Part II (continued 2)

The Hutchinsons, celebrated vocalists, sang their sweetest songs, and groups gathered on the rude forecastle-deck in spirited conversation with Frederick Douglass.

“Always thought Abolitionists were crackpots!” The man from Indiana frowned.

“Wouldn’t think any—er—a black could talk like that!” The speaker, who came from Delaware, certainly had never heard such talk before.

“This man—he is not black.” The tinge of foreign accent in the words caused the Americans to glance up sharply. Perhaps the immaculate swarthy passenger was from Quebec. A Washingtonian eyed him coolly and rose to his feet.

“He’s a nigger just the same!” he said, and walked away from the group.

They fell silent after that. But some time afterward several of the passengers approached the Captain with the request that he invite this unusual character to deliver a lecture in the salon. Captain Judkins, who had been unhappy about the matter, gladly complied. He himself went to the steerage and sat chatting with the ex-slave. The dark man’s manners captivated him.

Announcement was made of the scheduled lecture. News of the Captain’s visit to the steerage got around. In one of the most expensive suites on the ship three young men faced each other. They were trembling with rage.

“By God, suh,” said one, thumping the table with his fist, “we won’t stand for it!”

“Invited to the salon!” said another.

“By the Captain!”

The pampered son of a Louisiana planter tore his silk cravat as he loosened it.

“Dog of a runaway slave—flaunted in our faces!” His voice choked in his throat. His cousin quickly assented.

“Fool Captain ought to be horsewhipped!”

The fair-haired boy from Georgia emptied his glass of brandy and waved his hand drunkenly.

“Just a minute, gentlemen. No rash talk! Gotta plan—that’s it—gotta plan!”

“Plan—hell!” The dark face of the Louisianian flushed dangerously. “We’ll just throw the nigger overboard if he dares show his impertinent face!”

“Yes,” agreed his cousin. “That’ll show the damned Yankees!”

They did not really believe he would come. But, of course, they did not know Frederick Douglass.

On the appointed evening the salon filled up early. Few of the ladies had dared to go to the steerage, and now flowered ruffles and curls fluttered with excitement as they settled into the cushioned seats. Promptly on the hour the imposing figure appeared in the doorway. At a sign from the Captain, who had risen, Douglass walked toward the front of the room.

Then it happened.

The three young men were now five. At Douglass’ appearance the two who were inside the salon sprang quickly to their feet, the three who had been watching from the deck came running in.

“We’ll stop him!”

“Get the nigger!”

“Throw him overboard!”

Ladies screamed, men jumped up, but Frederick only stood still while they closed in on him. Perhaps he had expected something like this. At any rate, his face did not change. The clamor increased as, cursing, the young men knocked aside any opposition.

But they had reckoned without the Captain. The stern old Britisher’s voice thundered out. His shipmen came running, and before the rioters could realize what had happened, they were struggling in the firm grasp of British seamen, who looked toward the Captain for further orders.

Captain Judkins was outraged. He glared at the offenders who, utterly bewildered by the turn of events, were stuttering their objections. The Captain chose to ignore everything except one obvious fact.

“Put these young drunks in irons until they sober up!” He turned away, leaving his competent crewmen to execute the order.

The Louisianian’s face paled. He stared about stupidly, expecting the whole roomful of people to rise in protest. But they did not. The faces swam before his eyes crazily as, stumbling a little, he was led away. Later he heard them applauding on the upper deck.

The next day they sighted land. A mist between the ocean and the sky turned green, took shape. The man beside Frederick gripped the rail with his broken nails.

“’Tis Ireland,” he repeated softly. And there was pain and heartache in his voice.

Frederick did not sleep that night. He was one of the huddled group that stayed on deck. They talked together in low voices, watching the distant flicker of an occasional light, straining their ears to catch some sound. Some of them had failed in the bewildering New World, and they were going back. Others had succeeded and now were returning for parents or wives and children.

But Frederick was breaking through the horizon. He was getting on the other side. He had sailed through the sky. America and all that it had meant to him lay far behind. How would Europe receive this dark-skinned fugitive from slavery?

The ship docked at Liverpool, but certain preliminaries prevented the passengers from going ashore immediately. Baltimore, New Bedford, not even New York, had prepared Frederick for the port of Liverpool. It was rapidly becoming Britain’s monstrous spider of commerce, flinging its sticky filaments to the far corners of the world and drawing into its net all that the earth yields up to men.

Just inside the bottleneck entrance to the Mersey River, kept relatively free from silt by tidal scour, Liverpool was once a shelter for fishing vessels which built up a comfortable coastal trade with Ireland. Medieval sailors gave little thought to the sandstone hill that lay beyond the marshy fringe. The Dee River silted up and trade with America grew; and it was found that Liverpool was well situated to meet the change. The mouth of the old pool was converted into wet docks, the marshes were hollowed out, and railroads tunneled through the sandstone hill with ease. The British Empire was expanding.

Now all along the wharves rode merchant ships of every variety, ships laden with iron and salt, timber and coal, grains, silks and woollens, tobacco and, most of all, raw cotton from America.

Frederick saw them unloading the cotton and piling it high on the docks. He knew it was going to the weavers of Lancashire. He wondered if those weavers knew how cotton was planted and chopped and picked.

The Hutchinsons had been in Liverpool before, so they all went to a small hotel not far from the wide Quadrant. Frederick stood in the square gazing up at the great columned building fashioned after the Greek Parthenon and for a moment he forgot about the cotton. He liked the quiet, solid strength of that building. He resolved to visit it to feel the stone and measure the columns.

Quite unexpectedly Liverpool became aware of Frederick Douglass.

The young men who had been so rudely halted in their premeditated violence, went immediately to the police demanding the arrest of the “runaway slave” and of the ship’s Captain! They were not prepared for the calm detachment of British justice. Never doubting the outcome, the young men repaired to the newspapers, where they told of their “outrageous treatment,” denounced the Captain and all his crew and heaped abuse upon the insolent instigator of this “crime against society.”

British curiosity is not easily aroused. But the young men’s language pricked both the authorities and the newspapermen. They did not like it. They dropped in on Captain Judkins. His words were few, brusque and pointed. The police asked politely if he wished them to lock the young men up. The Captain considered their proposal coolly and decided he had no interest in the young men. He was going to take his Missus to hear the black American speak. She would enjoy it. And now, if the inspector was finished, his Missus was waiting. The Captain hurried away, rolling a little on his sea legs; and the newspapermen decided they would visit the “black American.”

The Honorable William Gladstone, down from London for a few days, re-read a certain column in his paper over a late and solitary breakfast. The new Colonial Secretary spent most of his time in London; but Liverpool remained his home. It was a lovely house, well out of town, away from the dirt and noise of warehouses and docks. Well back from the graveled road, behind high fences and undulating greens, sat the residences of England’s merchant princes. Gladstone had represented his neighbors in the government since he was twenty-three years old, first as vice-president and then president of the Board of Trade. Now, at thirty-six, he had been made Colonial Secretary. It took a man who knew trade and the proper restrictions for its protection to handle the affairs of Egypt, Australia and fabulously rich India.

The young man frowned and crumpled his paper.

“Nevins!” he called.

“Yes, sir!”

“Nevins, have you been in town this week?”

Nevins considered before answering. There must be no mistake about this matter.

“Not this week, sir.”

“Well, have you heard any talk of a British India Society meeting?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“India Society,” the Colonial Secretary explained, “or anything at all about India. I understand there have been meetings in the provinces—talk about starving India—Indian independence—some sort of agitation.”

“We’ve had nothing of that kind in these parts.” Nevins spoke with a touch of disapproval.

The Colonial Secretary picked up his paper. He frowned at it a moment.

“I was wondering if there were any connection. Any connection at all. Might well be, you know.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“There’s something here about a runaway slave from America speaking in town tonight—at one of those workers’ halls. They’re springing up all over England.” He added the last thoughtfully.

“Did you say a slave, sir, perhaps an African cannibal?”

“Exactly. This gives a most extraordinary account of the fellow on shipboard. Ship’s Captain says he’s educated.”

“I can’t believe it, sir.”

“Um—would be very strange, if true. But who would be bringing him over here?” The American Revolution had not yet become a mellowed memory. Americans—white or black—would bear watching.

“Nevins!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I should like you to attend this meeting.”

“I, sir?”

“Find out what this slave has to say and what’s behind him.”

It had really been planned by the Hutchinsons as a concert. The Anti-Slavery Society had asked Mr. Buffum to say a few words. Douglass was merely to be presented and to say that he was glad to be in England. But the newspapers had played up Frederick Douglass’ story so much that at the last moment they decided to seize the opportunity and feature him. When, long before dark the hall began to fill, it was obvious that they had come to hear “the black man.”

While the crowd listened respectfully to the Hutchinsons, Frederick studied his first British audience. Somehow it was different. He realized it bore out what he had witnessed in two days of wandering about Liverpool. For the first time in his life he had seen white people whose lot might well be compared with that of the black slave in America. Here in Liverpool they could indeed leave their jobs, he thought grimly; but their children would starve. He saw them living in unbelievable squalor, several families herded together in two or three rooms, or in a single dirty cellar, sleeping on straw and shavings.

He sat on the platform and studied their faces. There was something in their eyes, something in the stolid set of their chins, something hard and unyielding, some strength which could not be destroyed—something to join with his strength. And so when he rose he did not fumble for words. He told them that he was glad that here on British soil he was truly free, that no slave-hunter could drag him from the platform, no arm, however long, turn him over to a master. Here he stood a free man, among other free men!

They cheered him lustily. And when they had quieted down he began to talk to them about cotton. He talked to them of the cotton piled high on the docks of Liverpool and how it got there. He talked to them of black hands picking cotton and blood soaking into soil around the cotton stalks.

“Because British manufacturers need cotton, American slavery can defy the opinions of the civilized world and block Abolitionists in America and England. If England bought free cotton from some other part of the world, if she stopped buying slave-grown cotton, American slavery would die out.”

Graphically, he added up the horrors of slavery. He told how the labor of the slave in chains cheapened and degraded labor everywhere. They listened, leaning forward in their seats, their eyes fixed.

“Cotton can be grown by free labor, at a fair cost and in far greater abundance, in India. England, as a matter of self-interest as well as on the score of humanity, should without delay redress the wrongs of India, give protection and encouragement to its oppressed and suffering population, and thus obtain a permanent and abundant supply of free cotton produced by free men.”

“A powerful speech, sir!” Nevins reported the next morning.

The Colonial Secretary looked at his man with some impatience.

“Well, really, Nevins! Let’s be a bit more specific. A black make a powerful speech—something of an exaggeration, surely!”

“He’s not really a black, sir,” Nevins answered surprisingly.

“Good Lord! What is he then?”

“I couldn’t rightly say, sir.” There was a dogged stubbornness about Nevins this morning. The Colonial Secretary shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, well. What did he talk about?”

A lucid thought flashed across Nevins’ mind.

“He talked about cotton, sir.”

“About cotton?” The Colonial Secretary stared. “What on earth did he say about cotton?”

“He said that better cotton could be raised in India than in America.”

The lucid moment passed, and Nevins could tell no more. But the young Colonial Secretary saw the newspaper accounts of Douglass’s talk before he returned to London. He took out his notebook and on a clean, fresh page he wrote a name, “Frederick Douglass.” Then he thoughtfully drew a circle around it. William Gladstone’s mind had projected itself into the future, when there might be no more cheap cotton coming from America. The Colonial Secretary was a solid young man with no nonsense about him.

Across the narrow strip of water, in Dublin, Daniel O’Connell sat in a ruby-brick house off Rutland Square, while the dusk of a September evening closed about him. He held a letter in his hand—a letter he had been re-reading while he waited. From far-off America his friend, William Lloyd Garrison, had written:

I send him to you, O’Connell, because you of all men have most to teach him. He is a young lion, not yet fully come into his strength, but all the latent power is there. I tremble for him! I am not a learned man. When confronted with clever phrasing of long words I am like to be confused. Scholars well versed in theology say I am a perfectionist.... As Christians, I believe we must convert the human race. Yet, God forgive me, doubts assail my heart. Here is a man, a few short years ago a slave. I stand condemned each time I look into his face. I am ashamed of being identified with a race of men who have done him so much injustice, who yet retain his people in horrible bondage. I try to make amends. But who am I to shape this young man’s course? I have no marks of a lash across my back; I’ve had the comforts of a mother’s tender care; I speak my father’s name with pride. I am a free white man in a land shaped and designed for free white men. But you, O’Connell, know of slavery! Your people are not free. Poor and naked, they are governed by laws which combine all the vices of civilization with those of primitive life. The masses of Ireland enjoy neither the freedom of the savage, left to roam his own forests and draw fish from his rivers, nor the bread of servitude.... From you, Frederick Douglass can learn. I commend him to you, with my love. He will strengthen your great heart. He will renew your faith and hope for all mankind.

The old man sat, turning the letter in his hand. The years lay heavy along his massive frame. His own voice came back to him: Sons of Ireland! Agitate, agitate, agitate!

Yet the evictions of starving tenants went on. The great castle in its circle of wretched cabins, stripped the surrounding country of food and fuel. People were ignorant because they could not go to school, slothful because there was nothing they could do. Drunkards because they were cold. Ireland had long been in subjection harsh enough to embitter, yet not complete enough to subdue. But the failure of the potato crop this year had brought a deadening apathy. The Irish cottier was saying he could never be worse off or better off by any act of his own. And everywhere there were the gendarmes, sodden with drink and armed with carbines, bayonets and handcuffs.

Daniel O’Connell had been thirty-six years old when, in 1812, Robert Peel came to Dublin. To O’Connell the twenty-four-year-old Secretary for Ireland was the embodiment of everything English. The Irishman had been destined and educated for the priesthood, had taken up law instead, and risen as rapidly as a Catholic could in a Protestant government. An Irish Catholic could vote, but could not sit in Parliament; he could enter the army, navy or professions, but could not rise to the higher ranks. The universities and all the important posts in the Civil Service were closed to him.

As an advocate, Daniel O’Connell had been greatly in demand. In those days he stood six feet tall, with a head of fox-red curls and a face that had irregular, almost ugly features. They said his voice could be heard a mile off and was like music strained through honey. Reckless, cunning, generous and vindictive, O’Connell had fought for Ireland. They threw him in jail when he challenged Robert Peel to a duel. It never came off. He finally apologized, thinking to propitiate the Englishman in the matter of his Catholic Relief Bill that was up before Parliament.

Now Robert Peel was Prime Minister of England, and misery still lay like a shroud over all Ireland. O’Connell shook his head. Garrison was mistaken. There was nothing he could teach his young man. At seventy, one’s work is finished, and he, Daniel O’Connell, had failed.

After a while the girl brought in a lighted lamp and set it on the table. O’Connell said nothing. He was waiting.

Then he heard voices in the hall and he stood up, his keen eyes fixed on the door. It opened to admit Frederick Douglass. The dark man stood a moment where the lamplight fell on him; then he smiled. And something in the Irishman’s tired heart ran out to meet that smile. O’Connell strode across the room. He placed his two hands on the younger man’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes.

“My son, I’m glad you’ve come,” he said.

So Frederick Douglass saw Ireland and came to know its people. He learned why women’s faces beneath their shawls aged so quickly. He watched children claw the débris on the coal-quays of Cork. He saw the rich grasslands of the Golden Vale where fine, fat cattle fed while babies died for milk. Looking out over the Lakes of Killarney, he saw on the one side uncultivated tracts, marshy wastes studded with patches of heather, with here and there a stunted fir tree; and on the other, along the foot of the mountains beside the lovely lakes, green, smiling fields and woods of almost tropical vegetation. He learned that in Ireland there were only rich and poor, only palaces and hovels.

“Misrule is due to ignorance and ignorance is due to misrule.” O’Connell tapped the short stem of his pipe on the table. “Few Englishmen ever visit Ireland. When they do they drive in a carriage from country house to country house. The swarms of beggars in Dublin only fill them with disgust.”

“But—But why don’t these beggars work?”

“There are no industries in Ireland. Our wool and wheat go into English mills. In Ireland, in order to work, one must have a plot of land.”

Frowning, Douglass grappled with the problem. Oppression then was not confined to black folks! There was some common reason for it all.

O’Connell nodded his head.

“Possession of the land! This is the struggle, whether we’re talking about the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland, the brown peoples of India, or the blacks of South Africa. Indeed, where are your red men in America?”

The young man’s face showed something of horror. Was the earth so small then that men must destroy each other to have their little bit?

“Not at all. But there have always been those who would share nothing. Conquest has come to be a glorious thing. Our heroes are the men who take, not those who give!”

The old man was in fine form that fall. The young man with his vibrant personality and searching questions inspired him. Earlier in the year he had vetoed plans for a huge rally at the great Conciliation Hall. The place held twenty thousand people and O’Connell had not felt equal to it. But now he announced a change of mind: he and Douglass would speak there together.

It was an event talked of many a long winter evening afterward. “Dan—Our Dan,” they said, outdid himself. The massive stooped shoulders were squared, the white head high. Once more the magnificent voice pealed forth.

“Until I heard this man that day,” Douglass himself wrote, “I had thought that the story of his oratory and power was exaggerated. I did not see how a man could speak to twenty or thirty thousand people at one time and be heard by any considerable portion of them, but the mystery was solved when I saw his ample person and heard his musical voice. His eloquence came down upon the vast assembly like a summer thunder-shower upon a dusty road. At will he stirred the multitude to a tempest of wrath or reduced it to the silence with which a mother leaves the cradle-side of her sleeping babe. Such tenderness, such pathos, such world-embracing love! And, on the other hand, such indignation, such fiery and thunderous denunciation, such wit and humor, I never heard surpassed, if equaled, at home or abroad.”[5]

A piece on O’Connell came out in Brownson’s Review. Mr. O. A. Brownson, recently become a Catholic, took issue with the “Liberator” of Ireland for having attacked American institutions. O’Connell gave another speech.

“I am charged with attacking American institutions, as slavery is called,” he began. “I am not ashamed.... My sympathy is not confined to the narrow limits of my own green Ireland; my spirit walks abroad upon sea and land, and wherever there is sorrow and suffering, there is my spirit to succor and relieve.”

The striking pair toured Ireland together. O’Connell talked about the antislavery movement and why the people of Ireland should take part in it; Douglass preached O’Connell’s doctrines of full participation of all peoples in government and legislative independence.

“There must be government,” said O’Connell. They were talking together quietly in the old man’s rooms. “And the people must take part, must learn to vote and take responsibility. You have a fine Constitution in the United States of America. I have studied it carefully.”

“I have never read it,” confessed the dark man, very much ashamed.

“No?” O’Connell studied the somber face. “But you have read the Declaration of Independence. A glorious thing!”

“Yes.” And now there was deep bitterness. “And I find it only words!”

The Irishman leaned over and placed his hand upon the young man’s knee. He spoke softly.

“Aye, lad—words! But words that can come alive! And that’s worth working and even fighting for!”

Chapter Nine

“To be henceforth free, manumitted and discharged from all manner of servitude to me....”

The two letters reached them in the same mail. One came from James Buffum to Frederick; the other was for Daniel O’Connell from George Thompson, the English Abolitionist. Thompson, who had been stoned from his platform in Boston on his last trip to America, had not met Frederick. However, he had heard from William Lloyd Garrison.

Their letters said substantially the same thing: “We need Douglass in Scotland.”

The facts were brief. It had been proved that the Free Church of Scotland, under the leadership of the great Doctors Cunningham, Candlish and Chalmers, had taken money from slave-dealers to build churches and to pay church ministers for preaching the gospel. John Murray of Bowlien Bay and other antislavery men of Glasgow had called it a disgrace. The leading divines had thereupon undertaken to defend, in the name of God and the Bible, not only the principle of taking money from slavers, but also of holding fellowship with these traffickers in human beings. The people of Scotland were thoroughly aroused. Meetings were being called and strong speakers were needed. Buffum and Thompson were already on their way to Edinburgh.

“You’ll come back, Frederick?” O’Connell’s voice was wistful. It was like parting with a son.

“Come with us!” Frederick urged. But the “Liberator” shook his head.

“Our people are threatened with starvation. First our potatoes. And now the wheat crop has failed in England. There is no longer time. Richard Cobden writes that the Prime Minister may be with us. A shallow hope, but I must be on hand if needed.”

“Perhaps then I shall see you in London?” The thought that he might not see the old man again was unbearable.

“Perhaps, Frederick. God bless you!”

Frederick found the famous old city of Edinburgh literally plastered with banners. Send Back the Money stared at him from street corners. Every square and crescent carried the signs. They had scribbled it on the sidewalks and painted it in large white letters on the side of the rocky hill which stands like some Gibraltar, guarding the city: Send Back the Money.

For several days George Thompson, James Buffum and another American, Henry C. Wright, had been holding antislavery meetings in the city. As soon as Douglass arrived, they hurried him off to the most beautiful hall he had ever seen. The audience was already assembled and greeted him with cheers. Without taking time to remove the dust and grime of travel, he mounted the platform and told his story.

After that, excitement mounted in the town. Send Back the Money appeared in a banner across the top of Edinburgh’s leading newspapers. Somebody wrote a popular street song, with Send Back the Money in the chorus. Wherever Douglass went, crowds gathered. It was as if he had become the symbol of the people’s demand.

At last the general assembly of the Free Church rose to the bait and announced they would hold an open session at Cannon Mills. Doctors Cunningham and Candlish would defend the Free Church of Scotland’s relations with slavery in America. The great Dr. Chalmers was in feeble health at the time. “Besides,” Douglass wrote afterward,[6] “he had spoken his word on this question; and it had not silenced the clamor without nor stilled the anxious heavings within.” As it turned out, the whole weight of the business fell on Cunningham.

The quartet of Abolitionists made it their business to go to this meeting of the opposition. So did the rest of Edinburgh. The building held about twenty-five hundred persons. Long ahead of time, the crowd gathered outside and stood waiting for the doors to open.

Douglass always remembered the meeting at Cannon Mills with relish.

Dr. Cunningham rose to tumultuous applause and began his learned address. With logic and eloquence he built up his argument, the high point of which was that neither Jesus Christ nor his holy apostles had looked upon slaveholding as a sin.

Just as the divine reached this climax, George Thompson called out, in a dear, sonorous, but rebuking voice, “Hear! Hear! Hear!” Speaker and audience were brought to a dead silence.

“The effect of this common exclamation was almost incredible,” Douglass reported.[7] “It was as if a granite wall had been suddenly flung up against the advancing current of a river.... Both the Doctor and his hearers seemed appalled by the audacity as well as the fitness of the rebuke.”

After a moment the speaker cleared his throat and continued. But his words stuck in his throat—the flow of language was dammed. The speech dragged on for several minutes, and then the Doctor stumbled to his seat to scattered patting of hands.

The Free Church of Scotland held on to its bloodstained money, and the people bowed their heads in shame.

“Ours is a long history,” said Andrew Paton, sadly, “of incompetent leadership and blind, unquestioning following by the ranks.”

“But this time you did protest. The people of Scotland know what slavery means now,” George Thompson assured him.

Thompson, Buffum and Douglass traveled back to London together. They went by stagecoach, stopping each night at some inn. It was like a holiday. Frederick thought the soft mist that lay over all the land was very lovely. And there was something comforting and homelike about the way the stark grandeur of Scotland’s rugged crags gave way to rounded hills, wide valleys and gently rolling moors. The roads of Ireland had been bad, the occasional inns wretched and dirty. Now, for the most part, they rolled along in state; and, when night came, lights from an inn twinkled a jolly welcome, the dinner was hot and filling, the innkeeper genial. Undoubtedly, thought Frederick, life is pleasanter in England.

The three Abolitionists were teetotalers—temperance men on principle. But Frederick could not stifle a desire to taste of the foamy ale which he saw being tossed off with such gusto.

“Are you sure it’s alcoholic?” he asked.

Thompson threw back his head with a hearty laugh.

“If you mean will a bit of our ale with your dinner make you drunk. I’ll say no.” He eyed him with a quizzical twinkle. “You’d like some?”

“Frederick!” Buffum frowned his disapproval. He was three-fourths Massachusetts Puritan and he felt an older man’s responsibility.

But the Englishman spread his hands and reasoned.

“This is a test, Friend Buffum. Here is a newcomer to England. He observes that ale is a national drink. He asks why?” He leaned forward. “How can he speak of the temptations of any kind of drink if he has never even tasted ale? Be logical, man!” Frederick was certain that one eye winked. He grinned and looked anxiously at the Secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. By now he really wanted some ale. Buffum had to laugh, if weakly. He clucked his tongue and shook his head.

“Frederick, Frederick! What would the folks at home say?”

Thompson was signaling to the waiter to bring them a large ale.

“That,” he said sagely, as he turned back to his companions, “is something history will not record!” He looked at Frederick’s broad, rather solemn face and raised his eyebrows. “But I am of the opinion that a single wild oat sown by our young friend will do him no great harm.”

The boy came up, bearing three huge, foaming mugs, having interpreted the order as he thought right. He set the mugs down with a thump, scattering the suds in every direction, and departed before anyone could say “Jack Robinson!”

“Well”—Thompson shook with laughter—“it seems our young friend here is not going to sow his oats alone. So be it!” He raised his mug high in the air and led off.

“Gentlemen! To the Queen! God bless her!”

As they neared London they talked plans.

“First,” said Thompson, “our distinguished visitor must have some clothes.”

Frederick wondered whom he was talking about, but Buffum, his eyes on Frederick, nodded his head thoughtfully.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he murmured. Then they both looked at Frederick and he shifted uneasily. Answering the unspoken question in his face, Thompson explained.

“You are becoming something of a celebrity. You will be going to dinners and teas. You must have proper apparel.”

“But—” Frederick began, flushed and downcast.

“You are now in the employ of the World Anti-Slavery Society,” Thompson went on, “our chief and most effective spokesman. In the interest of the entire cause you must make what the French call the good impression.”

Now Frederick’s apprehensions began to mount. How could he go into English “society”?

“Clothes do not make a gentleman,” he said, shaking his head violently. “I am a workingman. I will speak—yes—anywhere. I will tell the meaning of slavery, I will do anything, but I have no manners or ways for society.”

Thompson regarded the young man a long moment before answering.

“You are right, Frederick,” he said quietly. “Clothes do not make a gentleman. They only serve to render him less conspicuous.” He placed the tips of his fingers together and continued. “It will interest you to know that our word aristocracy comes from the Greek aristokratia, which is to say ‘the best workman.’” He leaned forward. “Someday we’ll recognize that. Meanwhile, Frederick Douglass, make no mistake about it—you belong!”

Came the evening when the swaying stagecoach drew up before the Golden Cross Hostelry on Charing Cross. The thick fog gave Frederick a feeling of unreality. He could see nothing but dim lights and looming shadows, but he was surrounded by a kind of muffled, intermittent rumbling. He stood in the drizzling rain listening.

“Come,” said Thompson, taking him by the arm. “Let’s get inside. You’ll be drenched before you realize it.”

Thompson lived in Dulwich, a suburb of London, but he was going to stay in town a few days until his friends had found suitable lodging and until, as he put it, chuckling, Frederick was “launched.”

The next few days were busy ones. They found lodgings in Tavistock Square, not far from the Tavistock House, where Dickens lived for ten years. London would be Douglass’ headquarters. From there he would make trips throughout England and in the spring would go to Wales. He was waited upon by the British India Committee, the Society of Friends, the African Colonial Society and by a group working for the repeal of the Corn Laws.

“It is the poor man’s fight,” they said.

The newcomer listened carefully, read newspapers morning and night and asked questions. He spoke at the Freemason’s Hall, taking as his theme the right of every workman to have bread. Douglass spoke well, for he had only to step outside his rooms in London to see the pinch of poverty. Then, just as Thompson had warned him, the writers William and Mary Howitt sent a charming note asking him for a week-end in the country. Fortunately Frederick had managed to see a good tailor.

“Go, Frederick,” his co-workers urged him. “They are Quakers. They have influence. You will come back rested.”

Fall was closing around London like a shroud, but Clapham was delightful. The Howitts greeted him warmly.

“We have read your Narrative, so you are an old friend.”

This was Frederick’s initiation into English country life. He walked out into the beautiful garden where, rounding a smilax, he almost stepped on Hans Christian Andersen!

It was Mary and William Howitt who had translated the Danish writer’s works into English. Andersen was very fond of them, and their home in Clapham was his haven. When they had guests he could always putter about in the garden. He knew that the famous ex-slave was coming that afternoon, but he would meet him after the tea party was over. Now, on his knees, trowel in hand, a smudge of mud on his nose, he stared with amazement. So much of darkness and beard—and what a head!

A peal of musical laughter behind him caused Frederick to turn. The funny little man scrambled to his feet and Mary Howitt, who had followed Frederick into the garden, was saying, “It is our dear Hans.”

Andersen knew very little English and Frederick had never before heard Danish, so they could do very little more than grin at each other. But later, before an open fire, Frederick read Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy stories, while Andersen, sipping his brandy, watched the expressive dark face. Their eyes met, and they were friends.

The next day Douglass asked the Howitts about their translations and what it meant to study languages other than one’s native tongue. Then the writer of fairy tales began to talk. He spoke in Danish, and Mary interpreted. He talked of languages, of their background and history. He told Frederick about words and their symbolic magic. And another corner of Frederick’s brain unfolded itself.

There was too much rain the summer and fall of 1845. Robert Peel, Prime Minister of Great Britain, stood at his window and watched it beat down on the slippery stones of the court. But he was not seeing the paving stones, he was not seeing the dripping walls. He was seeing unripened spikes of wheat rotting in the mud. He knew he had a crisis on his hands and he was not ready.

Robert Peel was a Tory. His background and education, his administration as Secretary of Ireland, his avowed policies, all had been those of the Conservative party. In appearance he was cold and proud. But he was an honest man, and he grew in wisdom.

Until the 1840’s, despite the vast industrial changes of the previous half-century, some balance had been maintained between industry and agriculture. British farmers had been able to feed most of the workers in the new towns and factories and mines. But population had increased, villages had dwindled, and whole networks of manufacturing towns had sprung into being. When Peel took office the country was already in serious straits. The problem was economic, he knew. He listened to the speeches of John Bright, a Quaker cotton-spinner from Lancashire and he received Richard Cobden.

“There are thousands of houses in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger. Come with me and you will never rest until you give them bread,” Cobden said.

Cobden backed his facts with logic. High tariffs kept out foodstuffs and essential commodities; landowners were keeping up the price of wheat while workingmen starved. Britain was on the verge of social revolution.

So Robert Peel, the Conservative, began to reduce customs. In 1842 he set a gradually lowering scale for corn duties. He sought to shift the burden of taxation from the poor to the wealthier classes and to cheapen the necessities of life. He saw that reforms were necessary, but he wished to avoid hasty changes. And in this caution lay his undoing.

His own party fell away. The Whigs distrusted the haughty, gray-eyed Minister. What did he, a Tory, mean by “seeming” to favor lower tariffs? The Irish still hated him because he stood firm against Repeal of the Union. The Catholics opposed him because he had backed nonsectarian schools.

But the enemy who kept closest watch was Disraeli. Not for a day did this ambitious member of Parliament forget that he had been left out of the new Prime Minister’s cabinet. He took this omission as a personal slight. Hatred for Peel distorted his every move. Cleverly, coolly, calculatingly, Disraeli widened the cleavage in party ranks; he drew young aristocrats about him; he flattered them with his wit and charm, and whispered that Robert Peel, their Robert Peel, was betraying them. He was pushing the country into Free Trade. He would open the gates to a deluge that would destroy England.

In the spring of 1845 Richard Cobden had risen in the House of Commons and called for Repeal of the Corn Laws. He said that Free Trade ought to be applied to agriculture and pointed to what it had done for British manufacturing. He decried the old fallacy that wages vary with the price of bread. He thundered that there was no truth in the contention that wages were high when bread is dear and low when bread is cheap. The Conservatives drew together, their faces hardening.

But Robert Peel no longer backed the Corn Laws. He wanted the drawbridges around Britain lowered forever. But he wondered how could he, leader of the Conservative party, carry through such a revolutionary change? He decided to let the present Parliament run its course. In the next election he would appeal to the country: he would carry the fight to the people. Then they could send him back, free of all party ties and obligations, as a Free Trader.

But the weather is no respecter of parliamentary elections! The wheat crop failed in England, like the potato crop in Ireland. People were starving, and the Corn Laws locked out food. Peel called a meeting of his Cabinet, and the storm broke.

The Cobden forces were ready. They held great mass meetings, with Cobden and Bright enlisting every available speaker. Frederick Douglass addressed crowds in Piccadilly, on the docks, and in Hyde Park. He and John Bright went down into Lancashire. They talked in Birmingham and other towns and cities about the worker’s right to have bread.

Then one morning a week before Christmas, Bright burst into the rooms on Tavistock Square, waving a newspaper.

“We’ve won! We’ve won!” he shouted. “The Cabinet’s intact, the Prime Minister is back, the Repeal stands! We’ve won!”

James Buffum rolled out of bed and reached for the paper. Frederick, partly dressed, emerged from behind a curtained cubicle and clapped the little man on the shoulder. John Bright had watched his wife die of starvation while he sat at his spindles. But he could not fill enough spools. He could not spin fast enough. She had died. So John Bright had left his loom and joined Richard Cobden. Now there would be more food in England. He stood clinging to the dark man’s hand—this new friend who knew so much about suffering.

“I’m going home,” he said in his rich rolling Lancashire brogue. “I’m going down to tell the folks myself. Come with me. We’ll be glad together!”

So it happened that Frederick spent the Christmas in a spinner’s shack in Lancaster. On Christmas Eve he wrote Anna.

The baby’s crying in the next room and here in the corner sleeps a little lad just about Freddie’s age. He’s curled in a tight knot and his hair is falling over his face. It’s not as round as I remember Freddie’s, nor are his legs as plump. This house isn’t as big as our little place in New Bedford and there are four children! But tonight they’re all happy. The weavers carried on as if John and I had given them the world! My hand shakes as I think of it. We brought a goose and a few toys for the children. You should have seen their eyes! Tomorrow we will feast! How I wish you could share this with me. They’re letting me borrow their little ones. But my heart cannot but be anxious for my own. Are you well and are the children well? I enclose some money. Enough, I hope, for your most urgent needs. But my real Christmas present to you is news that will make you very happy. Friends here are raising money to purchase my freedom—seven hundred and fifty dollars! The Misses Richardson, sweet sisters in Newcastle, have written to Mr. Walter Forward of Philadelphia, who will seek out Captain Auld and ask what he will accept for my person. He will tell my former master that I am now in England and that there is no possibility of my being taken. There can be little doubt that under the circumstances the Captain will name his price—and be very glad to get it! So, dear Anna, soon this separation will be at an end. I will return to you and to my dear children, in fact and before the law, a free man.

The writer sat for a few moments regarding that last line. Anna’s eyes would shine when she read it. For an instant her face was there. Then the child stirred in his sleep. Frederick rose and straightened the little limbs on the cot. His hands were very tender.

“Frederick! I believe you’ve grown,” Garrison beamed. He had just arrived in London from America.

John Bright nodded. “He is a big man,” he said.

Garrison whisked Frederick away to Sir John Bowring’s castle where they had been asked for over New Year’s.

Sir John had represented England as Minister to China. He was a brilliant talker and drew about himself a circle of literary friends. On New Year’s Eve, Douglass stood at a table covered with fine linen and old silver. He held in his hand a crystal glass and drank another toast: “The Queen! God bless her!”

They were all back in London for the opening of Parliament. Robert Peel on the side of the people! A great day for England!

As if to honor the auspicious occasion the fog blew away during the night, and January 22, 1846, dawned clear and bright like a spring day. People poured into the streets and lined Pall Mall. The Queen was coming! They crowded into Cannon Row and Parliament Street and surrounded Westminster Hall and Parliament. The Queen was coming!

Cobden had secured seats for them in the gallery, but Garrison and Douglass lingered in the crowd, craning their necks. The bobbies were forcing them back to keep the way clear when a modest, closed carriage drew up and a tall figure in a high silk hat stepped out.

“It’s Peel! It’s Robert Peel!” shouted Garrison and that started the crowd cheering. They had not recognized the Prime Minister. But the tall, pale man looked neither to the right or left. He walked straight ahead, unsmiling, and disappeared. The people were disappointed. They wanted to know him. They wanted to be friends.

The cheers had not gone unheeded. In the great, open carriage with prancing horses that now turned into the square, Disraeli tightened his lips. The carriage stopped with a clatter, the footman sprang down and threw open the door. Disraeli stepped out, his head high, his silken cape enveloping him with majesty. The crowd pressed forward.

“Who is it?”

“Who is that man?”

“Disraeli!” someone answered.

“The Jew!” another voice added.

They drew back then, and let him pass in silence. Frederick Douglass followed him with his eyes. There was something painful in the defiant swagger. As he disappeared Frederick caught his breath sharply. He felt a hurt in his chest.

“I’m sorry for that man,” he said, in a heavy tone.

“Why?” asked Garrison coolly. “He would spit upon you!”

Frederick shook his head. “Let’s go in.” Suddenly, he was very tired.

Inside he forgot his singular depression when, from the throne of England, Queen Victoria declared the session of Parliament open. She was only thirty-one years old at that time, not beautiful perhaps, but a radiantly happy woman. Prince Albert was at her side. She was adored by her people. None of their hardships were laid at her door. Now she felt that a crisis had been successfully averted. Her voice rang with confidence and pride as she addressed her trusted Prime Minister.

And all the Lords and Ministers of the realm bowed low. The royal couple took their leave, and the business of running an empire was resumed. Every eye turned toward Robert Peel.

The Prime Minister rose, very pale, and began to state his case. He had the facts. Step by step, he unfolded his plan for combating the economic stalemate: cheap raw materials for the manufacturer, no protection against fair foreign competition, cheaper seed for the farmer, the open door for foreign meat and corn; for all, cheaper living.

No longer was his face cold and remote. The fires of deep conviction glowed in his eyes, and there was passion in his final declaration of independence.

“I will not, sirs,” he concluded, “undertake to direct the course of the vessel by observations which have been taken in 1842.” His words rang. “I do not wish to be Minister of England, but while I have the high honor of holding that office, I am determined to hold it by no servile tenure. I will only hold that office upon the condition of being unshackled by any other obligation than those of consulting the public interests, and of providing for the public safety.”

He bowed and took his seat. Douglass wet his dry lips. What did the heavy silence mean? He wanted to blister his hands with applause. Garrison laid his hand on the younger man’s arm.

There was a slight stir of movement, and Sir John Russell was on his feet. He commended the Prime Minister’s speech and quietly backed it up with the authentic statement of Whig disasters. Some of the tenseness relaxed. There was polite applause when Sir John ended and a bit of parliamentary phrasing by the clerk. Men moved restlessly, wondering what to do next.

Then, like an actor carefully choosing his entrance Disraeli rose. Slowly his eyes swept the chamber. There was a sneering smile on his lips. It was as if he scorned their cowardly silence. Disraeli knew his time had come.

He stepped forth as defender of everything sacred! He talked of all the fine traditions of Great Britain. Englishmen, he said, must be protected without and within, from those who would undermine her power. The Prime Minister had given a “glorious example of egotistical rhetoric,” and his policy was a “gross betrayal of the principles which had put him in power and of the party which kept him there.”

The brilliance of his style held them spellbound. His defense of England thrilled them and his attack on Peel justified their selfishness. Disraeli took his seat to thunderous applause.

Douglass was shaking as though ill.

“What does it mean?” he asked, when they had got away.

“It means,” said Richard Cobden, grimly, “that we’ll have to fight every inch of the way all over again. We have won nothing. Except that now Disraeli will stop at nothing to ruin Peel.”

“But how can Disraeli oppose the cause of poor people? I thought he knew of oppression and suffering from his own experience.” Douglass’ distress was very real. John Bright tried to explain.

“Suffering and oppression often only embitter men, Frederick, embitter and harden them. They close in upon themselves. They are so determined to be safe that they are ruthless and cruel. Undoubtedly Disraeli has suffered, but he has suffered selfishly—he has refused to see the sufferings of other people. He will sacrifice anything for power.”

Frederick Douglass was learning what it takes to make men free. In the spring he went up into Wales. He traveled, as he said in a letter which was published in the Liberator, “from the Hill of Howth to the Giant’s Causeway, and from the Giant’s Causeway to Cape Clear.” On May 12 he made a speech at Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, which was published throughout England. William Gladstone addressed a note to him, inviting him to call.

Douglass heard that Daniel O’Connell was in London, that the Irish and Catholics were joined in the coalition against Peel. Yet the Prime Minister carried his Corn Bill through the House of Commons with comparative ease. It began to look as if, in spite of Lord Bentinck and Disraeli, it would get through the House of Lords. Then they attacked Peel’s character.

Returning to London in May, Douglass immediately sought out O’Connell. The old man greeted him warmly, but he was haggard and shaken. Also, he was on the defensive. They could not avoid the subject which was uppermost in both their minds.

“He’s a lifelong enemy of Ireland, lad.” O’Connell studied Frederick’s troubled face anxiously.

“But Richard Cobden proves that Peel will listen to reason. Cobden has won him so far along the way. His enemies are using the Irish question now to destroy him.”

“He would tie Ireland to England forever!” The old man rose defiantly, shaking his white hair.

On June 25 the Corn Bill passed in the House of Lords, but the same day the Commons repudiated the Minister’s Life Preservation bill for Ireland by a majority of seventy-three. Once more his enemies could say that Peel had betrayed his principles and fooled his followers. Three days later Peel tendered his resignation to the Queen.

That evening Douglass, accompanied by O’Connell, made his way to the Parliament.

“He will speak tonight—for the last time,” John Bright had told them.

The members sat in their seats, strangely subdued. The contest between Peel and Disraeli was over. True, the Corn Laws were repealed—the gates were down. But Disraeli had forced Robert Peel out. He was finished.

Yet the grimness which had marked his pale face in the past months was gone, and in his final words there was a sense of peace that seemed to reach beyond that time and place.

“When Ministers appear to change their course, and lay themselves open to the charge of inconsistency, it were better perhaps for this country and for the general character of public men that they be punished by expulsion from office.” He did not blame them, then. There was no word of bitterness. Moreover, the credit for his reforms, he said, should not go to him. “The name which ought to be chiefly associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden,” one who has achieved his disinterested purpose by “appeals to our reason.”

There was a slight rustle throughout the chamber. It was as if the very shadows were listening.

“In relinquishing power, I shall leave a name censured by many who deeply regret the severance of party ties, by others, who, from no selfish interest adhere to the principles of Protection, considering its maintenance essential to the welfare and interests of the country; I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist, who clamors for Protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit. But it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of goodwill in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labor, and to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Perhaps they too will call my name when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is not leavened by a sense of injustice.”

It was all over in a few minutes. Frederick turned at a sound beside him. O’Connell had covered his face with his two hands. Frederick slipped his arm through his, pressing against him. The grand old man of Ireland was weeping.

It was the Reverend Samuel Hanson Cox who now decided that London had had just about enough of Frederick Douglass!

Sixty or seventy American divines had arrived in London that summer for the double purpose of attending the World Evangelical Alliance and the World Temperance Convention. It was the avowed purpose of a group of these ministers, under the leadership of the Reverend Cox, to procure a blanket endorsement for the Christian character of slaveholders. The matter was becoming a little ticklish in certain quarters, and these churchmen were determined to establish the Biblical and divine status of the “sons of Ham” whom—they agreed—God had designated “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

What was their dismay, therefore, to find one of the slaves running around at large in England, speaking from platforms, and being invited to the homes of respectable, but utterly misguided, Englishmen and Englishwomen—God save us!

The divines set about enlightening the English people. Before they realized it, the question of slavery became a burning issue in the Evangelical Alliance. And things did not go well. By far the larger crowds were attracted to the Temperance Convention, which was being held in huge Covent Garden. The Abolitionists planned carefully. One afternoon when the Garden was packed, Frederick Douglass was called from the audience to “address a few words” to the Convention. The slavers’ advocates were thunderstruck! They could not believe that such treachery existed within their own ranks. As, amid clamorous applause, Douglass made his way to the platform, Reverend Cox leaped to his feet and shouted his protests. But he was yelled down.

“Let him speak!”

“Hear him!”

“Douglass! Frederick Douglass!”

They shouted until the livid little divine sank helpless into his seat.

Frederick Douglass, “the young lion,” had come into his full strength. He stood facing the audience which filled every corner of Covent Garden, and felt power coursing all along his veins. He resolved that no man or woman within the sound of his voice that afternoon should ever be able to say “I did not know!”

According to the account written by the Reverend Cox that appeared in his denominational paper, the New York Evangelist, Douglass’ speech was “a perversion, an abuse, and an iniquity against the law of reciprocal righteousness—inspired, I believe, from beneath, and not from above. This Douglass,” said Reverend Cox, “denounced American temperance societies and churches as a community of enemies of his people. He talked to the American delegates as if he had been our schoolmaster and we his docile and devoted pupils.”

And Covent Garden rocked as it seldom had in all its history.

“We all wanted to reply,” the account concluded, “but it was too late. The whole theater seemed taken with the spirit of the Ephesian uproar; they were boisterous in the extreme, and poor Mr. Kirk could hardly obtain a moment to say a few well-chosen words.”

The applause was like thunder. When Douglass bowed and tried to leave the platform, people rushed forward to seize his hand. They blocked his path. Men and women wept. They shouted until they were hoarse. Nobody heard or heeded “poor Mr. Kirk.” Douglass left the theater at the head of a procession of Londoners, who continued to cheer him as they came out on the street. Curious passersby swelled the ranks. They followed him down Bow Street to Russell and past the Drury Lane Theater. But just beyond the theater Frederick stopped. He faced the crowd and at a motion from him they closed in around him.

“My friends,” he told them, “never in my life have people been so good to me. But I have spoken not to arouse you to cheers, but to move you to action. I have told you of slavery, of oppression, of wrongdoing which is going on in this world. I tell you now that this is true not only of black slaves in America, but of white slaves here in Europe. My friends, these are not times for cheering. Go to your homes, to your shops and to your offices! Pass my words along and find the job that you can do to bring about the freedom of all peoples. Go now, quickly!”

He stood facing them until they had dispersed, looking back over their shoulders, talking excitedly.

Then, with a sigh of deep satisfaction, Frederick Douglass went walking on down Russell Street. He turned into Drury Lane and half an hour later was rolling along Fulham Road.

Tavistock Square no longer claimed him as a lodger. When James Buffum returned to America and Douglass set out on his northern tour the attic rooms were given up. Upon his return to London he had been invited to make his home with friends in Chelsea where, in the rare periods between strenuous rounds, he could enjoy a haven from the noise and dirt of the city. He remembered that summer with pleasure—no fog, a mild sun, long walks over the Heath, across Albert Bridge and down by the river. Hours of undisturbed reading in a little arbor behind the cottage continually opened new vistas and broadened his understanding. More than the scars on his back, he deplored his lack of education. Now he seized every opportunity to learn.

Back in America the Mexican War was arousing people. The possibility of more slave states being added to the Union speeded up the Abolitionists. Word was rushed to the Anti-Slavery Society in England to enlist the people of Great Britain, to let the workers of Britain know how slavery in America threatened all their hard-bought gains, and perhaps get them to boycott slave-grown cotton.

Frederick Douglass rose to the need. Thousands packed into the Free Trade Hall in London to hear him; workers in Manchester and Birmingham learned how cotton was produced; merchants and dock hands rubbed shoulders at Concert Hall in Liverpool.

Frederick Douglass spoke to men and women in every walk of life. William Gladstone listened and learned from the black American. In Edinburgh he was entertained by George Combe, and the eminent philosopher listened as well as talked. Together they discussed the Corn Laws, reduction of hours of labor, and what black slavery was doing to the world. During this time Douglass was urged to remain in Europe. He was offered important posts in Ireland and in Scotland.

“Send for your family, Douglass!” they said. “There is work here for you to do.”

But he shook his head. In spite of all his activities, he was growing restless that winter. True, he was presenting the case of the slave to Britain. In a few months he had become famous; but within himself he felt that all this had only been a period of preparation. He was like an athlete who, trained to the pink of condition, was only going through preliminary skirmishes. For Frederick Douglass knew his real work lay ahead—in America.

They were still waiting for the final settlement with Captain Auld. He had asked one hundred and fifty pounds sterling for his slave. The money had been promptly sent.

Then, one morning, a letter reached Douglass in Darlington. It was from George Thompson.

“Your papers have arrived. Come down with us for two or three days before you go to Wales. There is so much to talk about and I know this means an early farewell.”

This was the beginning of his last days in Britain. He was invited to dinners, receptions, teas, scheduled for “farewell” speeches.

“What will you do?” they asked.

“I should like to establish a paper, a paper in which I can speak directly to my people, a paper that will prove whether or not a Negro has mind, the tongue of reason, and can present facts and arguments clearly.”

They placed twenty-five hundred dollars in his hands—as a start toward this enterprise.

“You will come back!” They made it both a question and an affirmation.

“When we have won our fight!” He nodded.

A crowd accompanied him to the boat at Liverpool and stood waving him goodbye. John Bright’s eyes were wet.

“We’ll miss you, Douglass!” said the little spinner from Lancaster.

The shores and wharves and people blurred as he stood on the deck. They had been so good. He reached in his pocket and once more took out the precious papers that declared him free.

The transaction had to be in two parts. Thomas Auld first sold him to his brother Hugh, and then the Philadelphia lawyer had secured the final manumission paper through the Baltimore authorities. It was this second and final sheet that Frederick unfolded—the paper for which the people of England had paid seven hundred and fifty dollars.

To all whom it may concern: Be it known, that I, Hugh Auld, of the city of Baltimore, in Baltimore county, in the state of Maryland, for divers good causes and considerations, me thereunto moving, have released from slavery, liberated, manumitted, and set free, and by these presents do hereby release from slavery, liberate, manumit, and set free, My Negro Man, named Frederick Bailey, otherwise called Douglass, being of the age of twenty-eight years, or thereabouts, and able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood and maintenance; and him the said negro man, named Frederick Bailey, otherwise called Frederick Douglass, I do declare to be henceforth free, manumitted, and discharged from all manner of servitude to me, my executors, and administrators forever.

In witness whereof, I, the said Hugh Auld, have hereunto set my hand and seal, the fifth of December, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-six.

Signed Hugh Auld.

Sealed and delivered in presence of T. Hanson Belt.[8]

He looked out across the waters. He had been away nearly two years. It was spring, and he was going home.

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, you are smart 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 eyes and 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 the National 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. The National Era took 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 Papers were 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. The Wilmot Proviso must 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 the Liberator, but the Standard and the Pennsylvania Freeman had 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 and extremely 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 the Liberator, 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 called it 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 as a 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 is wrong.” 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 the National Era office 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 situation desirable. 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 cautiously approached 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.’