Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998

Languages Used:

• English

LC Subject Headings:

• Abolitionists -- United States -- Biography.
  
• African American abolitionists -- Biography.
  
• African American orators -- Biography.
  
• African Americans -- Maryland -- Biography.
  
• Antislavery movements -- United States.
  
• Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895 -- Oratory.
  
• Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895.
  
• Fugitive slaves -- Maryland -- Biography.
  
• Slavery -- Maryland -- History -- 19th century.
  
• Slavery -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
  
• Slaves -- Maryland -- Biography.
  

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Frederick Douglass

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FREDERICK DOUGLASS
The Colored Orator.

BY

FREDERIC MAY HOLLAND,
Author of "The Reign of the Stoics," "Stories from Robert Browning,"
"The Rise of Intellectual Liberty," etc.

REVISED EDITION

[PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES]
New York
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
LONDON AND TORONTO
1895

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1891 by
FUNK & WAGNALLS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

        THE invitation to write this life was readily accepted, partly because I hoped it would in some degree reduce the color-prejudice, with other prejudices also, and partly because I have always felt an admiration for Mr. Douglass, which has increased as I have come to know him thoroughly. His consent was cordially given in a letter, where he says: "If you can say anything of me that the public does not already know, by all means tell it. I am sure you cannot say anything of me which will not be pretty strongly colored, but go ahead." Shortly before departing to Hayti he was kind enough to answer many questions which I put to him in his house, on Cedar Hill, and to relate anecdotes which will be new to my readers. He also lent me ten of his unpublished lectures, and so many other manuscripts and rare pamphlets, that I have been able not only to mention but to quote more than a hundred works by an author not admitted to a place among the forty-six thousand writers of English enrolled by Allibone.

        The list of published speeches, etc., in the Appendix has been made as complete as possible by inquiry in various directions. Much valuable information was obtained from Mr. Frederick Douglass, Jr., whose scrap-books gave me abundance of material about the later years of his father's life. By far the most difficult part of my work has been that relating to the decade just before the war; and here I was greatly aided and encouraged by the letters of reminiscences contributed by Miss Sallie Holley, Mrs. Lucy N. Colman, and another lady who knew Mr. Douglass in Rochester. For these and other extraordinary opportunities I am very grateful.

        More generally known sources of information, like the files of the "Liberator," have, of course, been examined thoroughly. Among the most valuable of books to me has been the "Life of Garrison," by his sons, who kindly supplied advance sheets and permitted me to make copious extracts. This favor I should have been glad to repay more fully, but unfortunately there were some serious differences of opinion between their hero and mine, under circumstances now but little known to readers generally. Here it becomes my plain duty to try and vindicate Douglass, even at the expense of a great philanthropist whom all delight to honor. Desire to do sufficient justice to important questions has suggested some comments on the Harper's Ferry tragedy, socialism, and the Southern problem; but it did not seem necessary to do more than give the orator's views about prohibition the tariff, and the merits of various candidates for President; and I hope I have not shown myself too party-colored.

F. M. H.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

        To this edition I have added an account of the last five years of the life of Mr. Douglass, and especially of his speeches at the World's Fair. I have also been able to show his position on the Hawaian question, to complete my list of his publications, to correct several mistakes, for instance on pp. 45 and 229, and to give what may be a more accurate estimate than my previous one of his peculiar greatness.

F. M. H.

CONTENTS.

• Preface . . . . . iii, iv
• CHAPTER I. The Slave . . . . . 7-31
• CHAPTER II. The Fugitive . . . . . 32-56
• CHAPTER III. The Crusader . . . . . 57-80
• CHAPTER IV. "Confident Against the World in Arms" . . . . . 81-111
• CHAPTER V. Beyond the Color-Line . . . . . 112-148
• CHAPTER VI. The "North Star" . . . . . 149-189
• CHAPTER VII. With the Men who Abolished Slavery . . . . . 190-206
• CHAPTER VIII. "The Man who is Right is a Majority" . . . . . 207-229
• CHAPTER IX. "Beware of a Yankee when he is Feeding" . . . . . 230-255

  ---

  Page vi

• CHAPTER X. "Is God Dead?" . . . . . 256-283
• CHAPTER XI. Union Forever . . . . . 284-311
• CHAPTER XII. The Leader in Politics . . . . . 312-332
• CHAPTER XIII. Marshal and Recorder . . . . . 333-357
• CHAPTER XIV. The Nation's Problem . . . . . 358-392
• CHAPTER XV. Conclusion . . . . . 393-410
• Appendix . . . . . 411-416
• Index . . . . . 417-431

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

CHAPTER I.
THE SLAVE.

        "IT has been a source of great annoyance to me, never to have a birthday," says Mr. Douglass, in a private letter. He supposes that he was born in February, 1817; but no one knows the day of his birth or his father's name. Such trifles were seldom recorded of slaves. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was one of the five daughters of Isaac and Betsy Bailey; and as slaves were not often permitted to own a surname, this must have been one of the old families of Maryland. Grandmother Betty was especially honored for her skill in planting sweet potatoes, as well as in making and handling nets for taking shad and herring. When we find further that the village where she resided still bore the aboriginal name, Tuckahoe, we may believe that it was from her, that her grandson derived those high cheek bones, and other

peculiarities of physiognomy, which often caused him to be mistaken for an Indian in later life. His first master sometimes called him "My little Indian boy," and his whole history shows that he sprang from a race of warriors, who had rather die than be slaves. His oratorical power should be ascribed to his African descent, or to his European parentage. He himself attributes his love of letters to the native genius of his mother, who was the only colored person able to read in the whole village. This rare accomplishment suggests the probability that she had once been something more than a field hand. Her son saw her so seldom, however, and lost her so early, that he may have overestimated her ability, in consequence partly of gratitude and partly of a popular theory, about the preponderating influence over great men of gifted mothers, which long investigation justifies my calling extravagant. Inheritance of genius has come, in actual fact, at least as much from the father as from the mother; and in the most illustrious instances it has come from both sides. I suspect that there is some foundation for the rumor, that the father in this case was a noted politician. White he undoubtedly was, for the son was of much lighter color than his mother, whose "deep black, glossy" features, are said by him to have resembled those of King Rameses the Great, on page 157 of "Prichard's Natural History of Man."

        She called him Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; but after his escape he took the name which he has made famous. She had an older son, Perry, and four daughters; but none of them, I think, was endowed with his peculiar genius. Perhaps there

was a different father. Her services were too valuable for her to be permitted to waste her time on her children, and Douglass does not remember having ever seen her before he was six years old.

        His earliest memories are of his grandmother's log cabin in his native village, Tuckahoe, on the bank of the Choptank River, in Talbot County, on the eastern shore of Maryland. The floor and chimney were of clay, and there were no windows, nor any bedsteads, except rails flung over the cross-beams. Food was coarse, but it was abundant, and the little boy was never scolded for playing in the dirt, or getting his clothes wet, or not learning his lessons, or using his knife and fork awkwardly. In fact, he had no lessons, or knife and fork, and scarcely any clothing, to be troubled about. Year after year went by, during which he was as free and happy as the squirrels he saw running up the trees, or the minnows for which he used to fish in the mill-pond. His grandmother was always kind, and the only cloud upon his path was the fear of being taken from her, as his brother and his sisters had been. He dreaded to find himself growing taller, and at last the terrible day came.

        One summer morning, before he was seven, she took his hand in hers, and led him, or carried him on her shoulder, over the twelve miles which lay between Tuckahoe and the house of their master, Captain Anthony. This man owned three farms in Tuckahoe, and about thirty slaves; but his time was mainly occupied in managing the estates of Colonel Lloyd, who had a thousand slaves and twenty or thirty different farms. All the overseers were under the control of Captain

Anthony, whose plain brick house stood near the stately mansion of Colonel Lloyd, on the latter's home plantation, on the banks of the Wye, which flows into Chesapeake Bay, about thirty-five miles southeast of Baltimore.

        At the "great house" the Lloyds lived in such luxury as the little boy had never dreamed of; but the suffering outside was almost indescribable. Most of the slaves were driven out into the field at the first sign of dawn, with lashes for those who came last; and they were kept there until it was too dark to work. The mending and cooking were done during the night, and the food was carried out to be eaten in the field, where the babies were nursed, when the mothers could not be spared time to go home. There was no public opinion in Talbot County to hinder the worst of cruelties. Our hero saw his Aunt Esther receive from his master, because he was jealous and she loved another slave, thirty or forty stripes, each of which drew screams and blood. One of his cousins once walked the twelve miles from Tuckahoe, to show how a drunken overseer had gashed her shoulders with his cowhide, and struck her such a blow over the head with his stick as left her face covered with blood. Her master only told her to tramp back at once or he would take the rest of her skin off her back himself. Such floggings were frequent, and a slave who tried to escape one by running into the creek, was shot down there by the overseer, on the very plantation where the little Frederick was kept. His wife's cousin, a girl of fifteen, was beaten to death in her sleep by her mistress for being unable to hear the cry of a baby who

had kept her up night after night. Murders of slaves were frequent on the Eastern Shore, but there was no punishment and little blame. The worst sufferings of the slaves, however, seem to have come from lack of sleep and food. The men and women were given about a quarter of a pound of pork, or a little fish, daily, a peck of coarse corn-meal per week, and nothing else, except a little salt. The corn-cake was full of bran, and covered so thickly with ashes that no Northerner could eat it. Bed there was none, only a blanket for each adult. The children had no blanket, nor any clothes, except a pair of shirts of sack-cloth for each child every year. Whole flocks of little boys and girls, from five to ten years old, might be seen running naked around the "great house," or huddled together in the sun during the frosty days of March.

        The little Frederick had to sleep on cold nights with his head and shoulders in a sack, and his feet had cracks big enough to hold a penholder. His share of the mush, which a dozen children at Captain Anthony's ate like pigs out of a trough on the kitchen floor, was so scanty that he was often pinched with hunger. He used to run to pick up the little bones which were flung out for the cats, and he often fought with the dog for the crumbs which fell from the kitchen table. The very taste of white bread was unknown to him; but he was fascinated by the sight of those snowy biscuits, baked in a quick oven, out of unleavened flour, which he saw carried to the Lloyd's table, and he made up his mind that he would have some to eat every morning when he was a man. This ambition has been so far satisfied that precisely

such biscuit have been regularly set before him for his Sunday breakfast at Cedar Hill.

        The worst of it was that the cook, Aunt Katy, often whipped him or made him go all day without food, except a wretched breakfast. One night, when he had been treated thus and was too hungry to sleep, he managed to steal a few kernels of Indian corn and roast them in the fire. Just as he was about to eat them, his mother came in and took him in her arms. She had walked twelve miles to see him, and her indignation, at hearing that Aunt Katy threatened to starve the life out of him, was loud and fierce. He ate the large ginger cake she gave him, and felt prouder, as he sat on her knee, than a king on his throne. He soon dropped off to sleep, however; before he awoke, his mother had to go back to her work; and he never saw her again, for he was not allowed to stand beside her dying bed. These visits had been rare, for it could only have been under unusually favorable circumstances that she was able to travel the twenty-four miles in a single night.

        These scenes show what was the early life of "Cap'n Ant'ney Fed," as he was called in the jargon of the plantation, where the sign of the possessive case was a luxury unknown to the slaves. He was switched into repeating the Lord's Prayer, but had no other religious training, except the information that "God up in the sky" had made white men to be masters and black people to be slaves, and that He knew what was best for them all. The child could not believe that the slaves were as well off as they ought to be, and he used to sit and wonder how slavery could exist if God was good. His trouble

often made him weep, and his perplexity was increased by observing that God had not made, by any means, slaves of all the blacks, or slave-holders of all the whites. Light broke in upon his troubled mind as he found that some of his fellow-slaves had been stolen from homes where they were free, and others were children of fathers and mothers who had been thus brought into bondage. Clearly it was man who was responsible, not God. The little boy's Aunt Jennie suddenly disappeared with her husband, and it was whispered about that they had run away to the free States, and would henceforth be free. Before he was eight years old he made up his mind that he would, some day, do what they did. No wonder, for, as he said in 1855, he became "just as well aware of the unjust, unnatural, and murderous character of slavery when nine years old, as I am now."

        Among the few bright spots in Fred's plantation life was the kindness of his master's daughter, Mrs. Thomas Auld, still called "Miss Lucretia" by the slaves. When he had a fight with another slave-boy, and came home roaring with pain, and streaming with blood from a wound which left the sign of the cross upon his forehead, it was she who washed away the blood, put on balsam, and bound up the wound. When he was unusually hungry he used to go and sing under her window, and she would give him a slice of bread and butter. It may have been her intercession which saved his boyish spirit from being crushed into submission to his lot, and gave him the key to the prison door.

        In the summer of 1825, soon after he had begun his ninth year, she told him that he was to go to Baltimore,

which seemed like heaven to the slaves on the Eastern Shore. The next three days were the happiest he had ever known, and were spent mainly in the creek, where he was trying to wash the dead skin off his feet and knees. "Miss Lucretia" had told him she would give him a pair of trousers if he could get himself clean. He had no home to regret, and he hardly dared to go to sleep, for fear he might be left behind.

        Early on a Saturday morning he was able to look for the last time, as he hoped, on the plantation, as the sloop carried him over Chesapeake Bay towards Baltimore. He arrived there on Sunday morning, and was kindly received by his new Mistress, Mrs. Hugh Auld, sister-in-law of Lucretia's husband, Thomas. "Miss Sopha," as the boy called her, gave him a comfortable bed, good clothes, and palatable food, while he had nothing harder to do than to run errands and take care of her son, little Tommy. All three soon grew very fond of each other, and she even granted a request, made under circumstances described thus, in a speech made at Belfast, in 1846:

        "I remember the first time I ever heard the Bible read, and from that time I trace my first desire to learn to read. I was over seven years old; my master had gone out one Sunday night, the children had gone to bed. I had crawled under the center table and had fallen asleep, when my mistress commenced to read the Bible aloud, so loud that she waked me. She waked me to sleep no more. I have found since that the chapter she then read was the first of Job. I remember my sympathy for the good old man, and my anxiety to learn more about him led me to ask my mistress to teach me to read."

        She complied gladly, and was soon looking forward

to see him reading the Bible. Her joy led her to tell her husband, but he at once forbade any more lessons, telling her that learning would spoil any nigger, and that if this one should ever be taught to read the Bible, there would be no keeping him a slave.

        This was said in Fred's hearing, and it proved the best lesson he ever had. He heard that knowledge would prevent his remaining a slave, and at once he made up his mind to get all he could. "Miss Sopha" not only taught him no more, but would snatch away any book or newspaper she might see in his hand, while she took great care never to leave him alone with anything he could read. He turned the street into a school-room, and made his white playmates his teachers. He always carried Webster's spelling-book in his pocket, and also bread enough to pay the hungry little boys he met for giving him lessons. He used now and then to ask these white boys if it was right for him to be a slave, and they always agreed with him that it was not. Finding them interested in the "Columbian Orator," he bought a copy with fifty cents, earned by blacking boots in the street. Here he found a dialogue between a runaway slave, just recaptured, and his master. The negro demonstrated the injustice of slavery with such power that he was emancipated. Think how eagerly this was read by the boy of thirteen! He entered with equal zeal into the denunciations of oppression by great orators, and especially by Sheridan in his demand for Catholic emancipation. The speeches of Chatham and Fox, too, in behalf of America, helped him to understand the rights of man. He was all ears when he heard any one speak of slavery, and the heat which his

master and other white men showed against Abolitionists, made him very curious to know who they were. Evidently they had something to do with slavery, but what could it be? At last he found out from one of the city newspapers, probably in February, 1833, when there was much agitation, that they had been sending petitions to Congress, asking for the abolition of the slave trade between States, as well as of slavery itself in the District of Columbia. Thenceforth he knew that he was not without friends upon the earth. This idea assumed a practicable form, when an Irishman repaid him, for helping to unload a boat full of stones, by telling him that he need only go North to be as free as anybody.

        His confidence that he would finally gain both freedom and knowledge was much increased by an interest in religion, which became very strong before he was fourteen. At this time he used to pick up stray pages of the Bible in the gutter, and wash and dry them, in order to pore over them in secret. His leisure was now mostly spent either in attending prayer-meetings, or in holding private worship with a good old colored man, who prayed almost without ceasing, even when on his dray. The boy taught the old man how to make out the hard words, and, in return was shown something of their meaning. Both felt sure that the Lord would call Frederick in due time to preach the Gospel; and the exhortation "to wait in trust and patience until the good time came," may have done much to keep him from making a premature attempt to escape. His master tried in vain to break up the intimacy by threats of the lash. The young church-member resented bitterly the

persecution, as he called it; and when the cholera smote Baltimore, in 1833, he thought that the Lord was punishing the whites for holding his people in bondage.

        One reason that Frederick did not run away then, was that he wished first to learn how to write a pass for himself. He had now exchanged his easy life, of waiting on "Miss Sopha" and little Tommy, for regular work in Mr. Auld's ship-yard. He noticed that the carpenters marked each piece of timber with a capital letter, S. L. A. or F.; and he soon found that these were the initials of the words "Starboard," "Larboard," "Aft," and "Forward." While the men were at dinner, he taught himself to make these four letters. Then he challenged the white boys to "beat that," and thus made them show him other letters. Thus he "learned to write on board fences, making some of his early capitals with their heads downwards and looking the wrong way." By and by he managed to copy the italics out of the spelling-book. He even ventured, at great risk of a flogging, to take the old writing-books which Master Tommy had brought home from school, and copy off line after line in the vacant spaces. He secretly carried a flour barrel and a chair into the kitchen loft, where he slept, and there he used to work late into the night, copying from the Bible and the Methodist hymn-book.

        While the young slave was preparing himself for freedom, he became, in consequence of the death of "Miss Lucretia" and her father, the property of her husband, Captain Thomas Auld. His new master soon quarreled with his brother in Baltimore, and

took his chattel away. This was in March, 1833, when Captain Auld had taken up his residence at St. Michael's, a fishing village on the Bay, about forty miles from Baltimore. He had taken a second wife; and her father, a rich slave-holder named Hamilton, lived a few miles away. The kitchen at St. Michael's was not very bountifully supplied; and the appetite of the growing boy was keen enough to tempt him to theft.

        Whatever scruples the young aspirant for the ministry felt, were quieted by this ingenious argument. Captain Auld's meat continued to be his, after it was taken out of one of his tubs and put into another; so there really was no stealing. As for the neighbors, they were accomplices in deliberately robbing the laborer of his reward, and he was justified in protecting himself against starvation at their expense. Another way in which he used to supply himself with food was letting loose his master's horse. The animal would always dash off to its former stable, on the Hamilton plantation, five miles off. The groom would have to be sent to bring him back, and he would return with bread enough to make him comfortable for a day or two. He gave additional offence by constantly speaking to Mr. Auld, or of him to Mrs. Auld, by his old title, "Captain," and not saying "Master," as was desired by the wife especially. Of course, this led to frequent whippings.

        Mrs. Auld was a devout member of the church, and Thomas became one at a camp-meeting that August; but Frederick's new brother disappointed all his hopes of better treatment than before. He ventured,

soon after the conversion, to help teach a little Sunday-school. A dozen old spelling-books and a few Testaments were collected. Twenty children came together the first day, and the young teacher thought he had now found something worth living for. Scarcely had school begun on the second Sunday, however, when in rushed a mob, headed by Master Thomas and two Methodist class-leaders. The scholars were driven away with sticks and stones, and forbidden ever to meet again, for they were black. Frederick was told that he wanted to be like Nat Turner, who led a bloody insurrection in Southampton, Va., 1831, and that he would get as many balls in his body as Nat had, if he did not look out. He had seen slave girls treated with unusual cruelty by a pious mistress in Baltimore, and he was soon to have new proof of how little could be done, even by religion, to lessen the essential wickedness of slavery.

        The completion of his industrial education was intrusted by Brother Auld to Brother Covey, a devout neighbor, famous for success in breaking unruly slaves. The morning of the first of January, 1834, found the poor boy trudging along, with his little bundle at the end of his stick, to the new master with whom that year must be spent. Covey, too, was a Methodist, and made his slaves hear a great deal of religious talk on Sunday, as well as a short prayer every morning and a long prayer every night. Frederick was depended upon to lead the singing, but he often failed to do so; for such worship seemed to him a mockery. He was no longer starved, but he was overworked systematically, and often kept in the field until almost midnight. It was never too hot or

too cold for out-door work--it could never rain, blow, snow, or hail too hard. The longest days were too short, he says, for his master, and the shortest nights were too long. Covey relied mainly on hard work for breaking slaves. When he chose to set them an example, he would "make everything fly before him." He was an experienced overseer, and had peculiar skill in watching his slaves, when they thought him far away, and creeping out upon them unexpectedly. They spoke of him to each other as "the snake," and felt as if they were always under his cruel eye.

        The lash was only a secondary feature of his plan; but it was not left out. Frederick had been with him but three days when he was sent, on one of the coldest mornings of January, with a pair of oxen, to bring in wood from the forest. He had never driven oxen before, and these were scarcely broken in. Covey himself would not have dared to take them into the woods, until he had let them work off some of their wildness in the open field. The young driver was told to go to the woods; and thither he went, without daring to make objections. The oxen ran all the way over the fields, pulling him along at the end of the rope with which he was ordered to keep them from running away. When they got in among the trees, they took fright, and rushed about wildly, so that he expected to be dashed to death. At last they stopped, entangled in sapplings, and with the body of the cart, the wheels, and the tongue lying scattered about. It took hard work to get the pieces together and release the oxen. On their way out of the wood they ran away once more, despite a heavy load, broke the gate into splinters, and nearly

crushed the driver between the wheel and the post. It was noon when he reached the house, but he was sent back at once with the cart to the woods. Covey followed, overtook him there, and said he would teach him how to waste time and break gates. He cut from a black gum-tree three young shoots, from four to six feet long, such as are used for ox-goads. Then he commanded the slave to take off his clothes. No heed was given to the order; Covey tore them off himself. The tough goads were worn out, one by one, and such sores were left on the back as kept open, under the coarse shirt, for weeks. This was the first instance of what happened every few days for six months.

        Douglass says it was then, if at any one time, more than another, that he was "made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery." "A few months of this discipline tamed me." . . . "I was broken in body, soul and spirit." . . . "My natural elasticity was crushed; my intellect languished; the disposition to read departed; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!" . . . "I had neither sufficient time in which to eat or sleep, except on Sunday." . . . "I spent this in a sort of beast-like stupor, between sleeping and waking under some large tree." . . . "I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was prevented by a combination of hope and fear." . . . "The over-work, and the brutal chastisement, combined with that ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought, 'I am a slave--a slave for life--a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom,' rendered me a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness."

        On one of the hottest Friday afternoons in August Covey was thrashing out his wheat in barbaric fashion. Horses were treading it loose from the straw; and Frederick was carrying the mixture of wheat, chaff and dirt to the fan. He was in a hurry, for he was to have time to go fishing, if the work was finished before sunset. About three o'clock he broke down, with no strength left, an extreme dizziness, and a violent headache. The fanning had to stop, for every hand was needed for the work. Covey found him lying by the fence, and, with a savage kick in the side, bade him rise. He tried to, but fell back. Another heavy kick brought him to his feet; but as soon as he stooped to pick up the tub in which he had been carrying food for the fan, he fell to the ground, utterly helpless. Then Brother Covey took up the hickory club with which the wheat had been struck off level with the sides of the measure, and gave him such a wound on the head as made blood run freely, saying, "If you have got the headache, I'll cure you." He was still unable to rise, and was left bleeding by the fence.

        His head was soon relieved by the flow of blood; and he resolved to go and complain to Captain Auld. He started up while Covey was looking another way, and gained the woods. There he had to lie down, for his strength failed him. At last the bleeding ceased, and he made his way barefoot, through bogs and briars, to St. Michael's. It took him five hours to make the seven or eight miles; and Auld insisted on his going back again to the good, religious man. He did so the next morning, and before the house he met Covey, with rope and cow-hide, ready for him. He

had but just time to get through the corn into the woods. There he lay down exhausted, for he had lost much blood and eaten nothing since noon the day before. All day he lay unpursued, for it was hoped that hunger would bring him back. His recent experiences with members of his church made prayer seem useless. There he lay all day in pain and despair.

        During the night another slave came by, on his way to spend Sunday with his wife. The good couple fed and sheltered the sufferer, at the risk of being treated in the same way. Sandy, as his benefactor was named, advised him not to attempt an escape, which would then have been very difficult, but to trust to the magic power of a root, whose wearer ran no danger of being whipped by any white man. The incredulous listener was reminded that all his book learning had not protected him. Sunday morning found him with his pocket full of roots in front of Covey's house. He was kindly received, for the good man was about to go to church. While regaining his strength, he resolved upon a course worthy of his white as well as of his Indian blood. He knew that those slaves who could be whipped easiest were whipped oftenest; and he felt that he had listened too blindly to sermons in which non-resistance was enjoined as the peculiar virtue of the colored race. "My hands," he says, "were no longer tied by my religion." He had made up his mind to risk being sold South, or incurring the penalty of the State law, which provided that any slave who resisted his master should be hung, and then have his head cut off and set up, with the four quarters of his body, in prominent places.

        Long before daylight the next morning he was called out and sent to feed the horses. As he was going up to the loft in the stable, Covey sneaked in behind and tried to slip a rope around his leg, in order to tie him up for a flogging. He fell heavily, but leaped up at once and sprang at his master's throat. There the strong black fingers kept their grasp until the nails drew blood. The white man tried to strike; but every blow was parried, though none was struck in return. He closed with the slave, but went down again and again upon the floor. "Are you going to resist, you scoundrel?" "Yes, sir," was the steady answer. Covey called his cousin to his assistance; but the white boy was at once doubled up with pain by the black boy's kick. "Are you going to keep this up?" "Yes, indeed, come what may. You have treated me like a brute the last six months, and I shall stand it no longer." Covey dragged him out of the stable to a stick of wood, with which he meant to knock him down. Just as he stooped to pick it up, he was seized by the black hands and flung out his full length into the cow-yard. Another slave now came up, and was commanded to take hold of the rebel. He at first pretended not to understand the order, and finally said, "My master hired me here to work, and not to help you whip Frederick." This man's owner would not let him be flogged unless he deserved it; and the two were left to fight it out. The only slave whom Covey owned was a woman who had been avowedly bought for breeding. She, too, was called upon for aid as she came in to milk the cows; and she, too, refused, though she knew she must suffer for it. For two hours the fight had gone on,

and Covey had not been able to draw a single drop of blood, while blood had been drawn from him. He had not been able to whip the slave; but at last he said, "Now, go to your work; I should not have whipped you half so much, if you had not resisted." He never tried it again, although he had plenty of opportunity, and even provocation, during the next six months.

        Douglass is right in calling this the turning point in his life as a slave. It made him a man instead of a timid boy, "a freeman, in fact, while I remained a slave in form." He was four years more in bondage, but he was never again whipped. It was several times attempted, but without success. Not the slightest punishment was inflicted for his resisting Covey. The latter probably kept his defeat as much of a secret as possible, lest his reputation as a slave-breaker should be forfeited. Captain Auld may have felt even then what he acknowledged forty years afterwards, on his death-bed, to his visitor, then Marshal Douglass, that he always thought him too smart to be a slave.

        At all events he was hired out, for the two years after that with Brother Covey, 1835 and 1836, to a neighbor who seldom whipped his slaves, and always gave them plenty of time to sleep and eat, while the supply of food was never stinted. Mr. Freeland did not profess religion, but he was a much better master than the church-members just mentioned, or two ministers in Talbot County, about whom a good deal is said in "My Bondage and My Freedom." The author had reason to think that the religion of slave-holders often put their consciences to sleep. He did

not, however, give up all idea of preaching some day himself, and he used, when every one else slept, to try to prepare for the pulpit by going out to the pigs and talking to them as "Dear Brethren." It was much more proper for him to say so to pigs than to white men, according to the laws of the land, and the opinions most revered throughout the United States. He was only a field-hand, and reading matter was more out of reach than in Baltimore. He did, however, manage to re-open his Sunday-school, and his time it escaped attack, although it numbered more than forty scholars. Many learned to read, either there or during the three evenings a week which were devoted to this work in winter; and the teacher afterward met several of his former pupils as freemen.

        This employment made the first year pass pleasantly, but early in 1836, the position of a slave, even in this mild form, began to seem intolerable to the young agitator; and the ideas which he had learned from the "Columbian Orator," in Baltimore, were earnestly set forth to his companions. Two of the slaves who labored beside him were fully aroused by his passionate declamations on the rights of man and the glories of liberty. Two other young men on the plantation of his owner's father-in-law, Mr. Hamilton, joined them. All agreed to set at naught the teachings of the pulpit, and the dangers which threatened fugitives. The conspirators held frequent meetings, and kept up each other's zeal by songs with a secret meaning, like

                         "I am bound for the land of Canaan,
                         I don't expect to stay much longer here," etc.

        According to the plan invented by our hero, they were going to take a large canoe, belonging to Mr. Hamilton, sail and paddle to the head of the bay, seventy miles off, and then make their way on foot to the North. The only free city known to them, even by name, was New York. The leader had written passes permitting the bearers to spend the Easter holidays in Baltimore, and they were getting ready to start on the Saturday evening previous. That morning, just as Frederick had been called in from the field for breakfast, he saw Mr. Hamilton gallop up to the house; three other white men followed on horseback; and after them walked two negroes whose hands were tied. He saw that he was betrayed and that his best plan was to submit quietly. One of Mr. Freeland's slaves followed his example, but the other fought bravely, though pistols were pointed against his heart. The scuffle gave the writer of the passes a chance to burn his own unobserved, and the others were eaten, by his advice, as the slaves were dragged along the road by the mounted constables. Mr. Freeland's mother had supplied the slaves whom he owned with food, while she scolded the "long-legged yellow devil," who had made them think of running away. They stopped during the tramp of fifteen miles at his master's store, and there, as the leader directed, they all protested that they had not the slightest intention of absconding, and asked indignantly what evidence there was against them. At last they reached Easton, the county seat, and were locked up in the jail. They could expect nothing better than to be sold to die in the rice swamps. Mr. Freeland and Mr. Hamilton had the slaves they

owned released, however, after the holidays were over, and took them back. The ring-leader was left behind. Captain Auld would have let him work out the year with Mr. Freeland, but Hamilton declared that he would shoot the dangerous fellow if he appeared again in that neighborhood. He was the only slave there who could read and write. Large sums were offered by the negro-traders, but Auld declared that money would not tempt him to sell Frederick South. Finally he was sent to Baltimore to learn a trade, and promised that, if he would behave himself, he should be emancipated at twenty-five. He had resisted his master with success, he had taken the lead in a plot to run away, and his courage did not go without its reward.

        Three years previous he had left Baltimore an unruly boy. He came back a strong man, resolved to protect himself against injury, and to use the first good opportunity for setting himself free. During the rest of 1836 he worked as apprentice in a large ship-yard; where he was at the beck and call of seventy-five carpenters. These white men, just before he entered the yard, had been led by fear of lower wages to refuse to let colored carpenters work there any longer; and now they encouraged the white apprentices to pick quarrels with the new nigger. In one of these he would have lost his life if he had not succeeded in parrying a blow from an adze. Another time he flung the man who struck him into the dock. Whenever he was struck he struck back again, and thus he held his own for about eight months. At last, the man who had been ducked came at him with three other apprentices. One was in front, armed

with a brick, one on each side, and the fourth behind with a heavy hand-spike. They closed in upon him. He defended himself, but a blow from the hand-spike stunned him and brought him to the ground. Then all four fell upon him with their fists, while the carpenters shouted: "Kill the d--d nigger! He struck a white man!" By and bye he came to himself and rose to his hands and knees. As he did so he got a kick in the left eye which closed it completely. Then they left him, but even then he would have run after them with the hand-spike if the carpenters had not interfered.

        This scene deserves attention, on account of his dauntless courage. The worst of it is, that he could get no protection from the law. He had been put once more under the charge of his master's brother, Hugh Auld; but when this gentleman applied for a warrant, the magistrate refused to issue one, unless white witnesses would come forward. Neither the word of the colored man, nor the sight of his wounds, was of the slightest importance. The laws of Maryland were for the protection of whites. All that Mr. Auld could do for the slave was to take him, as soon as his wounds had healed, into the yard where he was foreman. There the apprentice became an expert calker, and was able, before the end of 1837, to earn a dollar and a half a day, the highest wages paid to men of that trade in Baltimore. He was allowed to get a job where he could, and to collect the money; but he had to hand over every cent he received. He saw more plainly than before that slaves were not protected, but plundered.

        His literary education had stood still while he was

away from Baltimore; but now he met colored people who knew more than he did. Some of them were able to teach him geography and arithmetic. The young freedmen even permitted him to enter a club from which other slaves were excluded, "The East Baltimore Mutual Improvement Society;" and he took a prominent part in its debates. He also, in all probability, spoke often in religious meetings; and among his delighted hearers may be supposed to have been Anna Murray, a free women of color, who afterward became his wife.

        As his condition and prospects improved, his desire for freedom grew still stronger; and he longed to have money enough of his own to be able to escape. In May, 1838, he persuaded Hugh Auld to let him hire his time. He had to buy his tools and clothes, pay his board, and hand over three dollars a week, whether work was good or bad. He succeeded in carrying out the bargain and in laying aside some money. One Saturday evening in August, instead of going to Mr. Auld with the sum due, he went off with a party of friends to camp-meeting, and did not return before Sunday night. The privilege of hiring out was taken away, in punishment; and his indignation led him to spend the next week in idleness. On Saturday night there was a violent quarrel in consequence of his having no money to hand over; but, fortunately for him, they did not get to blows. The next day he made up his mind to go to work early Monday morning, to make Master Hugh as well satisfied as possible with him during that week, and the two following, and then to run away.

        His success will be related in the next chapter.

Thus far we have seen him become familiar with some of the best, as well as the worst, aspects of slavery. He had been a half-starved boy, running wild on a plantation, a petted house-servant, a field-hand, first under a master who fed him so poorly that he was obliged to steal, then under a professional negro-breaker, who over-worked him systematically, and whipped him cruelly, until he saved himself from more torture by making a resistance which might have brought him to the gallows. The result was his coming under a master who gave him plenty of food and rest, and never struck him. His attempt to escape, in company with other slaves, whom he had induced to join him, sent him back to Baltimore, where he was cruelly treated at first, but was soon able to learn a good trade and to support himself in almost complete liberty. He had worked his way upward by his own strength and courage, going through fight after fight, with his life in his hand. He had taught himself not only to read and write, but to speak effectively. He knew what to say about slavery, and how to say it. The principal thing which he needed to do in order to reach the platform was to break his chain.

CHAPTER II.
THE FUGITIVE.

        IT was on Monday, September 3, 1838, that the great purpose, which had been cherished for more than a dozen years, amid many changes in place and fortune, was carried out with complete success. It was many years before the fugitive told how he escaped. He was often tempted to give this additional charm to his lectures and editorials, but he would not resort to this easy way of conquering those slanderers who said that he had never been a slave. He kept his lips firmly shut, partly because he meant to save those who had assisted him from punishment, and partly because he was determined to have this path to freedom remain open to his brothers and sisters still in bondage. He knew that if no accounts of the escape of a slave who let himself be nailed up in a box, and sent North by rail, had been published, there might have been a thousand "Box Browns" a year. Such secrets were often printed, and it was not the slave who read them, but the master. Fortunately there was, at least, one enemy of slavery who was wise enough to fight her with silence as well as speech. His secret was not told in print before 1872.

        His plan was, in the first place, as already mentioned,

to work for three weeks so diligently and profitably as to avert all suspicion. He succeeded so well that, on the second Saturday night, he paid over, as the result of that week's work, nine dollars to his master. The latter was so delighted that he actually presented him with the generous sum of twenty-five cents, bidding him make a good use of it. We shall see that he did. He had already saved up seventeen dollars, and by the end of the third week all his preparations were made. The laws of Maryland required every free negro to carry papers describing him accurately and to pay liberally for this protection. Slaves often escaped by borrowing papers from a friend, to whom the precious documents would be returned by mail. Whenever a colored man came with free papers to the railroad station to buy a ticket, he was always examined carefully enough to insure the detection of a runaway, unless the resemblance was very close. Our hero was not acquainted with any free negro who looked much like him; but he found out that passengers who paid on the cars were not scrutinized so minutely as those who bought tickets, and also that sailors were treated with peculiar indulgence by the conductors. The dominant party was doing all it could to encourage the shipping interest, and rapidly reducing the tariff. The cry of "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights" meant in this instance "Free Labor and the Rights of the Slave."

        Among his friends was a sailor who was of much darker hue than he was himself, but who owned a protection, setting forth his occupation, and bearing the sacred figure of the American eagle. This was borrowed; sailors' clothes were purchased, and, on

Monday morning, the fugitive jumped on the train just as it started. His baggage had been put aboard by a friendly hackman. He was greatly troubled, for, as he wrote to his master, ten years later, "I was making a leap in the dark. The probabilities, so far as I could by reason determine them, were stoutly against the undertaking. The preliminaries and precautions I had adopted previously, all worked badly. I was like one going to war without weapons--ten chances of defeat to one of victory. One in whom I had confided, and one who had promised me assistance, appalled by fear at the trial hour, deserted me." "However, gloomy as was the prospect, thanks be to the Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed, at the moment which was to determine my whole earthly career, His grace was sufficient: my mind was made up."

        His anxiety increased in consequence of the harshness with which the conductor questioned other passengers in the negro car. The sailor, however, was addressed kindly and told, after a mere glance at the protection, that it was all right. Thus far he was safe; but there were several people on the train who would have known him at once in any other clothes. A German blacksmith looked at him intently, and apparently recognized him, but said nothing. On the ferry boat, by which they crossed the Susquehanna, he found an old acquaintance employed, and was asked some dangerous questions. On they went, however, until they stopped to let the train from Philadelphia pass. At a window sat a man under whom the runaway had been at work but a few days before. He might easily have recognized him, and

would certainly have had him arrested; but fortunately he was looking another way. The passengers went on from Wilmington by steamer to Philadelphia, where one of them took the train for New York and arrived early on Tuesday. In less than twenty-four hours the slave had made himself a free man. It was but a few months since he had become twenty-one.

        He was astonished at "the dazzling wonders of Broadway," and so full of joyous excitement that, as he wrote at once to a friend--we can guess what friend--in Baltimore, he felt as if he had escaped, like Daniel, from a den of lions. That very day, however, he met another fugitive, whom he had known in Baltimore as "Allender's Jake," and was told that they were both in deadly peril. The city was full of Southerners returning home. Many of the colored people could be bribed into betraying a runaway. All their boarding-houses were closely watched, and the new comer must not think of looking for work upon the wharves. In fact, the danger of recapture was even greater then in New York, than after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. Every door seemed closed against the stranger. He had no home, no friends, no chance of work, and he was likely soon to be out of money, although his first night in New York was passed in the open air, where he slept amid piles of barrels. He felt all the more alarmed because he had never before taken the full responsibility of looking after himself.

        At last he was obliged to tell his story to a sailor who looked good-natured, and he took him at once to his own house, and then to that of the Secretary of

the New York Vigilance Committee, Mr. David Ruggles. Here he was sheltered for several days, during which time Anna Murray came on from Baltimore and became his wife. She could not have been married to him according to the laws of Maryland. He stated afterwards, in a letter to Captain Auld, that "Instead of finding my companion a burden, she was truly a help-mate."

        The children of this marriage were Rosetta, born June 24, 1839; Lewis Henry, October 2, 1840; Frederick, March 3, 1842; Charles Remond, October 24, 1844; and Annie, March 22, 1849. The certificate, as given in his "Narrative," is dated September 15; but this was Saturday, which was the day on which he traveled to New Bedford and found workmen busy on the wharves. The wedding took place, I understand, on Friday, September 14.

        The bridegroom had heard of New Bedford as a place where he might be able to work at his trade. Accordingly the newly-married couple set out thither, on the day of the ceremony, by steamer, and in conformity with the system then universally enforced against people of color in the United States, spent the night on the deck. A stage-coach took them from Newport to New Bedford, but they had no money to pay for breakfast or to the driver, and he took possession of their baggage, which included three music books. What a wedding journey!

        The entire trip from Baltimore to New Bedford occupied less than two weeks. The fugitive had changed his name from Bailey, first to Stanley, and then, before his marriage, to Johnson, and he soon made a final change. He had been recommended to

a free colored man, named Nathan Johnson, who at once redeemed the baggage, in which was a music book, the "Seraph," which I saw in use just fifty years afterward in the Douglass mansion, near Washington. At Johnson's house the fugitives were treated with the utmost kindness. During breakfast, the Sunday after reaching New Bedford, the host remarked that there were so many Johnsons in the town as to make it difficult to tell them apart. On this he was invited to choose a surname for his guest, who insisted on still calling himself Frederick "to preserve a sense of my identity." Nathan Johnson had just been reading the "Lady of the Lake," and he at once selected the name of the noble fugitive. We shall see, hereafter, that the choice was singularly apt.

        Among the first lessons which Douglass learnt at New Bedford, was the immense superiority of free to slave labor. On the very day he arrived he saw five or six men do more work on the wharves, with the aid of an ox and a pulley, than had been done by twenty or thirty in Baltimore. He also soon found out the fallacy of two assertions, often made before the war, namely, that the South was more prosperous than the North, and that the negro was incapable of supporting himself as a free citizen. New Bedford was the richest community in the United States in proportion to its population, which trebled between 1820 and 1840. In 1838 she sent out nearly two hundred whalers, and the previous year had brought in a hundred and sixty thousand barrels of oil. Nathan Johnson and his wife earned their bread by hard work; but these two colored people had a neater

house, better food, more books and newspapers, and more general information than nine-tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot County. Many a fugitive was living more comfortably than the master from whom he had fled less than seven years before. The colored people were better treated in New Bedford than in any other place, Northern or Southern; their children went to school with the whites; and their determination to stand by each other made the capture of a fugitive impossible.

        Our hero now felt so safe that, on Monday morning, he dressed himself for work, and went out to find it. Seeing a pile of coal in front of a house he got leave to shovel it into the cellar. This was his first work as a freeman, and it was for the minister who had just been installed over the Unitarian Society, Rev. Ephraim Peabody. Four years earlier he had written from New Orleans to Harriet Martineau: "All my sympathies, and to a very great extent, my judgment is with the Abolitionists--entirely so if Dr. Channing is one." His preaching did not fulfill this promise, either at New Bedford, or afterward, at King's Chapel, where his ideal was "not an agitator, nor a revolutionist, nor a professional reformer." He and Douglass had much to teach each other; the fugitive did get help from the clergyman, and if the latter's official position had not stood between them, it is possible that Unitarianism would have made an illustrious convert, that the oppressed would have gained an influential champion, and that King's Chapel would have lost the chance to get a pastor who could offend nobody. It was Mrs. Peabody who gave leave to carry in the coal, and it was she who

put two silver half-dollars into a hand which clasped the coins gladly, in the knowledge that no master could take them away, but whatever was earned by the laborer would remain his own.

        His next job was to help load a sloop with oil. He soon got courage enough to try to work at his trade of calker, and a place was offered him by an antislavery man who was fitting out a whaler. He had no sooner set foot on the float, however, than all the white calkers declared that they would leave the ship unfinished, if he were allowed to strike a single blow upon her. It was a busy season, and the employer could do no better for him than give him work as a common laborer. The same prejudice met him everywhere, and obliged him to content himself with earning only a dollar a day, whereas he was perfectly competent to earn two. In this respect he was even worse treated than in Baltimore, where he was paid a dollar and a half a day, as much as any white man, for calking. Later in the season he supported himself by sawing wood for the whalers, and he never worked harder, even for Brother Covey. On borrowing Mr. Johnson's saw, he found it needed a cord as a brace; so he went to a store and asked for a fip's worth, but was at once told, rather sharply, that he must have come from the South. No harm came from this blunder, however, except a fright.

        His wife went out to service, and he was obliged to do so during the first winter, when prices were unusually high. While waiter in the family of Colonel John H. Clifford, who was Governor of Massachusetts in 1853, he once listened with great delight to the conversation of Robert C. Winthrop, behind whose

chair he stood. He seems, however, to have found waiting at table less pleasant than even sawing wood, rolling oil casks, digging cellars, removing rubbish from back yards, and scouring cabins. His preference for steady work made him soon take a place in an oil refinery, where he stayed as long as he was needed. Then he found employment, with other colored men, whom he esteemed highly, in fitting out whalers; and his last place in New Bedford was at Richmond's brass foundry. Here he often worked every day and two nights a week besides, his principal task being to blow the bellows. This was afterward done by steam; but he kept working at it until he was promoted to blow one of the trumpets before whose blast fell the walls of Jericho.

        His zeal for religion had been much weakened by what he saw of the white professors in Maryland; but now he felt that the Lord had brought him out of the house of bondage, and he sought to unite with one of the New Bedford churches. The Methodists, who then worshiped in Elm Street, and afterward in County Street, had, in 1838, a preacher who was so attractive that Douglass determined to become a member. He was not permitted, on account of his color, to sit in the body of the house; but he accepted this proscription as a necessary deference to the prejudices of the unconverted part of the congregation. He felt sure that the church members would treat him as a man and a brother. "Surely," he said to himself, "these Christian people have none of this feeling against color. They, at least, have renounced this unholy feeling. When none but the saints are assembled they will certainly recognize us as children

of the same Father, and heirs of the same salvation on equal terms with themselves."

        "Communion day came; the sermon was preached; the congregation departed; and I remained to see, as I thought, this holy sacrament celebrated in the spirit of its Great Founder. There were only about half a dozen colored people attached to the Elm Street Church at this time. After the congregation was dismissed these descended from the gallery and took a seat against the wall most distant from the altar. Brother B. was very animated, and sang very sweetly, 'Salvation, 'tis a joyful sound;' and soon he began to administer the sacrament. I was anxious to observe the bearing of the colored members; and the result was most humiliating. During the whole ceremony they looked like sheep without a shepherd. The white members went forward to the altar by the bench-full; and when it was evident that all the whites had been served with the bread and wine, Brother B., after a long pause, as if inquiring whether all the whites had been served, and fully assuring himself on that important point, then raised his voice to an unnatural pitch, and, looking to the corner where his black sheep seemed penned, beckoned with his hand, exclaiming, 'come forward, colored friends! come forward! You, too, have an interest in the blood of Christ. God is no respecter of persons. Come forward and take this holy sacrament to your comfort.' The colored members--poor, slavish souls--went forward as invited. I went out, and have never been in that church since."

        Other churches were tried with the same result. When one of them was holding a revival, he ventured to try to sit on the broad aisle; but a deacon hastened to say, what was then often said by drivers of omnibuses, door-keepers at menageries and theaters, and officials on board of steamboats and railroad cars, "We don't allow niggers in here." After

many such rebuffs from the white ministers and deacons, he joined the African M. E. Zion Church, but he soon left it, because the pastor was persuaded by other clergymen to refuse, like them, to give out notices of anti-slavery meetings. He remained, however, one of the colored Methodists, and occasionally officiated as a lay preacher in the little school-house on Second Street, where they worshiped.

        During these early years at New Bedford, he saved from drowning a boy, whom no one else ventured to try to rescue; a man named Sullivan had been also saved at St. Michael's, after grappling with his preserver in a way which nearly proved fatal to them both; and a white boy, who broke through the thin ice in a basin near Baltimore, owed his life to the courage and presence of mind with which the black boy, then only twelve, managed to reach him with an oar.

        The New Bedford Lyceum was not open at that time to colored people, but they held many meetings for discussion among themselves, and Douglass was an eager listener, as well as an impressive speaker. He had little time to read, but how well it was used may be judged from his habit of nailing up a newspaper on a post in the foundry, so that he could look at it while he worked the heavy beam up and down to fill the bellows. He made himself well acquainted with Scott, Whittier, and other poets, while Combe's "Constitution of Man," taught him the supremacy of law and order in nature, as well as the possibility of attaining happiness here on earth by obedience to natural laws. This book, he says, "relieved my path of many shadows;" but what he read most devoutly,

next to the Bible, was the "Liberator." Soon after becoming a subscriber, he listened, on April 15, 1839, to a lecture from Garrison, of whom he speaks thus:

        "As I looked upon this man from the gallery of old Liberty Hall, then otherwise deserted, dilapidated, and in ill-repute, with its wood-work defaced, its doors off hinges, and its windows broken by stones and bad eggs, thrown to break up antislavery meetings, the only place in town where such meetings could be held, I saw that the hour and the man were well met and well united. In him there was no contradiction between the speech and the speaker, but absolute sympathy and oneness. The faces of millions of men might be searched without finding one just like his; at least, it seemed so to me. In him I saw the resurrection and the life of the dead and buried hopes of my enslaved people. As I now remember, the style of Mr. Garrison's speaking would not be called eloquent. There was no fine flow of words, no dazzling sentences formed to tickle the ear. His power was the power which belongs only to character, conviction, and high moral purpose, and which cannot well be counterfeited."--("Thoughts and Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict." A Lecture not yet printed.)

        The express statement (in "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass," pp. 242-3), about the first Abolitionist, that, "On this occasion he announced nearly all his heresies," has been declared inconsistent with his habits when he spoke as agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, which was then the case. ("William Lloyd Garrison: the Story of His Life. Told by his Children." Vol. ii., p. 292, note.)

        The columns of the "Liberator," however, were full of arguments in favor of making no resistance to evil, and it is possible that some allusion to this subject may have inadvertently been made in the lecture,

and eagerly taken up by an enthusiastic hearer, who did not see that he had demonstrated the falsity of the doctrine in his own victory over slavery, in the person of Covey. In this and other respects, Douglass was then an ardent Garrisonian. He "loved this paper and its editor;" he took frequent occasion to attack slavery, not only in assemblages of colored people, but in conversation with white laborers, and he promptly attended every anti-slavery meeting in New Bedford, his "heart burning at every true utterance against the slave system, and every rebuke of its friends and supporters."

        Among other speakers whom he heard in Liberty Hall was Rev. Dr. Garnett, a man of pure African blood, afterwards Minister to Liberia. It is remarked that only a man who has felt the iron of slavery in his own soul, and has been accustomed to look on his own race as doomed and altogether wanting in great mental qualities "can well imagine my exultant feeling, while looking upon, and listening to, this brilliant contradiction to the degrading and disheartening theories which had been forced upon me by nearly all my previous history."

        Such speakers were sorely needed in 1840. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society had been formed, books had been printed against slavery, and laws to check its increase had been passed before the Revolutionary War. Soon after that struggle, new societies were formed in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and even Virginia. Vermont prohibited the wicked institution in 1777; and her example was followed throughout the North. A demand for immediate emancipation

was published in 1816, and another in 1824. Few desired any but gradual measures, however; and the general character of the controversy was mild and peaceable before 1830. Then began what Harriet Martineau has called "The Martyr Age of the United States." William Lloyd Garrison insisted zealously, as one of the editors of a Baltimore newspaper, in 1829, on immediate and unconditional emancipation, without expatriation. He showed that the Colonization Society, while professedly friendly to the colored race, was really an enemy; and he frequently exposed the horrors of the domestic slave trade, then flourishing rankly in Baltimore. An attack on a merchant in Massachusetts, who allowed his ship to be employed in this traffic, caused Garrison to be imprisoned for seven weeks, in the spring of 1830. He could get no church that fall in Boston for his lectures, nor any hall, except one belonging to a society of unbelievers, who showed especial interest in his cause, and who did believe in freedom of speech. The first number of the "Liberator" was published on January 1, 1831; and before the close of that year, five thousand dollars was offered by the State of Georgia as a reward for kidnapping the editor. Opposition only made him more zealous and steadfast. To a fellow-laborer, who urged him at this time to keep cool, saying, "Why, you are all on fire!" he answered, "Brother May, I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt."

        And it must not be supposed that all the fire and fury were on one side. Among the events of the seven years between 1831 and 1839 were the following. A Connecticut lady was put into a prison cell,

which had been occupied by a murderer, because she was trying to educate colored girls; she and her pupils were molested in every possible way, and the school was finally broken up by attempts to burn and tear down her house. An academy, which was opened to colored people in New Hampshire, was dragged from its foundations by a hundred yoke of oxen, according to a vote in town-meeting, and set up as a laughing-stock upon the common. The formation of anti-slavery societies in New York and Philadelphia took place with great difficulty, amid dangerous mobs. The meeting of the American Society in New York, on July 4, was broken up by rioters, who held possession of the city for three days, and did much damage to churches, schools, and private residences; and that August a Philadelphia mob destroyed forty-four houses of colored people and murdered a black man, while another was drowned in trying to escape. One day, in the next year, October 21, 1835, there were three mobs, that in broad-cloth which put a rope around Garrison's waist, tore his clothes from his body, and might have injured him seriously, if a refuge had not been found in Boston jail; that headed by a member of Congress, which drove out of Utica, New York, a convention of some seven hundred delegates, engaged in the formation of a State antislavery society; and that which broke up a meeting in Montpelier, Vermont. The brother of the Connecticut lady just mentioned was then serving out a sentence of eight months in the Washington jail for having used anti-slavery newspapers as wrappers for botanical specimens; and a divinity student, who had committed a similar offence at Nashville, Tennessee,

was whipped with twenty lashes on his bare back. And among the outrages of 1835 should also be mentioned the attempts of various Southern States to have their example, in suppressing all discussion of slavery, carried out, by law as well as by violence, throughout the North. During the next year the printing-press of J. G. Birney, soon to be a candidate for the Presidency, was destroyed by a Cincinnati mob; a New England clergyman was sentenced to three months of hard labor in the house of correction for his lectures; and despotic interference with the mails was proposed in Congress. But these details seem almost trivial when we think that a fugitive slave was burned alive in St. Louis soon after, for having stabbed the officers who took him prisoner; that a Presbyterian clergyman, who was trying to save from destruction the printing office, where he had denounced this and other fruits of slavery, was shot dead in Illinois; and that Pennsylvania Hall, which had been built at a cost of $40,000, as a place for freedom of speech about all reforms, was burned by a mob, who also set on fire the "Shelter for Colored Orphans."

        All these persecutions took place before the arrival of Mr. Douglass in New Bedford, where he must have heard them often discussed; and they show, like his own treatment in churches and shipyards, that the North was still with the South against his race. All the anti-slavery philanthropists were but a helpless minority, amid the violence of opposition, which marshaled churches and newspapers, State and city governments, police and militia, colleges and courts of justice, fine ladies and business men,

laborers and rowdies, in fact, almost the entire population of the free States against them. The evils of slavery were scarcely realized in the North; the pressure of family, denominational, political, and commercial ties with the South, was very strong; fears that agitation would bring on civil war had already been excited; and many good and wise men considered themselves bound by the Constitution of the United States to refrain from any attacks on institutions whose preservation seemed guaranteed by that great compact. Conservative people were especially alarmed at the irreverence with which the laws and the Constitution were treated, as well as at the encouragement of women to speak in public. The latter fact was peculiarly important to the clergy, as the former was to lawyers and business men.

        Disunionism could not, strictly speaking, be fairly charged against the Abolitionists before 1842; but the Declaration of Sentiments, which had been adopted nine years earlier by the American Anti-Slavery Society, on organizing at Philadelphia, and which had been drawn up by Garrison, with the approval of Whittier and S. J. May, speaks thus of the support given to slave-holders by people of the free States, under the Constitution: "This relation to slavery is criminal and full of danger; it must be broken up." Even from the beginning there was strong temptation to overlook the many peculiarly good features of our form of government, in the earnestness of indignation against one black spot. Mr. Garrison was led, by a desire to follow the Gospels literally, into maintaining that physical force ought never to be used in resisting evil, or accepted

as the foundation of government. He declared in the "Liberator" for 1837, that human governments are the results of disobedience to God, that they are to be preferred to anarchy just as is "the small-pox to the Asiatic cholera," and that "They are all anti-Christ. ("William Lloyd Garrison: the Story of His Life. Told by His Children." Vol. ii., pp. 150, 202.)

        Whittier complained that "He fills his paper with no-governmentism," and Elizur Wright declared that "His plan of rescuing the slave by the destruction of human laws is fatally conflictive with ours." The discontent of the most patriotic Abolitionists was increased, as he founded, in 1838, a Non-Resistance Society, with the approval of Oliver Johnson, S. J. May, Edmund Quincy, H. C. Wright, Stephen S. Foster, Lydia Maria Child, Maria W. Chapman, Abby Kelley, and Lucretia Mott. The Declaration of Sentiments pledged its members not to vote or hold office, and it is expressly stated, that "We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any human government."

        Such language, at a time when an anti-slavery meeting was sure to call out a mob, was more courageous than prudent. A clergyman or magistrate might seem to justify himself for declining to interfere by saying: "Men who disown allegiance to our government have no right to be protected against the righteous indignation which is called out by their disloyalty. They are to blame themselves for these mobs." We can all see now that these early Abolitionists were men and women of whom the world was not worthy; but I cannot help regretting that they were not a little more under the guidance of worldly wisdom.

        Mr. Garrison's anarchism, as it would now be called, was particularly important, because this was in all probability, as is expressly stated by a fellow-champion who is also one of the historians of the great conflict, William Goodell, what kept him from becoming "an early and zealous leader of the Liberty party." This organization, which developed first into the Free Soil and then into the Republican party, and finally abolished slavery, nominated a singularly good candidate for the presidency in 1840. Birney had been a prominent lawyer in Alabama, and had emancipated his slaves before he tried, first in Kentucky, and then in Ohio, to edit an anti-slavery paper which was destroyed three times by mobs; and he was then serving as secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The nomination was supported by Whittier, Sewall, Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Myron Holley, and other prominent Abolitionists, and it was made under the official direction of the State Anti-Slavery Society of New York. Most of the men who sympathized with the movement were determined to vote, and the only question was whether they should support Birney or one of the pro-slavery candidates, Van Buren and Harrison. The good of the cause demanded that the vote of the Liberty party should be made as large as possible, and I see a sad lack of ability either to appreciate a republican form of government, or to coöperate with those who differed with him even slightly, in Garrison's course. He followed up the nomination by expressing in the "Liberator" his surprise at "the folly, the presumption, the almost unequaled infatuation of the handful of Abolitionists." It rested largely with him to say

what gains should be made by this handful among the two hundred thousand members of the anti-slavery societies; and Birney's failure to get much more than seven thousand votes was largely due to the action taken six weeks after his nomination by the Garrisonians at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in May, 1840, in New York. Fearing to be outvoted, about four hundred and fifty of them came from New England by a special steamer, forming what their leader called in the "Liberator" "a heart-stirring spectacle!" About a hundred others of his followers came by rail; and, as only about a thousand votes were cast, the convention was completely under his control. He used it to pass resolutions, disapproving of the nomination of Birney and another Abolitionist, "as inexpedient and injurious to the cause," and declaring that "We cannot advise our friends to waste their energies in futile efforts to promote their election."

        There is no pleasure in dwelling on the mistakes of men like Garrison, and I hasten to speak of a point of controversy where he was clearly in the right. One reason why he and his adherents captured the convention was that they feared it might be packed against them by men who wished to shut out all women from the work. Lucretia Mott was not allowed to vote at the formation of the American Society, in 1833, but only to speak; the two sexes had to organize separate associations; and it was not considered proper for women to advocate reforms in print or in any place more public than a Quaker meeting-house. Shortly before Garrison was mobbed in Boston, he published, in the "Liberator," a letter of

sympathy from the daughter of a judge in the Supreme Court of South Carolina. Miss Angelina Grimké had abandoned her home and family in horror at the system in which she had been brought up, and in 1836 she felt it her duty to publish an "Appeal to Southern Women," which was publicly burned by the postmasters in South Carolina, while the Mayor of Charleston sent her word that she could not be suffered to go there on a visit to her mother. She was soon afterward invited to hold a series of women's meetings in New York parlors, but the audience increased so much that she made the unheard-of innovation of speaking in the session room of a Baptist church. Her next step was to address colored people of both sexes, and in June, 1837, at Lynn, she spoke for the first time to a mixed audience in which white men listened eagerly. Her sister Sarah assisted her; both asserted their right to speak and publish; and both were denounced by the Congregational ministers of Massachusetts in the "Pastoral Letter," best known through the poem which was called out in reply from Whittier. Even he, however, felt obliged to warn them privately against injuring the cause of the slave by bringing in a new question prematurely. "Carolina's high-souled daughters," as he calls them, knew better than any one else how to help the slave, and Angelina was soon seen standing in the Speaker's place in the Hall of Representatives in Boston, speaking to the members of the Legislature, while the seats were filled with the best and brightest people in the State. Her last appearance in public was in Pennsylvania Hall, before a mob who became quiet under the power of

her voice; but twenty hours later the building was set on fire. She had then been for three days a bride.

        By this time there were fighting in the front rank against slavery, not only Lucretia Mott and the Grimké sisters, but Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, Miss Abby Kelley, who has been sadly confounded with the half-witted Abby Folsom, and that gifted lady whose activity had caused her to be nick-named "Captain Chapman." To recognize their services was simply just, and it would have been a disgrace to the cause if the American Society had failed, in May, 1839, to enlarge its membership beyond the line of sex. The motion was supported by Garrison, Phillips, Gerrit Smith, C. C. Burleigh, and Oliver Johnson, but it had only a hundred and eighty-one votes against a hundred and forty-one. A year later the question was decided again in the same way, by giving Miss Kelley a place on a committee; and this time the vote was five hundred and fifty-seven against four hundred and fifty-one. The fact that each side had trebled its strength favors the supposition that both had tried to pack the convention.

        The result of this action, and of the attack on the Liberty candidates, was a secession in which clergymen were prominent. Rival societies were formed; and a new paper was started in opposition to the "Liberator." This last manifestation was short-lived; but it is estimated that about four-fifths of the men who had been working with Garrison, now parted company with him permanently. Most of the churches which had hitherto been open to the Garrisonians were now closed against them. Where they did speak, their audiences were, for a time, unexpectedly

scanty; and Stephen S. Foster was driven to adopt the plan of speaking in church without leave, where he had failed to obtain it. What he suffered in consequence will be told in the next chapter. It must now be remarked that, previous to 1841, the Abolitionists had shown no hostility to the Church; although they had good reason to regret her supporting slavery against them. They were among the most saintly of her children, and they still hoped to save her from being misled by time-serving hirelings. If the Garrisonians erred at all in regard to the Gospel, it was in following it too literally and zealously. It is true, that Garrison had called out some opposition by views about the Sabbath, which do not now seem irreligious; but his main heresies were in regard to the prejudices about color and sex.

        No one of these new movements can be properly understood, except by looking at it in connection with many other recent and alarming innovations. The year 1840 stood nearer to 1890, in the readiness with which all received opinions, even about clothing and food, were called in question, than to 1820, when controversy was mainly inside of the old-fashioned limits. Then Sidney Smith complained that "The Americans are a brave, industrious, and acute people; but they have hitherto given no indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or in their character." . . . "During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the arts, for literature, or even for the statesman-like studies of politics or political economy." . . . "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American

book?" Twenty years, from the time when these words were written, sufficed to bring forward Emerson, Channing, Prescott, Bancroft, Poe, Hawthorne, Cooper, Holmes, Longfellow, Whittier, and other authors who were read in many lands. The thinker, who rightly stands first on this list, as most original, and who has made many readers feel as completely emancipated as Douglass did on reaching New Bedford, said in his lecture on "Man, the Reformer," in 1841: "In the history of the world, the doctrine of reform never had such scope as at the present hour." Former accusers of society "all respected something--Church or State, literature or history, domestic usages, the market town, the dinner table, coined money. But now these and all things else hear the trumpet and must rush to judgment--Christianity, the laws, commerce, schools, the farm, the laboratory; and not a kingdom, town, statute, rite, calling, man, or woman, but it is threatened by the new spirit." In another lecture of the same year he says, "The present age will be marked by its harvest of projects for this reform of domestic, civil, literary, and ecclesiastical institutions. The leaders of the crusades against war, negro slavery, intemperance, government based on force, usages of trade, court and custom-house oaths, and so no to the agitators on the system of education and the laws of property, are the right successors of Luther, Knox, Robinson, Fox, Penn, Wesley, and Whitefield."

        Before these last words were spoken in public, the band of agitators had been joined by a new member, who had deeper experience than any of his brethren of the wrongs which he helped to right. We shall see

him rapidly rise to his full height of culture and genius, bear his share of persecution, and master all the conditions of success in that great reform with which his name is forever associated, so thoroughly as to grow wiser than his original teacher, Garrison, and do good service in rolling up the anti-slavery votes from the seven thousand for Birney, in 1840, to the eighteen hundred thousand, in 1860, for Abraham Lincoln.

CHAPTER III.
THE CRUSADER.

        AT the beginning of August, 1841, an anti-slavery convention was held at New Bedford, where Douglass heard not only Garrison, but Parker Pillsbury, a Universalist clergyman named Bradburn, and other leading Abolitionists; and he became so much interested that he determined to take a holiday, the first he had that summer, and go with his wife to attend the next series of meetings at Nantucket. He had already become somewhat noted as a speaker to colored people; but he felt greatly embarrassed when on the evening of Wednesday, August 11, as is recorded in the "Liberator," he was called out, for the first time in his life, to address a white audience "My speech on this occasion," he says, "is about the only one I ever made of which I do not remember a single connected sentence. It was with the utmost difficulty that I could stand erect, or that I could command and articulate two words without hesitation and stammering. I trembled in every limb." He has since told me, that he did manage to thank the champions of his race for their devotion, and also to express his hearty sympathy with their methods. It was then too late in the evening to say more. The impression he made was so favorable, however, that

he was persuaded to open the last session of the Nantucket convention the next morning, when, as is related by Garrison, "After apologizing for his ignorance and reminding the audience, that slavery is a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and thrilling reflections." He could not safely tell his real name, or his master's, or where he had lived in the South; but according to Parker Pillsbury, he succeeded in proving that he had been there by giving "a most side-splitting specimen of a slave-holding minister's sermon," on the text, "Servants, obey in all things your masters." A passage from this very effective parody will be found in the next chapter, where Miss Holley quotes it as she heard it, two years later, in Buffalo.

        The meetings had begun tamely, but gradually gained in fervor; and now "The crowded congregation had been wrought up almost to enchantment, as he turned over the terrible apocalypse of his experiences in slavery." Then Garrison arose; and as Douglass says, his speech "was one never to be forgotten by those who heard it. Those who had heard him oftenest, and had known him longest, were astonished. It was an effort of unequalled power, sweeping down, like a very tornado, every opposing barrier." Garrison says himself, "I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment." He began by declaring that Patrick Henry never spoke more eloquently in the cause of liberty. Then, according to Pillsbury, he asked, "Have we been listening to a thing, a piece of property, or to a man?"

"A man! A man!" shouted full five hundred voices. "And should such a man be held a slave in a republican and Christian land?" "No, no! Never, never!" "Shall such a man ever be sent back to slavery from the soil of old Massachusetts?" shouted Garrison, with all his power of voice. "Almost the whole assembly sprang with one accord to their feet, and the walls and roof of the Athenæum seemed to shudder with the 'No, no!' loud and long continued in the wild enthusiasm of the scene. As soon as Garrison could be heard, he caught up the acclaim, and superadded: 'No! a thousand times no! Sooner the lightnings of heaven blast Bunker Hill monument, till not one stone shall be left standing upon another.' " (Pillsbury, "Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles," pp.325-8.)

        Before Douglass returned to New Bedford, he accepted an invitation from Mr. Collins, agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, to enter into its service as a lecturer, and go to and fro with him, telling his story wherever he could find an audience. His salary was to be four hundred and fifty dollars a year. He was very unwilling at first, not only because he would be dangerously exposed to discovery and arrest, but because he distrusted his own ability. The Abolitionists insisted on his enlisting in their forlorn hope; "and I finally consented to go out for three months, for I supposed I should have got to the end of my story and my usefulness in that length of time." He has been out before the public, pleading for his race, almost fifty years, and he has not yet got to the end of his usefulness.

        The next place where he seems to have attracted

much notice was Hingham, where he spoke at the Plymouth County convention, November 4. According to an article copied into the "Liberator," from the "Hingham Patriot," he reminded those who saw him of Spartacus, the rebel gladiator, as presented by Forrest. "A man of his shrewdness, and his power, both intellectual and physical, must be poor stuff, thought we, to make a slave of. Any way, we would not like to be his master." . . . . "He is very fluent in the use of language, choice and appropriate language, too; and talks as well, for all we could see, as men who have spent all their lives over books." . . . "His master valued him at $2,000. He told us that he could distinguish a slave-holder or a slave by the cast of his eye, the moment he saw one." He seems, even then, to have done much more than tell his own experience. He did, it is true, in favoring the presentation of petitions as a means of attracting notice, relate how he learned himself who the "Bobolitionists" were, by hearing what they asked of Congress; but he went on to express his decided preference for moral suasion over political action. "We ought to do just what the slave-holders don't want us to do, that is, use moral suasion." He called the pledge of the North to return fugitives "the bulwark of slavery;" for it "discourages very many from making any attempt to gain their freedom." . . . "This is the Union whose dissolution we want to accomplish; and he is no true Abolitionist who does not go against this Union. The South cares not how much you talk against slavery in the abstract. They will agree with you, yet they will cling to it as for life; and it is this pledge, binding the North to the South, on which

they rely for its support." This is, of course, simply what he had been taught by Garrison, Phillips, and Collins. What was most original in his speeches at this time was the zeal with which he lashed the churches of the North for their alliance with those in the South.

        The most important work done by the Abolitionists in 1841 was in Rhode Island. This State was still under the charter of 1663, which had originally been very liberal, but had now become plainly unjust. The voters must not only be white, but must also be holders, or eldest sons of holders, of real estate, so that almost two-thirds of the men were disfranchised; and the majority of the Representatives were elected by a portion of the State inhabited by only about one-third of its citizens. Thus it was perfectly possible for fifteen hundred men to get the control of a legislature which ruled over fifty thousand adults. About seven hundred of the disfranchised men were colored.

        A movement to enlarge the suffrage, and equalize the representation, began in 1790, was renewed in 1829, and assumed formidable proportions in 1841. The Legislature was willing to make some changes, but not enough to satisfy the suffragists. These Dorrites, as they were called, on account of being led by Mr. T. W. Dorr, were mostly Democrats, and were determined to have full justice done to the white man at once. Those of them who wished to do something for the colored man also were overruled by the others, and persuaded to make a compromise. A new constitution was proposed in November, 1841, allowing all white men to vote, but postponing the question of enfranchising colored

people for decision afterwards; and all who would thus be entitled to the ballot were invited to show themselves at the polls on December 27, 28, or 29.

        There were men in Rhode Island who were determined that the negro should have his just part in whatever reform was accomplished. A series of conventions was arranged for December, and among the companions of Douglass was one of whom he says "No man thrilled me more on the slavery question than Parker Pillsbury." There, too, were Abby Kelley and Stephen S. Foster, whose conscience was never at peace unless he was stirring up a mob. He was now carrying out his own favorite plan, of rebuking lukewarm ministers and congregations in the midst of what they called public worship, with such success that even he was satisfied. Again and again he was dragged out by deacons and class-leaders. His collar was torn off by excited Quakers in Lynn, and he had been put in prison several times before he was ejected, in September, 1842, from the City Hall in Portland, with only one tail left on his long coat. How he spoke to opponents may be imagined from this fact. A number of Methodist ministers were led, partly by sympathy and partly by curiosity, into one of the anti-slavery conventions in Boston. Foster recognized their peculiar costume, and began his speech thus: "Is there a single member of the Methodist Episcopal Church within the sound of my voice, who dares deny that he is a villain?" His three companions in Rhode Island were not so fond of church-work; but the violence of the mob was increased by prejudice against the color of Douglass and the sex of Miss Kelley. I cannot but feel indignant,

even now, when I think of the foul words and rotten eggs that were hurled at her of whom Lowell wrote thus:

                         "A Judith there, turned Quakeress,
                         Sits Abby in her simple dress. * * * * * * *
                         No nobler gift of heart or brain,
                         No life more white from spot or stain,
                         Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid
                         Than hers--the simple Quaker maid."

        Convention after convention was mobbed, but still the friends of equal suffrage went on pointing out the black spot in the Dorr constitution. Its supporters were indignant, and its opponents rejoiced to see the suffragists at war among themselves. Of the last of these conventions, and one of the noisiest, that held in Providence, while the vote was being taken on the merits of the new plan, we have the following description, from the pen of Mr. N. P. Rogers, who was making the "Herald of Freedom," published at Concord, New Hampshire, a noble ally of the "Liberator":

        "Friday evening was chiefly occupied by colored speakers. The fugitive Douglass was up when we entered. This is an extraordinary man. He was cut out for a hero. In a rising for liberty, he would have been a Toussaint or a Hamilton. He has the 'heart to conceive, the head to contrive, and the hand to execute.' A commanding person--over six feet, we should say, in height, and of most manly proportions. His head would strike a phrenologist amid a sea of them in Exeter Hall, and his voice would ring like a trumpet in the field. Let the South congratulate herself that he is a fugitive. It would not have been safe for her, if he had remained about the plantations a year or two longer. Douglass is his fugitive name. He did not wear

it in slavery. We don't know why he assumed it, or who bestowed it on him--but there seems fitness in it, to his commanding figure and heroic port. As a speaker he has few equals. It is not declamation--but oratory, power of debate. He watches the tide of discussion with the eye of the veteran, and dashes into it at once with all the tact of the forum or the bar. He has wit, argument, sarcasm, pathos--all that first-rate men show in their master efforts. His voice is highly melodious and rich, and his enunciation quite elegant; and yet he has been but two or three years out of the house of bondage. We noticed that he had strikingly improved since we had heard him at Dover in September. We say thus much of him, for he is esteemed by our multitude as of an inferior race. We should like to see him before any New England legislature or bar, and let him feel the freedom of the anti-slavery meeting, and see what would become of his inferiority. Yet, he is a thing, in American estimate. He is the chattel of some pale-faced tyrant. How his owner would cower and shiver to hear him thunder in an anti-slavery hall. How he would shrink away, with his infernal whip, from his flaming eye when kindled with anti-slavery emotion. And the brotherhood of thieves, the posse comitatus of divines, we wish a hecatomb or two of the proudest and flintiest of them, were obliged to hear him thunder for human liberty, and lay the enslavement of his people at their doors. They would tremble like Belshazzar. Poor Wayland, we wish he could have been pegged to a seat in the Franklin Hall the evening the colored friends spoke. His 'limitations' would have abandoned him like the 'baseless fabric of a vision.' Sanderson, of New Bedford, Cole, of Boston, and Stanley, of North Carolina, followed Douglass. They all displayed excellent ability." . . . "These are the inferior race, these young black men, who, ten years ago, would have been denied entrance into such an assembly of whites, except as waiters or fiddlers. Their attempts at speaking would have been met with jeers of astonishment. It would have amazed the superior race as the ass's speech did Balaam. Now they mingle with applause in the debates with Garrison, and Foster, and Phillips.

Southern slavery--'hold thine own'--when the kindred of your victims are thus kindling Northern enthusiasm on the platform of liberty and free debate."

        A series of events in 1842, which attracted much attention at the time, justified fully the course pursued by the Abolitionists against the Dorrites. These latter attempted, merely as agents of the popular will, and without any sanction from the laws of the land, to substitute the new constitution for the old one, and make their leader Governor. President Tyler was appealed to by the lawful Governor, and promised him the support of the nation. Dorr tried to seize upon the administration by force; but most of the leading citizens, including his father and brother, took up arms against him; his most influential supporters deserted him; the cannons which he attempted to discharge with his own hands against the state troops, were found to be primed with wet paper; and he was soon obliged to disband his adherents. The law and order party, who were nicknamed Algerines, on account of their severity, made their victory permanent, by enacting, before the end of 1842, the constitution which was in force until very recently, and which has admitted black men to vote on the same terms as white, the property qualification being reduced so far as to allow any citizen to vote who would pay a tax of one dollar, and who had resided two years in the State.

        These details are important, because this experience, of the advantage of acting in harmony with our national spirit of respect for the laws and for the magistrates elected under them, may have done something to prepare Douglass for breaking with the

Garrisonian disunionists, as he ultimately did. At this time, however, he was completely carried away by his admiration for the enthusiasts, who gave their lives to the emancipation of his race, and who were free from that prejudice against any association with colored people, which was then almost universal at the North. He was surprised and delighted at the friendly welcome they gave him when he came to Boston in January, 1842. The first house in the city, where he was welcomed as a guest, was that of one of the few members of the Liberty party, Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, who was, he says, "the first of his color who ever treated me as if I were a man." This organization was not, however, handled very tenderly in the speech which he delivered before the Massachusetts Society in the Melodeon, on Wednesday, January 26. On Thursday evening he helped Garrison, Phillips, Rogers, and Abby Kelley take advantage of the convention's having been invited to occupy the Representatives' Hall, in the State House, to pass a resolution declaring "That Massachusetts is degraded and dishonored by her connection with Southern slavery; that this connection is not only dishonorable, but in the highest degree criminal; and that it must be broken up, at whatever sacrifice or hazard." If the meaning of these words was not plain enough, it was made so twenty-four hours afterward.

        The next evening, Friday, January 28, an audience of four thousand people was collected in Faneuil Hall, to demand the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Garrison presided; and, among the resolutions which were adopted, was one declaring that "The American Union is such only in form, but not

in substance, a hollow mockery instead of a glorious reality." This action was taken with the hearty support of both Phillips and Douglass. The latter enlivened the proceedings by giving his very funny imitation of the way in which slave-holding clergymen would exhort servants to obey their masters. His mimicry of the Southern preacher's whine was irresistibly comical.

        This sermon was often delivered by him in county conventions and other local meetings. His conscience was clear in the use of this weapon; for he was convinced, to quote a resolution which he introduced at Worcester, January 6, 1842, that, "The sectarian organizations of this country, called churches, are, in supporting slavery, upholding a system of theft, adultery, and murder; and it is the duty of Abolitionists to expose their true character before the public." His own attempts to get a chance to plead for his race in the pulpit were often unsuccessful; and he tells me that "When I asked for a church and the minister said, 'Brother Douglass, I don't know about this. I must ask the Lord. Let us pray,' I always knew I should not get it." He used to say in his early lectures, that he had offered many prayers for freedom; but he did not get it, until he prayed with his legs. His dissatisfaction with the clergy even led him to sing the parody on a familiar hymn, about being saved from a burning hell, and dwelling with Immanuel "in heavenly union."

                         "Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell,
                         How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,
                         And women buy, and children sell,
                         And preach all sinners down to hell,
                         And sing of heavenly union.

                         "They'll bleat and baa, dona like goats
                         Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes,
                         Array their backs in fine black coats,
                         Then seize their niggers by the throats,
                         And choke for heavenly union.

                         "They'll church you, if you sip a dram,
                         And damn you, if you steal a lamb,
                         Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam,
                         Of human rights, and bread and ham,
                         Kidnappers' heavenly union.

                         "They'll loudly talk of Christ's reward,
                         And bind his image with a cord,
                         And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,
                         And sell their brother in the Lord,
                         To hand-cuffed heavenly union.

                         "They'll read and sing a sacred song,
                         And make a prayer both loud and long,
                         And teach the right, and do the wrong,
                         Hailing the brother, sister throng,
                         With words of heavenly union. * * * * * * *

                         "They'll raise tobacco, corn, and rye,
                         And drive, and thieve, and cheat and lie,
                         And lay up treasure in the sky,
                         By making switch and cowskin fly,
                         In hope of heavenly union.

                         "They'll crack old Tony on the skull,
                         And preach and roar like Basham bull,
                         Or braying ass, of mischief full,
                         Then seize old Jacob by the wool,
                         And pull for heavenly union.

                         "A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief,
                         Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef,
                         Yet never would afford relief,
                         To needy, sable sons of grief,
                         Was big with heavenly union.

                         " 'Love not the world,' the preacher said,
                         And winked his eye, and shook his head.
                         He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned,
                         Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread,
                         Yet still loved heavenly union.

                         "Another preacher, whining, spoke,
                         Of one whose heart for sinners broke.
                         He tied old Nanny to an oak,
                         And drew the blood at every stroke,
                         And prayed for heavenly union.

                         "Two others ope'd their iron jaws,
                         And waved their children-stealing paws.