It was the spring of 1855, and never had the huge mills and factories and tanneries of Rochester been busier. Great logs of Allegheny pine rode down the Genesee River and lay in clean, shining tiers of lumber in the yards. Up and down the Erie Canal went the flatboats, mules straining at the heavy loads; and on the docks of Rochester Port the goods lay piled waiting for lake steamers to go westward. Rochester boasted that it was the most important station on the newly completed New York Central Railroad.
The vigorous young city waxed fat. Sleek, trim “city fathers” began considering the “cultural aspects” of their town. Rochester’s Gallery of Fine Arts was established; plans were drawn up for an Academy of Music. “Causes” became less popular than they had been. There were those who gave an embarrassed laugh when Susan B. Anthony’s name came up, and some wondered if so much antislavery agitation was good for their city.
Slaveholders, vacationing in Saratoga Springs, dropped in on Rochester. They admired its wide, clean streets and fine buildings, but they shuddered at the sight of well-dressed Negroes in the streets. The Southerners spent money freely and talked about new cotton mills; and more than one wondered aloud why Frederick Douglass was allowed to remain in such a fine city.
But the hardy, true strain of the people ran deep. When Frederick Douglass was prevented from speaking in nearby Homer by a barrage of missiles, Oren Carvath resigned as deacon of the Congregational Church, sold his farm and moved to Oberlin. His son, Erastus, made Negro education the work of his life and became the first president of Fisk University.
There was scarcely any moon the night Douglass rode his horse homeward along Ridge Road. He had spoken in Genesee on the Nebraska Bill and politics for Abolitionists.
He enjoyed these solitary rides. They cleared his brain. But tonight he kept thinking about an angry letter he had received that day—a letter in which the writer had accused Douglass of having deserted his friend Garrison “in the time of his greatest need.” Douglass loved William Lloyd Garrison and the complete unselfish sincerity of the New Englander’s every utterance.
“If there is a good man walking on this earth today, that man is Garrison!” Douglass spoke the words aloud and then he sighed.
For he knew that the North Star was diverging more and more from Garrison’s Liberator. Douglass took a different stand on the Constitution of the United States.