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IN
the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly forty
years ago, and in various writings since, I have given the public what I
considered very good reasons for withholding the manner of my escape. In
substance these reasons were, first, that such publication at any time
during the existence of slavery might be used by the master against the
slave, and prevent the future escape of any who might adopt the same means
that I did. The second reason was, if possible, still more binding to
silence: the publication of details would certainly have put in peril the
persons and property of those who assisted. Murder itself was not more
sternly and certainly punished in the State of Maryland than that of
aiding and abetting the escape of a slave. Many colored men, for no other
crime than that of giving aid to a fugitive slave, have, like Charles T.
Torrey, perished in prison. The abolition of slavery in my native State
and throughout the country,
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and the lapse of time, render
the caution hitherto observed no longer necessary. But even since the
abolition of slavery, I have sometimes thought it well enough to baffle
curiosity by saying that while slavery existed there were good reasons for
not telling the manner of my escape, and since slavery had ceased to
exist, there was no reason for telling it. I shall now, however, cease to
avail myself of this formula, and, as far as I can, endeavor to satisfy
this very natural curiosity. I should, perhaps, have yielded to that
feeling sooner, had there been anything very heroic or thrilling in the
incidents connected with my escape, for I am sorry to say I have nothing
of that sort to tell; and yet the courage that could risk betrayal and the
bravery which was ready to encounter death, if need be, in pursuit of
freedom, were essential features in the undertaking. My success was due to
address rather than courage, to good luck rather than bravery. My means of
escape were provided for me by the very men who were making laws to hold
and bind me more securely in slavery.
It
was the custom in the State of Maryland to require the free colored people to
have what were called free papers. These instruments they were required to renew
very often, and by charging a fee for this writing, considerable sums from time
to time were collected by the State. In these papers the name, age, color,
height, and form of the freeman were described, together with any scars or other
marks upon his person which could assist in his identification. This device in
some measure defeated itself -- since more than one man could be found to answer
the same general description. Hence many slaves could escape by personating the
owner of one set of papers; and this was often done as follows: A slave, nearly
or sufficiently answering the description set forth in the papers, would borrow
or hire them till by means of them he could escape to a free State, and then, by
mail or otherwise, would return them to the owner. The operation was a hazardous
one for the lender as well as for the borrower. A failure on the part of the
fugitive to send back the papers would imperil his benefactor, and the discovery
of the papers in possession of the wrong man would imperil both the fugitive and
his friend. It was, therefore, an act of supreme trust on the part of a freeman
of color thus to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another might be free. It
was, however, not unfrequently bravely done, and was seldom discovered. I was
not so fortunate as to resemble any of my free acquaintances sufficiently to
answer the description of their papers. But I had a friend -- a sailor -- who
owned a sailor's protection, which answered somewhat the purpose of free papers
-- describing his person, and certifying to the fact that he was a free American
sailor. The instrument had at its head the American eagle, which gave it the
appearance at once of an authorized document. This protection, when in my hands,
did not describe its bearer very accurately. Indeed, it called for a man much
darker than myself, and close examination of it would have caused my arrest at
the start.
In
order to avoid this fatal scrutiny on the part of railroad officials, I arranged
with Isaac Rolls, a Baltimore hackman, to bring my baggage to the Philadelphia
train just on the moment of starting, and jumped upon the car myself when the
train was in motion. Had I gone into the station and offered to purchase a
ticket, I should have been instantly and carefully examined, and undoubtedly
arrested. In choosing this plan I considered the jostle of the train, and the
natural haste of the conductor, in a train crowded with passengers, and relied
upon my skill and address in playing the sailor, as described in my protection,
to do the rest. One element in my favor was the kind feeling which prevailed in
Baltimore and other sea-ports at the time, toward "those who go down to the
sea in ships." "Free trade and sailors' rights" just then
expressed the sentiment of the country. In my clothing I was rigged out in
sailor style. I had on a red shirt and a tarpaulin hat, and a black cravat tied
in sailor fashion carelessly and loosely about my neck. My knowledge of ships
and sailor's talk came much to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to
stern, and from keelson to cross-trees, and could talk sailor like an "old
salt." I was well on the way to Havre de Grace before the conductor came
into the negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of his black
passengers. This was a critical moment in the drama. My whole future depended
upon the decision of this conductor. Agitated though I was while this ceremony
was proceeding, still, externally, at least, I was apparently calm and
self-possessed. He went on with his duty -- examining several colored passengers
before reaching me. He was somewhat harsh in tone and peremptory in manner until
he reached me, when, strange enough, and to my surprise and relief, his whole
manner changed. Seeing that I did not readily produce my free papers, as the
other colored persons in the car had done, he said to me, in friendly contrast
with his bearing toward the others:
"I
suppose you have your free papers?"
To
which I answered:
"No
sir; I never carry my free papers to sea with me."
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"But you have
something to show that you are a freeman, haven't you?"
"Yes,
sir," I answered; "I have a paper with the American Eagle on it, and
that will carry me around the world."
With
this I drew from my deep sailor's pocket my seaman's protection, as before
described. The merest glance at the paper satisfied him, and he took my fare and
went on about his business. This moment of time was one of the most anxious I
ever experienced. Had the conductor looked closely at the paper, he could not
have failed to discover that it called for a very different-looking person from
myself, and in that case it would have been his duty to arrest me on the
instant, and send me back to Baltimore from the first station. When he left me
with the assurance that I was all right, though much relieved, I realized that I
was still in great danger: I was still in Maryland, and subject to arrest at any
moment. I saw on the train several persons who would have known me in any other
clothes, and I feared they might recognize me, even in my sailor
"rig," and report me to the conductor, who would then subject me to a
closer examination, which I knew well would be fatal to me.
Though
I was not a murderer fleeing from justice, I felt perhaps quite as miserable as
such a criminal. The train was moving at a very high rate of speed for that
epoch of railroad travel, but to my anxious mind it was moving far too slowly.
Minutes were hours, and hours were days during this part of my flight. After
Maryland, I was to pass through Delaware -- another slave State, where
slave-catchers generally awaited their prey, for it was not in the interior of
the State, but on its borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and
active. The border lines between slavery and freedom were the dangerous ones for
the fugitives. The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds on his trail in
full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or noisily than did mine from the
time I left Baltimore till I reached Philadelphia. The passage of the
Susquehanna River at Havre de Grace was at that time made by ferry-boat, on
board of which I met a young colored man by the name of Nichols, who came very
near betraying me. He was a "hand" on the boat, but, instead of
minding his business, he insisted upon knowing me, and asking me dangerous
questions as to where I was going, when I was coming back, etc. I got away from
my old and inconvenient acquaintance as soon as I could decently do so, and went
to another part of the boat. Once across the river, I encountered a new danger.
Only a few days before, I had been at work on a revenue cutter, in Mr. Price's
ship-yard in Baltimore, under the care of Captain McGowan. On the meeting at
this point of the two trains, the one going south stopped on the track just
opposite to the one going north, and it so happened that this Captain McGowan
sat at a window where he could see me very distinctly, and would certainly have
recognized me had he looked at me but for a second. Fortunately, in the hurry of
the moment, he did not see me; and the trains soon passed each other on their
respective ways. But this was not my only hair-breadth escape. A German
blacksmith whom I knew well was on the train with me, and looked at me very
intently, as if he thought he had seen me somewhere before in his travels. I
really believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray me. At any rate, he saw me
escaping and held his peace.
The
last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most, was Wilmington. Here
we left the train and took the steam-boat for Philadelphia. In making the change
here I again apprehended arrest, but no one disturbed me, and I was soon on the
broad and beautiful Delaware, speeding away to the Quaker City. On reaching
Philadelphia in the afternoon, I inquired of a colored man how I could get on to
New York. He directed me to the William-street depot, and thither I went, taking
the train that night. I reached New York Tuesday morning, having completed the
journey in less than twenty-four hours.
My
free life began on the third of September, 1838. On the morning of the fourth of
that month, after an anxious and most perilous but safe journey, I found myself
in the big city of New York, a free
man -- one more added to the mighty throng which, like the confused waves
of the troubled sea, surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway.
Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every hand, my thoughts could
not be much withdrawn from my strange situation. For the moment, the dreams of
my youth and the hopes of my manhood were completely fulfilled. The bonds that
had held me to "old master" were broken. No man now had a right to
call me his slave or assert mastery over me. I was in the rough and tumble of an
outdoor world, to take my chance with the rest of its busy number. I have often
been asked how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely
anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory
answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the
"quick round of blood," I lived more in that one day than
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in a year of my slave life.
It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In
a letter written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: "I
felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions."
Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness
and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil. During ten or
fifteen years I had been, as it were, dragging a heavy chain which no
strength of mine could break; I was not only a slave, but a slave for
life. I might become a husband, a father, an aged man, but through all,
from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself
doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not
only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and
to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I
had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be
God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission
my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time,
between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible make-shifts of
theology and superstition. The one held me an abject slave -- a prisoner
for life, punished for some transgression in which I had no lot nor part;
and the other counseled me to manly endeavor to secure my freedom. This
contest was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory brought me
unspeakable joy.
But my
gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and power of the
slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite so free or so safe a
refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness and insecurity again
oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the street, a few hours after my
landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once known well in slavery. The information
received from him alarmed me. The fugitive in question was known in Baltimore as
"Allender's Jake," but in New York he wore the more respectable name
of "William Dixon." Jake, in law, was the property of Doctor Allender,
and Tolly Allender, the son of the doctor, had once made an effort to recapture Mr. Dixon,
but had failed for want of evidence to support his claim. Jake told me the
circumstances of this attempt, and how narrowly he escaped being sent back to
slavery and torture. He told me that New York was then full of Southerners
returning from the Northern watering-places; that the colored people of New York
were not to be trusted; that there were hired men of my own color who would
betray me for a few dollars; that there were hired men ever on the lookout for
fugitives; that I must trust no man with my secret; that I must not think of
going either upon the wharves or into any colored boarding-house, for all such
places were closely watched; that he was himself unable to help me; and, in
fact, he seemed while speaking to me to fear lest I myself might be a spy and a
betrayer. Under this apprehension, as I suppose, he showed signs of wishing to
be rid of me, and with whitewash brush in hand, in search of work, he soon
disappeared.
This
picture, given by poor "Jake," of New York, was a damper to my
enthusiasm. My little store of money would soon be exhausted, and since it would
be unsafe for me to go on the wharves for work, and I had no introductions
elsewhere, the prospect for me was far from cheerful. I saw the wisdom of
keeping away from the ship-yards, for, if pursued, as I felt certain I should
be, Mr. Auld, my "master," would naturally seek me there among the
calkers. Every door seemed closed against me. I was in the midst of an ocean of
my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger to every one. I was without home,
without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without work, and without
any definite knowledge as to what course to take, or where to look for succor.
In such an extremity, a man had something besides his new-born freedom to think
of. While wandering about the streets of New York, and lodging at least one
night among the barrels on one of the wharves, I was indeed free -- from
slavery, but free from food and shelter as well. I kept my secret to myself as
long as I could, but I was compelled at last to seek some one who would befriend
me without taking advantage of my destitution to betray me. Such a person I
found in a sailor named Stuart, a warm-hearted and generous fellow, who, from
his humble home on Centre street, saw me standing on the opposite sidewalk, near
the Tombs prison. As he approached me, I ventured a remark to him which at once
enlisted his interest in me. He took me to his home to spend the night, and in
the morning went with me to Mr. David Ruggles, the secretary of the New York
Vigilance Committee, a co-worker with Isaac T. Hopper, Lewis and Arthur Tappan,
Theodore S. Wright, Samuel Cornish, Thomas Downing, Philip A. Bell, and other
true men of their time. All these (save Mr. Bell, who still lives, and is editor
and publisher of a paper called the "Elevator," in San Francisco) have
finished their work on earth. Once in the hands of these brave and wise men, I
felt comparatively safe. With Mr. Ruggles, on the corner
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of Lispenard and Church
streets, I was hidden several days, during which time my intended wife
came on from Baltimore at my call, to share the burdens of life with me.
She was a free woman, and came at once on getting the good news of my
safety. We were married by Rev. J. W. C. Pennington, then a well-known and
respected Presbyterian minister. I had no money with which to pay the
marriage fee, but he seemed well pleased with our thanks.
Mr. Ruggles
was the first officer on the "Underground Railroad" whom I met after
coming North, and was, indeed, the only one with whom I had anything to do till
I became such an officer myself. Learning that my trade was that of a calker, he
promptly decided that the best place for me was in New Bedford, Mass. He told me
that many ships for whaling voyages were fitted out there, and that I might
there find work at my trade and make a good living. So, on the day of the
marriage ceremony, we took our little luggage to the steamer John W. Richmond,
which, at that time, was one of the line running between New York and Newport,
R. I. Forty-three years ago colored travelers were not permitted in the cabin,
nor allowed abaft the paddle-wheels of a steam vessel. They were compelled,
whatever the weather might be, -- whether cold or hot, wet or dry, -- to spend
the night on deck. Unjust as this regulation was, it did not trouble us much; we
had fared much harder before. We arrived at Newport the next morning, and soon
after an old fashioned stage-coach, with "New Bedford" in large yellow
letters on its sides, came down to the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our
fare, and stood hesitating what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker
gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage, -- Friends William C.
Taber and Joseph Ricketson, -- who at once discerned our true situation, and, in
a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: "Thee get in."
I never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way to our
new home. When we reached "Stone Bridge" the passengers alighted for
breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no breakfast, and, when
asked for our fares, I told the driver I would make it right with him when we
reached New Bedford. I expected some objection to this on his part, but he made
none. When, however, we reached New Bedford, he took our baggage, including
three music-books, -- two of them collections by Dyer, and one by Shaw, -- and
held them until I was able to redeem them by paying to him the amount due for
our rides. This was soon done, for Mr. Nathan Johnson not only received me
kindly and hospitably, but, on being informed about our baggage, at once loaned
me the two dollars with which to square accounts with the stage-driver. Mr. and
Mrs. Nathan Johnson reached a good old age, and now rest from their labors. I am
under many grateful obligations to them. They not only "took me in when a
stranger" and "fed me when hungry," but taught me how to make an
honest living. Thus, in a fortnight after my flight from Maryland, I was safe in
New Bedford, a citizen of the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Once
initiated into my new life of freedom and assured by Mr. Johnson that I need not
fear recapture in that city, a comparatively unimportant question arose as to
the name by which I should be known thereafter in my new relation as a free man.
The name given me by my dear mother was no less pretentious and long than
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in Maryland,
dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey.
Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself from the
slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called myself Johnson; but in New
Bedford I found that the Johnson family was already so numerous as to cause some
confusion in distinguishing them, hence a change in this name seemed desirable.
Nathan Johnson, mine host, placed great emphasis upon this necessity, and wished
me to allow him to select a name for me. I consented, and he called me by my
present name -- the one by which I have been known for three and forty years --
Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the "Lady of the
Lake," and so pleased was he with its great character that he wished me to
bear his name. Since reading that charming poem myself, I have often thought
that, considering the noble hospitality and manly character of Nathan Johnson --
black man though he was -- he, far more than I, illustrated the virtues of the
Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that, if any slave-catcher had entered his
domicile with a view to my recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like him
of the "stalwart hand."
The
reader may be surprised at the impressions I had in some way conceived of the
social and material condition of the people at the North. I had no proper idea
of the wealth, refinement, enterprise, and high civilization of this section of
the country. My "Columbian Orator," almost my only book, had done
nothing to enlighten me concerning Northern society. I had been taught that
slavery was the bottom fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea, I came
naturally to the conclusion
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that poverty must be the
general condition of the people of the free States. In the country from
which I came, a white man holding no slaves was usually an ignorant and
poverty-stricken man, and men of this class were contemptuously called
"poor white trash." Hence I supposed that, since the
non-slave-holders at the South were ignorant, poor, and degraded as a
class, the non-slave-holders at the North must be in a similar condition.
I could have landed in no part of the United States where I should have
found a more striking and gratifying contrast, not only to life generally
in the South, but in the condition of the colored people there, than in
New Bedford. I was amazed when Mr. Johnson told me that there was nothing
in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts that would prevent a colored
man from being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to
elect him. There, too, the black man's children attended the public
schools with the white man's children, and apparently without objection
from any quarter. To impress me with my security from recapture and return
to slavery, Mr. Johnson assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave
out of New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their
lives to save me from such a fate.
The fifth
day after my arrival, I put on the clothes of a common laborer, and went upon
the wharves in search of work. On my way down Union street I saw a large pile of
coal in front of the house of Rev. Ephraim Peabody, the Unitarian minister. I
went to the kitchen door and asked the privilege of bringing in and putting away
this coal. "What will you charge?" said the lady. "I will leave
that to you, madam." "You may put it away," she said. I was not
long in accomplishing the job, when the dear lady put into my hand two silver half-dollars.
To understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money,
realizing that I had no master who could take it from me, -- that it was mine -- that my hands were my own,
and could earn more of the precious coin, -- one must have been in some sense
himself a slave. My next job was stowing a sloop at Uncle Gid. Howland's wharf
with a cargo of oil for New York. I was not only a freeman, but a free
working-man, and no "master" stood ready at the end of the week to
seize my hard earnings.
The
season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being fitted out for
whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The sawing this wood was
considered a good job. With the help of old Friend Johnson (blessings on his
memory) I got a saw and "buck," and went at it. When I went into a
store to buy a cord with which to brace up my saw in the frame, I asked for a
"fip's" worth of cord. The man behind the counter looked rather
sharply at me, and said with equal sharpness, "You don't belong about
here." I was alarmed, and thought I had betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland
was six and a quarter cents, called fourpence in Massachusetts. But no harm came
from the "fi'penny-bit" blunder, and I confidently and cheerfully went
to work with my saw and buck. It was new business to me, but I never did better
work, or more of it, in the same space of time on the plantation for Covey, the
negro-breaker, than I did for myself in these earliest years of my freedom.
Notwithstanding
the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford three and forty years ago, the
place was not entirely free from race and color prejudice. The good influence of
the Roaches, Rodmans, Arnolds, Grinnells, and Robesons did not pervade all
classes of its people. The test of the real civilization of the community came
when I applied for work at my trade, and then my repulse was emphatic and
decisive. It so happened that Mr. Rodney French, a wealthy and enterprising
citizen, distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a
whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering to be
done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr. French for work. He,
generous man that he was, told me he would employ me, and I might go at once to
the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon reaching the float-stage, where others [sic]
calkers were at work, I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in
her unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil,
inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my eyes at
the time as it now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to hardships that made
ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my trade I could
have earned two dollars a day, but as a common laborer I received but one
dollar. The difference was of great importance to me, but if I could not get two
dollars, I was glad to get one; and so I went to work for Mr. French as a common
laborer. The consciousness that I was free -- no longer a slave -- kept me
cheerful under this, and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to
meet in New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts. For
instance, though colored children attended the schools, and were treated kindly
by their
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teachers, the New Bedford
Lyceum refused, till several years after my residence in that city, to
allow any colored person to attend the lectures delivered in its hall. Not
until such men as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and Horace Mann refused to lecture in their course while there was such a
restriction, was it abandoned.
Becoming
satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New Bedford to give me a living,
I prepared myself to do any kind of work that came to hand. I sawed wood,
shoveled coal, dug cellars, moved rubbish from back yards, worked on the
wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and scoured their cabins.
I
afterward got steady work at the brass-foundry owned by Mr. Richmond. My duty
here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and empty the flasks in which
castings were made; and at times this was hot and heavy work. The articles
produced here were mostly for ship work, and in the busy season the foundry was
in operation night and day. I have often worked two nights and every working day
of the week. My foreman, Mr. Cobb, was a good man, and more than once protected
me from abuse that one or more of the hands was disposed to throw upon me. While
in this situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard work, night and
day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like water, was more
favorable to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a newspaper to the
post near my bellows, and read while I was performing the up and down motion of
the heavy beam by which the bellows was inflated and discharged. It was the
pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and I look back to it now, after so
many years, with some complacency and a little wonder that I could have been so
earnest and persevering in any pursuit other than for my daily bread. I
certainly saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire me with such
interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands found to do. I
am glad to be able to say that, during my engagement in this foundry, no
complaint was ever made against me that I did not do my work, and do it well.
The bellows which I worked by main strength was, after I left, moved by a
steam-engine.
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