This was the beginning of his last days in Britain. He was invited to dinners, receptions, teas, scheduled for “farewell” speeches.
“What will you do?” they asked.
“I should like to establish a paper, a paper in which I can speak directly to my people, a paper that will prove whether or not a Negro has mind, the tongue of reason, and can present facts and arguments clearly.”
They placed twenty-five hundred dollars in his hands—as a start toward this enterprise.
“You will come back!” They made it both a question and an affirmation.
“When we have won our fight!” He nodded.
A crowd accompanied him to the boat at Liverpool and stood waving him goodbye. John Bright’s eyes were wet.
“We’ll miss you, Douglass!” said the little spinner from Lancaster.
The shores and wharves and people blurred as he stood on the deck. They had been so good. He reached in his pocket and once more took out the precious papers that declared him free.
The transaction had to be in two parts. Thomas Auld first sold him to his brother Hugh, and then the Philadelphia lawyer had secured the final manumission paper through the Baltimore authorities. It was this second and final sheet that Frederick unfolded—the paper for which the people of England had paid seven hundred and fifty dollars.