He had been dissuaded from starting a newspaper by two things. First, as soon as he returned from England he had been called upon to exercise to the fullest extent all his abilities as a speaker. Friends told him that in this field he could render the best and most needed service. They had discouraged the idea of his becoming an editor. Such an undertaking took training and experience. Douglass, always quick to acknowledge his own deficiencies, began to think his project far too ambitious.
Second, William Lloyd Garrison needed whatever newspaper gifts Douglass had for the Liberator. Garrison felt that a second antislavery paper in the same region was not needed. He pointed out that the way of the Liberator was hard enough as it was. He did not think of Douglass as a rival. But, quite frankly, he wanted the younger man to remain under his wing. There was nothing more selfish here than what a father might feel for his own son.
But Douglass was no longer a fledgling. The time had come for him to strike out for himself.
Rochester was a young, new city. It was ideally located in the Genesee valley, where the Genesee River flowed into Lake Ontario; it was a terminus of the Erie Canal. Here was an ideal set-up for getting slaves safely across into Canada! Day and night action—more action—was what Douglass wanted now. There was already an intelligent and highly respected group of Abolitionists in Rochester. It was composed of both Negroes and whites. They would, he knew, gather round him. He would not be working alone. In western New York his paper would in no way interfere with the circulation of the Liberator.
And so on December 3, 1847, appeared in Rochester, New York, a new paper—the North Star. Its editor was Frederick Douglass, its assistant editor Martin R. Delaney, and its object “to attack slavery in all its forms and aspects; advance Universal Emancipation; exact the standard of public morality, promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people; and to hasten the day of freedom to our three million enslaved fellow-countrymen.”
“Politics is an evil thing—it is not for us. We address ourselves to men’s conscience!” Garrison had often said. But Frederick Douglass went into politics.
The Free Soil party, formed in 1848, did not become a positive political force under that name. But, assembling in August as the election of 1852 drew near, it borrowed the name of “Free Democracy” from the Cleveland Convention of May 2, 1849, and drew to itself both Free Soilers and the remnants of the independent Liberty party. Frederick Douglass, on motion of Lewis Tappan, was made one of the secretaries. The platform declared for “no more slave states, no slave territory, no nationalized slavery, and no national legislation for the extradition of slaves.”
The most aggressive speech of the convention was made by Frederick Douglass, who was for exterminating slavery everywhere. The lion had held himself in rein for some time. The duties of editor and printer of his paper had chained him to his desk. He had built onto his house to make room for the fugitive slaves who now came in a steady stream to Rochester, directed to “Douglass,” agent of the Underground Railroad, who handled the difficult and dangerous job of getting the runaway slaves into Canada.
Douglass was still a young man, yet that night as he stood with the long, heavy bush of crinkly hair flowing back from his head like a mane—thick, full beard and flashing eyes—there was about him a timeless quality, embracing a long sweep of years, decades of suffering and much accumulated wisdom.