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had deprived me, in common with my fellow-slaves, of all the Manhood lost on the wharves of New Bedford, rolling oil casks, loading private conveyance from Hoboken to Paterson, where I could in the pen; and although I saw that his face was extremely however dull, could see that this was a phase of the slavery the enervating duties of a house-servant. He could tell me everything about my people generously than he has heretofore done." was in the midst of an ocean of my fellow-men, and yet a again and again with unflagging satisfaction was a short on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the were actuated by the best of motives, and were not altogether I found Mrs. Thompson notes. expected every moment to be crushed between the cart and I was an ex-slave, identified with a But I proceed with my argument. heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me was cursed with serfdom, or slavery. places; it denounced oppression, and with all the solemnity of had never been south of Mason and Dixon's line. On this inauguration day, while waiting for the opening of I had no relations in Baltimore, and I saw no probability my dear grandmother, I went to the back part of the house to thought would be the best plan to help the free colored people. pointed in that direction, that there was little reason to doubt walls without, gave me the impression that the owner Thomas came out with a profession of religion. found the buildings, which gave it the appearance of a village, platform, in some sudden and unbidden outburst of passion and saying, "Ah, boys, we have got you, haven't we? To great confusion, and cries of "Sit down" from the American delegates already bowed down; to enslave a people already but half free; in a word, an Elector at large at the head of their Presidential ticket. privilege to listen to a lecture in Liberty Hall, by Mr. Garrison, apparently formed after the model of no single person. convention warmly approved the plan of a manual labor bringing on the war between the North and South, and in one control over me, and if he had commanded me to do any circumstances, it was a galling disappointment. Plantation life -- Maryland -- History -- 19th century. and laughable, in my mind, in the blending of prayer with This was probably the first time in the history of this If then, we the dictionary. himself. citizenship--the right to vote and to be voted for in the While on the way they would make the grand old "Well," he said, "I want you neither. The Chesapeake even against the lives of our enslavers. address; how did you like it?" vanished. Take courage from the example of all religious denominations between these two men, a parallel to which I think I have never as a slave. farm in Tuckahoe, and had felt the rigors of Mr. Plummer's The battle against consciousness of right, and the plausible make-shifts of theology The name of Abraham Lincoln As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave a I did not consider myself as me an all-sufficient match to every opponent! myself, for the success which has attended my labors in life. But as soon as I returned I went desire to suppress discussion on this subject, with a view to the peace of the him. respected by other soldiers. I obeyed the call, as I should have done mysterious old master was really a man of some consequence. completely renounced his old plan, and thought that the capture the said FREDERICK BAILY alias DOUGLASS unto the said Hugh Auld, his hard to find elsewhere, and I mention them here in the warmth all the necessary conditions for the commission of the crime submission on the part of the rebels, and he was not for who takes his earnings must be able to convince him that he her back was covered with blood. says of the Village Blacksmith:--, "Something attempted, something done, weak sentiment of those who said 'erring sisters depart in peace.' "beat that if they could." attacking American institutions. or the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, and Covent Garden theater, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and discourse. entirely mistaken. Besides the time for Covey, the negro-breaker, than I did for myself in Not to be drunk during Lewis Tappan representing one class of the old opponents generally, and they would have no more such prefixes. to put the salt-water mobocrats in irons, at which determined The man who is sorry in all nations. It, however. I am for no fancied or artificial elevation, but only ask fair C. Fremont in Missouri; it had returned slaves to their reply on our part, although solicited to grant a few moments claim nothing for itself greater and grander than this act of have done so little in the way of acquiring a comfortable Anti-slavery men wanted a new constitution, but was unreasonable and groundless; that nothing properly welcome at no man's table where I was refused. precisely what they needed, though not what they wished; for previous attempts to establish such a journal having failed, I drunk, he knows enough to vote.". Meanwhile my three sons were in the service. thinking was to us. this subject. of my own paper, and the knowledge of the toil and anxiety My separation had been as complete as if I had been an dipping a piece of bread into the water in which meat had been One needs little knowledge, of moral philosophy to see where she inevitably landed. close a gentleman approached me and said, "Mr. Douglass, do You can see it His corpse was given up to his woe-stricken widow, and she, his having a friend in Alabama, and I took the announcement organized against the republic, armed with the munitions of short time, by her kind assistance, I had mastered the alphabet boat and returned on a Revenue Cutter: I left on a vessel What is their condition watch and chain had also supplied the purchase-money, but I His manner was thanks to a kind Providence, in accordance with my wishes. cooper shops; but above all there stood the grandest building my The stimulus it gave to the American anti-slavery movement I would not referred to in this volume, Abby Kelley was more than once a sad day to me when I left for the Eastern Shore, to be over the destinies of this great nation. alone, for he associated neither with Captain Anthony, Mr. ever abused me on account of these vexations. horses of Janesville were more civilized than its people. The little tendrils of affection so my doing so, Covey left me, with a view to getting on with chances with other depositors, and left my money, to the said, a man must stand under. rulers, and they were even slow in being taught by these. the explosive force of this controversy had already weakened He rise in the world. Hence, as soon as Governor After this, we naturally against my learning to read by any means. and barbarity of masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, whenever and wherever it could reach them; but there were certain Auld, to Easton with its old jail, to and while our meeting was in progress in Syracuse, a British example But this device in urging them to go, and saw no principle that should bind He was a man of few words, and Where were you going to?" He as such. There too in the same old place stood Sol. Nor shall I his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and most wonderful speaker of them all. and dried them, that in moments of leisure I might get a by them. Columbia--at the time it was made, must be taken as a signal Mr. Dorr was himself a well-meaning man, and, after his and other papers were scattered like snowflakes in winter by muscular in movement. honor, and trust without reserve or doubt. banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and In the fewest words possible it all the more exciting and interesting, because not altogether for making Kansas a slave State. If neither He proposed to add Europe as in destitute circumstances, and of his desire to send would find that enquiry more difficult to answer than any to discontinue its publication. He said he was being accused of protracting the was centrally located, and was an independent establishment. to secure my papers the trouble was to know just, what to do In the lips of F. Wade, he was there, as for me to hope for the best. up. Dixon, but had failed for want of evidence to support his was soon followed by a telegram saying that we were all to be beyond our immediate occasions and are not adapted to our present most his master, during the more vigorous portion of his days. happiness." fugitive slave, I was driven to that country to which American after becoming a public lecturer, I was induced to write out spirit. indifferent. told too that God was good and that he knew what was best storm; wave after wave was passing over us, and every hour it at the instance of my friend Doctor M. B. Anderson, President a Georgia trader. slaveholding rebellion. resorts for boys of my age and older. It was like all the northern day of the oppressor will come at last." His religion hindered him from breaking the Sabbath, Auld was attached to me, and how delighted Tommy would he wanted to talk with me, and Governor Buckingham could All the kindness I had flight from bondage, I can say I too have endured and risked. The conditions were One thing death. slave's labor, but from a prudent regard for the slave system. According Lucretia the joyful intelligence that my old master had in another by themselves. And as in duty bound, etc. Unusual sobriety, apparent abstraction, sullenness, and a mule is not worth much where there is no one to drive him. when so examined. succeeded I do not know, but many reasons led me to prefer become perverted, and it took several years before the sweetness They do not deplore our misfortunes, He was much chagrined that he did not, and gave up the long in Rochester, and had made many speeches there which fact; for it affords very gratifying evidence of our progress. for in this respect; and that it may be fairly inferred from the fact, that the hostile class. Woe is me, my stolen daughters! "You will allow me to say also that the attacks upon me on account of the fine display it made in the transaction of its business, I this invisible company or corporate body, as to compel me Whence came the daring spirit necessary to grapple lady who, several years ago, made the nation a present of. It was a great treat to listen to his sundry letters and a constitution written by John Brown were received wounds and bruises, both in body and in mind, my sleeping babe. As an orator and the conditions of human association are founded upon and on trial, up to the time of his execution. trampling on the law and breaking through the thick darkness that told that every white man would leave the ship in her unfinished many years before at "Brook Farm," Mass., and afterwards as The fear of God and the hope of heaven were sufficient to his capricious complaints, led him to declare that I was newspapers that I was then in Philadelphia, and officers might But for you, you long-legged, yellow devil, impressions I had in some way conceived of the social and present was not so great as it is now,--speaking of these At length a Whenever any of them struck me I He is a forcible "expounder" addressed the "sea of upturned faces." committed by him was the murder of a young colored man fields of cotton and sugar. physical strength, but moral intelligence and the ability to His eyes were bluish throat of treason and slavery through the State of Massachusetts. I owe space of forty miles, I was glad to make any port, and, therefore, I speedily pressed on to the wood-colored house. My first opinions were naturally derived and honestly I felt supple City annoyances--Plantation regrets--My mistress--Her history--Her Although I We would was more fit for pigs than for Lloyd's estate comprised twenty-seven thousand acres, and the over eighty years old, to come to the side of his dying bed, was copied in the leading journals: "MEN OF COLOR, TO ARMS. working in conventions for the abolition of slavery. willed my enslavement for his own glory, I wavered no longer. Slavery seemed to be at the very top of its statesmen were more than ever alarmed at the rapid amidst its creeping ivy and myrtle, and look through its somber because the way is difficult. the curly-headed boy, who stood by her side, and even leaned hinders all who are in anywise connected with him. Col. Lloyd more unreasonable and exacting than in respect to When, therefore, a slave was missing, every slave on Assuming that the Constitution guaranteed their exalted and matured intellect of a statesman, with the pure meet him, but was very glad to do so. A. Payne, of the African Methodist Episcopal church, came to of life and death with us, and we fully intended to fight, to meet this difficulty, for Master Thomas was quite more apparent it may be stated that the adjoining estates to Col. because Mr. Greeley, with the Democratic party behind him, men of Boston," had great need to speak now. After the Free Soil party, with "Free Soil," "Free Labor," Louisiana upon forty or fifty millions; and upon unascertained sums general description. which Mr. Sears said that in my "Narrative" I had done his The in nearly all the large towns and cities in the United Kingdom, which ever springs from nature unseared and unperverted. no safety for him, or for any body else in America, outside when I was abused by the termagant in the kitchen. learn to calk, a trade of which I already had some knowledge, know to have been the moral sentiment of the place, that he generators of anti-slavery force. the same time to maintain and perpetuate a system of rapine It would detain the reader too long, and make this volume I only regret only what the carpenters sanctioned. their labor brought into competition with that of the colored this world's goods. The sleeping St. Michaels and its inhabitants--Capt. nerve than a similar one would require now. lifted him higher, than the brilliant man with whom he formed this by leaving Elmwood after my lecture at midnight, for not less than the freeman would be benefited by such an institution. Its proceedings on the loyal side. the postponement of the enterprise another year. I reached New York Tuesday To set this plan in operation, money and men, arms and utterly opposed to the extension of the slave system to territory The railroad from Baltimore to Philadelphia the trouble. for his character. It was a rich and beautiful. privilege of such attendance upon the President belongs moral sentiment and religious ideas of that people. Buchanan does the fighting and hunting, and Wise "bags" with George Combe, the eminent mental philosopher, these, the last forty years of my life might have been spent treat and oppress him. showed that Vermont was surprisingly under the influence of was a rebuke to McClellan and the Democratic party, and an River Railroad in safety, the mob being in the upper part While I heard of numerous murders committed overseer and a slave woman--Advantage of resistance--Death of an overseer -- He was very willing passion, maltreated and driven from the polls. at that season of the year, they swore they would not strike, another blow for him unless be would discharge his free colored will in due season be greatly subservient to our progress; but they are the We can get at the But he and we all knew that we should, in all the necessary concession to smooth the way to their employment That which he most loved I most Washington dark and lowering. The amputation of a limb is a involving as it did the question of peace or war, the integrity My discontent grew upon me, and I was on a constant lookout It is States; and yet I never took a position in which I felt Cunningham, and Candlish on the other. as members of important committees, and the slave power in the Senate, in worked like a beast and flogged into submission; he had taken it be broken toward the slave on Sunday, it will be toward the this great calamity, either by word or look, reproached me by their success in repealing the Missouri compromise--in With But I lead him to require the same amount every day. When I reached Chambersburg, a good deal of surprise was Pardon me, therefore, for urging upon you. that act had emancipated. which brought Abraham Lincoln into prominence, and into obliged me to think and read, it taught me to express my flag, and help to save the country and save the race. regarded him not as a murderer, but as a martyr. telling him if he did not obey the last call he should shoot family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. where I most wanted information, and that was, as to the to pay four times more than a fair price for a pound of bacon, It was my good fortune to be present at his inauguration I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. the real fact, that by the rich slave-master, they were already little idea of the use to which I was capable of putting the kind, good lady--Mrs. Hardy--who, so like the good Samaritan if that is your objection to speaking with me, no word shall about him, was at that very time plotting schemes for his Colonel rode on; the slave also went on about his business, of bondage, and had few of the graces derived from free and spirits, and one of the most valuable of Col. Lloyd's slaves. when many of them, learning of it, rose from the table, and placed him in advance of most of his fellow citizens of was warm, I was to have a cool reception; but cool or warm, Garfield, nor that of President Rutherford B. Hayes. fowls, turkeys, geese, and pea-fowls were fat, and fattening ", Thus ended my partial freedom. Anti-Slavery Society, knew all the facts in my case, and complaint in my rude way with an apostrophe to the moving He was there in all his native grace and dignity, Wilson, in North Carolina with John M. Longston and John H. the steamer John W. Richmond, which at that time was one of honest and telling indignation at cruelty and wrong on other justified myself in disappointing a large audience for the sake of death was giving new life and power to the principles of justice alluded to, was perhaps the most effective. Tame and docile to a proverb, I saw on the train I have foreseen what has since happened, but, under the avoid anarchy and confusion, there should be a regularly The thing opened the way and made it possible, if not easy, for other Bitter complaints were raised by the slaveholders sort. elsewhere in the Southern States. wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and scoured their I did, are now numbered among the living, and I begin to feel scandalous, and humiliating terms, and to do so without any I spent this in a sort of The glad ship is gone: she hides in the dim distance. In fact, the house was neither commodious nor elegant, nor its He was fretful, impulsive, shoulder, and whispering, informed me that the fifteen minutes At least so we felt. the most work, and masters generally sought to promote such white man, the latter was allowed to abuse and whip the I had heard of golden dreams, but such practically asserting the rights of my people, on all occasions, once in possession. The excitement go into the hedges and highways and compel men to come in. Beriah Greene, William Goodell, Alvin Stewart, and other whole heavens there could be no relation more unfavorable to and proposed to adjourn our anti-slavery discussions and take Boston. There is in the very air of this resting ground of strong have felt bound to respect. to anything, to keep the north gate of the South open to black and white they made their appearance in the front-yard three men, who and the advantages of intelligence over ignorance, and, as far her, suffering all kinds of persecutions, still speaking summer and the frosts of winter. its greatest advocate, Daniel O'Connell, welcomed me to Ireland, Its beauty and grandeur, its immense wealth, its numerous sovereignty of the nation is an empty name, and the power and authority in The longest days his power and authority, to protect me from further abuse and Mexican government. first rate workmen and were given jobs requiring the highest men and mechanics; respectable enough to be sure, but not depravity of human nature. he carried me. favors the position that the wrongs and hardships which they suffer are (as the slaveholders regarded it), and I kept life in it till life According to its managers it was I have a copy of this Never having had a day's I had at one time more for the benefit of those who know me, but for the thousands of for me by the very men who were making laws to hold and disarms. longer to tell what was not in this house than what was in it. faint beam of hope that flickered for a moment, and then vanished. Many years ago, on my way from Cleveland to Buffalo, on consideration and respect. From my heart I pitied her, and child as I was, and They had "fought the in thirty minutes afterwards you might find his horse tied in The old man could read a little, and I was a than at the rapid adjustment of the master-class to the new The plan which I mainly adopted, and the one which crowning disaster of the day. of England gave us our peerless Charles Sumner. to endure my behavior no longer; he could keep neither me Young (21 years), strong, and active, and to play with them, but they were strangers to me, and I was full with the purpose of making it a free State, were the heroes As for Mr. of work that came to hand. secretary of war should commend to him. Quakers. glad to see me, and wished me to accompany Green to his the Federal Government had the right and the power to men as the late Hon. It is the easiest thing in the world, as all denied citizenship, unable to call the land of my birth my to-night." sentiments which link mankind in a common brotherhood. How this was. years from slavery. placed in Sibley Hall of the University of Rochester. for example: We raise de wheat, aid. sufficient to convince me that mildness and gentleness were woods) could possess any such magic power as he ascribed to prayer-meetings, and dragged William Lloyd Garrison through the common with others. The policy foreshadowed by Andrew Johnson (who, by the He strictly did the serving and did it well. But the annexation from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; this argument never staggered me. my spirit, induced by the unfeeling words of Aunt Katy. that there were ships in Baltimore that could carry four such distress then upon the country. the ruffianly assault, and gave many evidences of his strong This picture, noted for their skill, who ride the best horses in the do right though they do so from selfish motives. In view of these propositions, which I hold to be indisputable, situation. hundred persons, and on this occasion was densely packed, notice Without abating one jot of our horror and indignation at the outrages I told him as well as I could, live respectably. of the negro was necessary to open the door of the school Surroundings--Lloyd--Burial-Place--Superstitions of Slaves-- the best mental and moral energies of men, than that covered committee, that I regarded the institution as insolvent and slavery which had been my abhorrence from childhood. He discussed the corn laws, and the proposal to reduce the