Chapter Six
Is this a thing, or can it be a man?
Freedom is a hard-bought thing! Frederick expected to remain in New York. He was free, he had money in his pocket, he would find work. He had no plans beyond reaching this big city, where there were Abolitionists who printed papers calling for the freeing of the slaves, and many free Negroes. Here he could work in safety.
“Voila!” murmured a little French seamstress, peeping through the slits of her blinds as the jaunty figure came in view. She had seen such stepping before, such lifting of the head, such a singing with the shoulders. She remembered free men marching into the Place de la Concorde. She smiled and hummed a few bars of the “Marseillaise.” “Allons, enfants.... Marchons....” She threw the shutters open. What a beautiful morning!
But Frederick didn’t find work that first day. By nightfall he was feeling uneasy. Job-hunting had brought him up against an unexpected wall. The colored people he saw seemed to be avoiding him. He walked straight up to the next Negro he saw and spoke to him. From his bespattered appearance, and his pail and brush, Frederick judged the man to be a house painter.
“Good evening, mister! Could you tell me where I might find a place to stay? I just got here and—”
The man’s eyes in his sunken, dark face were rolling in every direction at once.
“Lemme be. I donno nothin’.” He was moving on, but Frederick blocked his path.
“Look, mister, I only want—”
The man’s tones were belligerent, though his voice was low.
“Donno nothin’ ’bout you, sailor. An’ I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’!”
Frederick watched him disappear around a corner. As night came on he followed a couple of sailors into a smoke-filled eating place. There he ate well, served by a swarthy, good-natured fellow, whose father that day had picked olives on a hillside overlooking Rome. Garlic, coarse laughter, warmth and the tangy smell of seamen mingled in the dimly lighted room. Some of the men lifted their foamy mugs in greeting as Frederick sank into a corner. He waved back. But he hurried through his meal, not daring to linger long for fear of betraying himself.
He walked aimlessly in the gathering gloom. He thought a lamplighter, lifting his wick to the corner lamp, eyed him suspiciously. Frederick turned down a dimmer thoroughfare. He was tired. The suitcase was heavy.
Across the street a bearded seaman took his stubby pipe from between his teeth and looked after the solitary figure.Young sailors do not carry heavy suitcases, bumping against their legs!The man grunted, crossed the street and came up behind the young man. He spoke softly.
“Hi, sailor!”
With a start Frederick turned. Now it was his turn to hesitate. In the fading light he could not distinguish whether the face behind the thick beard was white or colored. So he only answered, “Hi, yo’self!”
The stranger fell in beside him. “When’d you get in?”
“Yesterday. Up from the West Indies.” The answer came easily.But, the seaman thought to himself,it’s the wrong answer. Out of the corner of his eye he studied the young man and threw out another question.
“What’s your ship?”
Frederick was well prepared for this question.
“TheFalcon.”
They walked along in silence, the bearded seaman puffing his pipe. Frederick waited.
“Might you be headin’ toward the—north star?”
Frederick’s heart leaped. The words could have only one meaning. Yet was this man friend or foe? Dared he trust him?
“I hear tell the north star leads us straight,” he said.
The stranger took Frederick’s arm.
“It has led you well. Come!”
In the little house on Centre Street, Frederick met Tom Stuart’s mother, a bright-eyed little woman who greeted him warmly. But hardly could he blurt out an outline of his story before he had fallen asleep—for the first time in nearly forty-eight hours.
Then Tom Stuart went quickly to the corner of Lispenard and Church Streets and knocked on the door of David Ruggles, secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee.
“You are right,” said the secretary, when he heard what the seaman had to say. “He is not safe here.”
“New York’s full of Southerners. They’re beginning to come back from the watering-places now,” Stuart added.
“Looking for work down on the waterfront, he’ll be caught.”
The scar on Ruggles’ black face twisted into a smile.
“God’s providence protected him today. Now we must do our part and get him away.” He covered his sightless eyes with his hand and sat thinking.
David Ruggles had been born free. He was schooled, alert, and he had courage. But once he had dared too much for his own good. In Ohio an irate slave-chaser’s whip had cut across his face. Its thongs had torn at his eyes, and he would never see again. But the slave whom he was helping to escape had got away. And David Ruggles had said, “My eyes for a man’s life? We were the winners!”
The seaman cleared his throat.
“There is a girl—a freewoman. She is to meet him here.”
The secretary frowned.
“Good heavens! Haven’t we enough to do without managing love trysts?”
Tom Stuart grinned in the darkness as he walked home. He knew the heart of this black man. He would show no sign of annoyance the next morning when he welcomed the young fugitive.
As for Frederick, he wanted to kiss the hands of this blind man when they clasped his own so firmly.An agent of the Underground Railroad! Underground Railroad!—a whisper up and down the Eastern Shore. Now Frederick was to hear them spoken aloud.
The increasing numbers of slaves who were escaping, in spite of the rigid cordons thrown round the slave states and the terrifying penalties for failure in the attempt, gave rise to wild rumors. The bayous of Louisiana, the backlands of Alabama and Mississippi, the swamps of Florida and the mountains of the Atlantic states, seemed to suck them in like a man-eating plant. People said there was a colonyof blacks deep in the Florida scrub, where they lived a life of ease far inside the bayous that no white man could penetrate. Another group, so they said, raised crops on the broad flat plains that ran toward the border of Georgia; and two thousand more hid inside the dismal swamps of Virginia, coming out to trade with Negroes and whites.
There was no denying the fact that Negroes showed up across the border of Canada with surprising regularity—slaves from the rice fields of Georgia and South Carolina, the tobacco lands of Virginia and Maryland, and the cotton fields of Alabama.
“One thousand slaves a year disappear!” John Calhoun thundered in Congress. “They go as if swallowed up by an underground passage.”
The idea caught on. Young America expanding—passages opening to new territory. To a people still using the stagecoach, trains symbolized daring and adventure. An underground railway to freedom! Men cocked their hats rakishly, cut off their mustaches and tightened the holsters at their belts; small shopkeepers put heavy padlocks on their doors and slipped out to meetings; tall, lean men wearing linen and nankeen pantaloons—sons of planters among them—emptied their mint juleps and climbed into the saddle; the devout Quaker put a marker in his Bible and dug a new deep cellar underneath his house, partitioned off rooms with false walls and laid in fresh supplies of thick wide cloaks and long black veils.
What more natural than that slaves down in their quarters sang,Dat train comin’, hit’s comin’ round da bend!andGit on board, lil’ chillun, git on board!
The “train” might be a skiff, securely fastened under overhanging reeds. Or it might be a peddler’s cart, an open wagon filled with hay, or the family carryall, driven by a quiet man in a wide-brimmed Quaker hat, who spoke softly to the ladies sitting beside him, neatly dressed in gray, with Quaker bonnets on their heads and veils over their faces. The “train” might simply be a covered-up path through the woods. But the slave voices rose, exulting:
“Da train am rollin’Da train am rollin’ by—Hallelujah!”
“Da train am rollin’Da train am rollin’ by—Hallelujah!”
“Da train am rollin’Da train am rollin’ by—Hallelujah!”
“Da train am rollin’
Da train am rollin’ by—
Hallelujah!”
“Conductors” planned the connections. And David Ruggles in the house on Church Street routed the train in and out of New York City.He collected and paid out money, received reports and checked routes. David Ruggles was a busy man.
He heard Frederick through quietly. Frederick was worried. If he could not stay in New York, where would he go?
“It’s a big country,” Mr. Ruggles assured the young man. “A workman is worthy of his hire. We shall look about.” Then he asked abruptly, “Have you written the young lady?”
Frederick felt his face burn. Being among people with whom he could share his precious secret was a new experience.
“Y-es, sir,” he stammered. “I—I posted a letter this morning—On my way here.”
He looked toward Tom Stuart, whose eyes were laughing at him. The seaman put in a word.
“Got up and wrote the letter before dawn!”
“Since she is a freewoman,” Mr. Ruggles smiled, “she can no doubt join you immediately.”
“Yes—Yes, sir.”
“Very well. Then you must remain under cover until she comes.”
“He’s safe at my house,” Tom Stuart said quickly, and the secretary nodded.
“That is good,” he said. “And now for the record.”
At this word a slender boy of nine or ten years, who had been sitting quietly at the table, opened a large ledger and picked up a quill pen. He said nothing but turned his intelligent, bright eyes toward Frederick. Mr. Ruggles laid his hand on the boy’s arm.
“My son here is my eyes,” he said.
Frederick regarded the little fellow with amazement. He was going to write with that pen!
“You are called Frederick?” the father asked.
Frederick gave a start. “I have sometimes heard of another name—Bailey,” he said. “I—I really don’t know. They call me Frederick.”
“For the present, we shan’t worry about the surname. It is safer now to lose whatever identity you might have. Write Frederick Johnson, son!” The boy wrote easily. “There are so many Johnsons. But now that you are a free man, you must have a name—a family name.”
“Oh, yes, sir!”
The days passed swiftly. Anna arrived—warmly welcomed by Tom Stuart’s mother and whisked quickly out of sight until the moment when she stood beside him. Anna, her eyes pools of happiness, wearing a lovely plum-colored silk dress! They were married bythe Reverend J. W. C. Pennington, whose father, after having been freed by George Washington, had served him faithfully at Valley Forge. He refused the fee offered by the eager young bridegroom.
“It is my wedding gift to you, young man. God speed you!”
They were put aboard the steamerJohn W. Richmond, belonging to the line running between New York and Newport, Rhode Island.
“New Bedford is your place,” David Ruggles had said. “There are many Friends in New Bedford, and the shipyards are constantly fitting out ships for long whaling voyages. A good caulker will find work. Good luck, my boy!”
Since colored passengers were not allowed in the cabins, the bride and groom had to pass their first night on the deck. But what mattered whether they were cold or hot, wet or dry; whether they stood leaning over the rail, jammed against sticky kegs, or sat on the hard boards? They were free—they were young—they were on their way, to make a home, to build a lifetogether.
Oh, how bright the stars shone that night! Anna saw Frederick’s lips move as he gazed at them. She leaned closer and he tightened his arm about her. “I must not forget!” he murmured.
The nights on the open deck—they had two of them—enfolded them and shut out all the world. The ache of all their lonely years dissolved before the new happiness in their hearts. Then, out of the gray mist and the darker shadows, emerged the gaunt shores of their new world. Anna gripped her husband’s arm and trembled. But he lifted her face to his and kissed her.
As the boat approached New Bedford, the crowded harbor, with its stained, weather-beaten ships and dirty warehouses, was a golden gate—let down from the clouds just for them. Frederick wanted to shout.
“Look! Look!” He was pointing at an imposing house that stood on a hill behind the town. “That’s the kind of house we’ll have. A fine, big house! I’ll make it with my own hands. I’m free, Anna, I’m free to build a house like that!”
Her eyes laughed with him.
So it was that they landed on the rocky shores of New England, where free men had set their feet before them. Leif, son of Eric the Red, touched this coast with his Norsemen. In 1497 and ’98 John Cabot, Venetian navigator, explored here and gave England her claim to the region. Cabot under the British flag, Verrazzano under thefleurde lis, and Gomez under the flag of Spain, all of them had come even before the Pilgrim Fathers.
It was from Rhode Island—from Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, all part of the rising winds of rebellion—that New Bedford got its start. Time and again this salty breeze had blown through the Massachusetts commonwealth. It rose and blew steadily during most of the eighteenth century, bringing gains in political freedom and education and religious tolerance. Impoverished farmers had followed Daniel Shays; and an early governor, James Sullivan, had been stirred to say, “Where the mass of people are ignorant, poor and miserable, there is no public opinion excepting what is the offspring of fear.” The winds had died down during the rise of Federalism, but now once more a little breeze fanned the cheeks of the mill girls in Lowell and the mechanics in Boston. It rustled the dead, dry leaves piled high in Cambridge and Concord. It was scattering the seeds of Abolitionism.
Boston had William Lloyd Garrison, whom neither jails, fires, threats, nor the elegant rhetoric of William Ellery Channing could stifle. He waved his paper, theLiberator, high in the air, whipping the breeze higher. He stood his ground and loosed a blast destined to shake the rafters of the nation.
“Urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard!”
Certain slave states had set a price on William Lloyd Garrison’s head. But in February, 1837, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society had convened in the hall of the House of Representatives in Boston, and after every space was filled nearly five thousand people were turned away. Nathan Johnson had been one of the delegates from New Bedford.
Nathan Johnson was proud of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. His people had lived in the midst of a group of Dutch dairy farmers comfortably spread out over the meadowlands near Sheffield. They had owned a tiny piece of land. Nathan had gone to school, learned a trade and, like many another Massachusetts farm boy, made a trip to sea. For a time he had lingered in Scotland where a Negro was a curiosity. There was something about the hills and valleys with their jutting rocks that drew him. Then he realized he was homesick. He returned to Massachusetts, married and plied his trade—he was a carpenter—near the sight and sound and smell of the sea. He hadseen the face of slavery, but he believed the State of Massachusetts would educate the nation away from such evil practices.
David Ruggles had written Nathan Johnson about Frederick. The answer had come back: “Send him along!” And Johnson had hurried to the dock to meet the “poor critters.”
But the young man who stepped from the boat and took his hand with such a firm grip did not call forth pity. To the Yankee he had the look neither of a fugitive nor a slave.
Ma Johnson blocked all questions while she bustled about setting a good, hot meal before the newcomers.
“Dead beat, I know,” was her comment. “Now you just wash up and make yourselves right at home.” She poured water and handed them thick white towels, while little Lethia and Jane stared with wide eyes.
Everything floated in a dreamy mist. This house, this abundant table, this room were unbelievable. Frederick’s fingers itched to take down the books from their shelves, to pick up papers lying about. With an effort he brought his eyes back to the animated face of his host.
“There ain’t a thing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts to stop a colored man being governor of the state, if the folks sees fit to elect him!” Lethia nodded her small head gravely and smiled at Frederick.
Ma Johnson sighed gently. Nathan was off on his favorite topic—Massachusetts! But that was safe talk for these two nice young people. They could just eat in peace. She set a plate of savory clam chowder in front of Anna.
“No slaveholder’d dare try takin’ a slave out of New Bedford!” The glasses quivered as Johnson thumped the table. Frederick smiled.
“I’m glad to hear that—after what they told me about New York.”
“Humph!” The Yankee snorted. “New York ain’t in Massachusetts, young man. All sorts of people there. Can’t count on ’em!” Ma Johnson gently intervened.
“Reckon we have some troublemakers, too, even in New Bedford.”
“Ay, and I reckon we know how to take care of ’em!”
It was Indian summer in New England. The evenings were still long, with no suggestion of frost in the air. After supper they sat in the yard, and between long puffs on his pipe the host talked andgradually drew out the young man. Came the moment when he took his pipe from his mouth and sat forward on his chair, lips pressed together in a grim line.
“I cannot understand how such things be!” he said, shaking his head.
The women had gone inside. Lights shone in the cottage across the way, and on the other side of the white picket fence a girl laughed. Frederick stood up. Even in the dusk, Johnson was conscious of the broad shoulders and the long, lithe limbs. He was looking up at the trees.
“Almost—Almost I am afraid,” Frederick said.
“Afraid? Now? Your time to be afraid is gone. Now you are safe!”
“That’s it!Iam safe. I’m afraid of so much happiness.”
“A mite o’ happiness won’t spoil you, my boy. There’s strength in you. And now I reckon your wife is waiting.” Nathan Johnson stood up.
Inside the house Frederick turned and clasped the hand of his host.
“How can I thank you?” he asked.
The older man smiled. “Fine words ain’t needed, son. The two of you are good for Ma and me. Now go ’long with you!”
And he sent him to Anna.
They were awakened by church bells. Then they heard the children getting off to church. Anna started up guiltily. Perhaps they were delaying Mrs. Johnson.
But over the house lay a sweet Sabbath calm; it ran all up and down the street—and over all New Bedford. The day passed in unhurried discussion of jobs and plans for the young folks. Now indeed Frederick must have a name.
“Some take the name of their old master.”
“I won’t.” Frederick spoke emphatically.
“Ay,” agreed Nathan. “No sense in tying a stone round your children’s necks. Give ’em a good name.” He grinned at Frederick and Anna. “When I look at you I think of somebody I read about—fellow by the name of Douglass.”
“You want to name him from a book, Pa?” His wife laughed.
“Why not? He’s already got a heap out of books. And this Scotchman, Douglass, was a fine man. The book says he had a ‘stalwart hand’.”
Then Nathan launched into a vivid description of Scotland as he had seen it. He came back to the name.
“Ay, Douglass is a bonny name.”
Anna spoke softly. “Frederick Douglass—It has a good, strong sound.”
“You like it, Anna?” Frederick’s eyes drew her to him.
And Anna smiled, nodding her head. So Douglass was the name he passed on to their children.
The next day he went down to the wharves and caught his first view of New England shipping.
“The sight of the broad brim and the plain, Quaker dress,” he recalled later, “which met me at every turn, greatly increased my sense of freedom and security.I am among the Quakers, thought I,and am safe. Lying at the wharves and riding in the stream, were full-rigged ships of finest model, ready to start on whaling voyages. Upon the right and the left, I was walled in by large granite-fronted warehouses, crowded with the good things of this world. On the wharves, I saw industry without bustle, labor without noise, and heavy toil without the whip. There was no loud singing, as in Southern ports where ships are loading or unloading—no loud cursing or swearing—but everything went on as smoothly as the works of a well-adjusted machine. How different was all this from the noisily fierce and clumsily absurd manner of labor-life in Baltimore and St. Michaels! One of the first incidents which illustrated the superior mental character of Northern labor over that of the South, was the manner of unloading a ship’s cargo of oil. In a Southern port, twenty or thirty hands would have been employed to do what five or six did here, with the aid of a single ox hitched to the end of a fall. Main strength, unassisted by skill, is slavery’s method of labor. An old ox worth eighty dollars was doing in New Bedford what would have required fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of human bone and muscle to have performed in a Southern port.... The maid servant, instead of spending at least a tenth part of her time in bringing and carrying water, as in Baltimore, had the pump at her elbow. Wood-houses, indoor pumps, sinks, drains, self-shutting gates, washing machines, pounding barrels, were all new things, and told me that I was among a thoughtful and sensible people. The carpenters struck where they aimed, and the caulkers wasted no blows in idle flourishes of the mallet.”[1]
He remembered little about the hardships of that first winter in the North, and only mentioned in passing that he was not permitted to use his skill as a caulker. Even here white labor shut the black worker out. The difference between the wage of a caulker and that of a common day-laborer was 50 per cent. But Frederick would not be stopped. He was free. So he sawed wood, dug cellars, shoveled coal, rolled oil casks on the wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels. It was the cold that he remembered.
Nothing had prepared them for the cold—the silent, thick, gray cold that shut down like a vise over the land. The tiny house on a back street, which had seemed the fulfillment of their dreams, now was a porous shed. It had none of the Northern conveniences, and each trip through the snowdrifts to the distant well with its frozen buckets was a breath-taking effort.
Each morning Anna got her husband’s breakfast by candlelight, and Frederick set out for work. Odd jobs were not as easy to find nor as steady as he would have liked. Many cotton mills in New England were still that winter, and many ships lay idle all along Cape Cod. Down in Washington a new President was proving himself weak and ineffectual. Banks were tottering and business houses were going down in ruins. This was the year Susan B. Anthony’s father lost his factory, his store, his home; and the eighteen-year-old Quaker girl, with Berkshire hills mirrored in her eyes, went out to teach school.
During the hardest part of the winter, Frederick’s wages were less than ten dollars for the month. He and Anna were pinched for food. But they were never discouraged: they were living in a new world. When he could, Frederick attended the meetings of colored people of New Bedford. These meetings went far beyond the gatherings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, and once more Frederick sat silent, listening and learning. He was constantly amazed at the resolutions presented and discussions which followed. All the speakers seemed to him possessed of marvelously superior talents.
Two events during his first months in New Bedford had a decisive effect upon his life.
“Among my first concerns on reaching New Bedford,” he said years later, “was to become united with the church, for I had never given up, in reality, my religious faith. I had become lukewarm and in a backslidden state, but I was still convinced that it was my duty to join the church.... I therefore resolved to join the Methodist church in New Bedford and to enjoy the spiritual advantage ofpublic worship. The minister of the Elm Street Methodist Church was the Reverend Mr. Bonney; and although I was not allowed a seat in the body of the house, and was proscribed on account of my color, regarding this proscription simply as an accommodation of the unconverted congregation who had not yet been won to Christ and his brotherhood, I was willing thus to be proscribed, lest sinners should be driven away from the saving power of the Gospel. Once converted, I thought they would be sure to treat me as a man and a brother.Surely,thought I,these Christian people have none of this feeling against color....
“An opportunity was soon afforded me for ascertaining the exact position of Elm Street Church on the subject.... The occasion ... was the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.... At the close of his (Mr. Bonney’s) discourse, the congregation was dismissed and the church members remained to partake of the sacrament. I remained to see, as I thought, this holy sacrament celebrated in the spirit of its great Founder.
“There were only about a half dozen colored members attached to the Elm Street Church, at this time.... These descended from the gallery and took a seat against the wall most distant from the altar. Brother Bonney was very animated, and sung very sweetly, ‘Salvation, ’tis a joyful sound,’ and soon began to administer the sacrament. I was anxious to observe the bearing of the colored members, and the result was most humiliating. During the whole ceremony, they looked like sheep without a shepherd. The white members went forward to the altar by the bench full; and when it was evident that all the whites had been served with the bread and wine, Brother Bonney—pious Brother Bonney—after a long pause, as if inquiring whether all the white members had been served, and fully assuring himself on that important point, then raised his voice to an unnatural pitch, and looking to the corner where his black sheep seemed penned, beckoned with his hand, exclaiming, ‘Come forward, colored friends!—come forward! You, too, have an interest in the blood of Christ. God is no respecter of persons. Come forward, and take this holy sacrament to your comfort.’ The colored members—poor, slavish souls—went forward, as invited. I wentout, and have never been in that church since, although I honestly went there with the view of joining that body.”[2]
The second event was happier. Not long after they moved into thelittle house a young man knocked on their door. Frederick had just come in from a particularly hard and unproductive day. Anna, turning from the stove where she was about to serve the evening meal, listened attentively. She wanted to say something. Then she heard Frederick’s tired voice, “Subscribe? theLiberator?”
“Yes,” the young man spoke briskly, “You know, William Lloyd Garrison’s Abolitionist paper. Surelyweought to support him!”
Anna moved to the doorway, but Frederick was shaking his head.
“I wish I could, but—We—I can’t—now.”
Anna slipped her hand in his. It was warm and a little moist. The young man understood. He cleared his throat.
“You’dliketo read it?” he asked.
“Oh, yes!” It was Anna who breathed the answer.
“Then—you can pay me later!”
“Oh, Freddie, that’s wonderful!” Anna said, but her eyes were beaming at the young man, who grinned and disappeared around the corner.
“She’sgot brains!” he thought, with thorough appreciation.
Back at the stove, Anna was fairly singing.
“We hardly dared get theLiberatorthrough the mail in Baltimore. Now to think we can sit in our own yard and read it!”
Every week Anna watched eagerly for the paper. When it came she waved the sheet triumphantly over her head as she walked back from the mailbox. Garrison was a hero. The authorities had run the New Englander out of Baltimore. But it had been from the sparks he drew that the East Baltimore Improvement Society had come into being. Anna sent their copies to Baltimore after they had finished with them.
“E-man-ci-pa-tion,” Frederick stumbled over the long word. “What does it mean, Anna?”
“Freedom, Frederick—or rathersettingthe people free. Listen to this!” The two dark heads bent near the oil lamp. “‘The Constitution of the United States knows nothing of white or black men; makes no distinction with regard to the color or condition of free inhabitants.’”
Frederick learned to love the paper and its editor. Now he and Nathan Johnson could really talk together. Nathan found an apt pupil, and Ma Johnson took Anna under her wing.
As the days grew cooler folks began talking about Thanksgiving.
“What is it?” Anna asked, wrinkling her brow.
Then Ma Johnson told her about the Pilgrims, of their first, hardwinter, of how now each year after harvest time the people of New England set aside a special feasting day in their memory, a day when they gave thanks for all the good things of the earth.
“What a beautiful idea!” Anna turned it over in her mind. “A day of thanksgiving!”
“Those poor young ones never tasted turkey.” Ma conveyed this tragic information to Nathan. They decided to take a turkey to them.
“And I’ll show her how to cook it.” Ma was very fond of Anna.
They carried the fresh-killed bird, resplendent in all its feathers, to the little house. Frederick and Anna gazed upon it with awe.
“Hot water! Plenty of hot water!” Nathan rolled up his sleeves, and while they followed his movements like two children he plucked the fowl and handed it to Anna.
“We’ll have meat all winter!” Frederick laughed, his eyes on Anna’s shining face.
The little house was fairly bursting with happiness that fall. They were going to have a child—a child born on free soil.
“He’ll be a free man!” Frederick made the words a hymn of praise.
And Anna smiled.
In April William Lloyd Garrison came to New Bedford.
“You must go, Frederick,” Anna said, “since I can’t. Look at me!”
“Not without you.” The young husband shook his head, but Anna laughed and rushed supper. Frederick was one of the first to arrive at the hall.
He saw only one face that night, he heard only one voice—a face which he described as “heavenly,” a voice which he said “was never loud or noisy, but calm and serene as a summer sky, and as pure.”
Garrison was a young man then, with a singularly pleasing face and an earnest manner.
“The motto upon our banner has been, from the commencement of our moral warfare, ‘Our country is the world—our countrymen are all mankind.’ We trust it will be our only epitaph. Another motto we have chosen is ‘Universal Emancipation.’ Up to this time we have limited its application to those who are held in this country, by Southern taskmasters, as marketable commodities, goods and chattels, and implements of husbandry. Henceforth we shall use it in its widest latitude: the emancipation of our whole race from the dominion of man, from the thralldom of self, from the government ofbrute force, from the bondage of sin—and bringing them under the dominion of God, the control of an inward spirit, the government of the law of love, and into the obedience and liberty of Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Frederick’s heart beat fast. He was breathing hard. The words came faint; for inside he was shouting, “This man is Moses! Here is the Moses who will lead my people out of bondage!” He wanted to throw himself at this man’s feet. He wanted to help him.
Then they were singing—all the people in the hall were singing—and Frederick slipped out. He ran all the way home. He could not walk.
Summer came. There was more work on the wharves, when his son was born. Frederick laughed at obstacles. He’d show them! “Them” became the whole world—the white caulkers who refused to work with him, anybody who denied a place to his son because his skin was rosy brown! The young father went into an oil refinery, and then into a brass foundry where all through the next winter he worked two nights a week besides each day. Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like water, might seem more favorable to action than to thought, yet while he fanned the flames Frederick dreamed dreams, saw pictures in the flames. He must get ready! He must learn more. He nailed a newspaper to the post near his bellows and read while he pushed the heavy beam up and down.
In the summer of 1841 the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society held its grand convention in Nantucket. Frederick decided to take a day off from work and attend a session.
The little freedom breeze was blowing up a gale. Theologians, congressmen, governors and business men had hurled invectives, abuse and legislation at the Anti-Slavery Society, at theLiberatorand at the paper’s editor, William Lloyd Garrison. But in London, Garrison had refused to sit on the floor of the World Convention of Anti-Slavery Societies because women delegates had been barred; and now the very man who had founded the movement in America was being execrated by many of those who professed to follow him.
But Frederick knew only that William Lloyd Garrison would be at Nantucket.
The boat rounded Brant Point Light and came suddenly on a gray town that rose out of the sea. Nantucket’s cobbled lanes, bright with summer frocks, fanned up from the little bay where old whalers restedat anchor, slender masts of long sloops pointed to the sky, deep-sea fishing boats sprawled on the dirty waters, and discolored warehouses crowded down on the quays.
Frederick had no trouble finding his way to the big hall, for the Abolitionist convention was the main event in the town. It spilled out into the streets where groups of men stood in knots, talking excitedly. Quakers, sitting inside their covered carriages, removed their hats and talked quietly; and women, trying not to be conspicuous, stood under shade trees, but they too talked.
The morning session had been stormy. A serious rift had developed within the ranks of the antislavery movement. During his absence Garrison had been attacked by a body of clergymen for what they termed his “heresies”—the immediate charge being his “breaking of the Sabbath.” Garrison, it seemed, saw no reason why anyone should “rest” from abolishing slavery any day of the week. He maintained that all days should be kept holy. He lacked forbearance and Christian patience, they charged. He “aired America’s dirty linen” in Europe. He “insulted” the English brethren when he took his stand for full recognition of women in the World Anti-Slavery Convention, despite the fact that St. Paul had adjured women to silence. Garrison had made a statement in theLiberator: “I expressly declare that I stand upon the Bible, and the Bible alone, in regard to my views of the Sabbath, the Church, and the Ministry, and that I feel that if I can not stand triumphantly on that foundation I can stand nowhere in the universe. My arguments are all drawn from the Bible and from no other source.”[3]
For weeks the controversy had raged—sermons were preached, columns and letters were written. Theodore Parker, young minister in Boston, was denounced by his fellow-clergymen because he sided with Garrison. Now they had all come to Nantucket—Garrisonites and anti-Garrisonites; the issue of slavery was tabled while scholars drew nice lines in the science of casuistry and ethics, and theologians chanted dogmas.
All morning Garrison sat silent. His right hand twitched nervously. Pains shot up into his arm. His face was drawn and tired. His heart was heavy. Here and there in the crowd a bewildered black face turned to him. William Lloyd Garrison lowered his eyes and shut his teeth against a groan that welled up from his heart.
And so he did not see one more dark figure push into the hall; butWilliam C. Coffin, a Quaker and ardent Abolitionist, did. He had met Frederick at the house of his friend, Nathan Johnson. Coffin made his way back through the crowd and laid his hand on Frederick’s arm.
“Thee are well come, my friend,” he said.
Frederick had been peering anxiously toward the platform. He was so far back, the crowd was so thick and the people wedged in so tightly, that he despaired of hearing or seeing anything; but he smiled a warm greeting at the Quaker.
“Follow me, there are seats up front,” Friend Coffin was saying.
The older man led the way down a side aisle, and there close against the wall was a little space. Frederick gratefully slipped in beside his friend.
“This is fine,” he whispered, “I hated to miss anything.” He looked around at the other occupants of the side seats. He spoke worriedly. “But—But I don’t belong up here.”
The Quaker smiled. “This is thy place.” He leaned closer, and his eyes were very earnest. “Douglass, I am asking thee to speak a few words to the convention this afternoon.”
Frederick stared at him. He gasped.
“Me? Speak?”
The great hall was a vast arena packed with all the people in the world! Surely the Quaker was joking. But no, the voice was very low, but calm and sure.
“Tell them thy story, Douglass, as thee have told the men at the mill. Just tell them the truth—no matter how the words come.” Frederick shook his head helplessly. He couldn’t stand up there before all those people. He tried to hear what the man on the platform was saying, but the words were meaningless. The hall was stifling hot. Men were mopping their brows with damp handkerchiefs. Frederick opened his shirt at the neck and let his coat slip off his shoulders.
“Thee cannot escape thy duty, Douglass,” Mr. Coffin urged quietly. “Look about you! Today, thy people need thee to speak for them.” Frederick held his breath, and the Quaker added gravely, “Andheneeds thee—that good man who has worked so hard needs thy help.”
Frederick followed the Quaker’s eyes. He was gazing at William Lloyd Garrison, the man whom he honored and loved above all other men. How sunken and tired he looked!
“He needs thee,” the Quaker said again.
Frederick’s lips formed the words, though no sound came at first.
“I’ll try,” he whispered.
How long it was after this that Frederick found himself on his feet, being gently pushed toward the platform, he could not have said. Only when he was standing up there before all those people did he realize that he had not replaced his coat. It was a clean shirt, fresh from Anna’s tub and iron, but—! He fumbled with the button at his neck. His fingers were stiff and clumsy. He could not button it with the faces, a sea of faces, looking up at him, waiting. Everything was so still. They were waiting for him. He swallowed.
“Ladies and gentlemen—” a little girl, all big grave eyes, pushed her damped curls back and smiled at him, encouraging. Suddenly a mighty wave of realization lifted and supported him. These people were glad that he was free. They wanted him to be free! He began again.
“Friends, only a few short months ago I was a slave. Now I am free!” He saw them sway toward him. “I cannot tell you how I escaped because if known those who helped me would suffer terribly,terribly.” He said the word a second time and saw some realization of what he meant reflected in their faces.
“I do not ask anything for myself. I have my hands to work—my strength.... All of the seas could not hold my thanksgiving to Almighty God—and to you.” He was silent a moment and they saw his eyes grow darker; his face contracted as if in pain. When he began again, his voice trembled, they had to lean forward to catch his words.
“But I am only one. Where are my brothers? Where are my sisters? Their groans sound in my ears. Their voices cry out to me for help. My mother—my own mother—where is she? I hope she is dead. I hope that she has found the only peace that comes to a slave—that last, last peace in a grave. But even as I stand before you it may be—It may be that—” He stopped and covered his face with his hands. When he lifted his head, his eyes shone with resolution. “Hear me,” he said, “hear me while I tell you about slavery.”
And then, in a clear voice, he told them of Caroline, why she dragged her leg, and how she had risked her life to save him; he told them about Henry and John, Nada and Jeb. He told them of little children he had seen clinging to their mother as she was being sold away, of men and women whose “spirits” had to be broken, of degradation. He told them the content of human slavery.
“I am free,” his voice went low; but they leaned forward, hanging on every word. “But I am branded with the marks of the lash. See!” And with one movement, he threw back his shirt. He turned, and there across the broad, young back were deep knotty ridges, where the brown flesh had been cut to the bone and healed in pink lumps. They gasped.
“I have not forgotten—I do not forget anything. Nor will I forget while, any place upon this earth, there are slaves.”
He turned to leave the platform.
Then in the silence another voice, a golden voice, was heard. It was as if a trumpet called.
“Is this a thing—a chattel—or a man?”
William Lloyd Garrison stood there—his eyes flaming—his face alight. He waited for an answer, holding Frederick’s hand in his, facing the audience. And from a thousand voices rose the shout.
“He is a man!”
“A man! A man!”
Garrison let the tumultuous shouts roll and reverberate. Men wept unashamed. Far down the street people heard the applause and shouting and came running. Through it all Garrison stood, holding the strong brown hand in his. At last Garrison pressed the hand gently, and Frederick stumbled to his seat. Then Garrison stepped to the edge of the platform.
Those who had heard him oftenest and known him longest were astonished by his speech that afternoon. He was the fabulous orator who could convert a vast audience into a single individuality.
“And to this cause we solemnly dedicate our strength, our minds, our spirits and our lives!”
As long as they lived men and women talked about that August afternoon on Nantucket Island.
John A. Collins, general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, was at Frederick’s elbow when the meeting let out.
“We want you as an agent,” he was saying. “Come, Mr. Garrison told me to bring you to him.”
While the crowd surged about them, the great man once more held Frederick’s hand, but now he gazed searchingly at the brown face.
“Will you join us, Frederick Douglass?” he asked.
“Oh, sir, I am a member of the Society in New Bedford,” Frederick answered quickly and proudly. Garrison smiled.
“Of course. But I mean more than that—a lot more. I’m askingyou to leave whatever job you have and work with me. The pay is—well—uncertain. They tell me you have a family. I too have a family.”
“Yes, sir. I know,” Frederick said, his eyes like an adoring child’s.
“I am asking you to leave your own family and work for the larger family of God.”
“Yes, sir, I understand. I want to help. But I am ignorant. I was planning to go to school.”
“You will learn as you walk, Frederick Douglass. Your people need your strength now. We all need you.”
So Frederick left his job at the foundry and, as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, began active work to outlaw slavery in the nation.