“The motto upon our banner has been, from the commencement of our moral warfare, ‘Our country is the world—our countrymen are all mankind.’ We trust it will be our only epitaph. Another motto we have chosen is ‘Universal Emancipation.’ Up to this time we have limited its application to those who are held in this country, by Southern taskmasters, as marketable commodities, goods and chattels, and implements of husbandry. Henceforth we shall use it in its widest latitude: the emancipation of our whole race from the dominion of man, from the thralldom of self, from the government of brute force, from the bondage of sin—and bringing them under the dominion of God, the control of an inward spirit, the government of the law of love, and into the obedience and liberty of Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Frederick’s heart beat fast. He was breathing hard. The words came faint; for inside he was shouting, “This man is Moses! Here is the Moses who will lead my people out of bondage!” He wanted to throw himself at this man’s feet. He wanted to help him.
Then they were singing—all the people in the hall were singing—and Frederick slipped out. He ran all the way home. He could not walk.
Summer came. There was more work on the wharves, when his son was born. Frederick laughed at obstacles. He’d show them! “Them” became the whole world—the white caulkers who refused to work with him, anybody who denied a place to his son because his skin was rosy brown! The young father went into an oil refinery, and then into a brass foundry where all through the next winter he worked two nights a week besides each day. Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like water, might seem more favorable to action than to thought, yet while he fanned the flames Frederick dreamed dreams, saw pictures in the flames. He must get ready! He must learn more. He nailed a newspaper to the post near his bellows and read while he pushed the heavy beam up and down.
In the summer of 1841 the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society held its grand convention in Nantucket. Frederick decided to take a day off from work and attend a session.
The little freedom breeze was blowing up a gale. Theologians, congressmen, governors and business men had hurled invectives, abuse and legislation at the Anti-Slavery Society, at the Liberator and at the paper’s editor, William Lloyd Garrison. But in London, Garrison had refused to sit on the floor of the World Convention of Anti-Slavery Societies because women delegates had been barred; and now the very man who had founded the movement in America was being execrated by many of those who professed to follow him.
But Frederick knew only that William Lloyd Garrison would be at Nantucket.
The boat rounded Brant Point Light and came suddenly on a gray town that rose out of the sea. Nantucket’s cobbled lanes, bright with summer frocks, fanned up from the little bay where old whalers rested at anchor, slender masts of long sloops pointed to the sky, deep-sea fishing boats sprawled on the dirty waters, and discolored warehouses crowded down on the quays.
Frederick had no trouble finding his way to the big hall, for the Abolitionist convention was the main event in the town. It spilled out into the streets where groups of men stood in knots, talking excitedly. Quakers, sitting inside their covered carriages, removed their hats and talked quietly; and women, trying not to be conspicuous, stood under shade trees, but they too talked.
The morning session had been stormy. A serious rift had developed within the ranks of the antislavery movement. During his absence Garrison had been attacked by a body of clergymen for what they termed his “heresies”—the immediate charge being his “breaking of the Sabbath.” Garrison, it seemed, saw no reason why anyone should “rest” from abolishing slavery any day of the week. He maintained that all days should be kept holy. He lacked forbearance and Christian patience, they charged. He “aired America’s dirty linen” in Europe. He “insulted” the English brethren when he took his stand for full recognition of women in the World Anti-Slavery Convention, despite the fact that St. Paul had adjured women to silence. Garrison had made a statement in the Liberator: “I expressly declare that I stand upon the Bible, and the Bible alone, in regard to my views of the Sabbath, the Church, and the Ministry, and that I feel that if I can not stand triumphantly on that foundation I can stand nowhere in the universe. My arguments are all drawn from the Bible and from no other source.”[3]