Part II

THE LIGHTNING

—Harry Granick

Chapter Six

Is this a thing, or can it be a man?

Freedom is a hard-bought thing! Frederick expected to remain in New York. He was free, he had money in his pocket, he would find work. He had no plans beyond reaching this big city, where there were Abolitionists who printed papers calling for the freeing of the slaves, and many free Negroes. Here he could work in safety.

“Voila!” murmured a little French seamstress, peeping through the slits of her blinds as the jaunty figure came in view. She had seen such stepping before, such lifting of the head, such a singing with the shoulders. She remembered free men marching into the Place de la Concorde. She smiled and hummed a few bars of the “Marseillaise.” “Allons, enfants.... Marchons....” She threw the shutters open. What a beautiful morning!

But Frederick didn’t find work that first day. By nightfall he was feeling uneasy. Job-hunting had brought him up against an unexpected wall. The colored people he saw seemed to be avoiding him. He walked straight up to the next Negro he saw and spoke to him. From his bespattered appearance, and his pail and brush, Frederick judged the man to be a house painter.

“Good evening, mister! Could you tell me where I might find a place to stay? I just got here and—”

The man’s eyes in his sunken, dark face were rolling in every direction at once.

“Lemme be. I donno nothin’.” He was moving on, but Frederick blocked his path.

“Look, mister, I only want—”

The man’s tones were belligerent, though his voice was low.

“Donno nothin’ ’bout you, sailor. An’ I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’!”

Frederick watched him disappear around a corner. As night came on he followed a couple of sailors into a smoke-filled eating place. There he ate well, served by a swarthy, good-natured fellow, whose father that day had picked olives on a hillside overlooking Rome. Garlic, coarse laughter, warmth and the tangy smell of seamen mingled in the dimly lighted room. Some of the men lifted their foamy mugs in greeting as Frederick sank into a corner. He waved back. But he hurried through his meal, not daring to linger long for fear of betraying himself.

He walked aimlessly in the gathering gloom. He thought a lamplighter, lifting his wick to the corner lamp, eyed him suspiciously. Frederick turned down a dimmer thoroughfare. He was tired. The suitcase was heavy.

Across the street a bearded seaman took his stubby pipe from between his teeth and looked after the solitary figure. Young sailors do not carry heavy suitcases, bumping against their legs! The man grunted, crossed the street and came up behind the young man. He spoke softly.

“Hi, sailor!”

With a start Frederick turned. Now it was his turn to hesitate. In the fading light he could not distinguish whether the face behind the thick beard was white or colored. So he only answered, “Hi, yo’self!”

The stranger fell in beside him. “When’d you get in?”

“Yesterday. Up from the West Indies.” The answer came easily. But, the seaman thought to himself, it’s the wrong answer. Out of the corner of his eye he studied the young man and threw out another question.

“What’s your ship?”

Frederick was well prepared for this question.

“The Falcon.”

They walked along in silence, the bearded seaman puffing his pipe. Frederick waited.

“Might you be headin’ toward the—north star?”

Frederick’s heart leaped. The words could have only one meaning. Yet was this man friend or foe? Dared he trust him?

“I hear tell the north star leads us straight,” he said.

The stranger took Frederick’s arm.

“It has led you well. Come!”

In the little house on Centre Street, Frederick met Tom Stuart’s mother, a bright-eyed little woman who greeted him warmly. But hardly could he blurt out an outline of his story before he had fallen asleep—for the first time in nearly forty-eight hours.

Then Tom Stuart went quickly to the corner of Lispenard and Church Streets and knocked on the door of David Ruggles, secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee.

“You are right,” said the secretary, when he heard what the seaman had to say. “He is not safe here.”

“New York’s full of Southerners. They’re beginning to come back from the watering-places now,” Stuart added.

“Looking for work down on the waterfront, he’ll be caught.”

The scar on Ruggles’ black face twisted into a smile.

“God’s providence protected him today. Now we must do our part and get him away.” He covered his sightless eyes with his hand and sat thinking.

David Ruggles had been born free. He was schooled, alert, and he had courage. But once he had dared too much for his own good. In Ohio an irate slave-chaser’s whip had cut across his face. Its thongs had torn at his eyes, and he would never see again. But the slave whom he was helping to escape had got away. And David Ruggles had said, “My eyes for a man’s life? We were the winners!”

The seaman cleared his throat.

“There is a girl—a freewoman. She is to meet him here.”

The secretary frowned.

“Good heavens! Haven’t we enough to do without managing love trysts?”

Tom Stuart grinned in the darkness as he walked home. He knew the heart of this black man. He would show no sign of annoyance the next morning when he welcomed the young fugitive.

As for Frederick, he wanted to kiss the hands of this blind man when they clasped his own so firmly. An agent of the Underground Railroad! Underground Railroad!—a whisper up and down the Eastern Shore. Now Frederick was to hear them spoken aloud.

The increasing numbers of slaves who were escaping, in spite of the rigid cordons thrown round the slave states and the terrifying penalties for failure in the attempt, gave rise to wild rumors. The bayous of Louisiana, the backlands of Alabama and Mississippi, the swamps of Florida and the mountains of the Atlantic states, seemed to suck them in like a man-eating plant. People said there was a colony of blacks deep in the Florida scrub, where they lived a life of ease far inside the bayous that no white man could penetrate. Another group, so they said, raised crops on the broad flat plains that ran toward the border of Georgia; and two thousand more hid inside the dismal swamps of Virginia, coming out to trade with Negroes and whites.

There was no denying the fact that Negroes showed up across the border of Canada with surprising regularity—slaves from the rice fields of Georgia and South Carolina, the tobacco lands of Virginia and Maryland, and the cotton fields of Alabama.

“One thousand slaves a year disappear!” John Calhoun thundered in Congress. “They go as if swallowed up by an underground passage.”

The idea caught on. Young America expanding—passages opening to new territory. To a people still using the stagecoach, trains symbolized daring and adventure. An underground railway to freedom! Men cocked their hats rakishly, cut off their mustaches and tightened the holsters at their belts; small shopkeepers put heavy padlocks on their doors and slipped out to meetings; tall, lean men wearing linen and nankeen pantaloons—sons of planters among them—emptied their mint juleps and climbed into the saddle; the devout Quaker put a marker in his Bible and dug a new deep cellar underneath his house, partitioned off rooms with false walls and laid in fresh supplies of thick wide cloaks and long black veils.

What more natural than that slaves down in their quarters sang, Dat train comin’, hit’s comin’ round da bend! and Git on board, lil’ chillun, git on board!

The “train” might be a skiff, securely fastened under overhanging reeds. Or it might be a peddler’s cart, an open wagon filled with hay, or the family carryall, driven by a quiet man in a wide-brimmed Quaker hat, who spoke softly to the ladies sitting beside him, neatly dressed in gray, with Quaker bonnets on their heads and veils over their faces. The “train” might simply be a covered-up path through the woods. But the slave voices rose, exulting:

“Conductors” planned the connections. And David Ruggles in the house on Church Street routed the train in and out of New York City. He collected and paid out money, received reports and checked routes. David Ruggles was a busy man.

He heard Frederick through quietly. Frederick was worried. If he could not stay in New York, where would he go?

“It’s a big country,” Mr. Ruggles assured the young man. “A workman is worthy of his hire. We shall look about.” Then he asked abruptly, “Have you written the young lady?”

Frederick felt his face burn. Being among people with whom he could share his precious secret was a new experience.

“Y-es, sir,” he stammered. “I—I posted a letter this morning—On my way here.”

He looked toward Tom Stuart, whose eyes were laughing at him. The seaman put in a word.

“Got up and wrote the letter before dawn!”

“Since she is a freewoman,” Mr. Ruggles smiled, “she can no doubt join you immediately.”

“Yes—Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Then you must remain under cover until she comes.”

“He’s safe at my house,” Tom Stuart said quickly, and the secretary nodded.

“That is good,” he said. “And now for the record.”

At this word a slender boy of nine or ten years, who had been sitting quietly at the table, opened a large ledger and picked up a quill pen. He said nothing but turned his intelligent, bright eyes toward Frederick. Mr. Ruggles laid his hand on the boy’s arm.

“My son here is my eyes,” he said.

Frederick regarded the little fellow with amazement. He was going to write with that pen!

“You are called Frederick?” the father asked.

Frederick gave a start. “I have sometimes heard of another name—Bailey,” he said. “I—I really don’t know. They call me Frederick.”

“For the present, we shan’t worry about the surname. It is safer now to lose whatever identity you might have. Write Frederick Johnson, son!” The boy wrote easily. “There are so many Johnsons. But now that you are a free man, you must have a name—a family name.”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

The days passed swiftly. Anna arrived—warmly welcomed by Tom Stuart’s mother and whisked quickly out of sight until the moment when she stood beside him. Anna, her eyes pools of happiness, wearing a lovely plum-colored silk dress! They were married by the Reverend J. W. C. Pennington, whose father, after having been freed by George Washington, had served him faithfully at Valley Forge. He refused the fee offered by the eager young bridegroom.

“It is my wedding gift to you, young man. God speed you!”

They were put aboard the steamer John W. Richmond, belonging to the line running between New York and Newport, Rhode Island.

“New Bedford is your place,” David Ruggles had said. “There are many Friends in New Bedford, and the shipyards are constantly fitting out ships for long whaling voyages. A good caulker will find work. Good luck, my boy!”

Since colored passengers were not allowed in the cabins, the bride and groom had to pass their first night on the deck. But what mattered whether they were cold or hot, wet or dry; whether they stood leaning over the rail, jammed against sticky kegs, or sat on the hard boards? They were free—they were young—they were on their way, to make a home, to build a life together.

Oh, how bright the stars shone that night! Anna saw Frederick’s lips move as he gazed at them. She leaned closer and he tightened his arm about her. “I must not forget!” he murmured.

The nights on the open deck—they had two of them—enfolded them and shut out all the world. The ache of all their lonely years dissolved before the new happiness in their hearts. Then, out of the gray mist and the darker shadows, emerged the gaunt shores of their new world. Anna gripped her husband’s arm and trembled. But he lifted her face to his and kissed her.

As the boat approached New Bedford, the crowded harbor, with its stained, weather-beaten ships and dirty warehouses, was a golden gate—let down from the clouds just for them. Frederick wanted to shout.

“Look! Look!” He was pointing at an imposing house that stood on a hill behind the town. “That’s the kind of house we’ll have. A fine, big house! I’ll make it with my own hands. I’m free, Anna, I’m free to build a house like that!”

Her eyes laughed with him.

So it was that they landed on the rocky shores of New England, where free men had set their feet before them. Leif, son of Eric the Red, touched this coast with his Norsemen. In 1497 and ’98 John Cabot, Venetian navigator, explored here and gave England her claim to the region. Cabot under the British flag, Verrazzano under the fleur de lis, and Gomez under the flag of Spain, all of them had come even before the Pilgrim Fathers.

It was from Rhode Island—from Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, all part of the rising winds of rebellion—that New Bedford got its start. Time and again this salty breeze had blown through the Massachusetts commonwealth. It rose and blew steadily during most of the eighteenth century, bringing gains in political freedom and education and religious tolerance. Impoverished farmers had followed Daniel Shays; and an early governor, James Sullivan, had been stirred to say, “Where the mass of people are ignorant, poor and miserable, there is no public opinion excepting what is the offspring of fear.” The winds had died down during the rise of Federalism, but now once more a little breeze fanned the cheeks of the mill girls in Lowell and the mechanics in Boston. It rustled the dead, dry leaves piled high in Cambridge and Concord. It was scattering the seeds of Abolitionism.

Boston had William Lloyd Garrison, whom neither jails, fires, threats, nor the elegant rhetoric of William Ellery Channing could stifle. He waved his paper, the Liberator, high in the air, whipping the breeze higher. He stood his ground and loosed a blast destined to shake the rafters of the nation.

“Urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard!”

Certain slave states had set a price on William Lloyd Garrison’s head. But in February, 1837, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society had convened in the hall of the House of Representatives in Boston, and after every space was filled nearly five thousand people were turned away. Nathan Johnson had been one of the delegates from New Bedford.

Nathan Johnson was proud of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. His people had lived in the midst of a group of Dutch dairy farmers comfortably spread out over the meadowlands near Sheffield. They had owned a tiny piece of land. Nathan had gone to school, learned a trade and, like many another Massachusetts farm boy, made a trip to sea. For a time he had lingered in Scotland where a Negro was a curiosity. There was something about the hills and valleys with their jutting rocks that drew him. Then he realized he was homesick. He returned to Massachusetts, married and plied his trade—he was a carpenter—near the sight and sound and smell of the sea. He had seen the face of slavery, but he believed the State of Massachusetts would educate the nation away from such evil practices.

David Ruggles had written Nathan Johnson about Frederick. The answer had come back: “Send him along!” And Johnson had hurried to the dock to meet the “poor critters.”

But the young man who stepped from the boat and took his hand with such a firm grip did not call forth pity. To the Yankee he had the look neither of a fugitive nor a slave.

Ma Johnson blocked all questions while she bustled about setting a good, hot meal before the newcomers.

“Dead beat, I know,” was her comment. “Now you just wash up and make yourselves right at home.” She poured water and handed them thick white towels, while little Lethia and Jane stared with wide eyes.

Everything floated in a dreamy mist. This house, this abundant table, this room were unbelievable. Frederick’s fingers itched to take down the books from their shelves, to pick up papers lying about. With an effort he brought his eyes back to the animated face of his host.

“There ain’t a thing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts to stop a colored man being governor of the state, if the folks sees fit to elect him!” Lethia nodded her small head gravely and smiled at Frederick.

Ma Johnson sighed gently. Nathan was off on his favorite topic—Massachusetts! But that was safe talk for these two nice young people. They could just eat in peace. She set a plate of savory clam chowder in front of Anna.

“No slaveholder’d dare try takin’ a slave out of New Bedford!” The glasses quivered as Johnson thumped the table. Frederick smiled.

“I’m glad to hear that—after what they told me about New York.”

“Humph!” The Yankee snorted. “New York ain’t in Massachusetts, young man. All sorts of people there. Can’t count on ’em!” Ma Johnson gently intervened.

“Reckon we have some troublemakers, too, even in New Bedford.”

“Ay, and I reckon we know how to take care of ’em!”

It was Indian summer in New England. The evenings were still long, with no suggestion of frost in the air. After supper they sat in the yard, and between long puffs on his pipe the host talked and gradually drew out the young man. Came the moment when he took his pipe from his mouth and sat forward on his chair, lips pressed together in a grim line.

“I cannot understand how such things be!” he said, shaking his head.

The women had gone inside. Lights shone in the cottage across the way, and on the other side of the white picket fence a girl laughed. Frederick stood up. Even in the dusk, Johnson was conscious of the broad shoulders and the long, lithe limbs. He was looking up at the trees.

“Almost—Almost I am afraid,” Frederick said.

“Afraid? Now? Your time to be afraid is gone. Now you are safe!”

“That’s it! I am safe. I’m afraid of so much happiness.”

“A mite o’ happiness won’t spoil you, my boy. There’s strength in you. And now I reckon your wife is waiting.” Nathan Johnson stood up.

Inside the house Frederick turned and clasped the hand of his host.

“How can I thank you?” he asked.

The older man smiled. “Fine words ain’t needed, son. The two of you are good for Ma and me. Now go ’long with you!”

And he sent him to Anna.

They were awakened by church bells. Then they heard the children getting off to church. Anna started up guiltily. Perhaps they were delaying Mrs. Johnson.

But over the house lay a sweet Sabbath calm; it ran all up and down the street—and over all New Bedford. The day passed in unhurried discussion of jobs and plans for the young folks. Now indeed Frederick must have a name.

“Some take the name of their old master.”

“I won’t.” Frederick spoke emphatically.

“Ay,” agreed Nathan. “No sense in tying a stone round your children’s necks. Give ’em a good name.” He grinned at Frederick and Anna. “When I look at you I think of somebody I read about—fellow by the name of Douglass.”

“You want to name him from a book, Pa?” His wife laughed.

“Why not? He’s already got a heap out of books. And this Scotchman, Douglass, was a fine man. The book says he had a ‘stalwart hand’.”

Then Nathan launched into a vivid description of Scotland as he had seen it. He came back to the name.

“Ay, Douglass is a bonny name.”

Anna spoke softly. “Frederick Douglass—It has a good, strong sound.”

“You like it, Anna?” Frederick’s eyes drew her to him.

And Anna smiled, nodding her head. So Douglass was the name he passed on to their children.

The next day he went down to the wharves and caught his first view of New England shipping.

“The sight of the broad brim and the plain, Quaker dress,” he recalled later, “which met me at every turn, greatly increased my sense of freedom and security. I am among the Quakers, thought I, and am safe. Lying at the wharves and riding in the stream, were full-rigged ships of finest model, ready to start on whaling voyages. Upon the right and the left, I was walled in by large granite-fronted warehouses, crowded with the good things of this world. On the wharves, I saw industry without bustle, labor without noise, and heavy toil without the whip. There was no loud singing, as in Southern ports where ships are loading or unloading—no loud cursing or swearing—but everything went on as smoothly as the works of a well-adjusted machine. How different was all this from the noisily fierce and clumsily absurd manner of labor-life in Baltimore and St. Michaels! One of the first incidents which illustrated the superior mental character of Northern labor over that of the South, was the manner of unloading a ship’s cargo of oil. In a Southern port, twenty or thirty hands would have been employed to do what five or six did here, with the aid of a single ox hitched to the end of a fall. Main strength, unassisted by skill, is slavery’s method of labor. An old ox worth eighty dollars was doing in New Bedford what would have required fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of human bone and muscle to have performed in a Southern port.... The maid servant, instead of spending at least a tenth part of her time in bringing and carrying water, as in Baltimore, had the pump at her elbow. Wood-houses, indoor pumps, sinks, drains, self-shutting gates, washing machines, pounding barrels, were all new things, and told me that I was among a thoughtful and sensible people. The carpenters struck where they aimed, and the caulkers wasted no blows in idle flourishes of the mallet.”[1]

He remembered little about the hardships of that first winter in the North, and only mentioned in passing that he was not permitted to use his skill as a caulker. Even here white labor shut the black worker out. The difference between the wage of a caulker and that of a common day-laborer was 50 per cent. But Frederick would not be stopped. He was free. So he sawed wood, dug cellars, shoveled coal, rolled oil casks on the wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels. It was the cold that he remembered.

Nothing had prepared them for the cold—the silent, thick, gray cold that shut down like a vise over the land. The tiny house on a back street, which had seemed the fulfillment of their dreams, now was a porous shed. It had none of the Northern conveniences, and each trip through the snowdrifts to the distant well with its frozen buckets was a breath-taking effort.

Each morning Anna got her husband’s breakfast by candlelight, and Frederick set out for work. Odd jobs were not as easy to find nor as steady as he would have liked. Many cotton mills in New England were still that winter, and many ships lay idle all along Cape Cod. Down in Washington a new President was proving himself weak and ineffectual. Banks were tottering and business houses were going down in ruins. This was the year Susan B. Anthony’s father lost his factory, his store, his home; and the eighteen-year-old Quaker girl, with Berkshire hills mirrored in her eyes, went out to teach school.

During the hardest part of the winter, Frederick’s wages were less than ten dollars for the month. He and Anna were pinched for food. But they were never discouraged: they were living in a new world. When he could, Frederick attended the meetings of colored people of New Bedford. These meetings went far beyond the gatherings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, and once more Frederick sat silent, listening and learning. He was constantly amazed at the resolutions presented and discussions which followed. All the speakers seemed to him possessed of marvelously superior talents.

Two events during his first months in New Bedford had a decisive effect upon his life.

“Among my first concerns on reaching New Bedford,” he said years later, “was to become united with the church, for I had never given up, in reality, my religious faith. I had become lukewarm and in a backslidden state, but I was still convinced that it was my duty to join the church.... I therefore resolved to join the Methodist church in New Bedford and to enjoy the spiritual advantage of public worship. The minister of the Elm Street Methodist Church was the Reverend Mr. Bonney; and although I was not allowed a seat in the body of the house, and was proscribed on account of my color, regarding this proscription simply as an accommodation of the unconverted congregation who had not yet been won to Christ and his brotherhood, I was willing thus to be proscribed, lest sinners should be driven away from the saving power of the Gospel. Once converted, I thought they would be sure to treat me as a man and a brother. Surely, thought I, these Christian people have none of this feeling against color....

“An opportunity was soon afforded me for ascertaining the exact position of Elm Street Church on the subject.... The occasion ... was the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.... At the close of his (Mr. Bonney’s) discourse, the congregation was dismissed and the church members remained to partake of the sacrament. I remained to see, as I thought, this holy sacrament celebrated in the spirit of its great Founder.

“There were only about a half dozen colored members attached to the Elm Street Church, at this time.... These descended from the gallery and took a seat against the wall most distant from the altar. Brother Bonney was very animated, and sung very sweetly, ‘Salvation, ’tis a joyful sound,’ and soon began to administer the sacrament. I was anxious to observe the bearing of the colored members, and the result was most humiliating. During the whole ceremony, they looked like sheep without a shepherd. The white members went forward to the altar by the bench full; and when it was evident that all the whites had been served with the bread and wine, Brother Bonney—pious Brother Bonney—after a long pause, as if inquiring whether all the white members had been served, and fully assuring himself on that important point, then raised his voice to an unnatural pitch, and looking to the corner where his black sheep seemed penned, beckoned with his hand, exclaiming, ‘Come forward, colored friends!—come forward! You, too, have an interest in the blood of Christ. God is no respecter of persons. Come forward, and take this holy sacrament to your comfort.’ The colored members—poor, slavish souls—went forward, as invited. I went out, and have never been in that church since, although I honestly went there with the view of joining that body.”[2]

The second event was happier. Not long after they moved into the little house a young man knocked on their door. Frederick had just come in from a particularly hard and unproductive day. Anna, turning from the stove where she was about to serve the evening meal, listened attentively. She wanted to say something. Then she heard Frederick’s tired voice, “Subscribe? the Liberator?”

“Yes,” the young man spoke briskly, “You know, William Lloyd Garrison’s Abolitionist paper. Surely we ought to support him!”

Anna moved to the doorway, but Frederick was shaking his head.

“I wish I could, but—We—I can’t—now.”

Anna slipped her hand in his. It was warm and a little moist. The young man understood. He cleared his throat.

“You’d like to read it?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” It was Anna who breathed the answer.

“Then—you can pay me later!”

“Oh, Freddie, that’s wonderful!” Anna said, but her eyes were beaming at the young man, who grinned and disappeared around the corner.

“She’s got brains!” he thought, with thorough appreciation.

Back at the stove, Anna was fairly singing.

“We hardly dared get the Liberator through the mail in Baltimore. Now to think we can sit in our own yard and read it!”

Every week Anna watched eagerly for the paper. When it came she waved the sheet triumphantly over her head as she walked back from the mailbox. Garrison was a hero. The authorities had run the New Englander out of Baltimore. But it had been from the sparks he drew that the East Baltimore Improvement Society had come into being. Anna sent their copies to Baltimore after they had finished with them.

“E-man-ci-pa-tion,” Frederick stumbled over the long word. “What does it mean, Anna?”

“Freedom, Frederick—or rather setting the people free. Listen to this!” The two dark heads bent near the oil lamp. “‘The Constitution of the United States knows nothing of white or black men; makes no distinction with regard to the color or condition of free inhabitants.’”

Frederick learned to love the paper and its editor. Now he and Nathan Johnson could really talk together. Nathan found an apt pupil, and Ma Johnson took Anna under her wing.

As the days grew cooler folks began talking about Thanksgiving.

“What is it?” Anna asked, wrinkling her brow.

Then Ma Johnson told her about the Pilgrims, of their first, hard winter, of how now each year after harvest time the people of New England set aside a special feasting day in their memory, a day when they gave thanks for all the good things of the earth.

“What a beautiful idea!” Anna turned it over in her mind. “A day of thanksgiving!”

“Those poor young ones never tasted turkey.” Ma conveyed this tragic information to Nathan. They decided to take a turkey to them.

“And I’ll show her how to cook it.” Ma was very fond of Anna.

They carried the fresh-killed bird, resplendent in all its feathers, to the little house. Frederick and Anna gazed upon it with awe.

“Hot water! Plenty of hot water!” Nathan rolled up his sleeves, and while they followed his movements like two children he plucked the fowl and handed it to Anna.

“We’ll have meat all winter!” Frederick laughed, his eyes on Anna’s shining face.

The little house was fairly bursting with happiness that fall. They were going to have a child—a child born on free soil.

“He’ll be a free man!” Frederick made the words a hymn of praise.

And Anna smiled.

In April William Lloyd Garrison came to New Bedford.

“You must go, Frederick,” Anna said, “since I can’t. Look at me!”

“Not without you.” The young husband shook his head, but Anna laughed and rushed supper. Frederick was one of the first to arrive at the hall.

He saw only one face that night, he heard only one voice—a face which he described as “heavenly,” a voice which he said “was never loud or noisy, but calm and serene as a summer sky, and as pure.”

Garrison was a young man then, with a singularly pleasing face and an earnest manner.

“The motto upon our banner has been, from the commencement of our moral warfare, ‘Our country is the world—our countrymen are all mankind.’ We trust it will be our only epitaph. Another motto we have chosen is ‘Universal Emancipation.’ Up to this time we have limited its application to those who are held in this country, by Southern taskmasters, as marketable commodities, goods and chattels, and implements of husbandry. Henceforth we shall use it in its widest latitude: the emancipation of our whole race from the dominion of man, from the thralldom of self, from the government of brute force, from the bondage of sin—and bringing them under the dominion of God, the control of an inward spirit, the government of the law of love, and into the obedience and liberty of Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Frederick’s heart beat fast. He was breathing hard. The words came faint; for inside he was shouting, “This man is Moses! Here is the Moses who will lead my people out of bondage!” He wanted to throw himself at this man’s feet. He wanted to help him.

Then they were singing—all the people in the hall were singing—and Frederick slipped out. He ran all the way home. He could not walk.

Summer came. There was more work on the wharves, when his son was born. Frederick laughed at obstacles. He’d show them! “Them” became the whole world—the white caulkers who refused to work with him, anybody who denied a place to his son because his skin was rosy brown! The young father went into an oil refinery, and then into a brass foundry where all through the next winter he worked two nights a week besides each day. Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like water, might seem more favorable to action than to thought, yet while he fanned the flames Frederick dreamed dreams, saw pictures in the flames. He must get ready! He must learn more. He nailed a newspaper to the post near his bellows and read while he pushed the heavy beam up and down.

In the summer of 1841 the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society held its grand convention in Nantucket. Frederick decided to take a day off from work and attend a session.

The little freedom breeze was blowing up a gale. Theologians, congressmen, governors and business men had hurled invectives, abuse and legislation at the Anti-Slavery Society, at the Liberator and at the paper’s editor, William Lloyd Garrison. But in London, Garrison had refused to sit on the floor of the World Convention of Anti-Slavery Societies because women delegates had been barred; and now the very man who had founded the movement in America was being execrated by many of those who professed to follow him.

But Frederick knew only that William Lloyd Garrison would be at Nantucket.

The boat rounded Brant Point Light and came suddenly on a gray town that rose out of the sea. Nantucket’s cobbled lanes, bright with summer frocks, fanned up from the little bay where old whalers rested at anchor, slender masts of long sloops pointed to the sky, deep-sea fishing boats sprawled on the dirty waters, and discolored warehouses crowded down on the quays.

Frederick had no trouble finding his way to the big hall, for the Abolitionist convention was the main event in the town. It spilled out into the streets where groups of men stood in knots, talking excitedly. Quakers, sitting inside their covered carriages, removed their hats and talked quietly; and women, trying not to be conspicuous, stood under shade trees, but they too talked.

The morning session had been stormy. A serious rift had developed within the ranks of the antislavery movement. During his absence Garrison had been attacked by a body of clergymen for what they termed his “heresies”—the immediate charge being his “breaking of the Sabbath.” Garrison, it seemed, saw no reason why anyone should “rest” from abolishing slavery any day of the week. He maintained that all days should be kept holy. He lacked forbearance and Christian patience, they charged. He “aired America’s dirty linen” in Europe. He “insulted” the English brethren when he took his stand for full recognition of women in the World Anti-Slavery Convention, despite the fact that St. Paul had adjured women to silence. Garrison had made a statement in the Liberator: “I expressly declare that I stand upon the Bible, and the Bible alone, in regard to my views of the Sabbath, the Church, and the Ministry, and that I feel that if I can not stand triumphantly on that foundation I can stand nowhere in the universe. My arguments are all drawn from the Bible and from no other source.”[3]

For weeks the controversy had raged—sermons were preached, columns and letters were written. Theodore Parker, young minister in Boston, was denounced by his fellow-clergymen because he sided with Garrison. Now they had all come to Nantucket—Garrisonites and anti-Garrisonites; the issue of slavery was tabled while scholars drew nice lines in the science of casuistry and ethics, and theologians chanted dogmas.

All morning Garrison sat silent. His right hand twitched nervously. Pains shot up into his arm. His face was drawn and tired. His heart was heavy. Here and there in the crowd a bewildered black face turned to him. William Lloyd Garrison lowered his eyes and shut his teeth against a groan that welled up from his heart.

And so he did not see one more dark figure push into the hall; but William C. Coffin, a Quaker and ardent Abolitionist, did. He had met Frederick at the house of his friend, Nathan Johnson. Coffin made his way back through the crowd and laid his hand on Frederick’s arm.

“Thee are well come, my friend,” he said.

Frederick had been peering anxiously toward the platform. He was so far back, the crowd was so thick and the people wedged in so tightly, that he despaired of hearing or seeing anything; but he smiled a warm greeting at the Quaker.

“Follow me, there are seats up front,” Friend Coffin was saying.

The older man led the way down a side aisle, and there close against the wall was a little space. Frederick gratefully slipped in beside his friend.

“This is fine,” he whispered, “I hated to miss anything.” He looked around at the other occupants of the side seats. He spoke worriedly. “But—But I don’t belong up here.”

The Quaker smiled. “This is thy place.” He leaned closer, and his eyes were very earnest. “Douglass, I am asking thee to speak a few words to the convention this afternoon.”

Frederick stared at him. He gasped.

“Me? Speak?”

The great hall was a vast arena packed with all the people in the world! Surely the Quaker was joking. But no, the voice was very low, but calm and sure.

“Tell them thy story, Douglass, as thee have told the men at the mill. Just tell them the truth—no matter how the words come.” Frederick shook his head helplessly. He couldn’t stand up there before all those people. He tried to hear what the man on the platform was saying, but the words were meaningless. The hall was stifling hot. Men were mopping their brows with damp handkerchiefs. Frederick opened his shirt at the neck and let his coat slip off his shoulders.

“Thee cannot escape thy duty, Douglass,” Mr. Coffin urged quietly. “Look about you! Today, thy people need thee to speak for them.” Frederick held his breath, and the Quaker added gravely, “And he needs thee—that good man who has worked so hard needs thy help.”

Frederick followed the Quaker’s eyes. He was gazing at William Lloyd Garrison, the man whom he honored and loved above all other men. How sunken and tired he looked!

“He needs thee,” the Quaker said again.

Frederick’s lips formed the words, though no sound came at first.

“I’ll try,” he whispered.

How long it was after this that Frederick found himself on his feet, being gently pushed toward the platform, he could not have said. Only when he was standing up there before all those people did he realize that he had not replaced his coat. It was a clean shirt, fresh from Anna’s tub and iron, but—! He fumbled with the button at his neck. His fingers were stiff and clumsy. He could not button it with the faces, a sea of faces, looking up at him, waiting. Everything was so still. They were waiting for him. He swallowed.

“Ladies and gentlemen—” a little girl, all big grave eyes, pushed her damped curls back and smiled at him, encouraging. Suddenly a mighty wave of realization lifted and supported him. These people were glad that he was free. They wanted him to be free! He began again.

“Friends, only a few short months ago I was a slave. Now I am free!” He saw them sway toward him. “I cannot tell you how I escaped because if known those who helped me would suffer terribly, terribly.” He said the word a second time and saw some realization of what he meant reflected in their faces.

“I do not ask anything for myself. I have my hands to work—my strength.... All of the seas could not hold my thanksgiving to Almighty God—and to you.” He was silent a moment and they saw his eyes grow darker; his face contracted as if in pain. When he began again, his voice trembled, they had to lean forward to catch his words.

“But I am only one. Where are my brothers? Where are my sisters? Their groans sound in my ears. Their voices cry out to me for help. My mother—my own mother—where is she? I hope she is dead. I hope that she has found the only peace that comes to a slave—that last, last peace in a grave. But even as I stand before you it may be—It may be that—” He stopped and covered his face with his hands. When he lifted his head, his eyes shone with resolution. “Hear me,” he said, “hear me while I tell you about slavery.”

And then, in a clear voice, he told them of Caroline, why she dragged her leg, and how she had risked her life to save him; he told them about Henry and John, Nada and Jeb. He told them of little children he had seen clinging to their mother as she was being sold away, of men and women whose “spirits” had to be broken, of degradation. He told them the content of human slavery.

“I am free,” his voice went low; but they leaned forward, hanging on every word. “But I am branded with the marks of the lash. See!” And with one movement, he threw back his shirt. He turned, and there across the broad, young back were deep knotty ridges, where the brown flesh had been cut to the bone and healed in pink lumps. They gasped.

“I have not forgotten—I do not forget anything. Nor will I forget while, any place upon this earth, there are slaves.”

He turned to leave the platform.

Then in the silence another voice, a golden voice, was heard. It was as if a trumpet called.

“Is this a thing—a chattel—or a man?”

William Lloyd Garrison stood there—his eyes flaming—his face alight. He waited for an answer, holding Frederick’s hand in his, facing the audience. And from a thousand voices rose the shout.

“He is a man!”

“A man! A man!”

Garrison let the tumultuous shouts roll and reverberate. Men wept unashamed. Far down the street people heard the applause and shouting and came running. Through it all Garrison stood, holding the strong brown hand in his. At last Garrison pressed the hand gently, and Frederick stumbled to his seat. Then Garrison stepped to the edge of the platform.

Those who had heard him oftenest and known him longest were astonished by his speech that afternoon. He was the fabulous orator who could convert a vast audience into a single individuality.

“And to this cause we solemnly dedicate our strength, our minds, our spirits and our lives!”

As long as they lived men and women talked about that August afternoon on Nantucket Island.

John A. Collins, general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, was at Frederick’s elbow when the meeting let out.

“We want you as an agent,” he was saying. “Come, Mr. Garrison told me to bring you to him.”

While the crowd surged about them, the great man once more held Frederick’s hand, but now he gazed searchingly at the brown face.

“Will you join us, Frederick Douglass?” he asked.

“Oh, sir, I am a member of the Society in New Bedford,” Frederick answered quickly and proudly. Garrison smiled.

“Of course. But I mean more than that—a lot more. I’m asking you to leave whatever job you have and work with me. The pay is—well—uncertain. They tell me you have a family. I too have a family.”

“Yes, sir. I know,” Frederick said, his eyes like an adoring child’s.

“I am asking you to leave your own family and work for the larger family of God.”

“Yes, sir, I understand. I want to help. But I am ignorant. I was planning to go to school.”

“You will learn as you walk, Frederick Douglass. Your people need your strength now. We all need you.”

So Frederick left his job at the foundry and, as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, began active work to outlaw slavery in the nation.

Chapter Seven

Jobs in Washington and voting in Rhode Island

Amelia Kemp stood at her attic window. The waters of Chesapeake Bay tossed green and white and set the thick mass of trees on distant Poplar Island in motion. A boat rounded Keat Point. For a few moments Amelia could see the tips of the masts and a bit of white sail against the sky. Then it all disappeared. But the sight of a boat sailing away over the waters, of a ship going out to sea, was not at this moment depressing. She too was going away.

Lucy was dead. That morning they had laid her worn body in a grave at the edge of the pines. Covey, his Sunday suit sagging, stared stupidly while they shoveled in the hard lumps of clay. The preacher had wrung the widower’s hand, reminding him that “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”; and they had returned to the unpainted, sagging house. Now there was nothing further to do. She could go.

Amelia had tried to persuade her sister to leave with her before it was too late. She had dared to read her portions of Jack’s letters—“Come along, there are jobs in Washington—even for women.” But Lucy would have none of it. Her duty was clear. There were moments when she urged Amelia to go, others when she clung to her weakly. So the months had stretched into six years, and Amelia had stayed on.

Covey dropped into a chair on the front porch when they returned from the grave. All the lines of his body ran downward. Covey had not prospered. He knew nothing about a nationwide depression, Van Buren’s bickering with the banks, wars in Texas, or gag rules in Congress; he had no idea there was any connection between the 1840 presidential election and the price of cotton. He did know he was losing ground. No matter how hard he beat the slaves, crops failed or rotted in the fields, stock died, debts piled up, markets slumped and tempers were short all around the bay.

Now, his wife was dead—hadn’t been really sick, either. Just, petered out. Here it was April, and the sun was scorching.

He had heard no sound, but Covey was suddenly aware of being watched. He sat very still and stared hard into the bushes near the corner of the porch. Two hard, bright eyes stared back. Covey spoke sharply.

“Who’s that? Who’s that sneakin’ in them bushes?”

The eyes vanished, but the bushes did not stir. With a snarl, Covey leaned forward.

“Dammit! I’ll git my shotgun!”

The leaves parted and he saw the streaked, pallid, pinched face in which the green eyes blazed—a face topped with dirty, tangled tow-colored hair. It was an old face; but the slight body with pipe-stem legs and arms was that of a child, a girl-child not more than ten years old. She wore a coarse one-piece slip. One bare foot was wrapped as if to protect some injury, the other was scratched and bruised. The child did not come forward, but crouched beside the porch giving back stare for hard stare. Then with a little cry she disappeared around the house.

Covey spat over the porch rail and settled back. It was that brat of Caroline’s of course, still running about like a wild animal. Time she was helping around the house. He began to deliberate. Might be better to get rid of her right off. She’d soon be market size, and yellow gals brought good prices. He’d speak to Caroline about feeding her up. Better bring her in the house. Mustn’t let Caroline suspect anything, though.

He pulled himself up and turned to go inside. Maybe Caroline had something for him to eat.

Amelia stopped him in the hallway. She was wearing a hat and carrying a suitcase. Covey frowned.

“Oh, Mr. Covey! I was looking for you.” Her voice had a note of urgency.

Amelia had a way of emerging from the nondescript background with startling vividness. Months passed when he hardly saw her. Then there she was jumping out at him! What the devil did she want now? He waited for her to explain.

“I’m going away.”

Just like that. No stumbling around the words. Covey let his flat eyes travel over her. Not a bad-looking woman, Amelia. More spirit than her sister. He spoke slowly.

“I ain’t putting you out.”

Amelia’s response sounded grateful enough. “Oh, I know, Mr. Covey. It’s not that. But now that poor Lucy’s gone, I’ve no right to—to impose.”

Covey remembered that he had been keeping a roof over her head all these years. And what had he got out of it? Nothing. His eyes narrowed.

“Where you aiming to go?”

“I’m going to Washington. A cousin of Tom’s down there—his name’s Jack Haley—says I can get a—a job.”

Her words had started in a rush, but they faltered a little by the time she reached her incredible conclusion.

A job in Washington! Was the female crazy? In a surge of masculine protectiveness, Covey glowered at her.

“Who said you had to get out and get a job? Eh? Who said so?”

Amelia swallowed. She had not expected an argument. She did not intend to argue. She had to be getting along. She would miss her boat. She spoke firmly.

“Mr. Covey, it’s all settled. I’m going. Ben told me you were sending him to town this afternoon. I want to ride with him.”

Covey spoke deliberately. “The nigger’s lyin’—as usual. He better not go off the place this afternoon. An’ you best get those fool notions out of your head. You can stay right here and look after the house. I ain’t kickin’.” He strode into the kitchen. That took care of that. It was close to ten miles to St. Michaels. She’d have time to think it over. But who was this fellow in Washington—a cousin of her late husband, so she said. Um-um! Yes, Amelia had more spirit than poor Lucy.

Amelia, left standing in the hall, sighed and set down her bag. A pretty kettle of fish! Did Covey think he could hold her? Was she one of his slaves? Then in a flash of realization she saw the truth. She was indeed a slave—had been for all these years. And she was running away—just as much as those black slaves she read about.

Amelia picked up her suitcase, walked out onto the porch, down the steps, along the path, out to the road. She looked down the long dusty road to St. Michaels, and started walking.

It was nearly two miles to Lawson’s place, and when she reached the welcome shade of his grove she sank down to rest. Not too bad: she was making time. She rubbed her benumbed arm and wondered if there weren’t something in the bag she could dump out. She was going to have blisters on her feet. Soon, now, she’d reach the highway. If she did not get a ride, she would miss the boat.

When she set out again, she stumbled and cut her foot against a hidden stone. There was no time to do anything about it, however, so she plodded along, fixing her mind firmly on the Washington boat.

Thus she did not hear the cart until it was close behind her. Then she stopped, her legs trembling. The mule stopped without any sign from the Negro driver.

It was not the same mule, driven by the old Negro who had passed Amelia one morning more than six years before. There were so many mules being driven by so many Negroes up and down the Eastern Shore. This Negro was younger and he could see quite clearly. And what he saw puzzled and disturbed him—a white woman, alone on a side road, carrying a suitcase and giving every sign of being about to ask him for a lift!

Not good. He sat, a solid cloud of gloom, waiting for her to speak.

Amelia smiled. She had to clear her throat. The mule regarded her stolidly.

“Boy,” she asked, and the tone of her voice confirmed his worse fears, “are you going into St. Michaels?”

“No, ma’m. Jus’ up da road a piece, an’ right back. No, ma’m, Ah ain’t goin’ neah St. Michael. No, ma’m.”

He was too vehement. Amelia saw the confusion in his face and, because she was in the process of acquiring wisdom, she knew the cause. She must think of a way to reassure him. She spoke slowly.

“You see, I’m trying to get to St. Michaels. I want to catch a boat.”

Amelia saw the man’s eyes flicker. Going somewhere always aroused interest. He shook his head, but did not speak. Amelia looked away. The road seemed to quiver in the sun.

“You see, I’m starting on a journey.” Now she looked full at him—she looked at him as one looks at a friend and she said softly, “I’m heading toward the north star.”

Perhaps the man’s hands tightened on the reins. At any rate the mule jerked up his head. The black face froze. For one instant everything stood still. Then the Negro looked up and down the road and to the right and to the left. There were only dust and fields, and here and there a tree.

He climbed down from the cart and picked up her bag. He spoke without looking at her.

“Jus’ remembered, ma’m, Ah might could drive toward St. Michael. Jus’ might could.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!” The warmth in her tone forced a smile from him.

“Reckon Ah could fix up a seat for you in back.”

He did fix a seat, shoving aside sacks and cords of wood. It was not an upholstered carriage, but it got her to St. Michaels. She alighted at the market, to arouse less attention. But he insisted on carrying her bag to the pier.

“Ma’m,” he said, turning his hat in his hands, “hit seem mighty funny, but Ah—Ah wishes yo’ luck!”

And Amelia, eyes shining, answered, “Thank you—Thank you, my friend. The same to you!”

The slave leaned lazily against a pile until the gangplank was pulled up, his eyes under the flopping straw hat darting in every direction, watching. Then, as the space of dirty water widened and the boat became a living thing, he stood up, waved his hat in the air and, after wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead, spoke fervently.

“Do Jesus!”

Washington, D. C. had become a tough problem to the Boston Abolitionists. A group was meeting one evening in the Liberator office to map out some course of action.

“Every road barred to us! Our papers not even delivered in the mail!” Parker Pillsbury tossed his head angrily.

“Washington is a slave city. Thee must accept facts.” The Quaker, William Coffin, spoke in conciliatory tones.

“But it’s our Capital, too—a city of several thousand inhabitants—and the slaveholders build high walls around it.” The Reverend Wendell Phillips was impatient.

“We should hold a meeting in Washington!” William Lloyd Garrison sighed, thinking of all the uninformed people in that city.

His remark was followed by a heavy silence. An Abolitionist meeting in Washington was out of the question. Several Southern states had already put a price on Garrison’s head. Frederick, sitting in the shadows, studied the glum faces and realized that, in one way or another, every man in the room was marked. They were agents of the Anti-Slavery Society and they, no more than he, could go South. Washington was South. Then from near the door came a drawling voice.

“Gentlemen, trouble your heads no longer. I’m going home.” A slender man was coming forward into the lamplight.

At the sound of the soft drawl, Frederick froze. He crouched low, hiding his face. But no alarm was sounded. There was welcome in Garrison’s low greeting: “Gamaliel Bailey!”

The first voice answered, “I heard only enough to agree fully. We do need a spokesman in Washington. I would not flatter myself, gentlemen—but I am ready.”

Garrison spoke with unaccustomed vehemence.

“No! We need you here.”

Frederick slowly lifted his head. The man was a stranger to him. His speech proclaimed him a Southerner. Now Frederick saw an attractive, dark-haired gentleman in black broadcloth and loosely fitted gray trousers. He looked down at Garrison, his black eyes bright.

“This is the job that I alone can do,” he said.

Wendell Phillips’ golden voice was warm as he nodded his head.

“He’s right. Garrison. Gamaliel Bailey can go to Washington. He belongs.”

“Captain John Smith, himself,” Pillsbury teased, but with affection.

“At your service, sir.” The Southerner swept him a low bow.

“This is no laughing matter, Mr. Bailey,” a stern voice interposed. “They know you have worked with us. You are a known Abolitionist!”

Gamaliel Bailey flicked a bit of non-existent dust from his waistcoat, and gave a soft laugh.

“Once a Virginia Bailey, always a Virginia Bailey! Have no fear, Mr. Hunton,” he said. He caught sight of Frederick’s dark face lifting itself among them. His eyes lit up. “This must be the new agent of whom I’ve been hearing.”

“Yes,” several said at once. “It’s Frederick Douglass.”

Their handclasp was a promise. “I go to Washington now, so that you can come later,” said the Virginian.

“And I’ll be along!” promised Frederick Douglass.

William Lloyd Garrison did not smile. His face was clouded with apprehension. “You’ll need help,” he said.

“It is best that I find my help in Washington. I know one young man whom I can count on. Jack Haley. He’ll bring me all the news. You know, I think I’ll publish a paper!” He grinned. “Since they won’t let the Liberator in, we’ll see if I can’t get a paper out.”

So it happened that Jack Haley was not on the dock to meet Amelia’s boat from St. Michaels. The weekly issue of the National Era had hit the streets the day before, and scattered like a bomb all up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. In Congress, on the streets and in the clubs they raged! Here was heresy of the most dangerous order, printed and distributed within a stone’s throw of the Capitol. It was enough to make God-fearing Americans shudder when the son of such an old and respected family as the Virginia Baileys flaunted the mongrel elements in their faces. They did shudder, some of them. And grinning reporters ran from one caucus to the other.

Jack was much younger than his cousin Tom. He remembered Tom’s wife with affection. Her letters had intrigued him, and he was glad she was coming to Washington.

He found her down on the wharf, surrounded by bales of cotton, serenely rocking in a highback New England rocker!

Amelia saw him staring at her and with a little cry of joy she sprang up.

“Jack, I knew you’d get here! I wasn’t worrying a bit. And kind Captain Drayton has made me quite comfortable.”

The weather-beaten Vermonter, leaning against the rail of his ship, regarded the late arrival and scowled until his thick eyebrows threatened to tangle with his heavy beard.

“Nice way to treat a female!” he boomed.

Jack held her hands in his. She was so thin, so little. The gray strands smoothed carefully behind her ears accentuated the hollows in her face; the cotton dress she wore was washed out, but the blue eyes looking up at him were young and bright.

Amelia exclaimed over the little buggy Jack had waiting. He helped her in, tucked the bag under their feet and flapped the reins.

Washington in the spring! Heavy wagon wheels bogged down in deep ruts, and hogs wallowed in the mud; but a soft green haze lay over the sprawling town and wrapped it in loveliness. They were rolling along a wide street, and Amelia was trying to see everything at once. Then she saw the Capitol lifting its glistening dome against the wide blue sky, and she caught her breath.

They circled the Capitol grounds, turned down a shaded lane and stopped before a two-story brick house which sat well back in a yard with four great elms.

“Here we are!” Jack smiled down at her.

“How nice! Is this where you live?”

“No, ma’am. This is where, I hope, you’re going to live.”

“But who—?” began Amelia.

“Just you wait.” Jack jumped out and hitched the reins around a post. The big trees up and down the street formed an avenue of coolness. Amelia hesitated when he turned to assist her.

“Are they—Are they expecting me?”

Jack chuckled.

“Mrs. Royall, my dear, is expecting anything—at any time!”

“Jack! You don’t mean Mrs. Royall—the authoress!” Amelia hung motionless over the wheel. Jack grasped her firmly by the elbow.

“Who else? There is only one Mrs. Royall. There’s Her Highness now, back in the chicken yard. Come along. I’ll fetch the bag later.”

Amelia shook out her skirts and followed him along the path that led around the house.

The little old lady bending over a chicken coop from which spilled yellow puffs of baby chicks, might have been somebody’s indulgent grandmother. The calico dress drawn in around a shapeless middle was faded; so was the bonnet from which escaped several strands of iron-gray hair.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Royall!” There was warm deference in Jack’s voice.

She stood up and her shoulders squared. There was a certain sprightliness in the movement, and in the tanned, unwrinkled face gleamed eyes of a remarkable brightness. When she spoke her voice had an unexpected crispness.

“Indeed—it’s Jack Haley. And who is this female with you?”

“This is a kinswoman of mine, Mrs. Royall. I have the pleasure of presenting to you, Mrs. Amelia Kemp.”

“How do ye do!” The little old lady spoke with prim formality, her eyes flashing briefly over Amelia.

“I am honored, ma’am.” Amelia scarcely managed the words.

“She has come to Washington to work,” Jack went on. “So I have brought her to you.”

The gray eyes snapped.

“And why should you bring your kinswoman to me?”

“Because, Mrs. Royall, it’s newspapers she wants to know about. And you’re the best newsman in Washington, begging your pardon, ma’am.” He bowed elaborately.

“You needn’t!” She turned to Amelia.

“I’ve read one of your books, ma’am. Jack sent it to me. I learned so much about America.”

Undoubtedly the gray eyes softened, but the tone did not change.

“Why don’t you take her to your friend on the avenue—that infamous Abolitionist?”

“Mrs. Royall!” Jack’s voice was charged with shock. “You couldn’t be speaking about Editor Gamaliel Bailey?”

“He should be ashamed of himself. Selling out to those long-winded black coats!”

“But, Mrs. Royall—”

“Don’t interrupt. If he’d come to me I’d tell him how to get rid of slavery. It’s a curse on the land. But those psalm-singing missionaries—Bah!”

“May I remind you, Mrs. Royall,” Jack spoke very softly, “that when you came back from Boston you spoke very highly of the Reverend Theodore Parker. And he’s a—”

“He’s not a black coat.” The lady spoke with feeling. Her face cleared and she added sweetly, “He must be a Unitarian.” Then she laughed, all shadows and restraint gone. “Forgive an old windbag, guilty of the very faults she criticizes in others.” She lifted her eyes. “See how the sun shines on our Capitol. Have you ever seen anything half so beautiful?”

Amelia shook her head.

“I’ve never traveled any place before, ma’am. Washington is more than I can believe.”

“It’s too good for the people who live here. But come and rest yourself. I am a bad hostess.” Her eyes twinkled as she turned to Jack. “First, does she know I’m a criminal—a convicted criminal?” She made it sound very mysterious, and Amelia stared.

Jack laughed. “You tell her, Mrs. Royall!”

“’Tis very sad.” There was mockery in her voice. “A ‘common scold’—that was the finding of the jury. In England they would have ducked me in a pond; but here there was only the Potomac, and the honored judge deemed that might not be right—the waters would be contaminated. So they let me go.” They were in the house now and she was setting out china cups. “You know,” she frowned slightly, “the thing I really objected to was the word ‘common.’ That I did not like.”

“I agree with you, madam. Mrs. Royall’s scoldings of senators, congressmen and even presidents, of bankers and bishops, have always been in a class by themselves. ‘Common’ was not the word.” And again he bowed.

The old lady eyed him with approval.

“Where, might I ask, did you get your good manners? They are rare enough in Washington these days.” Before he could reply she had turned to Amelia—the gracious host to her guest. “Some day, my dear, I shall tell you of the Marquis de la Fayette. Ah! there were manners!”

“Liberté, fraternité, égalité!” Jack murmured the words half under his breath, but the old lady turned on him, her eyes flashing. Then, like an imp, she grinned.

So Amelia came to live with Anne Royall, long-time relict of Captain William Royall. He had fought beside Washington in the Revolutionary War and had been the General’s lifelong friend. In her own way she waged a war too. Each week she cranked a clumsy printing press in her shed and turned out a pithy paper called the Huntress. It advocated free schools for children everywhere, free trade, and liberal appropriations for scientific investigation. Amelia helped her about the house and with her chickens, accompanied her on interviews, saw red-faced legislators dodge down side-streets to avoid her. Gradually she learned something of how news is gathered and dispensed, but she learned more about the ways of Washington, D. C.

Amelia had been in Washington three weeks when one evening Jack stopped by.

“I’m going up North!” he announced.

“Where? What for?”

“The boss heard something about a rebellion in New England. He’s tickled pink. Said maybe that would keep Yankee noses out of other people’s worries. He’s sending me out to puff the scandal!”

“Do you know anything about it?” Mrs. Royall’s ears were alert.

“From what I can gather, seems a lot of poor folks in Rhode Island want to vote. And the bigwigs don’t like it!”

All of New England had become involved. Two state administrations were claiming the election in Rhode Island, and a clash was imminent. Until 1841 Rhode Island had operated under its colonial charter, which prohibited anyone from voting who did not own 134 acres of land. Therefore, seats in the state legislature were controlled by the older conservative villages, while the growing industrial towns, where the larger portion of the population was disfranchised, were penalized. That year Thomas Wilson Dorr, a Whig and graduate of Harvard, started a reform movement; and a new constitution was drawn up. This constitution was framed to enlarge the basis of representation and abolish the odious property requirement. But it confined the right of suffrage to white male citizens, pointedly shutting out the Negroes who had settled in Rhode Island.

Quakers were non-resistance men; they held themselves aloof from politics, but they were always on the alert to protect the black man’s rights. All antislavery advocates wanted a new constitution, but they did not want a defective instrument which would require reform from the start. So they could not back Dorr. The Perry brothers, Providence manufacturers, wrote to their friend, John Brown, a wool merchant in Springfield, Massachusetts.

“The time has come when the people of Rhode Island must accept a more comprehensive gospel of human rights than has gotten itself into this Dorr constitution. We have talked to him, and while he agrees in principle he fears to go further.”

John Brown sent the letter on to John Greenleaf Whittier, Secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Whittier talked it over with the Reverend Theodore Parker, who was considering making a series of speeches in Rhode Island, denouncing the color bar in what was being called a “People’s Constitution.”

“Why should not Negroes vote with all the other workers?” asked Whittier. “They would limit their gains in throwing out the old charter.”

Theodore Parker sighed wearily.

“It’s the workers who are doing this. Their own struggle has blinded them.”

“Thee are right.” Whittier slipped into the Quaker idiom in moments of great seriousness. “They see the black man only as a threat.”

Then their eyes met, fusing in a single thought. They spoke almost in one breath.

“Frederick Douglass!”

For a moment they smiled together, congratulating themselves. Then a frown came on Whittier’s face. He shook his head.

“But Friend Garrison will not consent. Thee knows his attitude toward any of us taking part in politics.”

Theodore Parker was silent a moment, drumming his long, white fingers on the table. Then his black eyes flashed.

“Are we discussing politics? We are concerned here with the rights of men.”

Whittier shook his head, but he grinned.

“Thee had best take care! Quoting Thomas Paine will not help.”

“Fiddlesticks! Tom Paine had more religion than all the clerics of Massachusetts rolled into one.” The young divine got to his feet, his thin face alight with enthusiasm. “Douglass goes to Rhode Island! I’ll take care of Garrison.”

It was decided, and Douglass was one of the Abolitionists’ trio which invaded every town and corner of the little state. They were Stephen S. Foster of New Hampshire, Parker Pillsbury from Boston, and Frederick Douglass from some unspecified section of the slave world—two white and one black—young and strong and on fire with their purpose. The splendid vehemence of Foster, the weird and terrible denunciations of Pillsbury, and the mere presence of Douglass created a furor from one end of the state to the other. They were followed by noisy mobs, they were thrown out of taverns, they were pelted with eggs and rocks and foul words. But they kept right on talking—in schoolhouses and churches and halls, in market places, in warehouses, behind factories and on docks. Sometimes they were accompanied by Abby Kelly, who was later to become Stephen Foster’s wife. Her youth and simple Quaker beauty, combined with her wonderful earnestness, her large knowledge and great logical power, bore down opposition. She stilled the wildest turmoil.

The people began to listen. They drew up a Freeman’s Constitution to challenge Thomas Dorr’s and called a huge mass meeting in Providence. On streamers and handbills distributed throughout the state, they listed “Frederick Douglass, Fugitive from Slavery,” as the principal speaker.

Jack Haley saw the streamers when he reached Providence late in the evening. He heard talk of the meeting around the hostelry while he gulped down his supper. When he reached the crowded hall things were already under way. There was some confusion as he was pushing his way in. Someone on the floor seemed to be demanding the right to speak.

“It’s Seth Luther!” whispered excited bystanders. “Thomas Dorr’s right-hand man.”

“Go on, Seth, have your say!” called out a loud voice in the crowd.

The young man on the platform motioned for silence. He nodded to the man standing in the aisle.

“Speak, my friend!” he said.

The man’s voice was harsh.

“You philanthropists are moaning over the fate of Southern slaves. Go down there and help them! We here are concerned with equal rights for men, with the emancipation of white men, before we run out after helping blacks whether they are free or in slavery. You’re meddling with what doesn’t concern you!”

There was some applause. There were boos and hisses, but the man sat down amid a murmur of approval from those near him.

Then Jack saw that the chairman on the platform had stepped aside and his place had been taken by an impressive figure. Even before he said a word the vast audience settled into silence. For undoubtedly this was the “fugitive slave” they had come to hear. Jack stared: this man did not look as if he had ever been a slave. The massive shoulders, straight and shapely body, great head with bushy mane sweeping back from wide forehead, deep-set eyes and jutting jaw covered with full beard—the poise and controlled strength in every line—called forth a smothered exclamation from Jack.

“My God! What a human being!”

“Ssh-sh!” several people hissed. Frederick Douglass was speaking.

“The gentleman would have us argue more and denounce less. He speaks of men and black and slaves as if our cause can differ from his own. What is our concern except with equal rights for men? And must we argue to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race? Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks and secretaries, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian’s God, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

“I tell you the slaveholders in the darkest jungles of the Southland concede this fact. They acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government; they acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the state of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be) subject him to punishment by death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? It is admitted in fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, than I may consent to argue the manhood of the black man.”

Men stamped and shouted and threw their hats into the air. The hall rang. Douglass took up in a quieter mood. He talked of the meaning of constitutional government, he talked of what could be gained if exploited people stood together and what they lost by battling among themselves.

“The slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, encourage enmity of the poor labouring white man against the blacks, and succeed in making the white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference is this: the latter belongs to one slaveholder, the former belongs to the slaveholders collectively. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers.”

Afterward Jack tried to go forward and ask some questions of the amazing orator, but the press of the crowd stopped him. He gave up and returned to the inn. And the next day they had gone back to Boston, he was told. Thomas Dorr, through his timidity and caution, had lost the people.

When the new Rhode Island constitution was finally adopted the word white had been struck out.

Jack Haley returned to Washington and handed in his account of the “rebellion.” The editor blue-penciled most of it. He said they had thrown away money on a wild-goose chase.

But Gamaliel Bailey studied the closely written pages Jack laid on his desk. True, he could not now publish the material in his National Era; but he drew a circle around the name “Frederick Douglass” and slipped the sheets into his file for future reference.

Every drop of blood slowly drained from Amelia’s face while Jack talked. Mrs. Royall dropped the stick of type she had been clutching—Jack had interrupted them at work in the shed—and stared at her helper.

“She’s sick!”

But Amelia shook her head. She leaned against the board, struggling to speak while into her white face there came a glow which changed her blue eyes into dancing stars.

“You said his name was Frederick, didn’t you? About how old would you say he was?”

“What?” asked Mrs. Royall.

“How old?” asked Jack.

“Yes.” Amelia was a little impatient. “The one you’re talking about—that slave who spoke. I’m sure I know who he is!”

“Oh, my goodness, Amelia! That’s impossible!” The idea made Jack frown. Mrs. Royall snorted.

“Describe him to me, Jack,” Amelia insisted, “every detail.”

She kept nodding her head while Jack rather grudgingly complied with her request. It seemed such a waste of time. He shook his head as he finished.

“There couldn’t possibly have been such an extraordinary slave around any place where you’ve been. All of us would have heard of him!”

Amelia smiled.

“I remember how he came walking up the road that day in a swirl of dust. He was little more than a boy then. Now he’s a man. It is the same.”

Then she told how that morning at dawn she had leaned from her attic window and watched a young buck slave defy a slave-breaker, how he had sent the overseer moaning to one side with his kick, how he had thrown the master to the ground. This was the first time she had ever told the story, but she told it very well.

“His name was Frederick—the same color, the same powerful shoulders and the same big head.”

“But this man—he looked older—he’s educated! If you had heard him!” Jack could not believe this thing.

Amelia only smiled.

“I found out afterward that even then he could read and write. Mr. Covey had him help with the accounts.”

“It’s just too incredible. That man from the Eastern Shore!”

Mrs. Royall spoke precisely. “Young man, when you’re my age you’ll know that it’s the incredible things which make life wonderful.”

And Amelia added, “There couldn’t be two Fredericks—turned from the same mold!”

Chapter Eight

On two sides of the Atlantic

Many people would have shared Jack’s reluctance to believe Amelia’s story. As time passed the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society found itself caught in a dilemma. The committee knew all the facts of Frederick’s case; but for his protection the members took every precaution, withholding the name of the state and county from which he had come, his master’s name and any other detail which might lead to his capture. Even so they realized that they must be constantly on guard. But the audiences began to murmur that this Frederick Douglass could not be a “fugitive from slavery.”

During the first three or four months Frederick’s speeches had been almost exclusively made up of narrations of his own personal experiences as a slave.

“Give us the facts,” said Secretary Collins. “We’ll take care of the philosophy.”

“Tell your story, Frederick,” Garrison would whisper as his protégé stepped upon the platform. And Frederick, smiling his devotion to the older man, always followed the injunction.

But Frederick was growing in stature. Scholars’ libraries were thrown open to him. Theodore Parker had sixteen thousand volumes; his library covered the entire third floor of his house.

“Come up any time, Frederick. Books, my boy, were written to be read.”

And Frederick reveled in Thomas Jefferson, Carlyle, Edmund Burke, Tom Paine, John Quincy Adams, Jonathan Swift, William Godwin. He became drunk on books; staggering home late at night, his eyes red, he would fall heavily across his bed. He pored over the newspapers from all parts of the country which Garrison gathered in the Liberator office; he sat at the feet of the greatest orators of the day—Wendell Phillips, Charles Redmond, Theodore Parker among them. He munched sandwiches and listened, while John Whittier read his verses; and always the young fugitive from slavery followed in the wake of William Lloyd Garrison, devouring his words, tapping his sources of wisdom, attuning his ears to every pitch of the loved voice.

Frederick’s speeches began to expand in content, logic and delivery.

“People won’t believe you ever were a slave, Frederick, if you keep on this way,” cautioned Collins. But Garrison shook his head.

“Let him alone!” he said.

The year 1843 was one of remarkable antislavery activity. The New England Anti-Slavery Society mapped out a series of one hundred conventions. The territory covered in the schedule included all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Under Garrison’s leadership it was a real campaign, taking more than six months to complete. Frederick Douglass was chosen as one of the agents to tour the country.

The first convention was held in Middlebury, Vermont, home of William Slade, for years co-worked with John Quincy Adams in Congress. Yet in this town the opposition to the antislavery convention was intensely bitter and violent. Vermont boasted that within her borders no slave had ever been delivered up to a master, but the towns did not wish to be involved in “agitation.”

What was in this respect true of the Green Mountain State was most discouragingly true of New York, the next state they visited. All along the Erie canal, from Albany to Buffalo, they met with apathy, indifference, and sometimes the mob spirit. Syracuse refused to furnish church, market, house, or hall in which to hold the meetings. Mr. Stephen Smith, who had received the little group of speakers in his home, was sick with distress. Frederick, standing beside a wide window, looked out upon a park covered with young trees. He turned to his unhappy host.

“Don’t worry, my friend,” he said. “We’ll have our meeting.”

The next morning he took his stand under a tree in the southeast corner of this park and began to speak to an audience of five persons. Before the close of the afternoon he had before him not less than five hundred. In the evening he was waited upon by the officers of the Congregational church and tendered the use of an old wooden building which they had deserted for a better. Here the convention continued for three days.

In the growing city of Rochester their reception was more cordial. Gerrit Smith, Myron Holly, William Goodell and Samuel Porter were influential Abolitionists in the section. Frederick was to know the eccentric, learned and wealthy Gerrit Smith much better. Now he argued with him, upholding Garrison’s moral persuasion against Gerrit Smith’s ballot-box, as the weapon for abolishing slavery. From Rochester, Frederick and William Bradburn made their way to Buffalo, a rising city of steamboats, business and bustle. The Friends there had been able to secure for the convention only an old dilapidated and deserted room on a side-street, formerly used as a post-office. They went at the time appointed and found seated a few cabmen in their coarse, wrinkled clothes, whips in hand, while their teams were standing on the street waiting for a job.

Bradburn was disgusted. After an hour of what he considered futile talk and haranguing, he left. That evening he took the steamer to Cleveland. But Frederick stayed on. For nearly a week he spoke every day in the old post-office to constantly increasing audiences. Then a Baptist church was thrown open to him. The following Sunday he spoke in an open park to an assembly of several thousand persons.

In Richmond, Indiana, their meeting was broken up, and their clothes ruined with evil-smelling eggs. In Pendleton, Indiana, Frederick’s speaking schedule suffered a delay.

It had been found impossible to obtain a building in Pendleton in which to hold the convention. So a platform was erected in the woods at the edge of town. Here a large audience assembled and Frederick and his companion speaker, William A. White, were in high spirits. But hardly had they climbed to the stand when they were attacked by a mob of about sixty persons who, armed with clubs, picks and bricks, had come out to “kill the nigger!”

It was a furious but uneven fight. The Friends tried to protect Frederick, but they had no defense. White, standing his ground, pleaded with the ruffians and got a ferocious blow on the head, which cut his scalp and knocked him to the ground. Frederick had caught up a stick, and he fought with all his strength; but the mob beat him down, leaving him, they supposed, dead on the ground. Then they mounted their horses and rode to Anderson where, it was said, most of them lived.

Frederick lay on the ground at the edge of the woods, bleeding and unconscious. Neal Hardy, a Quaker, carried him to his cart and took him home. There he was bandaged and nursed. His right hand had been broken and never recovered its natural strength and dexterity. But within a few days he was up and on his way. His arm was in a sling but, as he remarked, the rest of him “little the worse for the tussle.”

“A complete history of these hundred conventions would fill a volume far larger than the one in which this simple reference is to find place,” Frederick Douglass wrote many years later. “It would be a grateful duty to speak of the noble young men who forsook ease and pleasure, as did White, Gay and Monroe, and endured all manner of privations in the cause of the enslaved and down-trodden of my race.... Mr. Monroe was for many years consul to Brazil, and has since been a faithful member of Congress from Oberlin District, Ohio, and has filled other important positions in his state. Mr. Gay was managing editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, and afterward of the New York Tribune, and still later of the New York Evening Post.”[4]

The following winter, against the advice of his friends, Douglass decided on an independent course of action.

“Your word is being doubted,” he said to Garrison and Phillips. “That I cannot endure. They are saying that I am an impostor. I shall write out the facts connected with my experience in slavery, giving names, places and dates.”

“It will be a powerful story!” said Garrison, his eyes watching the glow of light from the fireplace.

Theodore Parker spoke impatiently. “So powerful that it will bring the pack on his heels. And neither the people nor the laws of Massachusetts will be able to protect him.”

“He’s mad!” Wendell Phillips’ golden voice was hard. “When he has finished I shall advise him to throw the manuscript in the fire!”

But Garrison smiled.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we’ll find a way. God will not lose such a man as Frederick Douglass!”

They looked at him sitting there in the dusk, with the firelight playing over his calm face. There were times when Garrison’s quiet faith confounded the two divines.

A way did reveal itself. In May, 1845, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, prefaced by letters by Garrison and Phillips, made its appearance. Priced at fifty cents, it ran through a large edition. In August, Douglass, with a purse of two hundred and fifty dollars raised by his friends in Boston, boarded the British ship Cambria for England, in company with the Hutchinsons, a family of Abolitionist singers, and James Buffum, vice-president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

Anna stood on the dock and waved goodbye. She smiled, though the ship was blurred and she could not distinguish his dear face at the rail. A blast of the whistle made little Freddie clutch her skirts and bury his face in alarm. He wanted to go home. Close by her side, straight and unmoved, stood six-year-old Lewis, holding the hand of his weeping sister, Rosetta.

“Look after Mother and the children, Son. I’m depending on you!” Lewis was turning over his father’s parting words. Now he would be the man of the house. Girls, of course, could cry. He watched his mother’s face.

A few final shouts, a last flutter of handkerchiefs, some stifled sobs, and the relatives and friends of the voyagers began to disperse. Anna felt a light touch on her arm.

“Come, Mrs. Douglass”—it was Mrs. Wendell Phillips—“we’re going to drive you home.”

Friends surrounded her—comforting, solicitous.

“You can depend upon us, Mrs. Douglass. You know that.”

Anna smiled. She had wanted him to go, to get out of harm’s reach. She could not continue to live in the terror that had gripped her ever since Frederick had returned from the western trip. He had made light of the “Indiana incident,” but his broken hand could not be hidden. Each time he left her after that, she knew what might happen. So she had urged him to go; she had smiled and said, “Don’t worry about us, Frederick. You must go!”

“My salary will be paid direct to you.”

“I’ll manage. Now that we’re in our home, it will be easy.” Nothing but confidence and assurances for him.

The summer before they had bought a lot in Lynn, Massachusetts. They had planned the house together; and in the fall—between trips and with the help of several friends—Douglass had built a cottage.

Anna hated to leave New Bedford—“a city of friends,” she called it.

“But you see,” she explained to them ruefully, “the Douglass family has simply rent the seams of this little house. We have to have more room.”

They had chosen Lynn because it was more on the path for Frederick’s work and because the town had a thriving Anti-Slavery Society. Came the day when they moved into their cottage. Anna washed windows and woodwork, and Lewis followed his father around, “chunking up all the holes” so that when the cold weather came they would be snug and warm.

The highway was good and the May day pleasant as the Reverend Wendell Phillips drove Douglass’ family back to their home.

“How long do you think he’ll have to stay away, Mr. Phillips?”

They were nearly there, before Anna dared ask the question she had been avoiding.

Wendell Phillips flicked his whip. It was a moment before he answered.

“It’s impossible to say, Mrs. Douglass. We’re certain he’ll render valuable service to the cause of freedom among peoples who do not know the real horrors of American slavery. Meanwhile, we’ll do what we can to see that his own return may be safe.”

“Pray God the time will not be long!” Mrs. Phillips laid her hand over that of the woman by her side.

Then they were at the gate and goodbyes were said. The children climbed down nimbly and rushed up the path. Anna moved more slowly.

She smiled at the sight of moist, chubby Charlie in the neighbor woman’s arms. This was their youngest son—hers and Frederick’s. Poor little fellow! Anna felt her heart contract. He didn’t know his father was going so far away.

“Hasn’t whimpered a mite,” the neighbor had kept him during the family’s absence. “So I mixed up a pot of soup for you. It’s on the stove all ready. I knew you’d all be starved.”

Anna’s voice choked when she tried to thank the good soul. The woman patted her arm and hurried homeward across the vacant lot.

Small Charlie was quite happy, so Anna left him with the other children and went to the room she shared with her husband. It was very small. The wardrobe door, left swinging open, bumped against the washstand crowding the bed. Anna took off her hat, placed it on the shelf and closed the door. Moving mechanically, she emptied the half-filled bowl of water on the stand and hung up an old alpaca coat. Frederick had discarded it at the last moment. Then she stood motionless, just thinking.

She had not told him she was going to have another baby: he might not have gone. But she knew she needed more money than that tiny salary. She could not leave the children. There must be something she could do. She must manage. Suddenly her face lighted. Lynn, Massachusetts, had one industry which in the early 1840’s spilled over into every section. Lynn had developed like a guild town in England; and that evening Anna made up her mind that she could do what was being done in many households in the town—she would make shoes.

In time she learned to turn a sole with the best of them.

Meanwhile a ship was going out to sea. And all was not smooth sailing.

“We should have taken one of the French boats—even if they are slower!” Mrs. Hutchinson regarded the apologetic purser scornfully.

“I’ll see the Captain at once.” And James Buffum stalked away in search of him.

No cabin had been assigned to Frederick Douglass. Though the tickets had been purchased together, the party was being separated—the Hutchinsons and Mr. Buffum sent to cabins, Frederick Douglass to the steerage.

Douglass took no part in the angry discussion that ensued. It was an old story to him. Negroes who had the temerity to travel about the United States were subject to insults and indignities. On the Sound between New York and Stonington no colored man was allowed abaft the wheel. In all seasons of the year, hot or cold, wet or dry, the deck was his only place. Douglass had been in many fights—had been beaten by conductors and brakemen. He smiled now remembering the time six men ejected him from a car on the Eastern Line between Boston and Portland. He had managed to tear away several seats and break a couple of windows.

But this morning, as the Cambria nosed her way out of the bay and started back to the Old Country which so many had left in their search for freedom, Douglass shrugged his shoulders.

“Let it go!” he said. “We’ll all reach England together. If I cannot go to the cabins, you can come to me in the steerage.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Douglass,” Captain Judkins quickly intervened. “There is only the formality of an invitation. You can visit your friends at any time.”

“Thank you, sir!” Douglass bowed gravely.

But Mrs. Hutchinson would not be quieted. “It’s ridiculous!”

Her husband sighed and slipped his arm through Frederick’s.

“Let’s go now and see that our friend is properly settled,” he said.

So they all went first to the steerage. And here, to the edification of the steerage passengers, they spent most of their time. But, as always happens within a small world, word got around, and during the long afternoons and evenings other first-class passengers began visiting the steerage.