Frederick Douglass

by Booker T. Washington

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.