Chapter Ten
A light is set on the road
Massachusetts hung out her fairest garlands that spring. The fruit trees were in bloom. Dandelions a foot tall framed the winding roads in gold; across the meadows lay Queen Anne’s lace and white daisies; the lake shallows were covered with dark, green rushes; and alders, growing at the water’s edge, stood between white and yellow water-lilies. There was sweetness in the air.
Behind the little house between two cedar trees the line of white clothes waved merrily in the breeze. Mrs. Walker from the other side of the fence, stood in the doorway and admired the scrubbed and polished kitchen.
“Land sakes, Mis’ Douglass, youaresmart this morning!”
The dark woman, her sleeves tucked up, was kneading a batch of dough. She did not stop. There was still so much to do, and her breasts were heavy with milk. She must set these loaves before she nursed the baby. But she smiled at her neighbor, her eyes shining.
“My husband’s coming home!”
Mrs. Walker laughed sympathetically.
“I know, but not today. Body’d think he was walkin’ in this minute.”
In the next room little Rosetta filled an earthen jar with buttercups and violets she had picked down by the river. It spilled over and she began to cry.
“Never mind,” comforted Lewis. He spoke with masculine superiority, reinforced by his eight years. “Pa’s got no time for flowers anyhow.”
But Miss Abigail always kept flowers on the table. She had taught Rosetta how to arrange them, and now the little girl wiped her eyesand returned to her task. She had only that week been brought back to the cottage in Lynn for her father’s homecoming. Shortly before the baby was born the Misses Abigail and Lydia Mott had taken the child to live with them in Albany. To this extent the Quaker ladies had lightened Anna’s responsibilities. They had cared for and taught Frederick Douglass’ little daughter carefully. Now she was home for a visit, they said: they wanted her back.
“Don’t touch!” Rosetta climbed down from the chair and eyed her centerpiece with satisfaction. She spoke to three-year-old Charlie, whose round face was also turned toward the flowers. Freddie, all of his six years intent on mending a hole in the fence, had sent his “baby brother” into the house with a terse “Get outta my way!”
Charlie’s plump legs carried him hither and yon obeying orders. Now he was wondering what he could do on his own. Pa was coming—and he wanted to do something special. All at once he yelled, “I’ll show him the baby!”
Two days later he clung, ecstatic with joy, to the big man’s coat when for the first time the father held his new daughter in his arms. It was love at first sight. Perhaps because she was called Annie, or perhaps it was the very special way she wrapped her fist about his thumb.
Over the heads of their children, Anna and Frederick smiled at each other. The months had put lines on her face; he knew the days and nights had not been easy. He had yet to rub the rough callouses on her hands and find out about the shoes! Anna saw that her husband had grown, that he had gone far. He had walked in high places. But now he was home again. They were together.
They feasted that evening. The children tumbled over themselves being useful. They emptied their plates and then sat listening, wide-eyed. He talked and then he too asked questions.
“Say nothing about the shoes. We’ll surprise him,” she had cautioned.
A joke on Pa!They hugged their secret gleefully, as children will.
At last the house was still and she lay down beside him.
“Everything’s gone fine, hasn’t it, dear?” He spoke with deep contentment. “The children are well. The house looks better than it did when I went away. How did you do it?”
Her body touched his in the old bed.
“I managed,” she murmured. The shoes had made her hands rough and hard. His skin was warm and smooth.
“Have you missed me?” he asked.
Her sigh of response came from a heart at peace.
Washington read of Frederick Douglass’ return in theNational Era. Gamaliel Bailey had been printing short accounts of his activities in Great Britain. Many of the Abolitionists had protested against Douglass’ purchase by English friends. They declared it a violation of antislavery principles and a wasteful expenditure of money. TheNational Eratook up the issue.
“Our English friends are wise,” Bailey’s editorial commented. “Maryland’s slave laws still stand. Frederick Douglass is now free anywhere in the United States, only because he carries manumission papers on his person. The Eastern Shore can no longer claim him.”
The slaveholding power, it seemed, was stronger than ever. Texas with its millions of acres had been admitted to the Union, and President Polk was negotiating a treaty that favored the slave oligarchy. Abolitionists had split over political matters and had weakened themselves. But the sparks had fallen and were lighting fires in unexpected places. Charles Sumner, emerging from the State Legislature in Massachusetts, was moving toward the United States Senate. From Pennsylvania came David Wilmot with his amendment of the proposed treaty saying “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part” of the territory acquired as a result of the Mexican War. Longfellow, most popular author in America, was writing thunderously on slavery;The Biglow Paperswere circulating, and petitions, signed by tens of thousands, were gathered and delivered in Washington by Henry Wilson and John Greenleaf Whittier. Inside Congress, the aged John Quincy Adams laid the petitions before the House. The House tabled them—but the sparks continued to fly.
On an evening late in May a group of people responded to invitations sent out by the Reverend Theodore Parker and gathered at his house in Boston. He had called them together to discuss further strategy. Among those present were Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Ellery Channing,[9]Walter Channing,[9]Wendell Phillips, James Russell Lowell, James and Lucretia Mott, Charles Sumner, Joshua Blanchard, William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass.
These men and women had not agreed on every issue in the past, but now they united their efforts toward one single end: Slavery must be stopped. If it could not now be abolished, at least it must not spread. TheWilmot Provisomust be carried to the country.
And who was better equipped to carry out such a mandate than William Lloyd Garrison and their newly returned co-worker, who had been hailed throughout Great Britain? The man who bore his “diploma” on his back, Frederick Douglass. So it was decided.
Douglass’ reputation no longer rested on the warm word of his personal friends. Not only had accounts of him been printed in theLiberator, but theStandardand thePennsylvania Freemanhad told of his speeches and reception abroad. Every antislavery paper in the country had picked up the stories. Horace Greeley had told New York about him. Nor was the opposition unaware of him. The advocates and supporters of slavery pointed to him as “a horrible example” of what “could happen.”
“Douglass!” The name was whispered in cabins and in tobacco and rice fields. It traveled up and down the Eastern Shore. A tall black girl, dragging logs through the marsh, heard it and resolved to run away. She became “Sojourner Truth” of the Underground Railroad—the fearless agent who time after time returned to the Deep South to organize bands of slaves and lead them out.
In Boston and Albany and New York they clamored to see and hear Douglass. And in clubs and offices and behind store-fronts they muttered angry words.
During the first week in August the Anti-Slavery Society held a three-day convention in Morristown, Pennsylvania, with hundreds of people coming by train from Philadelphia. Lucretia Mott, the foremost woman Abolitionist of her day, fired the crowd with enthusiasm. Douglass did not arrive until the second day. His name was on everyone’s lips, the trainmen craned their necks to see him, and he was pointed out wherever he went.
The evening of the closing day of the convention, Garrison and Douglass were to speak together at a church. It was packed when they arrived. Garrison spoke first. All went well until Douglass rose, when there came a sound of breaking glass and large stones flew through the windows. The men in the audience rushed out. There was the sound of shouting and running outside. The rowdies fled, and in a short while the meeting continued.
In Philadelphia there were a large number of educated andextremely active Negro Abolitionists. Douglass was particularly happy to spend some time with them, and they were eager to heed and honor him. William Grant Still, secretary of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, saw to it that they met Douglass.
On Saturday morning Garrison and Douglass said goodbye to their friends and hurried to the station. At the last moment Garrison recalled an errand.
“Go ahead and get the tickets, Douglass,” he said. “I’ll be along in time.”
Douglass complied with his request, but Garrison had not arrived when the train pulled in. Douglass boarded one of the last cars and, sitting down close to a window, watched rather anxiously for his traveling companion.
He did not notice the man who came up to the seat until he heard: “You there! Get out of that seat!”
It came like the old-remembered sting of a whip. He had not heard that tone for so long. He looked up. The speaker was a big man. He had evidently been drinking. His face was flushed.
“Get along up front where you belong!”
“I have a first-class ticket which entitles me to this seat,” Douglass said quietly. The muscles along his back were tightening.
“Why, you impudent darky!”
“Oh, John, please!”
Then Douglass saw that behind the man and, until that moment hidden by him, was a little woman, the thin, gray strands of her hair partly concealed by a poke bonnet, her blue eyes now wide with alarm.
“Oh,” said Douglass, rising, “excuse me, madam. Would you like my seat?”
The bully’s mouth dropped open. For a moment the unexpected words struck him dumb.
“Why—why—I—” the woman stammered.
“Shut up!” The man had recovered his breath. “Don’t talk to that nigger. I’ll knock his teeth down his black throat if he says another word.”
Frederick smiled at the woman.
“As I said, I have my ticket. But there are plenty of seats. I’ll gladly vacate this one for a lady.”
He moved quickly, catching his assailant’s blow with a swing of his arm, and brushed past before the man could recover himself. Douglass went on down the aisle. Behind him the man cursed.
“Oh, please, John!” the little lady protested.
Out on the platform, Douglass walked into Garrison. They hurried into another car and the train moved off.
“We’ll report the man when we reach the station,” said Garrison.
Douglass shrugged his shoulders. “He was drunk!” was his only comment.
The train pulled into Harrisburg about three o’clock in the afternoon. At the depot they found Dr. Rutherford, long-time subscriber to theLiberator, his sister-in-law, Agnes Crane, and several colored people awaiting them. One of the latter, a Mr. Wolf, proudly bore off Frederick Douglass to his home, while Dr. Rutherford took Mr. Garrison in tow.
Harrisburg, capital of Pennsylvania, was very much under the influence of slavery. The little group of Abolitionists had struggled valiantly against odds. They had obtained the Court House for the Saturday and Sunday evening presentations of their two speakers. Heretofore, antislavery lecturers had drawn only a few anxious listeners. This Saturday evening the Court House was filled to overflowing, and crowds had gathered in the street in front of the building.
Mischief was brewing. Outside, mounted horsemen mingled with the crowd, and inside the hall seethed with tense expectancy.
The chairman for the evening rose and introduced Mr. Garrison first. He spoke briefly, merely to open the meeting. Everybody knew that whatever happened would be aimed at Douglass. The dark speaker came forward, and someone in the back yelled, “Sit down, nigger!”
It was the signal. Through the windows came hurtling stones, bricks and pieces of Harrisburg pottery. From the back of the hall people threw stones and rotten eggs, ripe tomatoes and other missiles. Several men armed with clubs leaped for the platform.
The hall had become a bedlam: shrieks, shattering glass, and shouts of “Out with the damned nigger!” “Kill him!” “Break his head!” Douglass, recalling the mob in Indiana, seized a chair and laid about him with a will. A flying stone struck him just above the eye, and a brickbat grazed his head; but no one could get near him. It turned into a free-for-all. Garrison from his place on the platform thundered denunciations and rallied the people to their own defense. Gradually, they routed the disturbers and peace was restored.
One might suppose that the exhausted audience would have calledit quits. But not so with this crowd which had come out to hear Frederick Douglass. Scratches and wounds and broken heads were hurriedly tended; cold cloths were applied. And finally, holding a damp handkerchief to his head to stay the flow of blood, Douglass told his story. Far down the street the would-be “nigger killers” heard the cheers.
Sunday morning and afternoon they spoke at Negro churches. White people attended both times, and the meetings were unmolested. The Sunday evening crowd at the Court House was doubled. There was no trouble.
“Always heared tell them nigger-loving Abolitionists was chicken-hearted!” a man in a tavern complained morosely. “It’s a damn lie!” He rubbed his aching head thoughtfully.
Monday morning they left for Pittsburgh, going by train as far as Chambersburg, where they had to change to the stage. Here they were told that there had been some mistake about the tickets. The one Douglass held enabled him to go directly through on the two o’clock stage, but Garrison would have to wait until eight in the evening. Garrison told Douglas they would be expected and he might as well go ahead.
The route over the Alleghenies was beautiful, but slow and difficult. The stage was crowded, and it was a melting-hot day. When they drew up at the taverns for meals, Douglass was not allowed to eat in the dining room. He was told he might eat, if he stood outside. He preferred to go hungry—for the better part of two days.
On arriving at Pittsburgh the stage was met by a committee of twenty white and colored friends, with a brass band of colored men playing for all they were worth! The stage was late. It pulled in at three o’clock in the morning, but both committee and band had waited.
Douglass could not help relishing the consternation of his fellow-travelers when, to the accompaniment of deafening blasts from tuba and trumpet, he was literally lifted from the stage. How could they have known that the quiet, dark man whom they had seen humiliated and pushed aside, was a celebrity?
There was much about the dingy, smoke-covered city of Pittsburgh which reminded Douglass and Garrison of manufacturing towns in England. These people were down to bare necessities. They knew life and death could be hard and violent. They wanted no part of slavery.
“No more slave states!” they shouted.
Their enthusiasm was in the English style. They expressed approval without stint. At the close of the final meeting, they gave three tremendous cheers—one for Garrison, one for Douglass, and one for the local worker who had brought the speakers, A. K. Foster.
On Friday Garrison and Douglass took a steamer down the Ohio River. They stopped off at New Brighton, a village of about eight hundred people. They spoke in a barn, where, from barrels of flour piled on the beams over their heads, specks sifted down, whitening their clothes. They left aboard a canal boat, in the company of a young Negro named Peck, a future graduate of Rush Medical College at Chicago.
The next stop was Youngstown, where they were the guests of a jovial tavern keeper. He always took in Abolitionist lecturers free of charge. There they spoke three times in a huge grove. By evening Douglass was without voice. His throat was throbbing and he could not speak above a whisper. Garrison carried on. New Lyme, Painesville, Munson, Twinsburg—every town and hamlet on the way—in churches, halls, barns, tents, in groves and on hillsides. Oberlin, which come next, was a milestone for them both.
“You know that from the commencement of the Institution in Oberlin,” Garrison wrote his wife, “I took a lively interest in its welfare, particularly on account of its springing up in a wilderness, only thirteen years since, through the indomitable and sublime spirit of freedom by which the seceding students of Lane Seminary were actuated....
“Oberlin has done much for the relief of the flying fugitives from the Southern prison-house, multitudes of whom have found it a refuge from their pursuers, and been fed, clad, sheltered, comforted, and kindly assisted on their way out of this horrible land to Canada. It has also promoted the cause of emancipation in various ways, and its church refuses to be connected with any slaveholding or pro-slavery church by religious fellowship....
“I think our visit was an important one.... Douglass and I have been hospitably entertained by Hamilton Hill, the Treasurer of the Institution, an English gentleman, who formerly resided in London, and is well acquainted with George Thompson and other antislavery friends.... Among others who called was Miss Lucy Stone, who has just graduated, and who yesterday left for her home in Brookfield, Massachusetts.... She is a very superior young woman, and has a soul as free as air, and is preparing to go forth asa lecturer, particularly in vindication of the rights of woman.... But I must throw down my pen, as the carriage is at the door to take us to Richfield, where we are to have a large meeting today under the Oberlin tent, which is capable of holding four thousand persons.”[10]
It was Garrison who finally broke down.
Their first meeting in Cleveland was held in Advent Chapel. Hundreds were turned away, and in the afternoon they moved out into a grove in order to accommodate the crowd. It sprinkled occasionally during the meeting, but no one seemed to mind. The next morning, however, Garrison opened his eyes in pain. He closed them again and tried to move. He sat up, dizzy and swaying. Douglass, seeing his face, rushed to his side.
The doctor ordered him to stay in bed for a few days. They were scheduled to leave for Buffalo within the hour, and once more Garrison urged Douglass to go on ahead.
“I’ll be along,” he said weakly.
Garrison did not join him at Buffalo. Douglass held the meetings alone and it was the same at Waterloo and West Winfield. By the time he reached Syracuse on September 24, Douglass had begun to worry. There, however, he found word. Garrison had been very ill. He was now recovering and would soon be in Buffalo. Somewhat relieved, Douglass went on to Rochester, where he held large and enthusiastic meetings.
For a few days he visited with Gerrit Smith on his estate at Peterboro. Only then did he realize how tired he was. The high-ceilinged, paneled rooms of the fine old manor offered the perfect refuge from the rush and noise and turmoil of the past weeks. Douglass stretched out in an easy chair before an open fire and rested.
Something was bothering Douglass. Now that the cheering crowds were far away he frowned. Gerrit Smith fingered a long-stemmed glass of sherry and waited.
“They listened eagerly,” Douglass said at last, “they filled the halls and afterward they cheered.” He stopped and Gerrit Smith nodded his head.
“And what then?” Smith’s voice had asked the question in Douglass’ mind.
Douglass was silent a long moment. He spoke slowly.
“They did not need convincing. The people know that slavery iswrong.” Again Smith nodded his head. Douglass frowned. “Is it that convictions are not enough?”
Then Gerrit Smith leaned forward.
“Convictions are the final end we seek,” he said. “But even you dare not pit your convictions against the slaveholder’s property. Slaveholders are not concerned or bothered about cheering crowds north of the Ohio river. They can laugh at them! But they will not laugh long if the cheering crowds go marching to the ballot box. Convictions need votes to back them up!”
The shadows in the room deepened. For a long time there was only silence.
“There’s a man in Springfield you ought to know,” Gerrit Smith spoke quietly. “His name is John Brown.”
And so Douglass first heard of John Brown, in whose plans he would be involved for many years to come.
Upon the establishment of Oberlin College in 1839, Gerrit Smith had given the school a large tract of land in Virginia. The small group in Ohio hardly knew what to do with his gift until, in 1840, young John Brown, son of one of the Oberlin trustees, wrote proposing to survey the lands for a nominal price if he could buy some of it himself and establish his family there.
“He said,” continued Smith, “that he planned to set up there a school for both the Negroes and poor whites of the region.”
Titles to the Virginia lands were not clear because squatters were in possession, and the Oberlin trustees welcomed Brown’s plan. Thus John Brown first saw Virginia and looked over the rich and heavy lands which roll westward to the misty Blue Ridge. The Oberlin lands lay about two hundred miles west of Harper’s Ferry in the foothills and along the valley of the Ohio.
“He wrote that he liked the country as well as he had expected and its inhabitants even better,” Smith chuckled.
By the summer of 1840 the job was done, and Brown had picked out his ground. It was good hill land on the right branch of a valuable spring, with a growth of good timber and a sugar orchard. In August the Oberlin trustees voted “that the Prudential Committee be authorized to perfect negotiations and convey by deed to Brother John Brown of Hudson, one thousand acres of our Virginia land on the conditions suggested in the correspondence which has already transpired between him and the Committee.”[11]
“But then”—Gerrit Smith’s voice took on new urgency—“all negotiations stopped. The panic overthrew everybody’s calculations. Brown’s wool business collapsed, and two years later he was bankrupt. He had endorsed notes for a friend, and they sent him to jail. Then he entered into partnership with a man named Perkins, with a view to carrying on the sheep business extensively. Perkins was to furnish all the feed and shelter for wintering, and Brown was to take care of the flock.” Smith was silent for a few minutes, puffing on his pipe. “I think he loved being a shepherd. Anyway, during those long, solitary days and nights he developed a plan for furnishing cheap wool direct to consumers.
“He has a large store now in Springfield, Massachusetts. They say his bales are firm, round, hard and true, almost as if they had been turned out in a lathe. But the New England manufacturers are boycotting him. He’s not playing according to the rules and he’s being squeezed out. The truth of the matter is that John Brown has his own set of rules. He says he has a mission to perform.” There was another long silence. Then Gerrit Smith spoke and his voice was sad. “I wish I had it in my power to give him that tract of land protected by the Blue Ridge Mountains. I think that land lies at the core of all his planning.”
Gerrit Smith was right. John Brown had a plan. One thing alone reconciled him to his Springfield sojourn and that was the Negroes whom he met there. He had met black men singly here and there before. He was consumed with an intense hatred of slavery, and in Springfield he found a group of Negroes working manfully for full freedom. It was a small body without conspicuous leadership. On that account it more nearly approximated the great mass of their enslaved race. Brown sought them in home, in church and on the street; he hired them in his business. While Garrison and Douglass were touring Ohio, John Brown was saying to his black porter and friend, “Come early in the morning so that we’ll have time to talk.”
And so before the store was swept or the windows wiped, they carefully reviewed their plans for the “Subterranean Pass Way.”
Amelia and Mrs. Royall did not make the trip north. Amelia’s disappointment was tempered because she knew Frederick Douglass was somewhere out West. Jack Haley laughed and said that was the reason the old lady did not go. But Anne Royall said no newspaper woman could leave Washington when news was fairly bristling in the air.
That last was true. Had not the South fought and paid for the gold fields of California? Now the scratch of President Polk’s pen as he signed the treaty with Mexico reverberated through the halls of Congress. Tempers were short.
“And manners have been tossed out the window,” said Anne Royall.
Then Jefferson Davis was sent up from Mississippi. Mrs. Royall was immediately intrigued by the tall, handsome war hero.
“Careful, Mrs. Royall!” warned Jack Haley, shaking his finger.
“Attend your own affairs, young man,” snapped the old lady. “Jefferson Davis brings charm into this nest of cawing crows!”
Foreign consulates were rocking, too. Ambassadors dared not talk. For this was a year of change—kings being overthrown; Garibaldi, Mazzini, Kossuth emerging as heroes. Freedom had become an explosive word—to be handled with care. They smashed the windows of theNational Eraoffice and talked of running Gamaliel Bailey out of town. But it was difficult to call out a mob within sight of the Capitol building. And Gamaliel Bailey—facing his critics with that dazzling, supercilious, knowing smile of his—sent them away gnashing their teeth but helpless.
The time had come for action. Oratory was not enough. Convictions, however sound and pure, were not enough. Time was running out.
Frederick Douglass wrote a letter to John Brown in Springfield, Massachusetts. Douglass told the wool merchant of his recent visit with Gerrit Smith.
“I’d like to talk with you,” he wrote. And John Brown answered, “Come.”
Of that first visit with John Brown, Douglass says:
“At the time to which I now refer this man was a respectable merchant in a populous and thriving city, and our first meeting was at his store. This was a substantial brick building on a prominent, busy street. A glance at the interior, as well as at the massive walls without, gave me the impression that the owner must be a man of considerable wealth. My welcome was all that I could have asked. Every member of the family, young and old, seemed glad to see me, and I was made much at home in a very little while. I was, however, surprised with the appearance of the house and its location. After seeing the fine store I was prepared to see a fine residence in an eligible locality.... In fact, the house was neither commodious nor elegant, nor its situationdesirable. It was a small wooden building on a back street, in a neighborhood chiefly occupied by laboring men and mechanics. Respectable enough, to be sure, but not quite the place where one would look for the residence of a flourishing and successful merchant. Plain as was the outside of this man’s house, the inside was plainer. Its furniture would have satisfied a Spartan. It would take longer to tell what was not in this house than what was in it. There was an air of plainness about it which almost suggested destitution.
“My first meal passed under the misnomer of tea.... It consisted of beef-soup, cabbage, and potatoes—a meal such as a man might relish after following the plow all day or performing a forced march of a dozen miles over a rough road in frosty weather. Innocent of paint, veneering, varnish, or table-cloth, the table announced itself unmistakably of pine and of the plainest workmanship. There was no hired help visible. The mother, daughters, and sons did the serving, and did it well. They were evidently used to it, and had no thought of any impropriety or degradation in being their own servants. It is said that a house in some measure reflects the character of its occupants; this one certainly did. In it there were no disguises, no illusions, no make-believes. Everything implied stern truth, solid purpose, and rigid economy. I was not long in company with the master of this house before I discovered that he was indeed the master of it, and was likely to become mine too if I stayed long enough with him....
“In person he was lean, strong and sinewy, of the best New England mold, built for times of trouble and fitted to grapple with the flintiest hardships. Clad in plain American woolen, shod in boots of cowhide leather, and wearing a cravat of the same substantial material, under six feet high, less than one hundred and fifty pounds in weight, aged about fifty, he presented a figure straight and symmetrical as a mountain pine. His bearing was singularly impressive. His head was not large, but compact and high. His hair was coarse, strong, slightly gray and closely trimmed, and grew low on his forehead. His face was smoothly shaved, and revealed a strong, square mouth, supported by a broad and prominent chin. His eyes were bluish-gray, and in conversation they were full of light and fire. When on the street, he moved with a long, springing, race-horse step, absorbed by his own reflections, neither seeking nor shunning observation.
“After the strong meal already described, Captain Brown cautiouslyapproached the subject which he wished to bring to my attention; for he seemed to apprehend opposition to his views. He denounced slavery in look and language fierce and bitter, thought that slaveholders had forfeited their right to live, that the slaves had the right to gain their liberty in any way they could, did not believe that moral suasion would ever liberate the slave, or that political action would abolish the system.
“He said that he had long had a plan which could accomplish this end, and he had invited me to his house to lay that plan before me. He had observed my course at home and abroad and he wanted my co-operation. His plan as it then lay in his mind had much to commend it. It did not, as some suppose, contemplate a general rising among the slaves, and a general slaughter of the slave-masters. An insurrection, he thought, would only defeat the object; but his plan did contemplate the creating of an armed force which should act in the very heart of the South. He was not averse to the shedding of blood, and thought the practice of carrying arms would be a good one for the colored people to adopt, as it would give them a sense of manhood. No people, he said, could have self-respect, or be respected, who would not fight for their freedom. He called my attention to a map of the United States, and pointed out to me the far-reaching Alleghenies, which stretch away from the borders of New York into the Southern states. ‘These mountains,’ he said, ‘are the basis of my plan. God has given the strength of the hills to freedom; they were placed there for the emancipation of the Negro race; they are full of natural forts, where one man for defense will be equal to a hundred for attack; they are full also of good hiding-places, where large numbers of brave men could be concealed, and baffle and elude pursuit for a long time. I know these mountains well, and could take a body of men into them and keep them there despite of all the efforts of Virginia to dislodge them. The true object to be sought is first of all to destroy the money value of slave property; and that can only be done by rendering such property insecure. My plan, then, is to take at first about twenty-five picked men, and begin on a small scale; supply them with arms and ammunition and post them in squads of five on a line of twenty-five miles. The most persuasive and judicious of these shall go down to the fields from time to time, as opportunity offers, and induce the slaves to join them, seeking and selecting the most restless and daring.’
“When I asked him how he would support these men, he saidemphatically that he would subsist them upon the enemy. Slavery was a state of war, and the slave had a right to anything necessary to his freedom.... ‘But you might be surrounded and cut off from your provisions or means of subsistence.’ He thought this could not be done so they could not cut their way out; but even if the worst came he could but be killed, and he had no better use for his life than to lay it down in the cause of the slave. When I suggested that we might convert the slaveholders, he became much excited, and said that could never be. He knew their proud hearts, and they would never be induced to give up their slaves, until they felt a big stick about their heads.
“He observed that I might have noticed the simple manner in which he lived, adding that he had adopted this method in order to save money to carry out his purpose. This was said in no boastful tone, for he felt that he had delayed already too long, and had no room to boast either his zeal or his self-denial. Had some men made such display of rigid virtue, I should have rejected it as affected, false and hypocritical; but in John Brown, I felt it to be real as iron or granite. From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield in 1847, while I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful of its peaceful abolition.”[12]
Soon after this visit with John Brown, Frederick Douglass decided on a definite step. He would move to Rochester, New York, and there he would set up his contemplated newspaper.
He had been dissuaded from starting a newspaper by two things. First, as soon as he returned from England he had been called upon to exercise to the fullest extent all his abilities as a speaker. Friends told him that in this field he could render the best and most needed service. They had discouraged the idea of his becoming an editor. Such an undertaking took training and experience. Douglass, always quick to acknowledge his own deficiencies, began to think his project far too ambitious.
Second, William Lloyd Garrison needed whatever newspaper gifts Douglass had for theLiberator. Garrison felt that a second antislavery paper in the same region was not needed. He pointed out that the way of theLiberatorwas hard enough as it was. He did not think of Douglass as a rival. But, quite frankly, he wanted the younger man to remain under his wing. There was nothing more selfish here than what a father might feel for his own son.
But Douglass was no longer a fledgling. The time had come for him to strike out for himself.
Rochester was a young, new city. It was ideally located in the Genesee valley, where the Genesee River flowed into Lake Ontario; it was a terminus of the Erie Canal. Here was an ideal set-up for getting slaves safely across into Canada! Day and night action—more action—was what Douglass wanted now. There was already an intelligent and highly respected group of Abolitionists in Rochester. It was composed of both Negroes and whites. They would, he knew, gather round him. He would not be working alone. In western New York his paper would in no way interfere with the circulation of theLiberator.
And so on December 3, 1847, appeared in Rochester, New York, a new paper—theNorth Star. Its editor was Frederick Douglass, its assistant editor Martin R. Delaney, and its object “to attack slavery in all its forms and aspects; advance Universal Emancipation; exact the standard of public morality, promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people; and to hasten the day of freedom to our three million enslaved fellow-countrymen.”
“Politics is an evil thing—it is not for us. We address ourselves to men’s conscience!” Garrison had often said. But Frederick Douglass went into politics.
The Free Soil party, formed in 1848, did not become a positive political force under that name. But, assembling in August as the election of 1852 drew near, it borrowed the name of “Free Democracy” from the Cleveland Convention of May 2, 1849, and drew to itself both Free Soilers and the remnants of the independent Liberty party. Frederick Douglass, on motion of Lewis Tappan, was made one of the secretaries. The platform declared for “no more slave states, no slave territory, no nationalized slavery, and no national legislation for the extradition of slaves.”
The most aggressive speech of the convention was made by Frederick Douglass, who was for exterminating slavery everywhere. The lion had held himself in rein for some time. The duties of editor and printer of his paper had chained him to his desk. He had built onto his house to make room for the fugitive slaves who now came in a steady stream to Rochester, directed to “Douglass,” agent of the Underground Railroad, who handled the difficult and dangerous job of getting the runaway slaves into Canada.
Douglass was still a young man, yet that night as he stood with the long, heavy bush of crinkly hair flowing back from his head like a mane—thick, full beard and flashing eyes—there was about him a timeless quality, embracing a long sweep of years, decades of suffering and much accumulated wisdom.
“Americans! Your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three million of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad ... and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill.... You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators.... Your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against the oppressor; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence.... You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America!”
The people went out along the streets of Pittsburgh repeating his words. The convention delegates scattered to their states.
And out in Illinois a homely state legislator named Abraham Lincoln was saying that it is “the sacred right of the people ... to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.... It is the quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.”