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Charles-Chesnutt-Frederick-Douglass-1899-nonfiction.txt
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Charles-Chesnutt-Frederick-Douglass-1899-nonfiction.txt
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FREDERICK DOUGLASS 1899
Charles Chesnutt
The Beacon biographies of eminent Americans. Includes bibliographical
references (p.).
Preface
Frederick Douglass lived so long, and played so conspicuous a part on
the world's stage, that it would be impossible, in a work of the
size of this, to do more than touch upon the salient features of his
career, to suggest the respects in which he influenced the course of
events in his lifetime, and to epitomize for the readers of another
generation the judgment of his contemporaries as to his genius and his
character.
Douglass's fame as an orator has long been secure. His position as the
champion of an oppressed race, and at the same time an example of its
possibilities, was, in his own generation, as picturesque as it
was unique; and his life may serve for all time as an incentive
to aspiring souls who would fight the battles and win the love of
mankind. The average American of to-day who sees, when his attention
is called to it, and deplores, if he be a thoughtful and just man,
the deep undertow of race prejudice that retards the progress of the
colored people of our own generation, cannot, except by reading the
painful records of the past, conceive of the mental and spiritual
darkness to which slavery, as the inexorable condition of its
existence, condemned its victims and, in a less measure, their
oppressors, or of the blank wall of proscription and scorn by which
free people of color were shut up in a moral and social Ghetto, the
gates of which have yet not been entirely torn down.
From this night of slavery Douglass emerged, passed through the limbo
of prejudice which he encountered as a freeman, and took his place in
history. "As few of the world's great men have ever had so checkered
and diversified a career," says Henry Wilson, "so it may at least be
plausibly claimed that no man represents in himself more conflicting
ideas and interests. His life is, in itself, an epic which finds few
to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality." It was, after
all, no misfortune for humanity that Frederick Douglass felt the iron
hand of slavery; for his genius changed the drawbacks of color and
condition into levers by which he raised himself and his people.
The materials for this work have been near at hand, though there is
a vast amount of which lack of space must prevent the use.
Acknowledgment is here made to members of the Douglass family for aid
in securing the photograph from which the frontispiece is reproduced.
The more the writer has studied the records of Douglass's life, the
more it has appealed to his imagination and his heart. He can claim no
special qualification for this task, unless perhaps it be a profound
and in some degree a personal sympathy with every step of Douglass's
upward career. Belonging to a later generation, he was only
privileged to see the man and hear the orator after his life-work was
substantially completed, but often enough then to appreciate
something of the strength and eloquence by which he impressed his
contemporaries. If by this brief sketch the writer can revive among
the readers of another generation a tithe of the interest that
Douglass created for himself when he led the forlorn hope of his race
for freedom and opportunity, his labor will be amply repaid.
Charles W. Chesnutt
Cleveland, October, 1899
CHRONOLOGY
1817
Frederick Douglass was born at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Talbot County,
Maryland.
1825
Was sent to Baltimore to live with a relative of his master.
1833
_March._ Was taken to St. Michaels, Maryland, to live again with his
master.
1834
_January._ Was sent to live with Edward Covey, slave-breaker, with
whom he spent the year.
1835-36
Hired to William Freeland. Made an unsuccessful attempt to escape from
slavery, Was sent to Baltimore to learn the ship-calkers trade.
1838
_May_. Hired his own time and worked at his trade.
_September 3_. Escaped from slavery and went to New York City. Married
Miss Anna Murray. Went to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Assumed the name
of "Douglass."
1841
Attended anti-slavery convention at New Bedford and addressed the
meeting. Was employed as agent of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery
Society.
1842
Took part in Rhode Island campaign against the Dorr constitution.
Lectured on slavery. Moved to Lynn, Massachusetts.
1843
Took part in the famous "One Hundred Conventions" of the New England
Anti-slavery Society.
1844
Lectured with Pillsbury, Foster, and others.
1845
Published _Frederick Douglass's Narrative_.
1845-46
Visited Great Britain and Ireland. Remained in Europe two years,
lecturing on slavery and other subjects. Was presented by English
friends with money to purchase his freedom and to establish a
newspaper.
1847
Returned to the United States. Moved with his family to Rochester, New
York. Established the _North Star_, subsequently renamed _Frederick
Douglass's Paper_. Visited John Brown at Springfield, Massachusetts.
1848
Lectured on slavery and woman suffrage.
1849
Edited newspaper. Lectured against slavery. Assisted the escape of
fugitive slaves.
1850
_May 7._ Attended meeting of Anti-slavery Society at New York City.
Running debate with Captain Rynders.
1852
Supported the Free Soil party. Elected delegate from Rochester to Free
Soil convention at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Supported John P. Hale for
the Presidency.
1853
Visited Harriet Beecher Stowe at Andover, Massachusetts, with
reference to industrial school for colored youth.
1854
Opposed repeal of Missouri Compromise.
_June 12._ Delivered commencement address at Western Reserve College,
Hudson, Ohio.
1855
Published _My Bondage and My Freedom_. _March_. Addressed the New York
legislature.
1856
Supported Fremont, candidate of the Republican party.
1858
Established _Douglass's Monthly_. Entertained John Brown at Rochester.
1859
_August 20_. Visited John Brown at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
_May 12 [October]._ Went to Canada to avoid arrest for alleged
complicity in the John Brown raid.
_November 12._ Sailed from Quebec for England.
Lectured and spoke in England and Scotland for six months.
1860
Returned to the United States. Supported Lincoln for the Presidency.
1862
Lectured and spoke in favor of the war and against slavery.
1863
Assisted in recruiting Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts
colored regiments. Invited to visit President Lincoln.
1864
Supported Lincoln for re-election.
1866
Was active in procuring the franchise for the freedmen.
_September._ Elected delegate from Rochester to National Loyalists'
Convention at Philadelphia.
1869 [1870]
Moved to Washington, District of Columbia. Established [Edited and
then bought] the _New National Era_.
1870
Appointed secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission by President
Grant.
1872
Appointed councillor of the District of Columbia. [Moved family there
after a fire (probably arson) destroyed their Rochester home and
Douglass's newspaper files.] Elected presidential elector of the State
of New York, and chosen by the electoral college to take the vote to
Washington.
1876
Delivered address at unveiling of Lincoln statue at Washington.
1877
Appointed Marshal of the District of Columbia by President Hayes.
1878
Visited his old home in Maryland and met his old master.
1879
Bust of Douglass placed in Sibley Hall, of Rochester University. Spoke
against the proposed negro exodus from the South.
1881
Appointed recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia.
1882
_January._ Published _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_, the third
and last of his autobiographies. _August 4._ Mrs. Frederick Douglass
died.
1884
_February 6._ Attended funeral of Wendell Phillips. _February 9._
Attended memorial meeting and delivered eulogy on Phillips. Married
Miss Helen Pitts.
1886
_May 20._ Lectured on John Brown at Music Hall, Boston.
_September 11._ Attended a dinner given in his honor by the Wendell
Phillips Club, Boston.
_September._ Sailed for Europe.
Visited Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt, 1886-87.
1888
Made a tour of the Southern States.
1889
Appointed United States minister resident and consul-general to the
Republic of Hayti and _chargé d'affaires_ to Santo Domingo.
1890
_September 22._ Addressed abolition reunion at Boston.
1891
Resigned the office of minister to Hayti.
1893
Acted as commissioner for Hayti at World's Columbian Exposition.
1895
_February 20._ Frederick Douglass died at his home on Anacostia
Heights, near Washington, District of Columbia.
I.
If it be no small task for a man of the most favored antecedents and
the most fortunate surroundings to rise above mediocrity in a great
nation, it is surely a more remarkable achievement for a man of the
very humblest origin possible to humanity in any country in any age of
the world, in the face of obstacles seemingly insurmountable, to win
high honors and rewards, to retain for more than a generation the
respect of good men in many lands, and to be deemed worthy of
enrolment among his country's great men. Such a man was Frederick
Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer
force of character and talents that neither slavery nor caste
proscription could crush must ever remain as a shining illustration
of the essential superiority of manhood to environment. Circumstances
made Frederick Douglass a slave, but they could not prevent him from
becoming a freeman and a leader among mankind.
The early life of Douglass, as detailed by himself from the platform
in vigorous and eloquent speech, and as recorded in the three volumes
written by himself at different periods of his career, is perhaps the
completest indictment of the slave system ever presented at the bar of
public opinion. Fanny Kemble's _Journal of a Residence on a Georgian
Plantation_, kept by her in the very year of Douglass's escape from
bondage, but not published until 1863, too late to contribute anything
to the downfall of slavery, is a singularly clear revelation of
plantation life from the standpoint of an outsider entirely unbiased
by American prejudice. _Frederick Douglass's Narrative_ is the same
story told from the inside. They coincide in the main facts; and in
the matter of detail, like the two slightly differing views of a
stereoscopic picture, they bring out into bold relief the real
character of the peculiar institution. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ lent to
the structure of fact the decorations of humor, a dramatic plot, and
characters to whose fate the touch of creative genius gave a living
interest. But, after all, it was not Uncle Tom, nor Topsy, nor Miss
Ophelia, nor Eliza, nor little Eva that made the book the power it
proved to stir the hearts of men, but the great underlying tragedy
then already rapidly approaching a bloody climax.
Frederick Douglass was born in February, l8l7,--as nearly as the date
could be determined in after years, when it became a matter of public
interest,--at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Talbot County, on the eastern
shore of Maryland, a barren and poverty-stricken district, which
possesses in the birth of Douglass its sole title to distinction. His
mother was a negro slave, tall, erect, and well-proportioned, of a
deep black and glossy complexion, with regular features, and manners
of a natural dignity and sedateness. Though a field hand and compelled
to toil many hours a day, she had in some mysterious way learned to
read, being the only person of color in Tuckahoe, slave or free, who
possessed that accomplishment. His father was a white man. It was in
the nature of things that in after years attempts should be made to
analyze the sources of Douglass's talent, and that the question should
be raised whether he owed it to the black or the white half of his
mixed ancestry. But Douglass himself, who knew his own mother and
grandmother, ascribed such powers as he possessed to the negro half of
his blood; and, as to it certainly he owed the experience which gave
his anti-slavery work its peculiar distinction and value, he doubtless
believed it only fair that the credit for what he accomplished should
go to those who needed it most and could justly be proud of it. He
never knew with certainty who his white father was, for the exigencies
of slavery separated the boy from his mother before the subject of
his paternity became of interest to him; and in after years his white
father never claimed the honor, which might have given him a place in
history.
Douglass's earliest recollections centered around the cabin of his
grandmother, Betsey Bailey, who seems to have been something of a
privileged character on the plantation, being permitted to live with
her husband, Isaac, in a cabin of their own, charged with only the
relatively light duty of looking after a number of young children,
mostly the offspring of her own five daughters, and providing for her
own support.
It is impossible in a work of the scope of this to go into very
elaborate detail with reference to this period of Douglass's life,
however interesting it might be. The real importance of his life to us
of another generation lies in what he accomplished toward the world's
progress, which he only began to influence several years after his
escape from slavery. Enough ought to be stated, however, to trace
his development from slave to freeman, and his preparation for the
platform where he secured his hearing and earned his fame.
Douglass was born the slave of one Captain Aaron Anthony, a man of
some consequence in eastern Maryland, the manager or chief clerk of
one Colonel Lloyd, the head for that generation of an old, exceedingly
wealthy, and highly honored family in Maryland, the possessor of a
stately mansion and one of the largest and most fertile plantations in
the State. Captain Anthony, though only the satellite of this great
man, himself owned several farms and a number of slaves. At the age of
seven Douglass was taken from the cabin of his grandmother at Tuckahoe
to his masters residence on Colonel Lloyd's plantation.
Up to this time he had never, to his recollection, seen his mother.
All his impressions of her were derived from a few brief visits made
to him at Colonel Lloyd's plantation, most of them at night. These
fleeting visits of the mother were important events in the life of the
child, now no longer under the care of his grandmother, but turned
over to the tender mercies of his master's cook, with whom he does not
seem to have been a favorite. His mother died when he was eight or
nine years old. Her son did not see her during her illness, nor learn
of it until after her death. It was always a matter of grief to him
that he did not know her better, and that he could not was one of the
sins of slavery that he never forgave.
On Colonel Lloyd's plantation Douglass spent four years of the slave
life of which his graphic description on the platform stirred humane
hearts to righteous judgment of an unrighteous institution. It is
enough to say that this lad, with keen eyes and susceptible feelings,
was an eye-witness of all the evils to which slavery gave birth. Its
extremes of luxury and misery could be found within the limits of one
estate. He saw the field hand driven forth at dawn to labor until
dark. He beheld every natural affection crushed when inconsistent with
slavery, or warped and distorted to fit the necessities and promote
the interests of the institution. He heard the unmerited strokes of
the lash on the backs of others, and felt them on his own. In the wild
songs of the slaves he read, beneath their senseless jargon or their
fulsome praise of "old master," the often unconscious note of grief
and despair. He perceived, too, the debasing effects of slavery upon
master and slave alike, crushing all semblance of manhood in the
one, and in the other substituting passion for judgment, caprice for
justice, and indolence and effeminacy for the more virile virtues of
freemen. Doubtless the gentle hand of time will some time spread
the veil of silence over this painful past; but, while we are still
gathering its evil aftermath, it is well enough that we do not forget
the origin of so many of our civic problems.
When Douglass was ten years old, he was sent from the Lloyd plantation
to Baltimore, to live with one Hugh Auld, a relative of his master.
Here he enjoyed the high privilege, for a slave, of living in the
house with his master's family. In the capacity of house boy it was
his duty to run errands and take care of a little white boy, Tommy
Auld, the son of his mistress for the time being, Mrs. Sophia Auld.
Mrs. Auld was of a religious turn of mind; and, from hearing her
reading the Bible aloud frequently, curiosity prompted the boy to ask
her to teach him to read. She complied, and found him an apt pupil,
until her husband learned of her unlawful and dangerous conduct, and
put an end to the instruction. But the evil was already done, and the
seed thus sown brought forth fruit in the after career of the orator
and leader of men. The mere fact that his master wished to prevent his
learning made him all the more eager to acquire knowledge. In after
years, even when most bitter in his denunciation of the palpable evils
of slavery, Douglass always acknowledged the debt he owed to this good
lady who innocently broke the laws and at the same time broke the
chains that held a mind in bondage.
Douglass lived in the family of Hugh Auld at Baltimore for seven
years. During this time the achievement that had the greatest
influence upon his future was his learning to read and write. His
mistress had given him a start. His own efforts gained the rest. He
carried in his pocket a blue-backed _Webster's Spelling Book_, and, as
occasion offered, induced his young white playmates, by the bribes
of childhood, to give him lessons in spelling. When he was about
thirteen, he began to feel deeply the moral yoke of slavery and to
seek for knowledge of the means to escape it. One book seems to have
had a marked influence upon his life at this epoch. He obtained,
somehow, a copy of _The Columbian Orator_, containing some of the
choicest masterpieces of English oratory, in which he saw liberty
praised and oppression condemned; and the glowing periods of Pitt and
Fox and Sheridan and our own Patrick Henry stirred to life in the
heart of this slave boy the genius for oratory which did not burst
forth until years afterward. The worldly wisdom of denying to slaves
the key to knowledge is apparent when it is said that Douglass first
learned from a newspaper that there were such people as abolitionists,
who were opposed to human bondage and sought to make all men free.
At about this same period Douglass's mind fell under religious
influences. He was converted, professed faith in Jesus Christ, and
began to read the Bible. He had dreamed of liberty before; he now
prayed for it, and trusted in God. But, with the shrewd common sense
which marked his whole life and saved it from shipwreck in more
than one instance, he never forgot that God helps them that help
themselves, and so never missed an opportunity to acquire the
knowledge that would prepare him for freedom and give him the means of
escape from slavery.
Douglass had learned to read, partly from childish curiosity and the
desire to be able to do what others around him did; but it was with a
definite end in view that he learned to write. By the slave code
it was unlawful for a slave to go beyond the limits of his own
neighborhood without the written permission of his master. Douglass's
desire to write grew mainly out of the fact that in order to escape
from bondage, which he had early determined to do, he would probably
need such a "pass," as this written permission was termed, and could
write it himself if he but knew how. His master for the time being
kept a ship-yard, and in this and neighboring establishments of
the same kind the boy spent much of his time. He noticed that the
carpenters, after dressing pieces of timber, marked them with certain
letters to indicate their positions in the vessel. By asking questions
of the workmen he learned the names of these letters and their
significance. He got up writing matches with sticks upon the ground
with the little white boys, copied the italics in his spelling-book,
and in the secrecy of the attic filled up all the blank spaces of his
young master's old copy-books. In time he learned to write, and thus
again demonstrated the power of the mind to overleap the bounds that
men set for it and work out the destiny to which God designs it.
II.
It was the curious fate of Douglass to pass through almost every phase
of slavery, as though to prepare him the more thoroughly for his
future career. Shortly after he went to Baltimore, his master, Captain
Anthony, died intestate, and his property was divided between his two
children. Douglass, with the other slaves, was part of the personal
estate, and was sent for to be appraised and disposed of in the
division. He fell to the share of Mrs. Lucretia Auld, his masters
daughter, who sent him back to Baltimore, where, after a month's
absence, he resumed his life in the household of Mrs. Hugh Auld,
the sister-in-law of his legal mistress. Owing to a family
misunderstanding, he was taken, in March, 1833, from Baltimore back to
St. Michaels.
His mistress, Lucretia Auld, had died in the mean time; and the new
household in which he found himself, with Thomas Auld and his second
wife, Rowena, at its head, was distinctly less favorable to the slave
boy's comfort than the home where he had lived in Baltimore. Here he
saw hardships of the life in bondage that had been less apparent in a
large city. It is to be feared that Douglass was not the ideal slave,
governed by the meek and lowly spirit of Uncle Tom. He seems, by his
own showing, to have manifested but little appreciation of the wise
oversight, the thoughtful care, and the freedom from responsibility
with which slavery claimed to hedge round its victims, and he was
inclined to spurn the rod rather than to kiss it. A tendency to
insubordination, due partly to the freer life he had led in Baltimore,
got him into disfavor with a master easily displeased; and, not
proving sufficiently amenable to the discipline of the home
plantation, he was sent to a certain celebrated negro-breaker by the
name of Edward Covey, one of the poorer whites who, as overseers and
slave-catchers, and in similar unsavory capacities, earned a living as
parasites on the system of slavery. Douglass spent a year under Coveys
ministrations, and his life there may be summed up in his own words:
"I had neither sufficient time in which to eat nor to sleep, except on
Sundays. The overwork and the brutal chastisements of which I was the
victim, combined with that ever-gnawing and soul-destroying thought,
'I am a slave,--a slave for life,' rendered me a living embodiment of
mental and physical wretchedness."
But even all this did not entirely crush the indomitable spirit of a
man destined to achieve his own freedom and thereafter to help win
freedom for a race. In August, 1834, after a particularly atrocious
beating, which left him wounded and weak from loss of blood, Douglass
escaped the vigilance of the slave-breaker and made his way back to
his own master to seek protection. The master, who would have lost
his slave's wages for a year if he had broken the contract with
Covey before the year's end, sent Douglass back to his taskmaster.
Anticipating the most direful consequences, Douglass made the
desperate resolution to resist any further punishment at Covey's
hands. After a fight of two hours Covey gave up his attempt to whip
Frederick, and thenceforth laid hands on him no more. That Covey did
not invoke the law, which made death the punishment of the slave who
resisted his master, was probably due to shame at having been worsted
by a negro boy, or to the prudent consideration that there was no
profit to be derived from a dead negro. Strength of character,
re-enforced by strength of muscle, thus won a victory over brute force
that secured for Douglass comparative immunity from abuse during the
remaining months of his year's service with Covey.
The next year, 1835, Douglass was hired out to a Mr. William Freeland,
who lived near St. Michael's, a gentleman who did not forget justice
or humanity, so far as they were consistent with slavery, even
in dealing with bond-servants. Here Douglass led a comparatively
comfortable life. He had enough to eat, was not overworked, and found
the time to conduct a surreptitious Sunday-school, where he tried to
help others by teaching his fellow-slaves to read the Bible.
III.
The manner of Douglass's escape from Maryland was never publicly
disclosed by him until the war had made slavery a memory and
the slave-catcher a thing of the past. It was the theory of the
anti-slavery workers of the time that the publication of the details
of escapes or rescues from bondage seldom reached the ears of those
who might have learned thereby to do likewise, but merely furnished
the master class with information that would render other escapes
more difficult and bring suspicion or punishment upon those who had
assisted fugitives. That this was no idle fear there is abundant
testimony in the annals of the period. But in later years, when there
was no longer any danger of unpleasant consequences, and when it had
become an honor rather than a disgrace to have assisted a distressed
runaway, Douglass published in detail the story of his flight. It
would not compare in dramatic interest with many other celebrated
escapes from slavery or imprisonment. He simply masqueraded as a
sailor, borrowed a sailors "protection," or certificate that he
belonged to the navy, took the train to Baltimore in the evening, and
rode in the negro car until he reached New York City. There were many
anxious moments during this journey. The "protection" he carried
described a man somewhat different from him, but the conductor did not
examine it carefully. Fear clutched at the fugitive's heart whenever
he neared a State border line. He saw several persons whom he knew;
but, if they recognized him or suspected his purpose, they made no
sign. A little boldness, a little address, and a great deal of good
luck carried him safely to his journey's end.
Douglass arrived in New York on September 4, 1838, having attained
only a few months before what would have been in a freeman his legal
majority. But, though landed in a free State, he was by no means a
free man. He was still a piece of property, and could be reclaimed
by the law's aid if his whereabouts were discovered. While local
sentiment at the North afforded a measure of protection to fugitives,
and few were ever returned to bondage compared with the number that
escaped, yet the fear of recapture was ever with them, darkening their
lives and impeding their pursuit of happiness.
But even the partial freedom Douglass had achieved gave birth to a
thousand delightful sensations. In his autobiography he describes this
dawn of liberty thus:
"A new world had opened up to me. I lived more in one day than in a
year of my slave life. I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den
of hungry lions. My chains were broken, and the victory brought me
unspeakable joy."
But one cannot live long on joy; and, while his chains were broken,
he was not beyond the echo of their clanking. He met on the streets,
within a few hours after his arrival in New York, a man of his own
color, who informed him that New York was full of Southerners at that
season of the year, and that slave-hunters and spies were numerous,
that old residents of the city were not safe, and that any recent
fugitive was in imminent danger. After this cheerful communication
Douglass's informant left him, evidently fearing that Douglass himself
might be a slave-hunting spy. There were negroes base enough to play
this role. In a sailor whom he encountered he found a friend. This
Good Samaritan took him home for the night, and accompanied him next
day to a Mr. David Ruggles, a colored man, the secretary of the New
York Vigilance Committee and an active antislavery worker. Mr. Ruggles
kept him concealed for several days, during which time the woman
Douglass loved, a free woman, came on from Baltimore; and they were
married. He had no money in his pocket, and nothing to depend upon but
his hands, which doubtless seemed to him quite a valuable possession,
as he knew they had brought in an income of several hundred dollars a
year to their former owner.
Douglass's new friends advised him to go to New Bedford,
Massachusetts, where whaling fleets were fitted out, and where he
might hope to find work at his trade of ship-calker. It was believed,
too, that he would be safer there, as the anti-slavery sentiment was
considered too strong to permit a fugitive slave's being returned to
the South.
When Douglass, accompanied by his wife, arrived in New Bedford, a
Mr. Nathan Johnson, a colored man to whom he had been recommended,
received him kindly, gave him shelter and sympathy, and lent him a
small sum of money to redeem his meagre baggage, which had been held
by the stage-driver as security for an unpaid balance of the fare to
New Bedford. In his autobiography Douglass commends Mr. Johnson for
his "noble-hearted hospitality and manly character."
In New York Douglass had changed his name in order the better to hide
his identity from any possible pursuer. Douglass's name was another
tie that bound him to his race. He has been called "Douglass" by the
writer because that was the name he took for himself, as he did his
education and his freedom; and as "Douglass" he made himself famous.
As a slave, he was legally entitled to but one name,--Frederick. From
his grandfather, Isaac Bailey, a freeman, he had derived the surname
Bailey. His mother, with unconscious sarcasm, had called the little
slave boy Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. The bearer of this
imposing string of appellations had, with a finer sense of fitness,
cut it down to Frederick Bailey. In New York he had called himself
Frederick Johnson; but, finding when he reached New Bedford that a
considerable portion of the colored population of the city already
rejoiced in this familiar designation, he fell in with the suggestion
of his host, who had been reading Scott's _Lady of the Lake_,
and traced an analogy between the runaway slave and the fugitive
chieftain, that the new freeman should call himself Douglass,
after the noble Scot of that name [Douglas]. The choice proved not
inappropriate, for this modern Douglass fought as valiantly in his own
cause and with his own weapons as ever any Douglass [Douglas] fought
with flashing steel in border foray.
Here, then, in a New England town, Douglass began the life of a
freeman, from which, relieved now of the incubus of slavery, he soon
emerged into the career for which, in the providence of God, he seemed
by his multiform experience to have been especially fitted. He did not
find himself, even in Massachusetts, quite beyond the influence of
slavery. While before the law of the State he was the equal of any
other man, caste prejudice prevented him from finding work at his
trade of calker; and he therefore sought employment as a laborer. This
he found easily, and for three years worked at whatever his hands
found to do. The hardest toil was easy to him, the heaviest burdens
were light; for the money that he earned went into his own pocket.
If it did not remain there long, he at least had the satisfaction of
spending it and of enjoying what it purchased.
During these three years he was learning the lesson of liberty and
unconsciously continuing his training for the work of an anti-slavery
agitator. He became a subscriber to the _Liberator_, each number of
which he devoured with eagerness. He heard William Lloyd Garrison
lecture, and became one of his most devoted disciples. He attended
every anti-slavery meeting in New Bedford, and now and then spoke on
the subject of slavery in humble gatherings of his own people.
IV
In 1841 Douglass entered upon that epoch of his life which brought the
hitherto obscure refugee prominently before the public, and in which
his services as anti-slavery orator and reformer constitute his chief
claim to enduring recollection. Millions of negroes whose lives had
been far less bright than Douglass's had lived and died in slavery.
Thousands of fugitives under assumed names were winning a precarious
livelihood in the free States and trembling in constant fear of the
slave-catcher. Some of these were doing noble work in assisting others
to escape from bondage. Mr. Siebert, in his _Underground Railroad_,
mentions one fugitive slave, John Mason by name, who assisted thirteen
hundred others to escape from Kentucky. Another picturesque fugitive
was Harriet Tubman, who devoted her life to this work with a courage,
skill, and success that won her a wide reputation among the friends
of freedom. A number of free colored men in the North, a few of them
wealthy and cultivated, lent their time and their means to this cause.
But it was reserved for Douglass, by virtue of his marvellous gift of
oratory, to become pre-eminently the personal representative of his
people for a generation.
In 1841 the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society, which had been for
some little time weakened by faction, arranged its differences, and
entered upon a campaign of unusual activity, which found expression in
numerous meetings throughout the free States, mainly in New
England. On August 15 of that year a meeting was held at Nantucket,
Massachusetts. The meeting was conducted by John A. Collins, at that
time general agent of the society, and was addressed by William Lloyd
Garrison and other leading abolitionists. Douglass had taken a holiday
and come from New Bedford to attend this convention, without the
remotest thought of taking part except as a spectator. The proceedings
were interesting, and aroused the audience to a high state of feeling.
There was present in the meeting a certain abolitionist, by name
William C. Coffin, who had heard Douglass speak in the little negro
Sunday-school at New Bedford, and who knew of his recent escape from
slavery. To him came the happy inspiration to ask Douglass to speak
a few words to the convention by way of personal testimony. Collins
introduced the speaker as "a graduate from slavery, with his diploma
written upon his back."
Douglass himself speaks very modestly about this, his first public
appearance. He seems, from his own account, to have suffered somewhat
from stage fright, which was apparently his chief memory concerning
it. The impressions of others, however, allowing a little for the
enthusiasm of the moment, are a safer guide as to the effect of
Douglass's first speech. Parker Pillsbury reported that, "though it
was late in the evening when the young man closed his remarks, none
seemed to know or care for the hour.... The crowded congregation had
been wrought up almost to enchantment during the whole long evening,
particularly by some of the utterances of the last speaker [Douglass],
as he turned over the terrible apocalypse of his experience in
slavery." Mr. Garrison bore testimony to "the extraordinary emotion it
exerted on his own mind and to the powerful impression it exerted upon
a crowded auditory." "Patrick Henry," he declared, "had never made a
more eloquent speech than the one they had just listened to from the
lips of the hunted fugitive." Upon Douglass and his speech as a text
Mr. Garrison delivered one of the sublimest and most masterly efforts
of his life; and then and there began the friendship between the
fugitive slave and the great agitator which opened the door
for Douglass to a life of noble usefulness, and secured to the
anti-slavery cause one of its most brilliant and effective orators.
At Garrison's instance Collins offered Douglass employment as lecturer
for the Anti-slavery Society, though the idea of thus engaging him
doubtless occurred to more than one of the abolition leaders who heard
his Nantucket speech. Douglass was distrustful of his own powers. Only
three years out of slavery, with little learning and no experience
as a public speaker, painfully aware of the prejudice which must be
encountered by men of his color, fearful too of the publicity that
might reveal his whereabouts to his legal owner, who might reclaim his
property wherever found, he yielded only reluctantly to Mr. Collins's
proposition, and agreed at first upon only a three months' term of
service.
Most of the abolitionists were, or meant to be, consistent in their
practice of what they preached; and so, when Douglass was enrolled as
one of the little band of apostles, they treated him literally as a
man and a brother. Their homes, their hearts, and their often none too
well-filled purses were open to him. In this new atmosphere his mind
expanded, his spirit took on high courage, and he read and studied
diligently, that he might make himself worthy of his opportunity to do
something for his people.
During the remainder of 1841 Douglass travelled and lectured in
Eastern Massachusetts with George Foster, in the interest of the
two leading abolition journals, the _Anti-slavery Standard_ and the
_Liberator_, and also lectured in Rhode Island against the proposed
Dorr constitution, which sought to limit the right of suffrage to
white male citizens only, thus disfranchising colored men who had
theretofore voted. With Foster and Pillsbury and Parker[1] and
Monroe[2] and Abby Kelly [Kelley][3] he labored to defeat the Dorr
constitution and at the same time promote the abolition gospel. The
proposed constitution was defeated, and colored men who could meet the
Rhode Island property qualification were left in possession of the
right to vote.
[Footnote 1: Editor's Note to Dover Edition: Reverend Theodore Parker
(1810-1860) was a Unitarian minister who graduated from the Harvard
Divinity School and was active in the Boston area.]
[Footnote 2: Editor's Note to Dover Edition: James Monroe (1821-1898),
a New Englander with a Quaker mother; in 1839 he became an
Abolitionist lecturer instead of enrolling in college.]
[Footnote 3: Editor's Note to Dover Edition: Abigail Kelley Foster
(1811-1887), who married another Abolitionist, Stephen Foster, in
1845, was a Quaker orator and organizer on behalf of the abolition of
slavery and for women's right to vote.]
Douglass had plunged into this new work, after the first embarrassment
wore off, with all the enthusiasm of youth and hope. But, except among
the little band of Garrisonians and their sympathizers, his position
did not relieve him from the disabilities attaching to his color.
The feeling toward the negro in New England in 1841 was but little
different from that in the State of Georgia to-day. Men of color were
regarded and treated as belonging to a distinctly inferior order of
creation. At hotels and places of public resort they were refused
entertainment. On railroads and steamboats they were herded off by
themselves in mean and uncomfortable cars. If welcomed in churches
at all, they were carefully restricted to the negro pew. As in the
Southern States to-day, no distinction was made among them in these
respects by virtue of dress or manners or culture or means; but all
were alike discriminated against because of their dark skins. Some
of Douglass's abolition friends, among whom he especially mentions
Wendell Phillips and two others of lesser note, won their way to his
heart by at all times refusing to accept privileges that were denied
to their swarthy companion. Douglass resented proscription wherever
met with, and resisted it with force when the odds were not too
overwhelming. More than once he was beaten and maltreated by railroad
conductors and brakemen. For a time the Eastern Railroad ran its cars
through Lynn, Massachusetts, without stopping, because Douglass, who
resided at that time in Lynn, insisted on riding in the white people's
car, and made trouble when interfered with. Often it was impossible
for the abolitionists to secure a meeting-place; and in several
instances Douglass paraded the streets with a bell, like a town crier,
to announce that he would lecture in the open air.
Some of Douglass's friends, it must be admitted, were at times rather
extreme in their language, and perhaps stirred up feelings that a
more temperate vocabulary would not have aroused. None of them ever
hesitated to call a spade a spade, and some of them denounced slavery
and all its sympathizers with the vigor and picturesqueness of a
Muggletonian or Fifth Monarchy man of Cromwell's time execrating his
religious adversaries. And, while it was true enough that the Church
and the State were, generally speaking, the obsequious tools of
slavery, it was not easy for an abolitionist to say so in vehement
language without incurring the charge of treason or blasphemy,--an old
trick of bigotry and tyranny to curb freedom of thought and freedom of
speech. The little personal idiosyncrasies which some of the reformers
affected, such as long hair in the men and short hair in the
women,--there is surely some psychological reason why reformers run
to such things,--served as convenient excuses for gibes and unseemly
interruptions at their public meetings. On one memorable occasion,
at Syracuse, New York, in November, 1842, Douglass and his fellows
narrowly escaped tar and feathers. But, although Douglass was
vehemently denunciatory of slavery in all its aspects, his twenty
years of training in that hard school had developed in him a vein of
prudence that saved him from these verbal excesses,--perhaps there was
also some element of taste involved,--and thus made his arguments more
effective than if he had alienated his audiences by indiscriminate
attacks on all the institutions of society. No one could justly
accuse Frederick Douglass of cowardice or self-seeking; yet he was
opportunist enough to sacrifice the immaterial for the essential, and
to use the best means at hand to promote the ultimate object sought,
although the means thus offered might not be the ideal instrument. It
was doubtless this trait that led Douglass, after he separated from
his abolitionist friends, to modify his views upon the subject
of disunion and the constitutionality of slavery, and to support
political parties whose platforms by no means expressed the full
measure of his convictions.
In 1843 the New England Anti-slavery Society resolved, at its annual
meeting in the spring, to stir the Northern heart and rouse the
national conscience by a series of one hundred conventions in New
Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.
Douglass was assigned as one of the agents for the conduct of this
undertaking. Among those associated in this work, which extended over
five months, were John A. Collins, the president of the society, who
mapped out the campaign; James Monroe; George Bradburn; William A.
White; Charles L. Remond, a colored orator, born in Massachusetts, who
rendered effective service in the abolition cause; and Sidney Howard
Gay, at that time managing editor of the _National Anti-slavery
Standard_ and later of the New York _Tribune_ and the New York
_Evening Post._
The campaign upon which this little band of missionaries set out was
no inconsiderable one. They were not going forth to face enthusiastic
crowds of supporters, who would meet them with brass bands and shouts
of welcome. They were more likely to be greeted with hisses and
cat-calls, sticks and stones, stale eggs and decayed cabbages, hoots
and yells of derision, and decorations of tar and feathers.
In some towns of Vermont slanderous reports were made in advance of
their arrival, their characters were assailed, and their aims and
objects misrepresented. In Syracuse, afterward distinguished for its
strong anti-slavery sentiment, the abolitionists were compelled to
hold their meetings in the public park, from inability to procure a
house in which to speak; and only after their convention was well
under way were they offered the shelter of a dilapidated and abandoned
church. In Rochester they met with a more hospitable reception. The
indifference of Buffalo so disgusted Douglass's companions that they
shook the dust of the city from their feet, and left Douglass, who was
accustomed to coldness and therefore undaunted by it, to tread the
wine-press alone. He spoke in an old post-office for nearly a week,
to such good purpose that a church was thrown open to him; and on
a certain Sunday, in the public park, he held and thrilled by his
eloquence an audience of five thousand people.
On leaving Buffalo, Douglass joined the other speakers, and went
with them to Clinton County, Ohio, where, under a large tent, a mass
meeting was held of abolitionists who had come from widely scattered
points. During an excursion made about this time to Pennsylvania to
attend a convention at Norristown, an attempt was made to lynch him at
Manayunk; but his usual good fortune served him, and he lived to be
threatened by higher powers than a pro-slavery mob.
When the party of reformers reached Indiana, where the pro-slavery
spirit was always strong, the State having been settled largely by
Southerners, their campaign of education became a running fight, in
which Douglass, whose dark skin attracted most attention, often got
more than his share. His strength and address brought him safely
out of many an encounter; but in a struggle with a mob at Richmond,
Indiana, he was badly beaten and left unconscious on the ground. A
good Quaker took him home in his wagon, his wife bound up Douglass's
wounds and nursed him tenderly,--the Quakers were ever the consistent
friends of freedom,--but for the lack of proper setting he carried to
the grave a stiff hand as the result of this affray. He had often been
introduced to audiences as "a graduate from slavery with his diploma
written upon his back": from Indiana he received the distinction of a
post-graduate degree.
V.
It can easily be understood that such a man as Douglass, thrown thus
into stimulating daily intercourse with some of the brightest minds
of his generation, all animated by a high and noble enthusiasm for
liberty and humanity,--such men as Garrison and Phillips and Gay
and Monroe and many others,--should have developed with remarkable
rapidity those reserves of character and intellect which slavery had
kept in repression. And yet, while aware of his wonderful talent for
oratory, he never for a moment let this knowledge turn his head or
obscure the consciousness that he had brought with him out of slavery
of some of the disabilities of that status. Naturally, his expanding
intelligence sought a wider range of expression; and his simple
narrative of the wrongs of slavery gave way sometimes to a discussion
of its philosophy. His abolitionist friends would have preferred
him to stick a little more closely to the old line,--to furnish the
experience while they provided the argument. But the strong will that
slavery had not been able to break was not always amenable to politic
suggestion. Douglass's style and vocabulary and logic improved so
rapidly that people began to question his having been a slave.
His appearance, speech, and manner differed so little in material
particulars from those of his excellent exemplars that many people
were sceptical of his antecedents. Douglass had, since his escape from
slavery, carefully kept silent about the place he came from and his
master's name and the manner of his escape, for the very good
reason that their revelation would have informed his master of his
whereabouts and rendered his freedom precarious; for the fugitive
slave law was in force, and only here and there could local public
sentiment have prevented its operation. Confronted with the
probability of losing his usefulness, as the "awful example," Douglass
took the bold step of publishing in the spring of 1845 the narrative
of his experience as a slave, giving names of people and places, and
dates as nearly as he could recall them. His abolitionist friends
doubted the expediency of this step; and Wendell Phillips advised him
to throw the manuscript into the fire, declaring that the government
of Massachusetts had neither the power nor the will to protect him
from the consequences of his daring.
The pamphlet was widely read. It was written in a style of graphic
simplicity, and was such an _exposé_ of slavery as exasperated its
jealous supporters and beneficiaries. Douglass soon had excellent
reasons to fear that he would be recaptured by force or guile and
returned to slavery or a worse fate. The prospect was not an alluring
one; and hence, to avoid an involuntary visit to the scenes of his
childhood, he sought liberty beyond the sea, where men of his color
have always enjoyed a larger freedom than in their native land.
In 1845 Douglass set sail for England on board the _Cambria_, of the
Cunard Line, accompanied by James N. Buffum, a prominent abolitionist
of Lynn, Massachusetts. On the same steamer were the Hutchinson