September 4, 1838—Completing a perilous 24-hour escape from slavery, 20-year-old Frederick Douglass arrived in New York City near what is now Chambers Street, his first step in becoming arguably the most important African-American leader before Martin Luther King Jr.
Within a few years, displaying a fiery eloquence and bearing personal witness to the evils of slavery, Douglass made for one of the most prized speakers on the abolitionist circuit. He would also edit one of the leading abolitionist papers, North Star; press during the Civil War for immediate emancipation and for the utility of African-American troops in destroying the Confederacy; and served as a U.S. Marshal toward the end of the Reconstruction Era.
His flight for freedom would make any short list of the greatest, most consequential escapes in American history. Yet Douglass only revealed the full details in his third autobiography, Life and Times (1881), by which time the issue of slavery had been decided by force of arms and his disclosures about who aided him and how would not open anyone to reprisals.
Those dangers were real because of fugitive slave laws on the books at the time. For instance, for assisting Virginia and Maryland slaves on their flight north, Charles T. Torrey, an abolitionist journalist and former Congregationalist pastor, was sentenced to six years at hard labor in the Maryland state penitentiary, where he died.
As a youngster, Douglass was taught, for awhile, to read by Sophia Auld, until her husband Thomas put an end to it, fearing it would make the boy discontented with his lot as a slave. Thereafter, he learned to read on the sly—copying out letters written on lumber by carpenters and asking his white playmates to show him how to form other letters properly.
At age 18, he had tried unsuccessfully to run away. After he was caught, Thomas Auld told him he’d get his freedom at age 25—if he learned a trade in the meantime. By the end of the summer of 1838, however, Thomas’ brother Hugh decided to end a hiring-out arrangement he had had with Douglass that allowed the slave greater financial earning power.
Within a few years, displaying a fiery eloquence and bearing personal witness to the evils of slavery, Douglass made for one of the most prized speakers on the abolitionist circuit. He would also edit one of the leading abolitionist papers, North Star; press during the Civil War for immediate emancipation and for the utility of African-American troops in destroying the Confederacy; and served as a U.S. Marshal toward the end of the Reconstruction Era.
His flight for freedom would make any short list of the greatest, most consequential escapes in American history. Yet Douglass only revealed the full details in his third autobiography, Life and Times (1881), by which time the issue of slavery had been decided by force of arms and his disclosures about who aided him and how would not open anyone to reprisals.
Those dangers were real because of fugitive slave laws on the books at the time. For instance, for assisting Virginia and Maryland slaves on their flight north, Charles T. Torrey, an abolitionist journalist and former Congregationalist pastor, was sentenced to six years at hard labor in the Maryland state penitentiary, where he died.
As a youngster, Douglass was taught, for awhile, to read by Sophia Auld, until her husband Thomas put an end to it, fearing it would make the boy discontented with his lot as a slave. Thereafter, he learned to read on the sly—copying out letters written on lumber by carpenters and asking his white playmates to show him how to form other letters properly.
At age 18, he had tried unsuccessfully to run away. After he was caught, Thomas Auld told him he’d get his freedom at age 25—if he learned a trade in the meantime. By the end of the summer of 1838, however, Thomas’ brother Hugh decided to end a hiring-out arrangement he had had with Douglass that allowed the slave greater financial earning power.
Concerned that he’d be sold and forced to live away from the woman he’d come to love, Anna Murray, Douglass decided on August 12 that on September 3 he would escape. As the day he picked grew closer, his anxiety mounted as he thought of the people he loved that he might never see again if he succeeded and on the probability of severe punishment if he failed.
With help from Anna, who sold two featherbeds to assist him, Douglass managed to get hold of “free papers” that allowed manumitted blacks to move around with some degree of freedom. Dressed in a sailor’s red shirt and black cravat, he boarded a train bound for Wilmington, Del., where he switched to a steamboat for Philadelphia—and even this wasn’t enough, because he promptly booked a train to New York City.
From what I have seen of high school and college curricula, the first autobiography written by Douglass—Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)—is the most assigned of his memoirs, perhaps because it is the shortest and most concentrated in its depiction of slavery. For my part, I prefer Life and Times—not only because it fills in the details of his escape, but because of its vivid portraits of two men with whom he came in contact later on: Daniel O’Connell, the Irish lawyer-politician who gained Catholic emancipation as a Member of Parliament, and Abraham Lincoln. Although O’Connell earned Douglass’ admiration from the beginning for his eloquence and his unwavering denunciation of slavery, Lincoln won it by degrees, after his slow but finally unshakeable move toward emancipation of the slaves during the Civil War.
“No transatlantic statesman bore a testimony more marked and telling against the crime and curse of slavery than did Daniel O’Connell,” Douglass wrote. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, in which he reflects on the awful price paid by North and South alike for their part in this crime, might merit the same tribute. So, of course, might Douglass himself.
In a class I took at the Chautauqua Institution last month on Seneca Falls and the women’s rights movement, our instructor, Rick Swegan, drew our attention to the portrait of Douglass that I have used for this post. It was taken at roughly the time he wrote the Narrative.
With help from Anna, who sold two featherbeds to assist him, Douglass managed to get hold of “free papers” that allowed manumitted blacks to move around with some degree of freedom. Dressed in a sailor’s red shirt and black cravat, he boarded a train bound for Wilmington, Del., where he switched to a steamboat for Philadelphia—and even this wasn’t enough, because he promptly booked a train to New York City.
From what I have seen of high school and college curricula, the first autobiography written by Douglass—Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)—is the most assigned of his memoirs, perhaps because it is the shortest and most concentrated in its depiction of slavery. For my part, I prefer Life and Times—not only because it fills in the details of his escape, but because of its vivid portraits of two men with whom he came in contact later on: Daniel O’Connell, the Irish lawyer-politician who gained Catholic emancipation as a Member of Parliament, and Abraham Lincoln. Although O’Connell earned Douglass’ admiration from the beginning for his eloquence and his unwavering denunciation of slavery, Lincoln won it by degrees, after his slow but finally unshakeable move toward emancipation of the slaves during the Civil War.
“No transatlantic statesman bore a testimony more marked and telling against the crime and curse of slavery than did Daniel O’Connell,” Douglass wrote. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, in which he reflects on the awful price paid by North and South alike for their part in this crime, might merit the same tribute. So, of course, might Douglass himself.
In a class I took at the Chautauqua Institution last month on Seneca Falls and the women’s rights movement, our instructor, Rick Swegan, drew our attention to the portrait of Douglass that I have used for this post. It was taken at roughly the time he wrote the Narrative.
The steady, unflinching look of Douglass in this daguerreotype, Rick noted, was similar to that of some famous black militants of the late 1960s. Though I came across another, earlier image from the time of Douglass’ escape, I felt, like Rick, that the 1840s picture captured something essential in the man—his self-possession, his dignity, and his refusal to be taken for granted by anybody.
excellent post. Good job Mike
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