"The following is a copy of these curious papers, both of my transfer from Thomas to Hugh Auld, and from Hugh to myself:
"Know all men by these Presents, That I, Thomas Auld, of Talbot county, and state of Maryland, for and in consideration of the sum of one hundred dollars, current money, to me paid by Hugh Auld, of the city of Baltimore, in the said state, at and before the sealing and delivery of these presents, the receipt whereof, I, the said Thomas Auld, do hereby acknowledge, have granted, bargained, and sold, and by these presents do grant, bargain, and sell unto the said Hugh Auld, his executors, administrators, and assigns, ONE NEGRO MAN, by the name of Frederick Baily, or Douglass, as he calls himself—he is now about twenty-eight years of age—to have and to hold the said negro man for life. And I, the said Thomas Auld, for myself, my heirs, executors, and administrators, all and singular, the said Frederick Baily, alias Douglass, unto the said Hugh Auld, his executors, administrators, and assigns, against me, the said Thomas Auld, my executors, and administrators, and against all and every other person or persons whatsoever, shall and will warrant and forever defend by these presents. In witness whereof, I set my hand and seal, this thirteenth day of November, eighteen hundred and forty-six.
Thomas Auld.
"Signed, sealed, and delivered in presence of Wrightson Jones.
"John C. Leas."
"The authenticity of this bill of sale is attested by N. Harrington, a justice of the peace of the state of Maryland, and for the county of Talbot, dated same day as above.
"To all whom it may concern: Be it known, that I, Hugh Auld, of the city of Baltimore, in Baltimore county, in the state of Maryland, for divers good causes and considerations, me thereunto moving, have released from slavery, liberated, manumitted, and set free, and by these presents do hereby release from slavery, liberate, manumit, and set free, MY NEGRO MAN, named Frederick Baily, otherwise called Douglass, being of the age of twenty-eight years, or thereabouts, and able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood and maintenance; and him the said negro man, named Frederick Baily, otherwise called Frederick Douglass, I do declare to be henceforth free, manumitted, and discharged from all manner of servitude to me, my executors, and administrators forever.
"In witness whereof, I, the said Hugh Auld, have hereunto set my hand and seal, the fifth of December, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-six.
Hugh Auld.
"Sealed and delivered in presence of T. Hanson Belt.
"James N. S. T. Wright."
Mr. Douglass had returned to America, but the truths he proclaimed in England, Ireland, and Scotland echoed adown their mountains, and reverberated among their hills. The Church of Scotland and the press of England were distressed with the problem of slavery. The public conscience had been touched, and there was "no rest for the wicked." Mr. Douglass had received his name—Douglass—from Nathan Johnson, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, because he had just been reading about the virtuous Douglass in the works of Sir Walter Scott. How wonderful then, in the light of a few years, that a fugitive slave from America, bearing one of the most powerful names in Scotland should lean against the pillars of the Free Church of Scotland, and meet and vanquish its brightest and ablest teachers (the friends of slavery, unfortunately), Doctors Cunningham and Candlish!
It will be remembered that Mr. Garrison had built his school upon the fundamental idea that slavery was constitutional; and that in order to secure the overthrow of the institution he was compelled to do his work outside of the Constitution; and to effect the good desired, the Union should be dissolved. With these views Mr. Douglass had coincided at first, and into the ranks of this party he had entered. But upon his return from England he changed his residence and views about the same time, and established his home and a newspaper in Rochester, New York State. Mr. Douglass gave his reasons for leaving the Garrisonian party as follows:
"About four years ago, upon a reconsideration of the whole subject, I became convinced that there was no necessity for dissolving the 'union between the northern and southern states'; that to seek this dissolution was no part of my duty as an abolitionist; that to abstain from voting, was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery; and that the constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery, but, on the contrary, it is, in its letter and spirit, an anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence, as the supreme law of the land."[125]
It was charged by some persons that for financial reasons Mr. Douglass changed his views and residence; that the Garrisonians were poor; but that Gerrit Smith was rich; and that he assisted Mr. Douglass in establishing the "North Star," a weekly paper. But Mr. Douglass was a man of boldness of thought and independence of character; and whatever the motives were which led him away from his early friends he at least deserved credit for possessing the courage necessary to such a change. But Mr. Douglass was not the only anti-slavery man who imagined that the Constitution was an anti-slavery instrument. This was the error of Charles Sumner. Slavery was as legal as the right of the Government to coin money. As has been shown already, it was recognized and protected by law when the British sceptre ruled the colonies; it was recognized by all the courts during the Confederacy; it was acknowledged as a legal fact by the Treaty of Paris of 1782, and of Ghent in 1814: the gentlemen who framed the Constitution fixed the basis of representation in Congress upon three fifths of the slaves; and gave the owners of slaves a fugitive slave law, at the birth of the nation, by which to hunt their slaves in all the States and Territories of North America. But Mr. Douglass lived long enough to see that he was wrong and Mr. Garrison right; that the dissolution of the Union was the only way to free his race. In his way he did his part as faithfully and as honestly as any of his brethren in either one of the anti-slavery parties.
Having established a reputation as an orator in England and America; and having lifted over the tangled path of his fugitive brethren the unerring, friendly "North Star," he now turned his attention to debating. It was a matter of regret that two such powerful and accomplished orators as Frederick Douglass and Samuel Ringgold Ward should have taken up so much precious time in splitting hairs on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery. Perhaps it did good. It certainly did the men good. It was an education to them, and exciting to their audiences. Mr. Douglass's forte was in oratory; in exposing the hideousness of slavery and the wrongs of his race. Mr. Ward—a protégé of Gerrit Smith's—was scholarly, thoughtful, logical, and eloquent. Mr. Douglass was generally worsted in debate, but always triumphant in oratory. A careful study of Mr. Douglass's speeches from the time he began his career as a public speaker down to the present time reveals wonderful progress in their grammatical and synthetical structure. He grew all the time. On the 12th of May, 1846, he delivered a speech at Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, from which the following is extracted:
"All the slaveholder asks of me is silence. He does not ask me to go abroad and preach in favor of slavery; he does not ask any one to do that. He would not say that slavery is a good thing, but the best under the circumstances. The slaveholders want total darkness on the subject. They want the hatchway shut down, that the monster may crawl in his den of darkness, crushing human hopes and happiness, destroying the bondman at will, and having no one to reprove or rebuke him. Slavery shrinks from the light; it hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved. To tear off the mask from this abominable system, to expose it to the light of heaven, aye, to the heat of the sun, that it may burn and wither it out of existence, is my object in coining to this country. I want the slaveholder surrounded, as by a wall of anti-slavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring down in letters of light. I want him to feel that he has no sympathy in England, Scotland, or Ireland; that he has none in Canada, none in Mexico, none among the poor wild Indians; that the voice of the civilized, aye, and savage world is against him. I would have condemnation blaze down upon him in every direction, till, stunned and overwhelmed with shame and confusion, he is compelled to let go the grasp he holds upon the persons of his victims, and restore them to their long-lost rights."
This was in 1846. On the 5th of July, 1852, at Rochester, New York, he, perhaps, made the most effective speech of his life. The poet Sheridan has written: "Eloquence consists in the man, the subject, and the occasion." None of these conditions were wanting. There was the man, the incomparable Douglass; the wrongs of slavery was his subject; and the occasion was the 4th of July.
"Fellow-citizens:—Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
"Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the 'lame man leap as an hart.'
"But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.
"'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.'
"Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, 'may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!' To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American Slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, every thing that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great sin and shame of America! 'I will not equivocate; I will not excuse'; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just."