nation, was interested directly or indirectly, in preserving the integrity and maintaining the economic value of slave-labor. The mining, the manufacturing, and the great grain interests of the present time were unknown and scarcely dreamed of in those early days of the nation’s industries. Cotton was “king,” and its dominion affected in some way, and to some degree, the social, political, and economic life of the republic.

The results of Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin were such as to check the current of sentiment in favor of emancipation, which had found expression in the sayings of Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and other Revolutionary leaders. In his great speech of March 7, 1850, Daniel Webster said: “In 1791 the first parcel of cotton of the growth of the United States was exported and amounted to 19,200 pounds. It has gone on increasing rapidly until the whole crop may now, perhaps, in a season of great product and great prices, amount to $100,000,000.” According to the estimates of the United States Census Bureau in its census of 1900, cotton production increased from 2,000,025 pounds in 1790 to 987,637,200 pounds in 1849, and 2,397,238,140 pounds in 1859. The enormous capital invested in this industry created a close community of interest between the planters of the South and the capitalists of the North; hence the influence of the cotton trade was felt in both sections.

This enormous interest easily dominated the politics of the times, North and South. The most prominent statesmen of the nation, after 1850, were either openly committed to policies and measures to protect and extend the power of slavery, or were silent, since to oppose these policies and measures meant, in many instances, political extinction. The trend of all legislation in our national government at this period was directly opposed to emancipation. Meanwhile, the evil flourished and became more and more a part of the spirit and blood of our national life. If there were no slavery in the Northern states, one reason was that slave-labor had proven unprofitable. In the early days of the institution, the North was quite as willing to legalize and protect slavery as the South, and continued to do so as long as it paid and was practicable. The mere fact that slavery was profitable where climatic conditions were congenial to cotton raising, increased the demand for both slaves and territory. The pressure for more slaves and more territory for slavery, was so persistent, that it constantly became easier to ignore moral and religious precepts, to set aside the national maxims, and to override the laws that stood in the way of its extension and power. For example, the slave-trade was prohibited by national law, yet so little effort was made to enforce this law, that importations kept the market well supplied. The acts of Congress, the messages of our presidents, the utterances of our cabinet ministers, and correspondence with the representatives of the nation at foreign courts, contain abundant evidences of the constant concern of our government that nothing should be done to impair the security of slave-property in the United States. The acts of Congress by which every addition to our national domain south of the Ohio River became slave-territory, clearly show this. When in 1855, a “slaver” was driven by storm to seek refuge in Bermuda, our Minister at the Court of St. James was instructed that, “in the present state of diplomatic relations with the government of his British Majesty, the most immediately pressing of the matters with which the United States Legation at London is now charged, is the claim of certain American citizens against Great Britain, for a number of slaves wrecked on the island in the Atlantic.” The message contains a polite hint that “neglect to satisfy these demands might possibly tend to disturb and weaken the kind and amicable relations that now so happily subsist between the two countries.”

By sanction of the national government, slavery was legalized and protected at the national capital. The war with Mexico, which resulted in the annexation of Texas, was followed by the establishment of slavery in the territory so acquired. It was fostered and defended as a national institution not only by numerous acts of the government, but by public sentiment in the Northern states. It had existed before the foundation of the Union. It had been accepted as a fact by the framers of the Constitution. As such, it had a legitimate claim, it was urged, to the protection of the government. It was generally assumed that, on the whole, the Negro was better off in slavery than as a free man. Though the Northern people did not favor the extension of slavery, they were disposed to meet in a spirit of conciliation every demand for more protection, more power, and more territory for this traffic.

When opposition, not on grounds of expediency but of fundamental right, began to manifest itself in Northern states by the circulation of Abolition papers, the alarm of slave-owners was expressed in no uncertain tones. Some of the governors of slave-states and their legislatures made urgent demands that such publications be suppressed. The following is a sample of some of the resolutions passed by the legislatures: “Resolved that our sister states are respectfully requested to enact penal laws prohibiting the printing, within their respective limits, of all such publications as may have a tendency to make our slaves discontented.”

The messages of the governors of two Northern states, William L. Marcy of New York, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts, aptly illustrate sentiment in the North at this time. Governor Marcy said: “Without the power to pass such laws, the states would not possess all the necessary means for preserving their external relations of peace among themselves.” Governor Everett said: “Whatever by direct and necessary operation is calculated to excite an insurrection among slaves, has been held by highly respectable legal authority an offense against the peace of this commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law.”

In the same year, 1836, the Rhode Island legislature reported on a bill in conformity with the demands of the slave-states. The significance of this action is that it was taken fully two months prior to the request of the Southern states. Thus it appears that the idea of the suppression of free speech and free publication against slavery was first broached in a Northern state.

President Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, in 1835 suggested “the propriety of passing such laws as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern states, through the mail, of incendiary publications, intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection.”

The Postmaster-General, a Northern man, serving under Jackson, refused to “sanction” or condemn the acts of certain postmasters in arresting the circulation of Abolition circulars, characterized as “incendiary matter.”

The state of public feeling at this time fully justified the government and its officials in everything they did to protect slavery, since their action was sanctioned by a sentiment national in extent and character. Just how strong was this public opinion in the North may be further illustrated by the spirit of mob-violence that forms one of the darkest chapters in the struggle to make this country, in deed as well as in name, “the home of the free.” William Lloyd Garrison and Benjamin Lundy, were repeatedly assaulted while they were running a paper in Baltimore in 1827. The gentle and pious young Quakeress, Prudence Crandall, of Canterbury, Conn., was arrested and sent to jail for allowing colored children to attend her school. Her brother, Dr. Reuben Crandall, was arrested in the city of Washington, thrown into prison on August 11, 1833, and held there for eight months on the charge of circulating incendiary publications with the intent of inciting slaves to insurrection. The only evidence against him was that he had in his trunk some anti-slavery circulars. He died from the effects of his imprisonment soon after his release.

On the 4th day of July, 1834, an anti-slavery meeting in New York was made the occasion of a frightful riot. At Worcester, Mass., in 1835, an anti-slavery speaker, Rev. O. Scott, son of an ex-governor, was forcibly prevented from delivering a lecture, and his notes were torn up. On the same day at Canaan, N. H., an academy was demolished, for the reason that it was designed for the instruction of colored youth. At Boston, on October 21, 1835, a mob of “five thousand gentlemen” attacked the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and dispersed one of its meetings while its president was at prayers. At Syracuse, N. Y., in October, 1833, a crowd of “prominent” citizens broke up a meeting called by Gerrit Smith to form an anti-slavery society; and in December, 1836, an anti-slavery meeting at New Haven, Conn., was dispersed by students of Yale College. At Alton, Ill., on the 7th day of November, 1837, Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was shot and killed and his printing press destroyed by a mob. At Cincinnati, O., in 1836, and again in 1840, mobs of citizens demolished the printing press of the Philanthropist, owned by James G. Birney, an ex-slave-holder from Kentucky. Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, built for the free discussion of all questions interesting to the American people, was burned by a mob in May, 1838, because Abolitionists had been allowed to hold a meeting there.

But what was perhaps the most heartless of all instances of violence occurred on the 1st of August, 1842, at Philadelphia. The colored people of that city had built a fine church and hall in which they were holding a temperance celebration on the day of the anniversary of British emancipation. A mob was formed which burned the building, demolished the homes of the participants, and in a most savage and brutal manner, beat and maltreated its innocent victims. This riot lasted two days and the city authorities offered but feeble protection.

Many other incidents of violence directed against attempts to discuss the slavery question might be recited, but enough have been mentioned to indicate public feeling in almost every community in the non-slave-holding States. All these manifestations of opposition to anti-slavery agitation and action were at first and for a long time very generally sanctioned by the churches, the schools and colleges, and by the politicians of the free North. All the forces of conservatism in the country were, as might have been expected, in favor of preserving the status quo, and scarcely any cause in the whole history of our country has ever been so unpopular as this Abolition movement. It seemed that the slave-holders might rest perfectly secure in the assurance that their interests would be well guarded by their friends in the free-states, assisted by the natural inertia of the great mass of the Northern people, who were instinctively opposed to any sudden or violent change such as the agitation of the Abolitionists seemed to portend.

The inherent weakness of slavery in this country appeared when the very laws that were passed to sustain and support it served merely to arouse the public to a real comprehension of its evils. Gradually it became clear to an ever-increasing number of citizens that it had no place in a republic. It was out of harmony with the doctrines and principles fought for in the Revolutionary War, and it did violence to the consciences of large numbers of men and women, North and South, who, uncontrolled by prejudice, were free to think and act for themselves. Thousands of Southern people who felt that slavery was a wrong, emancipated their slaves; others were moved to treat them with unusual kindness, and still others held them because they could not help themselves.

Many influences were at work to arouse and quicken the moral sense of the public and to make it conscious of the issues involved in the question. Such agencies as the missionary movement, in its effort to “evangelize” the world; the work of the Bible, tract and educational societies, the religious awakening of the masses, in response to the appeals of such eloquent preachers as Beecher, Rice, and Summerfield; and the new interest in the former teachings of Hopkins and Edwards:—all these forces, along with the new enthusiasm for social and political reform, which found expression in the work of temperance and peace societies and the fight against the cruel treatment of the Indians, especially the Cherokees, aroused the people and prepared them to take part in the discussion of public questions, giving them a new sense of the significance and the responsibility of self-government. This revived public spirit was aided and advanced by the growing influence of the modern newspaper press, and of journals dealing with a variety of subjects other than politics. Each moral and social question came to have an organ to spread its views. Every one who had a gift for writing had the opportunity to impress his opinions upon the public, if he could but get hold of a press and printing outfit. A noted author of that period says: “No one can comprehend in their real and distinctive characteristics, the existing agitations of America, if he does not take into account the new power and changed direction of the public press constituting a new era in human history.”

With these agencies for the education of the masses, there came into being the lecture platform. Any man or woman with a talent for fluent speech and a “cause,” was at liberty to take the rostrum and attempt to get a hearing. The same writer, above quoted, says: “The railway car of 1838, and the electric telegraph ten years after, were scarcely greater innovations or greater curiosities than were the voluntary lectures, free public conventions, and the moral and religious weekly journals with their correspondence from 1825 to 1830.”

The development of these moral and religious agencies furnished the masses of the American people with the means of creating a more active interest in public affairs. Out of these grew that broader knowledge and more acute moral sense which led them to inquire into the sanctions that seemed to hedge about and protect the institution of slavery.

It was in such an atmosphere, in which religious enthusiasm touched and quickened the sense of responsibility of the people in social and political conditions, that the Abolition spirit grew and became a power in public affairs. The question of slavery was definitely put before the people as a political issue in the Missouri Compromise in 1820. During the debate that followed they heard for the first time, the doctrine of “immediate and unconditional emancipation of the slave.” Interest in this new and radical doctrine was immediate and wide-spread. To those who owned slaves, and indeed to the vast majority of the people, North and South, who accepted slavery as an established institution with a legitimate claim to protection from attack, this new doctrine seemed at once revolutionary and dangerous.

The cry at once went up, “Put down the discussion and silence the agitation!” It was indeed a question that could not survive debate. As a matter of fact, the opposition which Abolition aroused was the one thing that insured its final triumph. Men felt instinctively—it was the republican habit of mind—that there must be something essentially unsound in a system that could not tolerate open and free discussion. Hence it was that every attempt to suppress the agitation defeated its own purposes. The characters who now began to push to the front in the ranks of the Abolitionists were men of stern American fibre. Facts, figures, and arguments began to pile up which showed that this country could not long exist “half-slave and half-free.” The terms “pro-slavery” and “anti-slavery” came into the vocabulary of political discussion during this new conflict. The breach between the forces represented by these names grew wider and wider as the strife continued. The very nature of the issue caused a degree of bitterness that has never before or since been equaled in political argument in the United States. There could be no such thing as compromise. A test of moral and physical strength was sooner or later inevitable.

The issues of the contest may be summarized with advantage.