Frederick Douglass: The Rochester Years

Douglass bought a two story home in Rochester, New York for Anna and the children and on December 3, 1847, Douglass began his second career, when his four page weekly newspaper, the North Star, came off the presses. On the masthead appeared the motto, "Right is of no sex - Truth is of no color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren." Once the North Star began to circulate, Douglass's friends in the abolitionist movement rallied to join in praising it. However, not everyone was pleased to see another antislavery paper - especially one edited by an ex-slave. Some local citizens were unhappy that their town was the site of a black newspaper, and the New York Herald urged the citizens of Rochester to dump Douglass's printing press into Lake Ontario. Gradually, Rochester came to take pride in the North Star and its bold editor.

The town had a reputation for being pro-abolitionist. Rochester's women were active in antislavery societies, and through them Douglass kept in close contact with the leaders in the fight for women's rights, among them Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Along with the good will of Rochester's abolitionist and female political activists, Douglass received encouragement from the local printer's union. The North Star received a number of glowing reviews, but unfortunately the praises did not translate into financial success. The cost of producing a weekly newspaper was high and subscriptions grew slowly. For a number of years, Douglass was forced to depend on his own savings and contributions from friends to keep the paper afloat. He was forced to return to the lecture circuit to raise money for the paper. During the paper's first year, he was on the road for six months. In the spring of 1848, he had to mortgage his home.

In the midst of these troubles, a friend from England arrived to help Douglass with his financial problems. Julia Griffiths had raised enough money to help launch the paper, and now she was prepared to fight for its survival. Griffiths put the North Star's finances in order, and Douglass was eventually able to regain possession of his home. By 1851, he would be able to write to his friend, the abolitionist publisher and politician Gerrit Smith, "The North Star sustains itself, and partly sustains my large family. It has reached a living point. Hitherto, the struggle of its life has been to live. Now it more than lives." Despite the ups and downs, Douglass's newspaper continued publication as a weekly until 1860 and survived for three more years as a monthly. After 1851, it would be titled Frederick Douglass' Paper. Douglass's newspaper symbolized the potential for blacks to achieve whatever goals they set. The paper provided a forum for black writers and highlighted the success achieved by prominent black figures in American society.

For Douglass, starting the North Star marked the end of his dependence on Garrison and other white abolitionists. The paper allowed him to discover the problems facing blacks around the country. Douglass had heated arguments with many of his fellow black activists, but these debates showed that his people were beginning to involve themselves in the center of events affecting their position in America. By the end of the 1840's, Douglass was well on his way to becoming the most famous and respected black leader in the country. He was in great demand as a speaker and writer, he had proved himself to be and independent thinker and courageous spokesman for black liberty and equality.

During his years in Rochester, Douglass continued to grow in status as the editor of the nation's best known black newspaper, in which he was free to attack slavery with all the power of his intellect. Yet the turmoil of the 1850's would severely test his faith in the ability of America to rid itself of the institution that kept his people in bondage. Some of the turmoil made its way into Douglass's home. While he roamed far beyond his original bounds, his wife, though hard-working, remained uneducated and politically unambitious. Douglass hired a teacher for Anna in 1848, hoping to bridge the gap between them. But his effort failed and Anna remained almost totally illiterate.

Douglass appreciated his wife's domestic skills, but he also admired the educated, politically active women who served in the antislavery and women's rights movements. He was grateful for all the help the women abolitionists had given blacks, and in 1848, he showed his support for the feminist cause by attending the first women's rights convention. The movement drew much hostile press, and the 35 women and 32 men who went to the convention were described as "manhaters" and "hermaphrodites" (people with both male and female sexual features). The women delegates hesitated to make the demand for voting rights (suffrage) a part of their movement's platform, and the feminist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked Douglass to speak on the matter. With an appeal for bold action, Douglass convinced the women that political equality was an essential step in their liberation.

The cause of women's rights continued to remain important to Douglass. Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott among many other feminists would be his lifelong friends. A scandal erupted in 1848 when Julia Griffiths began to serve as Douglass's office and business manager and soon became his almost constant companion. She arranged his lectures, dealt with the paper's finances and accompanied him to meetings. People in Rochester gradually adjusted to the sight of the black leader and the white woman walking arm in arm down the street. Rumors began to fly because Griffiths lived in the same house with Douglass and his wife. Anna Douglas was uneasy about the local talk, but did not speak much about the situation. The controversy was reported in the newspapers, and Douglass was attacked by the Garrisonians for involving the abolitionist movement in a scandal. In 1852, Griffiths decided to spare Douglass further embarrassment by moving out of his home. She remained his close associate until 1855, when she returned to England.

Tensions between Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison began to mount because Douglass's views on how to fight slavery gradually began to change and differed sharply from Garrison's. The first principles of Garrison that Douglass began to question was the idea that resisting slavery through violent means was wrong. In 1847, Douglass met with the militant white abolitionist John Brown, who helped to convince Douglass that pacifist means could not by themselves bring an end to slavery. Brown had told him that slaveholders "had forfeited their right to live, and that slaves had the right to gain their liberty in any way they could." At abolitionist meetings Douglass began telling his audiences that he would be pleased to hear that the slaves in the South had revolted and "were spreading death and destruction." Ten years later, he had completely abandoned the idea that slavery could be ended peacefully. Douglass began widening his circle of abolitionist friends and thus began to question Garrison's opposition to seeking antislavery reforms through the political process.

In 1848, he urged women to fight for the vote. Garrison's view of the Constitution as a proslavery document was not accepted by all abolitionists, as Douglass began to talk with these dissenters, he began to see the matter in a different way. The Constitution, with its emphasis on promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty for all, clearly seemed to be antislavery. The North, Douglass realized, would never abolish slavery if that could only be done by dividing the Union and dismantling the Constitution. He therefore decided that slavery would have to be ended through political reforms. Garrit Smith, who was a leader in the antislavery Liberty party became associated with Douglass and got him involved in politics. In 1848, he attended a convention of the Free Soil party, which was trying to stop the spread of slavery into areas west of the Mississippi River.

The final split between Douglass and Garrison took place in June, 1851 at the annual meeting of the American Antislavery Society. Douglass shocked his old associates by publicly announcing that he intended to urge the readers of the North Star to engage in politics. The Garrisonian press launched a vicious assault against him during the following months. The disputes between the antislavery factions did not dominate Douglass's life. He was active in any cause that furthered the cause of his people. Douglass also tried to establish a black vocational school, an institution that would train its students to become skilled tradesmen. Among the people he visited in his efforts to raise funds for the school was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the immensely popular antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin . Unfortunately, Douglass was unable to raise enough money to start the school.

Douglass was a proud and loving father although he was often away from home. A fifth child, Annie, was born in 1849. Rochester's public schools would not admit black students so Douglass enrolled his oldest child, Rosetta, into a private school. However, even there Rosetta was segregated from white students, and Douglass finally hired a woman to teach his children at home. Never one to let racial discrimination go unchallenged, Douglass campaigned to end segregation in Rochester's school system, and in 1857 his efforts succeeded.

In 1850 Douglass became strongly involved in the underground railroad, the system set up by antislavery groups to bring runaways to sanctuaries in the North and in Canada. Douglass's home in Rochester was near the Canadian border, and during the 1850s it became an important station on the underground railroad. Eventually, he became the superintendent of the entire system in his area. He often found runaways sitting on the steps of his newspaper office when he arrived for work. At times, as many as 11 fugitives were hiding in his home. Over the years, he and Anna fed and sheltered hundreds of these men and women. Only a few of the slaves who tried to escape from the South were successful. Douglass fiercely attacked the fugitive slave laws and the many atrocities that were being committed against runaway slaves.

In a speech given in Rochester on Independence Day in 1852, Douglass pointed out how differently blacks and whites viewed the day's celebrations: What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all the other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim...To him your celebration is a sham...a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States. The sufferings of the hunted fugitive slaves reminded Douglass that freedom for his people would not come easily. In a speech he made at a Canandaigua, New York, convention celebrating the 20th anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies, Douglass preached that blacks must unite to gain their liberty and that they must be prepared for a hard struggle. Blacks, he said, would have to pay a heavy price to win their freedom. "We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."

During the mid-1850s, John Brown was the leader of one of the Free Soil bands fighting the proslavery forces in Kansas. But Brown wanted to start a slave revolt in the South. In 1859, he decided to lead an attack on the northern Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, seize the weapons stored in the nearby federal armory, and hold the local citizens hostage while he rounded up slaves in the area. Gathering a small force of white and black volunteers, Brown rented a farm near Harpers Ferry and made his preparations for attack. From the farm, Brown wrote to Douglass, asking him to come to a meeting in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in August. There Brown announced his plans and urged Douglass to join in the attack. Douglass refused. He had agreed with Brown's earlier ideas, but he knew that an attack on federal property would enrage most Americans.

This was the last time Douglass and Brown met. On October 16, 1589, Brown and his men seized Harpers Ferry. The next night, federal troops led by Colonel Robert E. Lee marched into the town and stormed the armory where Brown's band was stationed. Brown was captured, and two of his sons were killed in the fighting. In less than two months, Brown was tried for treason, found guilty, and hanged. Douglass was lecturing in Philadelphia when he received the news about Brown's raid, and he was warned that letters had been found that implicated him in the attack. The headlines for the newspapers' accounts of the incident featured his name prominently. Knowing that he stood little chance of a fair trial if he were captured and sent to Virginia, Douglass fled to Canada. While in Canada, Douglass wrote letters in his own defense, justifying both his flight and his refusal to help Brown. One of the men captured during the raid said that Douglass had promised to appear at Harpers Ferry with reinforcements. Douglass denied this accusation, saying that he would never approve of attacks on federal property. But though he could not condone the raid, he praised Brown as a "noble old hero."

In November 1859, Douglass sailed to England to begin a lecture tour, a trip he had planned long before the incident at Harpers Ferry. The news of his near arrest only increased his popularity with his audiences, and his lectures helped to stir up more sympathy for the antislavery cause. In May 1860, just as he was about to continue his lecture tour in France, word reached him that his youngest child, Annie, had died. Heartbroken over the loss of his daughter, Douglass decided to go home. Glad to be back with his family again, Douglass knew that he was home - and home included not just Rochester but all of America, including the states in the South. It was a home filled with strife, but it was his, and he embraced it all: the land, the people, the Constitution, the Union.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part3.html

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Frederick Douglass: From Slave to Abolitionist/Editor

Alone in New York, Frederick soon realized that although he was free, he was not free of cares. Through word of mouth on the street, Frederick learned that southern slave catchers were roaming the city looking for fugitives in boarding houses that accepted blacks. He learned that no one, black or white, could be trusted. After finding out this news, Frederick wandered around the city for days, afraid to look for employment or a place to live. Finally, he told an honest-looking black sailor about his predicament. The man took him to David Ruggles, an officer in the New York Vigilance Committee. Ruggles and his associates were the City's link in the underground railroad, a network of people who harbored runaway slaves and helped transport them to safe areas in the United States and Canada.

Secure for the moment in Ruggle's home, Frederick sent for his fiancee, Anna Murray. The two were married on September 15, 1838. Ruggles told Frederick that in the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, he would be safe from slave catchers and he could find work as a caulker. Upon arriving in New Bedford, Anna and Frederick stayed in the home of the well-to-do black family of Nathan Johnson. To go along with his new life, Frederick decided to change his name so as to make it more difficult for slave catchers to trace him. Nathan Johnson was at the time reading The Lady of the Lake, a novel by Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, and he suggested that Frederick name himself after a character in the book. Frederick Baily thus became Frederick Douglass.

Once settled, Douglass was amazed to find that his neighbors in the North were wealthier than most slave owners in Maryland. He had expected that northerners would be as poor as the people in the South who could not afford slaves. Many free blacks lived better than Thomas Auld or Edward Covey. On the New Bedford wharves, he saw how industry made extensive use of labor saving mechanical devices. In loading a ship, 5 men and an ox did what it took 20 men to do in a southern port. To Douglass's eye, men who neither held a whip nor submitted to it worked more quietly and efficiently than those who did.

Still, New Bedford was not a paradise. Although black and white children attended the same schools, some public lecture halls were closed to blacks. Churches welcomed black worshipers but forced them to sit in separate sections. Worst of all, white shipyard employees would not allow skilled black tradesmen, such as Douglass, to work beside them. Unable to find work as a caulker, Douglass had to work as a common laborer. He sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, and loaded and unloaded ships. Anna Douglass worked too as a household servant and laundress. In June 1839, Anna gave birth to their first child, a daughter which they named Rosetta. A son, Lewis was born the following year.

After living in New Bedford for only a few months, a young man approached Douglass and asked him if he wanted to subscribe to the Liberator, a newspaper edited by the outspoken leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, William Lloyd Garrison. Douglass immediately became caught up in the Liberator's attacks on southern slaveholders. "The paper became my meat and drink," wrote Douglass. "My soul was set all on fire."

Inevitably, Douglass became involved in the abolitionist movement, regularly attending lectures in New Bedford. The American Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was a member, had been formed in 1833. Like Garrison, most of the leaders in the society were white, and black abolitionists sometimes had a difficult time making their voices heard within the movement. Nonetheless, the black leaders kept up a constant battle to reduce racial prejudice in the North. Douglass also became very involved with the local black community, and he served as a preacher at the black Zion Methodist Church. One of the many issues he became involved in was the battle against attempts by white southerners to force blacks to move to Africa. Some free blacks had moved to Liberia, a settlement area established for them in West Africa in 1822. Douglass, along with others in the abolitionist movement were opposed to African colonization schemes, believing that the United States was the true home of black Americans. In March 1839 some of Douglass's anticolonization statements were published in the Liberator.

In August 1841, at an abolitionist meeting in New Bedford, the 23 year old Douglass saw his hero, William Lloyd Garrison, for the first time. A few days later, Douglass spoke before the crowd attending the annual meeting of the Massachusetts branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison immediately recognized Douglass's potential as a speaker, and hired him to be an agent for the society. As a traveling lecturer accompanying other abolitionist agents on tours of the northern states, his job was to talk about his life and to sell subscriptions to the Liberator and another newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Standard. For most of the next 10 years, Douglass was associated with the Garrisonian school of the antislavery movement. Garrison was a pacifist who believed that only through moral persuasion could slavery end, he attempted through his writings to educate slaveholders about the evils of the system they supported. He was opposed to slave uprisings and other violent resistance, but he was firm in his belief that slavery must be totally abolished. In the first issue of the Liberator in 1831, he had written:

"On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation .....Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of a ravisher.....but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.....I will not retreat a single inch----AND I WILL BE HEARD."

Ever controversial, Garrison made many enemies throughout the country. He made sweeping attacks on organized religion because the churches refused to take a stand against slavery. He also believed that the U.S. Constitution upheld slavery, for it stated that nonfree individuals (slaves) should be counted as three-fifths of a person in the census figures used for determining a state's share of the national taxes and its number of seats in the House of Representatives. Garrison said that abolitionists should refuse to vote or run for political office because our government was so ill founded. He also called for the Union to be dissolved, demanding that it be split between a free nation in the North and a slavehold confederacy in the South.

Garrison also supported political equality for women and he fought to make it part of the abolitionist program. Some men were entirely against him on this issue, while others thought that it distracted attention from the struggle against slavery. In 1840, when he insisted that women be allowed to serve as delegates to abolitionist conventions, much of the membership of the American Anti-Slavery Society split off and formed a separate organization. The new group, the Foreign and American Anti-Slavery Society, was not opposed to working with political organizations, and many of its members supported the small, newly formed antislavery Liberty party. Although the often abrasive Garrison splintered the antislavery movement, he was a powerful leader. His sincerity and passionate devotion to the abolitionist inspired many people, and his views had a strong effect on Douglass. For three months in 1851, Douglass traveled with other abolitionists to lectures through Massachusetts. Introduced as "a piece of property" or "a graduate from that peculiar institution, with his diploma written on his back," he launched into stirring recollections of his years in slavery. Many of his friends in New Bedford thought that the publicity was dangerous for him, but he was careful to omit details that would identify him as the fugitive slave Frederick Baily.

Douglass was an immediate success on the lecture circuit. "As a speaker, he has few equals," proclaimed the Concord, Massachusetts, Herald of Freedom, the newspaper praised his elegant use of words, and his debating skills. "He has wit, arguments, sarcasm, pathos - all that first rate men show in their master effort." His flashing eyes, large mass of hair, and tall figure added to his performance. Douglass's early speeches dealt mainly with his own experiences. With dramatic effect, he told stories about the brutal beatings given by slaveowners to women, children, and elderly people. He described how he had felt the head of a young girl and found it "nearly covered with festering sores." He told about masters "breeding" their female slaves. But he also used humor, making his audiences laugh when he told how he broke the slave breaker Edward Covey. He especially delighted in imitating clergymen who warned slaves that they would be offending God if they disobeyed their masters. The stories that Douglass told were just what the people wanted to hear. At the time, a flood of proslavery propaganda had been disbursed by southern writers to combat abolitionist literature. According to these articles, most slaves were content with their easy life. Supposedly, slaves worked only until noon, dressed and ate better than most poor whites, and enjoyed job security that would be envied by most northern factory workers. Many people in the North were taken in by the slaveholders' fictions, and abolitionists were often harassed by hostile mobs.

Douglass's life story refuted the proslavery accounts; even so, he declared, his years in bondage would be deemed blissful by many slaves laboring in the Deep South. After a few months of speaking, Douglass began to add comments about the racial situation in the North. He reminded the people in his audiences that even in Massachusetts a black man could not always find work in his chosen profession. He described how he had been thrown out of railroad cars that were exclusively for white passengers. Even here, he said, churches segregated their congregations and offered blacks a second place in heaven. After Douglass's first trial period as a lecturer was over, he was asked to continue with his work, and he eagerly agreed. During 1842, he traveled throughout Massachusetts and New York with William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent speakers. He also visited Rhode Island, helping to defeat a measure that would have given voting rights to poor whites while denying them to blacks.

In 1843, Douglass participated in the Hundred Conventions project, the American Anti-Slavery Society's six month tour of meeting halls throughout the west. Although Douglass enjoyed his work immensely, his job was not an easy one. When traveling, the lecturers had to live in poor accommodations. Douglass was often roughly handled when he refused to sit in the "Negro" sections of trains and steamships, and worst of all some of the meetings that were held in western states were sometimes disrupted by proslavery mobs. In Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass's hand was broken when he and an associate were beaten up by a gang of thugs. Such incidents were common on the western frontier, where abolitionists were often viewed as dangerous fanatics. Despite these incidents, Douglass was sure that he had found his purpose in life.

His abilities as a speaker grew as he continued to lecture in 1844. Many abolitionists thought he was growing in his ability too quickly and that audiences were no longer as sympathetic to him, they thought it was best to keep a little of the plantation speech, it was not a good idea for him to seem too learned. They advised him to stick to talking about his life as a slave and not about the goals of the antislavery movement. To some degree, the fear proved to be correct. People gradually began to doubt that Douglass was telling the truth about himself. Reporting on a lecture that he gave in 1844, the Liberator wrote that many people in the audience refused to believe his stores: "How a man, only six years out of bondage, and who had never gone to school could speak with such eloquence - with such precision of language and power of thought - they were utterly at a loss to devise."

With his reputation at stake, Douglass decided to publish the story of his life. During the winter of 1844-45, he set down on paper all the facts - the actual names of the people and places connected with his years in slavery. When Douglass showed the finished manuscript to abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, his friend suggested that he dispose of it before he was found out and shipped back to Maryland. Douglass was adamant about having his story printed. He did not care if Thomas Auld and every southern slave catcher learned who he was, the rest of world would hear his story too.

In May 1845, 5,000 copies of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was published. William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips wrote introductions to the book. Almost immediately, Douglass's autobiography became a best seller. The success brought by Douglass's Narrative after its publication in 1845 was due in large part to its moral force. His book is a story of the triumph of dignity, courage, and self-reliance over the evils of the brutal, degrading slave system. It is a sermon on how slavery corrupts the human spirit and robs both master and slave of their freedom. The book enjoyed widespread popularity in the North, and European editions also sold very well. However, Douglass's fame as an author threatened his freedom. Federal laws gave Thomas Auld the right to seize his property, the fugitive slave Frederick Baily.

The fear of losing his freedom prompted Douglass to pursue a dream he had long held; in the summer of 1845 he decided to go to England. There he would be free from slave catchers, and also have the opportunity to speak to English audiences and try to gain support for the American antislavery movement. By 1838 all slaves within the British Empire had been given a gradual emancipation and were free. The vigor of the English abolition movement was still very strong.

As the wife of a traveling lecturer, Anna Douglass had probably grown used to her husband's long absences. By August 1845, the Douglasses had 4 children: 6 year old Rosetta, 5 year old Lewis, 3 year old Frederick and 10 month old Charles. Anna not only raised the children, but also toiled in a shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts where the Douglasses had moved in 1842. Douglass sailed to England on the British steamship Cambria. He was forced to stay in the steerage (second class) area of the ship, but he made many friends on board and was even asked to give a lecture on slavery by the captain. Some men were so angry at his speech that they threatened to throw him overboard. The captain had to step in and threaten to put the men in irons if they caused any more trouble. The rest of the voyage was peaceful.

For nearly two years, Douglass traveled throughout the British Isles. Everywhere he went, prominent people welcomed him to their homes. Everywhere he spoke, enthusiastic crowds came to hear the fugitive slave denounce the system which he had grown up in. He was quite happy in his new surroundings. As he wrote to William Lloyd Garrison in January 1846, "Instead of the bright blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft gray fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe and lo! The chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as a slave, or offer me an insult." He was also astonished that he encountered so little racial prejudice among the British.

The main topic of Douglass's lecturers were slavery, but he also discussed a number of other causes that had become important to him. Douglass had hated the way slaveowners would encourage their workers to drink themselves into a stupor during Christmas holidays. He saw alcohol as another means used to humiliate slaves. During his stay in Ireland, he also met with Daniel O'Connell, the Irish Catholic leader who was fighting to end British rule in his country. Douglass spoke out in favor of Irish independence. In the summer of 1846, Douglass was joined by William Lloyd Garrison, and they traveled around England as a powerful team of antislavery lecturers. In Scotland, the two became involved in a campaign against the Free Church of Scotland. The church was partly supported by contributions from American slaveholders of Scottish ancestry. Douglass and Garrison added their voices to the cries of local antislavery activists: "Send the money back." The church kept the money, but the dispute gained publicity for Douglass's battle against American slavery.

The World Temperance Convention that was held in London in August 1846 was the scene of Douglass's most controversial speech. There he attacked the American temperance movement because it failed to criticize slaveowners who used alcohol to pacify their workers. He also felt that the temperance activists were hostile to free blacks. The Reverend Samuel Cox, a member of the American delegation, publicly accused him of trying to destroy the unity of the temperance movement. Douglass responded that Cox was a bigot and, like many other clergymen, a secret supporter of slavery.

By the fall of 1846, Douglass was ready to return home. Garrison and other friends convinced him to stay another six months, but Douglass rejected suggestions that he settle in England. His work lay in America where his people labored in bondage. However, recapture remained a frightening possibility for Douglass if he returned to the United States. The problem was unexpectedly resolved when two English friends raised enough money to buy his freedom. The required amount, $710.96, was sent to Hugh Auld, to whom Thomas Auld had transferred the title to Douglass. On December 5, 1846, Hugh Auld signed the papers that declared the 28 year old Douglass a free man.

Douglass appreciated the gesture of his English friends, even though as an abolitionist he did not recognize Hugh Auld's right to own him. In the spring of 1847, Douglass sailed from England aboard the Cambria. He had left the United States as a respected author and lecturer and was returning with a huge international reputation. Thousands of people heard his lectures and he aroused much goodwill for the abolitionist cause in the British Isles. His tour had been an unqualified success.

Douglass was met by friends and family upon returning home. However, some abolitionists criticized him for letting his freedom be bought because he was thereby acknowledging Hugh Auld's right to own him. Douglass's rebuttal was that his freedom was the gift of friends and that he recognized Hugh Auld as his kidnapper, not his master. Now that the ransom had been paid, he could fight the battle against slavery with a free mind.

During his travels in England, Douglass had demonstrated some independence from the Garrison abolitionist faction, addressing a meeting sponsored by a rival antislavery group. Upon his return to America, he decided to found and edit a new abolitionist newspaper with the help of funds raised by his English friends. Garrison was opposed to this because he needed Douglass as a lecturer and thought there were already enough abolitionists papers at the time. Douglass dropped the idea for a while. In August 1847, he joined Garrison on a lecture tour throughout the North, Garrison became seriously ill and Douglass was forced to continue the tour without him.

After finishing the tour in the fall of 1847, he again began drawing up plans for a new abolitionist paper. The goal of his paper would be to proclaim the abolitionist cause and fight for black equality. Rather than publish his paper in New England,, where the Liberator was based, Douglass decided to move farther west, to Rochester, New York.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part2.html

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Frederick Douglass: The Slave Years

Frederick Baily was born a slave in February 1818 on Holmes Hill Farm, near the town of Easton on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The farm was part of an estate owned by Aaron Anthony, who also managed the plantations of Edward Lloyd V, one of the wealthiest men in Maryland. The main Lloyd Plantation was near the eastern side of Chesapeake Bay, 12 miles from Holmes Hill Farm, in a home Anthony had built near the Lloyd mansion, was where Frederick's first master lived.

Frederick's mother, Harriet Baily, worked the cornfields surrounding Holmes Hill. He knew little of his father except that the man was white. As a child, he had heard rumors that the master, Aaron Anthony, had sired him. Because Harriet Baily was required to work long hours in the fields, Frederick had been sent to live with his grandmother, Betsey Baily. Betsy Baily lived in a cabin a short distance from Holmes Hill Farm. Her job was to look after Harriet's children until they were old enough to work. Frederick's mother visited him when she could, but he had only a hazy memory of her. He spent his childhood playing in the woods near his grandmother's cabin. He did not think of himself as a slave during these years. Only gradually did Frederick learn about a person his grandmother would refer to as Old Master and when she spoke of Old Master it was with certain fear.

At age 6, Frederick's grandmother had told him that they were taking a long journey. They set out westward, with Frederick clinging to his grandmother's skirt with fear and uncertainty They had approached a large elegant home, the Lloyd Plantation, where several children were playing on the grounds. Betsy Baily had pointed out 3 children which were his brother Perry, and his sisters Sara and Eliza. His grandmother had told him to join his siblings and he did so reluctantly. After a while one of the children yelled out to Frederick that his grandmother was gone. Frederick fell to the ground and wept, he was about to learn the harsh realities of the slave system.

The slave children of Aaron Anthony's were fed cornmeal mush that was placed in a trough, to which they were called. Frederick later wrote "like so many pigs." The children made homemade spoons from oyster shells to eat with and competed with each other for every last bite of food. The only clothing that they were provided with was one linen shirt which hung to their knees. The children were provided no beds or warm blankets. On cold winter nights they would huddle together in the kitchen of the Anthony house to keep each other warm.

One night Frederick was awakened by a woman's screams. He peered through a crack in the wall of the kitchen only to see Aaron Anthony lashing the bare back of a woman, who was his aunt, Hester Baily. Frederick was terrified, but forced himself to watch the entire ordeal. This would not be the first whipping he would see, occasionally he himself would be the victim. He would learn that Aaron Anthony would brutally beat his slaves if they did not obey orders quickly enough.

Frederick's mother was rarely able to visit her children due to the distance between Holmes Hill Farm and the Lloyd plantation. Frederick last saw his mother when he was seven years old. He remembered his mother giving a severe scolding to the household cook who disliked Frederick and gave him very little food. A few months after this visit, Harriet Baily died, but Frederick did not learn of this until much later.

Because Frederick had a natural charm that many people found engaging, he was chosen to be the companion of Daniel Lloyd, the youngest son of the plantation's owner. Frederick's chief friend and protector was Lucretia Auld, Aaron Anthony's daughter, who was recently married to a ship's captain named Thomas Auld. One day in 1826 Lucretia told Frederick that he was being sent to live with her brother-in-law, Hugh Auld, who managed a ship building firm in Baltimore, Maryland. She told him that if he scrubbed himself clean, she would give him a pair of pants to wear to Baltimore. Frederick was elated at this chance to escape the life of a field hand. He cleaned himself up and received his first pair of pants. Within three days he was on his way to Baltimore.

Upon Frederick's arrival at the Auld Home, his only duties were to run errands and care for the Auld's infant son, Tommy. Frederick enjoyed the work and grew to love the child. Sophia Auld was a religious woman and frequently read aloud from the Bible. Frederick asked his mistress to teach him to read and she readily consented. He soon learned the alphabet and a few simple words. Sophia Auld was very excited about Fredericks progress and told her husband what she had done. Hugh Auld became furious at this because it was unlawful to teach a slave to read. Hugh Auld believed that if a slave knew how to read and write that it would make him unfit for a slave. A slave that could read and write would no longer obey his master without question or thought, or even worse could forge papers that said he was free and thus escape to a northern state where slavery was outlawed. Hugh Auld then instructed Sophia to stop the lessons at once!

Frederick learned from Hugh Auld's outburst that if learning how to read and write was his pathway to freedom, then gaining this knowledge was to become his goal. Frederick gained command of the alphabet on his own and made friends with poor white children he met on errands and used them as teachers. He paid for his reading lessons with pieces of bread. At home Frederick read parts of books and newspapers when he could, but he had to constantly be on guard against his mistress. Sophia Auld screamed whenever she caught Frederick reading. Sophia Auld's attitude toward Frederick had changed, she no longer regarded him as any other child, but as a piece of property. However, Frederick gradually learned to read and write. With a little money he had earned doing errands, he bought a copy of The Columbian Orator, a collection of speeches and essays dealing with liberty, democracy, and courage.

Frederick was greatly affected by the speeches on freedom in The Columbian Orator, and so began reading local newspapers and began to learn about abolitionists. Not quite 13 years old but enlightened with new ideas that both tormented and inspired him. Frederick began to detest slavery. His dreams of emancipation were encouraged by the example of other blacks in Baltimore, most of whom were free. But new laws passed by southern state legislators made it increasingly difficult for owners to free their slaves.

During this time, Aaron Anthony died, and his property went to his two sons and his daughter, Lucretia Auld. Frederick remained a part of the Anthony estate and was sent back to the Lloyd plantation to be a part of the division of property. Frederick was chosen by Thomas and Lucretia Auld and was sent back to Hugh and Sophia Auld in Baltimore. Seeing his family being devided up increased his hatred of slavery, however, he was hurt the most that his grandmother, considered too old for any work, was evicted from her cabin and sent into the woods to die. Within a year of Frederick's return to Baltimore, Lucretia Auld died. The two Auld brothers then got into a dispute, and Thomas wrote to Hugh and demanded the return of his late wife's property, which included Frederick.

Frederick was sorry to leave Baltimore because he had recently become a teacher to a group of other young blacks. In addition, a black preacher named Charles Lawson had taken Frederick under his wing and adopted him as his spiritual son. In March of 1833, the 15 year old Frederick was sent to live at Thomas Auld's new farm near the town of Saint Michaels, a few miles from the Lloyd plantation.

Frederick was again put to work as a field hand and was extremely unhappy about his situation. Thomas Auld starved his slaves, and they had to steal food from neighboring farms to survive. Frederick received many beatings and saw worse ones given to others. He then organized a Sunday religious service for the slaves which met in near by Saint Michaels. The services were soon stopped by a mob led by Thomas Auld. Thomas Auld had found Frederick especially difficult to control so he decided to have someone tame his unruly slave.

In January 1834, Frederick was sent to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had gained a reputation around Saint Michaels for being and expert "slave breaker". Frederick was not too displeased with this arrangement because Covey fed his slaves better than Auld did. The slaves on Covey's farm worked from dawn until after nightfall, plowing, hoeing, and picking corn. Although the men were given plenty of food, they had very little time allotted to eat before they were sent back to work. Covey hid in bushes and spied on the slaves as they worked, if he caught one of them resting he would beat him with thick branches.

After being on the farm for one week, Frederick was given a serious beating for letting an oxen team run wild. During the months to follow, he was continually whipped until he began to feel that he was "broken". On one hot August afternoon his strength failed him and he collapsed in the field. Covey kicked and beat Frederick to no avail and finally walked away in disgust. Frederick mustered the strength to get up and walk to the Auld farm, where he pleaded with his master to let him stay. Auld had little sympathy for him and sent him back to Covey. Beaten down as Frederick was, he found the strength to rebel when Covey began tying him to a post in preparation for a whipping. "At that moment - from whence came the spirit I don't know - I resolved to fight," Frederick wrote. "I seized Covey hard by the throat, and as I did so, I rose." Covey and Frederick fought for almost two hours until Covey finally gave up telling Frederick that his beating would have been less severe had he not resisted. "The truth was," said Frederick, "that he had not whipped me at all." Frederick had discovered an important truth: "Men are whipped oftenist who are whipped easiest." He was lucky, legally, a slave could be killed for resisting his master. But Covey had a reputation to protect and did not want it known that he could not control a 16 year old boy.

After working for Covey for a year, Frederick was sent to work for a farmer named William Freeland, who was a relatively kind master. But by now, Frederick did not care about having a kind master. All Frederick wanted was his freedom. He started an illegal school for blacks in the area that secretly met at night and on Sundays, and with five other slaves he began to plan his escape to the North. A year had passed since Frederick began working for William Freeland and his plan of escape had been completed. His group planned to steal a boat, row to the northern tip of Chesapeake Bay, and then flee on foot to the free state of Pennsylvania. The escape was supposed to take place just before the Easter holiday in 1836, but one of Frederick's associates had exposed the plot and a group of armed white men captured the slaves and put them in jail.

Frederick was in jail for about a week. While imprisoned, he was inspected by slave traders, and he fully expected that he would be sold to "a life of living death" in the Deep South. To his surprise, Thomas Auld came and released him. Then Frederick's master sent him back to Hugh Auld in Baltimore. The two brothers had finally settled their dispute. Frederick was now 18 years old, 6 feet tall and very strong from his work in the fields. Hugh Auld decided that Frederick should work as a caulker (a man who forced sealing matter into the seams in a boat's hull to make it water tight) to earn his keep. He was hired out to a local shipbuilder so that he could learn the trade. While apprenticing at the shipyard, Frederick was harassed by white workers who did not want blacks, slaves or free, competing with them for jobs. One afternoon, a group of white apprentices beat up Frederick and nearly took out one of his eyes. Hugh Auld was angry when he saw what had happened and attempted to press charges against the assailants. However, none of the shipyard's white employees would step forward to testify about the beating. Free blacks had little hope of obtaining justice through the southern court system, which refused to accept a black person's testimony against a white person. Therefore, the case had to be dropped.

After Frederick recovered from his injuries, he began apprenticing at the shipyard where Hugh Auld worked. Within a year, he was an experienced caulker and was being paid the highest wages possible for a tradesman at his level. He was allowed to seek his own employment and collect his own pay, and at the end of each week he gave all his earnings to Hugh Auld. Sometimes he was allowed to keep a little money for himself. But as time passed, he became resentful of having to give up his hard earned pay.

In Frederick's spare time he met with a group of educated free blacks and indulged in the luxury of being a student again. Some of the free blacks formed an educational association called the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, which Frederick had been admitted to. This is where Frederick learned his debating skills. At one of the society's meetings, Frederick met a free black woman named Anna Murray. Anna was a few years older than Frederick and was a servant for a wealthy Baltimore family. Although Anna was a plain, uneducated woman, Frederick admired her qualities of thriftiness, industriousness and religiousness. Anna and Frederick were soon in love and in 1838 they were engaged.

Love and courtship increased Frederick's discontent with his status. After Frederick's escape attempt, Thomas Auld had promised him that if he worked hard he would be freed when he turned 25. But Frederick did not trust his master, and he resolved to escape. However, escaping would be very difficult due to professional slave catchers patrolling the boarders between slave states and free states, and free blacks traveling by train or steamboat had to carry official papers listing their name, age, height, skin color, and other distinguishing features. In order to escape, Frederick needed money to pay for traveling expenses. Frederick arranged with Hugh Auld to hire out his time, that is, Frederick would take care of his own room and board and pay his master a set amount each week, keeping any extra money for himself. This also gave him the opportunity to see what it was like living on his own.

This arrangement had been working out quite well until Frederick returned home late one night and failed to pay Hugh Auld on time. Auld was furious and revoked his hiring-out privilege. Frederick was so enraged over this that he refused to work for a week. He finally gave in to Auld's threats, but he also made a resolution that in three weeks, on September 3, 1838, he would be on a northbound train. Escaping was a difficult decision for Frederick. He would be leaving his friends and his fairly comfortable life in Baltimore forever. he did not know when and if he would see Anna Murray again. Furthermore, if he was caught during his escape, he was sure that he would be either killed or sold to slave traders. Taking all of this into consideration, Frederick was resolved to escape to freedom.

With money that he borrowed from Anna, Frederick bought a ticket to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He also had a friend's "sailor's protection," a document that certified that the person named on it was a free seaman. Dressed in a sailor's red shirt and black cravat, Frederick boarded the train. Frederick reached northern Maryland before the conductor made it to the "Negro car" to collect tickets and examine papers. Frederick became very tense when the conductor approached him to look at his papers because he did not fit the description on them. But with only a quick glance, the conductor walked on, and the relieved Frederick sank back in his seat. On a couple of occasions, he thought that he had been recognized by other passengers from Baltimore, but if so they did not turn him in to the authorities.

Upon arriving in Wilmington, Delaware, Frederick then boarded a steamboat to Philadelphia. Even after stepping on Pennsylvania's free soil, he knew he was not yet safe from slave catchers. He immediately asked directions to New York City, and that night he took another train north. On September 4, 1838, Frederick arrived in New York City. Frederick could not find the words to express his feelings of leaving behind his life in slavery. He later wrote, "A new world had opened upon me." "Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted, but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil."

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part1.html

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A biography of the life of Frederick Douglass by Sandra Thomas

Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War.
A brilliant speaker, Douglass was asked by the American Anti-Slavery Society to engage in a tour of lectures, and so became recognized as one of America's first great black speakers. He won world fame when his autobiography was publicized in 1845. Two years later he bagan publishing an antislavery paper called the North Star.

Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/home.html

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Three Speeches from Frederick Douglass:

1. THE CHURCH AND PREJUDICE
(Speech delivered at the Plymouth County Anti-Slavery Society, November 4, 1841)

At the South I was a member of the Methodist Church. When I came north, I thought one Sunday I would attend communion, at one of the churches of my denomination, in the town I was staying. The white people gathered round the altar, the blacks clustered by the door. After the good minister had served out the bread and wine to one portion of those near him, he said, "These may withdraw, and others come forward;" thus he proceeded till all the white members had been served. Then he took a long breath, and looking out towards the door, exclaimed, "Come up, colored friends, come up! for you know God is no respecter of persons!" I haven't been there to see the sacraments taken since.
At New Bedford, where I live, there was a great revival of religion not long ago--many were converted and "received" as they said, "into the kingdom of heaven." But it seems, the kingdom of heaven is like a net; at least so it was according to the practice of these pious Christians; and when the net was drawn ashore, they had to set down and cull out the fish. Well, it happened now that some of the fish had rather black scales; so these were sorted out and packed by themselves. But among those who experienced religion at this time was a colored girl; she was baptized in the same water as the rest; so she thought she might sit at the Lord's table and partake of the same sacramental elements with the others. The deacon handed round the cup, and when he came to the black girl, he could not pass her, for there was the minister looking right at him, and as he was a kind of abolitionist, the deacon was rather afraid of giving him offense; so he handed the girl the cup, and she tasted. Now it so happened that next to her sat a young lady who had been converted at the same time, baptized in the same water, and put her trust in the same blessed Saviour; yet when the cup containing the precious blood which had been shed for all, came to her, she rose in disdain, and walked out of the church. Such was the religion she had experienced!
Another young lady fell into a trance. When she awoke, she declared she had been to heaven. Her friends were all anxious to know what and whom she had seen there; so she told the whole story. But there was one good old lady whose curiosity went beyond that of all the others--and she inquired of the girl that had the vision, if she saw any black folks in heaven? After some hesitation, the reply was, "Oh! I didn't go into the kitchen!"
Thus you see, my hearers, this prejudice goes even into the church of God. And there are those who carry it so far that it is disagreeable to them even to think of going to heaven, if colored people are going there too. And whence comes it? The grand cause is slavery; but there are others less prominent; one of them is the way in which children in this part of the country are instructed to regard the blacks.
"Yes!" exclaimed an old gentleman, interrupting him--"when they behave wrong, they are told, 'black man come catch you.'"
Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place! They assign us that place; they don't let us do it for ourselves, nor will they allow us a voice in the decision. They will not allow that we have a head to think, and a heart to feel, and a soul to aspire. They treat us not as men, but as dogs--they cry "Stu-boy!" and expect us to run and do their bidding. That's the way we are liked. You degrade us, and then ask why we are degraded--you shut our mouths, and then ask why we don't speak--you close our colleges and seminaries against us, and then ask why we don't know more.
But all this prejudice sinks into insignificance in my mind, when compared with the enormous iniquity of the system which is its cause--the system that sold my four sisters and my brothers into bondage--and which calls in its priests to defend it even from the Bible! The slaveholding ministers preach up the divine right of the slaveholders to property in their fellow- men. The southern preachers say to the poor slave, "Oh! if you wish to be happy in time, happy in eternity, you must be obedient to your masters; their interest is yours. God made one portion of men to do the working, and another to do the thinking; how good God is! Now, you have no trouble or anxiety; but ah! you can't imagine how perplexing it is to your masters and mistresses to have so much thinking to do in your behalf! You cannot appreciate your blessings; you know not how happy a thing it is for you, that you were born of that portion of the human family which has the working, instead of the thinking to do! Oh! how grateful and obedient you ought to be to your masters! How beautiful are the arrangements of Providence! Look at your hard, horny hands--see how nicely they are adapted to the labor you have to perform! Look at our delicate fingers, so exactly fitted for our station, and see how manifest it is that God designed us to be His thinkers, and you the workers--Oh! the wisdom of God!"--I used to attend a Methodist church, in which my master was a class leader; he would talk most sanctimoniously about the dear Redeemer, who was sent "to preach deliverance to the captives, and set at liberty them that are bruised"--he could pray at morning, pray at noon, and pray at night; yet he could lash up my poor cousin by his two thumbs, and inflict stripes and blows upon his bare back, till the blood streamed to the ground! all the time quoting scripture, for his authority, and appealing to that passage of the Holy Bible which says, "He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes!" Such was the amount of this good Methodist's piety.
(Foner, Volume I, pages 102-105)

2. FIGHTING REBELS WITH ONLY ONE HAND
(Douglass' Monthly, September 1861)

What on earth is the matter with the American Government and people? Do they really covet the world's ridicule as well as their own social and political ruin? What are they thinking about, or don't they condescend to think at all? So, indeed, it would seem from their blindness in dealing with the tremendous issue now upon them. Was there ever anything like it before? They are sorely pressed on every hand by a vast army of slaveholding rebels, flushed with success, and infuriated by the darkest inspirations of a deadly hate, bound to rule or ruin. Washington, the seat of Government, after ten thousand assurances to the contrary, is now positively in danger of falling before the rebel army. Maryland, a little while ago considered safe for the Union, is now admitted to be studded with the materials for insurrection, and which may flame forth at any moment.--Every resource of the nation, whether of men or money, whether of wisdom or strength, could be well employed to avert the impending ruin. Yet most evidently the demands of the hour are not comprehended by the Cabinet or the crowd. Our Presidents, Governors, Generals and Secretaries are calling, with almost frantic vehemance, for men.--"Men! men! send us men!" they scream, or the cause of the Union is gone, the life of a great nation is ruthlessly sacrificed, and the hopes of a great nation go out in darkness; and yet these very officers, representing the people and Government, steadily and persistently refuse to receive the very class of men which have a deeper interest in the defeat and humiliation of the rebels, than all others.--Men are wanted in Missouri--wanted in Western Virginia, to hold and defend what has been already gained; they are wanted in Texas, and all along the sea coast, and though the Government has at its command a class in the country deeply interested in suppressing the insurrection, it sternly refuses to summon from among the vast multitude a single man, and degrades and insults the whole class by refusing to allow any of their number to defend with their strong arms and brave hearts the national cause. What a spectacle of blind, unreasoning prejudice and pusillanimity is this! The national edifice is on fire. Every man who can carry a bucket of water, or remove a brick, is wanted; but those who have the care of the building, having a profound respect for the feeling of the national burglars who set the building on fire, are determined that the flames shall only be extinguished by Indo-Caucasian hands, and to have the building burnt rather than save it by means of any other. Such is the pride, the stupid prejudice and folly that rules the hour.
Why does the Government reject the Negro? Is he not a man? Can he not wield a sword, fire a gun, march and countermarch, and obey orders like any other? Is there the least reason to believe that a regiment of well-drilled Negroes would deport themselves less soldier-like on the battlefield than the raw troops gathered up generally from the towns and cities of the State of New York? We do believe that such soldiers, if allowed to take up arms in defence of the Government, and made to feel that they are hereafter to be recognized as persons having rights, would set the highest example of order and general good behavior to their fellow soldiers, and in every way add to the national power.
If persons so humble as we can be allowed to speak to the President of the United States, we should ask him if this dark and terrible hour of the nation's extremity is a time for consulting a mere vulgar and unnatural prejudice? We should ask him if national preservation and necessity were not better guides in this emergency than either the tastes of the rebels, or the pride and prejudices of the vulgar? We would tell him that General Jackson in a slave state fought side by side with Negroes at New Orleans, and like a true man, despising meanness, he bore testimony to their bravery at the close of the war. We would tell him that colored men in Rhode Island and Connecticut performed their full share in the war of the Revolution, and that men of the same color, such as the noble Shields Green, Nathaniel Turner and Denmark Vesey stand ready to peril everything at the command of the Government. We would tell him that this is no time to fight with one hand, when both are needed; that this is no time to fight only with your white hand, and allow your black hand to remain tied.
Whatever may be the folly and absurdity of the North, the South at least is true and wise. The Southern papers no longer indulge in the vulgar expression, "free n----rs." That class of bipeds are now called "colored residents." The Charleston papers say:

"The colored residents of this city can challenge comparison with their class, in any city or town, in loyalty or devotion to the cause of the South. Many of them individually, and without ostentation, have been contributing liberally, and on Wednesday evening, the 7th inst., a very large meeting was held by them, and a committee appointed to provide for more efficient aid. The proceedings of the meeting will appear in results hereinafter to be reported."

It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. There were such soldiers at Manassas, and they are probably there still. There is a Negro in the army as well as in the fence, and our Government is likely to find it out before the war comes to an end. That the Negroes are numerous in the rebel army, and do for that army its heaviest work, is beyond question. They have been the chief laborers upon those temporary defences in which the rebels have been able to mow down our men. Negroes helped to build the batteries at Charleston. They relieve their gentlemanly and military masters from the stiffening drudgery of the camp, and devote them to the nimble and dexterous use of arms. Rising above vulgar prejudice, the slaveholding rebel accepts the aid of the black man as readily as that of any other. If a bad cause can do this, why should a good cause be less wisely conducted? We insist upon it, that one black regiment in such a war as this is, without being any more brave and orderly, would be worth to the Government more than two of any other; and that, while the Government continues to refuse the aid of colored men, thus alienating them from the national cause, and giving the rebels the advantage of them, it will not deserve better fortunes than it has thus far experienced.--Men in earnest don't fight with one hand, when they might fight with two, and a man drowning would not refuse to be saved even by a colored hand.
(Foner, Volume 3, pages 151-154)

(At the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, April, 1865, Douglass delivered the following speech on the subject: The Equality of all men before the law; Note that this was given within days of the close of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln.)

3. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS

I came here, as I come always to the meetings in New England, as a listener, and not as a speaker; and one of the reasons why I have not been more frequently to the meetings of this society, has been because of the disposition on the part of some of my friends to call me out upon the platform, even when they knew that there was some difference of opinion and of feeling between those who rightfully belong to this platform and myself; and for fear of being misconstrued, as desiring to interrupt or disturb the proceedings of these meetings, I have usually kept away, and have thus been deprived of that educating influence, which I am always free to confess is of the highest order, descending from this platform. I have felt, since I have lived out West [Douglass means west of Boston, in Rochester, NY], that in going there I parted from a great deal that was valuable; and I feel, every time I come to these meetings, that I have lost a great deal by making my home west of Boston, west of Massachusetts; for, if anywhere in the country there is to be found the highest sense of justice, or the truest demands for my race, I look for it in the East, I look for it here. The ablest discussions of the whole question of our rights occur here, and to be deprived of the privilege of listening to those discussions is a great deprivation.
I do not know, from what has been said, that there is any difference of opinion as to the duty of abolitionists, at the present moment. How can we get up any difference at this point, or any point, where we are so united, so agreed? I went especially, however, with that word of Mr. Phillips, which is the criticism of Gen. Banks and Gen. Banks' policy. [Gen. Banks instituted a labor policy in Louisiana that was discriminatory of blacks, claiming that it was to help prepare them to better handle freedom. Wendell Phillips countered by saying, "If there is anything patent in the whole history of our thirty years' struggle, it is that the Negro no more needs to be prepared for liberty than the white man."] I hold that that policy is our chief danger at the present moment; that it practically enslaves the Negro, and makes the Proclamation [the Emancipation Proclamation] of 1863 a mockery and delusion. What is freedom? It is the right to choose one's own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything; and when any individual or combination of individuals undertakes to decide for any man when he shall work, where he shall work, at what he shall work, and for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce him to slavery. [Applause.] He is a slave. That I understand Gen. Banks to do--to determine for the so-called freedman, when, and where, and at what, and for how much he shall work, when he shall be punished, and by whom punished. It is absolute slavery. It defeats the beneficent intention of the Government, if it has beneficent intentions, in regards to the freedom of our people.
I have had but one idea for the last three years to present to the American people, and the phraseology in which I clothe it is the old abolition phraseology. I am for the "immediate, unconditional, and universal" enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. [Loud applause.] Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself.
It may be objected, however, that this pressing of the Negro's right to suffrage is premature. Let us have slavery abolished, it may be said, let us have labor organized, and then, in the natural course of events, the right of suffrage will be extended to the Negro. I do not agree with this. The constitution of the human mind is such, that if it once disregards the conviction forced upon it by a revelation of truth, it requires the exercise of a higher power to produce the same conviction afterwards. The American people are now in tears. The Shenandoah has run blood--the best blood of the North. All around Richmond, the blood of New England and of the North has been shed--of your sons, your brothers and your fathers. We all feel, in the existence of this Rebellion, that judgments terrible, wide-spread, far-reaching, overwhelming, are abroad in the land; and we feel, in view of these judgments, just now, a disposition to learn righteousness. This is the hour. Our streets are in mourning, tears are falling at every fireside, and under the chastisement of this Rebellion we have almost come up to the point of conceding this great, this all-important right of suffrage. I fear that if we fail to do it now, if abolitionists fail to press it now, we may not see, for centuries to come, the same disposition that exists at this moment. [Applause.] Hence, I say, now is the time to press this right.
It may be asked, "Why do you want it? Some men have got along very well without it. Women have not this right." Shall we justify one wrong by another? This is the sufficient answer. Shall we at this moment justify the deprivation of the Negro of the right to vote, because some one else is deprived of that privilege? I hold that women, as well as men, have the right to vote [applause], and my heart and voice go with the movement to extend suffrage to woman; but that question rests upon another basis than which our right rests. We may be asked, I say, why we want it. I will tell you why we want it. We want it because it is our right, first of all. No class of men can, without insulting their own nature, be content with any deprivation of their rights. We want it again, as a means for educating our race. Men are so constituted that they derive their conviction of their own possibilities largely by the estimate formed of them by others. If nothing is expected of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation. By depriving us of suffrage, you affirm our incapacity to form an intelligent judgment respecting public men and public measures; you declare before the world that we are unfit to exercise the elective franchise, and by this means lead us to undervalue ourselves, to put a low estimate upon ourselves, and to feel that we have no possibilities like other men. Again, I want the elective franchise, for one, as a colored man, because ours is a peculiar government, based upon a peculiar idea, and that idea is universal suffrage. If I were in a monarchial government, or an autocratic or aristocratic government, where the few bore rule and the many were subject, there would be no special stigma resting upon me, because I did not exercise the elective franchise. It would do me no great violence. Mingling with the mass I should partake of the strength of the mass; I should be supported by the mass, and I should have the same incentives to endeavor with the mass of my fellow-men; it would be no particular burden, no particular deprivation; but here where universal suffrage is the rule, where that is the fundamental idea of the Government, to rule us out is to make us an exception, to brand us with the stigma of inferiority, and to invite to our heads the missiles of those about us; therefore, I want the franchise for the black man.
There are, however, other reasons, not derived from any consideration merely of our rights, but arising out of the conditions of the South, and of the country--considerations which have already been referred to by Mr. Phillips--considerations which must arrest the attention of statesmen. I believe that when the tall heads of this Rebellion shall have been swept down, as they will be swept down, when the Davises and Toombses and Stephenses, and others who are leading this Rebellion shall have been blotted out, there will be this rank undergrowth of treason, to which reference has been made, growing up there, and interfering with, and thwarting the quiet operation of the Federal Government in those states. You will se those traitors, handing down, from sire to son, the same malignant spirit which they have manifested and which they are now exhibiting, with malicious hearts, broad blades, and bloody hands in the field, against our sons and brothers. That spirit will still remain; and whoever sees the Federal Government extended over those Southern States will see that Government in a strange land, and not only in a strange land, but in an enemy's land. A post-master of the United States in the South will find himself surrounded by a hostile spirit; a collector in a Southern port will find himself surrounded by a hostile spirit; a United States marshal or United States judge will be surrounded there by a hostile element. That enmity will not die out in a year, will not die out in an age. The Federal Government will be looked upon in those States precisely as the Governments of Austria and France are looked upon in Italy at the present moment. They will endeavor to circumvent, they will endeavor to destroy, the peaceful operation of this Government. Now, where will you find the strength to counterbalance this spirit, if you do not find it in the Negroes of the South? They are your friends, and have always been your friends. They were your friends even when the Government did not regard them as such. They comprehended the genius of this war before you did. It is a significant fact, it is a marvellous fact, it seems almost to imply a direct interposition of Providence, that this war, which began in the interest of slavery on both sides, bids fair to end in the interest of liberty on both sides. [Applause.] It was begun, I say, in the interest of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union, and the North was fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the United States Constitution, and the North fighting to retain it within those limits; the South fighting for new guarantees, and the North fighting for the old guarantees;--both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro. Yet, the Negro, apparently endowed with wisdom from on high, saw more clearly the end from the beginning than we did. When Seward said the status of no man in the country would be changed by the war, the Negro did not believe him. [Applause.] When our generals sent their underlings in shoulder-straps to hunt the flying Negro back from our lines into the jaws of slavery, from which he had escaped, the Negroes thought that a mistake had been made, and that the intentions of the Government had not been rightly understood by our officers in shoulder-straps, and they continued to come into our lines, threading their way through bogs and fens, over briers and thorns, fording streams, swimming rivers, bringing us tidings as to the safe path to march, and pointing out the dangers that threatened us. They are our only friends in the South, and we should be true to them in this their trial hour, and see to it that they have the elective franchise.
I know that we are inferior to you in some things--virtually inferior. We walk about you like dwarfs among giants. Our heads are scarcely seen above the great sea of humanity. The Germans are superior to us; the Irish are superior to us; the Yankees are superior to us [Laughter]; they can do what we cannot, that is, what we have not hitherto been allowed to do. But while I make this admission, I utterly deny, that we are originally, or naturally, or practically, or in any way, or in any important sense, inferior to anybody on this globe. [Loud applause.] This charge of inferiority is an old dodge. It has been made available for oppression on many occasions. It is only about six centuries since the blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo-Saxons were considered inferior by the haughty Normans, who once trampled upon them. If you read the history of the Norman Conquest, you will find that this proud Anglo-Saxon was once looked upon as of coarser clay than his Norman master, and might be found in the highways and byways of Old England laboring with a brass collar on his neck, and the name of his master marked upon it. You were down then! [Laughter and applause.] You are up now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also. [Applause.]
The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the "manifest destiny" of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government. So, too, when Russia wanted to take possession of a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks were an "inferior race." So, too, when England wants to set the heel of her power more firmly in the quivering heart of old Ireland, the Celts are an "inferior race." So, too, the Negro, when he is to be robbed of any right which is justly his, is an "inferior man." It is said that we are ignorant; I admit it. But if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote. If he knows as much when he is sober as an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote, on good American principles. [Laughter and applause.]
But I was saying that you needed a counterpoise in the persons of the slaves to the enmity that would exist at the South after the Rebellion is put down. I hold that the American people are bound, not only in self-defence, to extend this right to the freedmen of the South, but they are bound by their love of country, and by all their regard for the future safety of those Southern States, to do this--to do it as a measure essential to the preservation of peace there. But I will not dwell upon this. I put it to the American sense of honor. The honor of a nation is an important thing. It is said in the Scriptures, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" It may be said, also, What doth it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, but lose its honor? I hold that the American government has taken upon itself a solemn obligation of honor, to see that this war--let it be long or short, let it cost much or let it cost little--that this war shall not cease until every freedman at the South has the right to vote. [Applause.] It has bound itself to it. What have you asked the black men of the South, the black men of the whole country to do? Why, you have asked them to incure the enmity of their masters, in order to befriend you and to befriend this Government. You have asked us to call down, not only upon ourselves, but upon our children's children, the deadly hate of the entire Southern people. You have called upon us to turn our backs upon our masters, to abandon their cause and espouse yours; to turn against the South and in favor of the North; to shoot down the Confederacy and uphold the flag-- the American flag. You have called upon us to expose ourselves to all the subtle machinations of their malignity for all time. And now, what do you propose to do when you come to make peace? To reward your enemies, and trample in the dust your friends? Do you intend to sacrifice the very men who have come to the rescue of your banner in the South, and incurred the lasting displeasure of their masters thereby? Do you intend to sacrifice them and reward your enemies? Do you mean to give your enemies the right to vote, and take it away from your friends? Is that wise policy? Is that honorable? Could American honor withstand such a blow? I do not believe you will do it. I think you will see to it that we have the right to vote. There is something too mean in looking upon the Negro, when you are in trouble, as a citizen, and when you are free from trouble, as an alien. When this nation was in trouble, in its early struggles, it looked upon the Negro as a citizen. In 1776 he was a citizen. At the time of the formation of the Consitution the Negro had the right to vote in eleven States out of the old thirteen. In your trouble you have made us citizens. In 1812 Gen. Jackson addressed us as citizens--"fellow-citizens." He wanted us to fight. We were citizens then! And now, when you come to frame a conscription bill, the Negro is a citizen again. He has been a citizen just three times in the history of this government, and it has always been in time of trouble. In time of trouble we are citizens. Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace? Would that be just?
I ask my friends who are apologizing for not insisting upon this right, where can the black man look, in this country, for the assertion of his right, if he may not look to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society? Where under the whole heavens can he look for sympathy, in asserting this right, if he may not look to this platform? Have you lifted us up to a certain height to see that we are men, and then are any disposed to leave us there, without seeing that we are put in possession of all our rights? We look naturally to this platform for the assertion of all our rights, and for this one especially. I understand the anti-slavery societies of this country to be based on two principles,--first, the freedom of the blacks of this country; and, second, the elevation of them. Let me not be misunderstood here. I am not asking for sympathy at the hands of abolitionists, sympathy at the hands of any. I think the American people are disposed often to be generous rather than just. I look over this country at the present time, and I see Educational Societies, Sanitary Commissions, Freedmen's Associations, and the like,--all very good: but in regard to the colored people there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. [Applause.] The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. Gen. Banks was distressed with solicitude as to what he should do with the Negro. Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, "What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don't disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot- box, let him alone, don't disturb him! [Applause.] If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone,--your interference is doing him a positive injury. Gen. Banks' "preparation" is of a piece with this attempt to prop up the Negro. Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you in the illustration used by Mr. Phillips, the fault will not be yours, it will be his who made the Negro, and established that line for his government. [Applause.] Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man. A great many delusions have been swept away by this war. One was, that the Negro would not work; he has proved his ability to work. Another was, that the Negro would not fight; that he possessed only the most sheepish attributes of humanity; was a perfect lamb, or an "Uncle Tom;" disposed to take off his coat whenever required, fold his hands, and be whipped by anybody who wanted to whip him. But the war has proved that there is a great deal of human nature in the Negro, and that "he will fight," as Mr. Quincy, our President, said, in earlier days than these, "when there is reasonable probability of his whipping anybody." [Laughter and applause.]
(Foner, Volume Four, pages 157- 165)

Article Source: http://www.frederickdouglass.org/speeches/index.html

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A Short Biography of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin, in February, 1818, near the town of Easton, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Separated from his mother when only a few weeks old he was raised by his grandparents. At about the age of six, his grandmother took him to the plantation of his master and left him there. Not being told by her that she was going to leave him, Douglass never recovered from the betrayal of the abandonment. When he was about eight he was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with Hugh and Sophia Auld, relatives of his master. It was shortly after his arrival that his new mistress taught him the alphabet. When her husband forbade her to continue her instruction, because it was unlawful to teach slaves how to read, Frederick took it upon himself to learn. He made the neighborhood boys his teachers, by giving away his food in exchange for lessons in reading and writing. At about the age of twelve or thirteen Douglass purchased a copy of The Columbian Orator, a popular schoolbook of the time, which helped him to gain an understanding and appreciation of the power of the spoken and the written word, as two of the most effective means by which to bring about permanent, positive change.

Returning to the Eastern Shore, at approximately the age of fifteen, Douglass became a field hand, and experienced most of the horrifying conditions that plagued slaves during the 270 years of legalized slavery in America. But it was during this time that he had an encounter with the slavebreaker Edward Covey. Their fight ended in a draw, but the victory was Douglass', as his challenge to the slavebreaker restored his sense of self-worth. After an aborted escape attempt when he was about eighteen, he was sent back to Baltimore to live with the Auld family, and in early September, 1838, at the age of twenty, Douglass succeeded in escaping from slavery by impersonating a sailor.

He went first to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he and his new wife Anna Murray began to raise a family. Whenever he could he attended abolitionist meetings, and, in October, 1841, after attending an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island, Douglass became a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and a colleague of William Lloyd Garrison. This work led him into public speaking and writing. He published his own newspaper, The North Star, participated in the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, in 1848, and wrote three autobiographies. He was internationally recognized as an uncompromising abolitionist, indefatigable worker for justice and equal opportunity, and an unyielding defender of women's rights. He became a trusted advisor to Abraham Lincoln, United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, Recorder of Deeds for Washington, D.C., and Minister-General to the Republic of Haiti.

Frederick Douglass sought to embody three keys for success in life:
Believe in yourself.
Take advantage of every opportunity.
Use the power of spoken and written language to effect positive change for yourself and society.

Douglass said, "What is possible for me is possible for you." By taking these keys and making them his own, Frederick Douglass created a life of honor, respect and success that he could never have dreamed of when still a boy on Colonel Lloyd's plantation on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Article Source: http://www.frederickdouglass.org/douglass_bio.html

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Obama's election ties African-American, U.S. history

By Joye Brown

WASHINGTON

Walking along the Mall the day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as the nation's 44th president, I saw something I'd never seen before.

Clusters of people, of all races and ages, strolling along and talking out loud about U.S. history.

They talked about presidents. Congress and the Capitol. And I watched two teens pause, astonished, as they stood on the Mall and looked back to see the White House in the distance behind them.

In years past, the usual crowd visiting my hometown included excited teachers leading around groups of bored students, or parents working hard to keep up with rambunctious children sprinting toward the Mall's carousel or the head of a dinosaur at one of the many nearby Smithsonian museums.

But, for one day at least, the inauguration of the nation's first African-American president changed that.

History.

Black history.

American history.

Visitors couldn't get enough of it.

Which is a grand notion as the nation plots its next moves forward.

It took more than 200 years for the United States to elect its first African-American president. What's impressive is that the nation, voting across racial, gender, economic and political lines, did it together.

The act itself was a revolution, one built on other revolutions.

The nation's founders had a notion that the United States could be a place that offered liberty and justice for all, even as slavery continued to be a blight on the land.

And when enslaved Africans finally were freed, they faced the harsh reality that being free did not mean they were fully vested citizens.

The fight for civil rights actually began during the Civil War.

That much University of Virginia historian Jennifer Burns makes clear during a fascinating series of lectures on American history (easily downloaded as a podcast at jenniferburns.org).

She says the 4 million enslaved Africans in the South had a hand in freeing themselves. Their desire to be free flew in the face of Southern mythology that slaves were childlike and wanted the security of being slaves. The successful flight of many of the masters' most trusted slaves to the North belied the myth that plantation owners were in charge. And the North's hard-won willingness finally to allow slaves to join the Union Army (in extremely harsh and dangerous jobs) gave African-Americans - including Frederick Douglass - hope that they could work their way toward the privilege of full citizenship.

There's no National Museum of African-American History on the Mall, but there are plans to build one.

No doubt the civil rights movement will be part of it.

Still, it's not too early to begin connecting the dots, from 4 million enslaved Africans and their descendants and their thirst for freedom before and during the Civil War to the stories of modern-day Long Islanders included in this special Black History Month special section to a nation's collective move to elect an African-American president.

Joseph McNeil is in the history books. He's one of the young men who refused to leave a luncheon counter in the segregated South. Barbara Patton, Darlene Harris and Roger Corbin are in the local history books, too. They were the first local African-American state and county legislative representatives. And Marge Rogatz, one of the many Long Islanders active in local civil rights efforts, is still in the thick of things - pushing for affordable housing, among other things.

They're all part of the same story.

History.

Black history.

U.S. history.

Three strands that this year, finally, and firmly, were joined together as one

Article Source: http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sunday/lilife/ny-bhpage26019667feb01,0,5130028.column

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