Washington read of Frederick Douglass’ return in the National Era. Gamaliel Bailey had been printing short accounts of his activities in Great Britain. Many of the Abolitionists had protested against Douglass’ purchase by English friends. They declared it a violation of antislavery principles and a wasteful expenditure of money. The National Era took up the issue.
“Our English friends are wise,” Bailey’s editorial commented. “Maryland’s slave laws still stand. Frederick Douglass is now free anywhere in the United States, only because he carries manumission papers on his person. The Eastern Shore can no longer claim him.”
The slaveholding power, it seemed, was stronger than ever. Texas with its millions of acres had been admitted to the Union, and President Polk was negotiating a treaty that favored the slave oligarchy. Abolitionists had split over political matters and had weakened themselves. But the sparks had fallen and were lighting fires in unexpected places. Charles Sumner, emerging from the State Legislature in Massachusetts, was moving toward the United States Senate. From Pennsylvania came David Wilmot with his amendment of the proposed treaty saying “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part” of the territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War. Longfellow, most popular author in America, was writing thunderously on slavery; The Biglow Papers were circulating, and petitions, signed by tens of thousands, were gathered and delivered in Washington by Henry Wilson and John Greenleaf Whittier. Inside Congress, the aged John Quincy Adams laid the petitions before the House. The House tabled them—but the sparks continued to fly.
On an evening late in May a group of people responded to invitations sent out by the Reverend Theodore Parker and gathered at his house in Boston. He had called them together to discuss further strategy. Among those present were Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing,[9] Walter Channing, [9] Wendell Phillips, James Russell Lowell, James and Lucretia Mott, Charles Sumner, Joshua Blanchard, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass.
These men and women had not agreed on every issue in the past, but now they united their efforts toward one single end: Slavery must be stopped. If it could not now be abolished, at least it must not spread. The Wilmot Proviso must be carried to the country.
And who was better equipped to carry out such a mandate than William Lloyd Garrison and their newly returned co-worker, who had been hailed throughout Great Britain? The man who bore his “diploma” on his back, Frederick Douglass. So it was decided.
Douglass’ reputation no longer rested on the warm word of his personal friends. Not only had accounts of him been printed in the Liberator, but the Standard and the Pennsylvania Freeman had told of his speeches and reception abroad. Every antislavery paper in the country had picked up the stories. Horace Greeley had told New York about him. Nor was the opposition unaware of him. The advocates and supporters of slavery pointed to him as “a horrible example” of what “could happen.”
“Douglass!” The name was whispered in cabins and in tobacco and rice fields. It traveled up and down the Eastern Shore. A tall black girl, dragging logs through the marsh, heard it and resolved to run away. She became “Sojourner Truth” of the Underground Railroad—the fearless agent who time after time returned to the Deep South to organize bands of slaves and lead them out.
In Boston and Albany and New York they clamored to see and hear Douglass. And in clubs and offices and behind store-fronts they muttered angry words.