March 12, 1839 marks the first public record of Frederick Douglass speaking at an antislavery meeting. He was among a small group of black citizens of New Bedford, Massachusetts, who passed several resolutions against the strategy of “colonization” – black expatriation to Africa or to the Caribbean - which was recommended by many as a part of the end of slavery. A record of the speech and the resolutions is cited in a March, 1839 edition of The Liberator and described in the David W. Blight’s 2018 biography of Douglass: “The group invoked verbatim the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, called colonization a form of tyranny, and declared with special emphasis “We are American citizens, born with natural, inherent, just and inalienable rights.” (Blight, 90)
“We are American citizens, born with natural, inherent, just and inalienable rights.”
It is worth pointing out that these arguments, insofar as they refer to the Declaration of Independence, are moral arguments, given that the Declaration was essentially a statement of the ideals and goals of our founding as an independent nation, with arguments supporting those ideals. It is not legally binding upon our government. It is the constitution (along with the amendments, additional federal acts, laws and court rulings) that is legally binding.(note 2) Even as the struggle for equal rights continues for oppressed and disenfranchised groups to this day, it is instructive to reflect on the ideals in the Declaration of Independence as we consider where we stand in the struggle for equality.
Frederick Douglas, only a few years removed from slavery, continued to engage in serving, leading and eventually preaching in the AME Zion Church, and he also spoke at several antislavery society meetings in New Bedford. All of this led up to the dramatic moment, mentioned previously, when he came into contact with the Massachusetts Antislavery Society leadership at a convention in Nantucket, Massachusetts in August of 1841. Douglass describes himself as shaking in his bones as he faced the assembly, but he apparently gained his footing quickly and captivated the crowd with an account of slavery from the perspective of an insider that those in attendance would never forget. Garrison spoke after Douglass and according to those in attendance, Douglass’ personal account seems to have animated and energized Garrison’s presentation. This energizing effect would come to characterize Douglass’ impact on the antislavery movement as a whole in its second decade as the living example of the power of freedom moved across the abolitionist landscape like a shooting star.
Blight describes the initial activities … “Within one week of Nantucket, Douglass found himself whisked out on the railroads and into churches and halls of eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, telling his stories from the Eastern Shore (his last slave home), making witness against slavery, attacking racial prejudice and proslavery churches in the North.” (Blight, 100) Douglass had begun a rapid transition from a man laboring for a living with his hands to a man able to use his mind, his oratorical skill, and his passion for the plight of his brethren in slavery as the basis for a new career. Remarkably, he was only twenty-three.
To place in historical context, Douglass’ rise to prominence takes place during the second decade of the intense phase of abolitionism (taking the publication of The Liberator in 1830 as a starting point). During the remainder of 1841 and continuously until late 1844, Douglas joined the ranks of abolitionist movement speakers taking the message across the northern states from east to west. Prominent women joined the movement as well, this time period coinciding with the emergence of women’s rights as a national concern. Within a very short time after Douglass emergence as a capable abolitionist speaker, he transitioned into a role as one of the top tier members of the traveling teams of speakers and movement organizers. By the end of 1841, Douglass had spoken in at least twenty towns in the Northeast. (Blight, 107) His activism only intensified and during a three month period of 1842, for example, he traveled to at least 42 towns and villages. (Blight, 116) His traveling on behalf of the movement was punctuated by only brief stays with his family in Lynn, Massachusetts where he was able to build a home. 1843 and 44 were both marked by “100 Conventions” tours, along with countless other engagements, the 1843 tour being over 3,000 miles in length, concluding in December in Philadelphia with a large three-day meeting. Blight recounts as follows … “A Philadelphia paper described him as “graceful, winning, fluent, argumentative, logical and convincing.” He could “transport his hearers to the regions of rapture, and lower them into the deepest feeling for suffering humanity.”” (Blight, 136)
The Dangers and Hardships of the Abolitionist Speaking Circuit:
Characteristic of the individuals who carried the abolitionist message was a commitment to a rigorous traveling schedule fraught with a variety of difficulties and dangers, due to the challenges of travel and more so due to the opposition coming from opponents of their message. This opposition came in many varieties: there were open supporters of slavery (some traveling from south to north as instigators); others who harbored racist ideologies against the movement and who therefore would oppose Douglass’ role at a different level over and above their rejection of the abolitionist message; others who opposed the growing prominence of women in the movement; and various forms of opposition from churches in each community who typically objected either to their harsh criticisms of slave owners, or criticisms of the church’s complicity with slavery, or to the fact of women speakers. (Recall from my earlier article Abolition 3: The Remarkable Journey of the Grimke Sisters, how the Grimke sisters had begun to break down barriers as women speaking to mixed audiences in 1837.) The traveling activists and community organizers (to use our contemporary language) were creative and innovative in their strategies in approaching each town. In some cases they would begin in a public park or even by merely walking down the street announcing a meeting location; at other times meeting in various town halls or even taverns; and when they were allowed, assembling in the churches, which in most communities provided the largest natural venues for the effort.Representative of the ambitious schedules undertaken by the abolitionists was the “One Hundred Conventions” campaign organized by the AASS for the last half of 1843. There were about ten main speakers including Douglass and the Quaker feminist Abby Kelly. From the beginning of his involvement, Douglass was supportive of the women who worked in the movement and likewise he never resisted their efforts to include the concerns of women’s rights with the abolitionist cause, whereas some movement activists resisted this association. The Hundred Cities tour set out to cover Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania and reach up to a half a million people. (Blight, 128) Funds were limited, so fund raising was a part of the work as well as the practice of depending on the support of local participants in each locale that they visited. Often one or more members of the group would arrive in town (travel was not always coordinated nor schedules predictable) and begin to stir up support.
Douglass became very adept at stirring up a large following within a few days even if he started with no supporters at all, and this given that invariably there were vocal and sometimes violent opponents.
The western end of the tour became increasingly dangerous due to the significant presence of racist and pro-slavery communities. In Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass and William White literally had to fight for their lives in the face of a racist mob that actually attacked them on the outdoor speaking podium from which they were working. Douglass credits White with saving his life in the face of a mob that had expressed intent on killing him. Among many blows and injuries, Douglass suffered a broken hand that for the rest of his life remained in an impaired state.
There were many complex and interconnected political and moral principles that informed the various factions of the movement, and these caused all manner of internal conflict and eventually a major schism in the antislavery movement (see next article). Gradually, Douglass went through a transition in which, initially, he adopted in total and diligently supported Garrison’s specific “platform” of principles, and gradually came to his own independence on the various issues and developed his own positions. The experience of this near death encounter in Indiana affected Douglass’s commitment to the Garrisonian philosophy of non-resistance (pacifism), and he gradually recognized that physical resistance would become part of his involvement in the cause if the circumstances demanded. (Blight, 134) The AASS group would undertake another “One Hundred Conventions Tour” in Massachusetts in 1844, and in addition to his involvement in this work Douglass increasingly traveled to invitations throughout New England in response to a growing demand specifically focused around Douglass himself.
In late 1844 Douglass began to write his first biography, and it was published in mid 1845 – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. Part of Douglass’ motivation for writing his story was a growing suspicion among those who heard him speak that he had not actually been a slave, due to his apparent education and oratorical ability. His white “handlers,” organizing the various speaking opportunities, warned him of this outcome and in fact tried diligently to control his message so as to focus on the “slave testimonial” aspect and to not stray into contemplations of moral and political ideology. Douglass, aside from having an apparent tendency and ability to recall and recount his history, recognized the value of providing the details of his background.(note 3) As noted previously, due to the exposure to fugitive capture that accompanied the publication of such a detailed exposition of his slave past, Douglass journeyed across the Atlantic to England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, almost immediately after the biography came out. Douglass remained overseas for twenty months, returning in April of 1847. A British Quaker family he had become acquainted with, primarily Ellen and Anna Richardson, secured Douglass’ freedom from Thomas Auld for the sum of $711.66. (Blight, 171)
Soon upon his return to America, Douglass resumed a frantic speaking schedule with the movement, including his last tour with William Lloyd Garrison in the summer and fall of 1847, travelling from east to west in a grueling routine that left both Douglass and Garrison ill and fatigued. In fact, Garrison had to leave the tour during a stop in Cleveland to recover from severe illness in September. Douglass was able to continue the remainder of the tour through upstate New York including Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.
The stop in Rochester was not Douglass’ first trip to the area, known as an important stop on one route of the Underground Railroad. Rochester was soon to become significant to Douglass in an entirely different way. By the end of 1847, Douglass implemented a plan to begin his own abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, an idea which he had been considering since his time in Great Britain. With the assistance of British supporters and a publishing team that he was able to assemble, he made a commitment to create a print venue for the message. Douglass’ determined efforts with The North Star mark another transition in his career in which he took on a more independent path guided by his own priorities and also developing his skills as a writer and publisher as well as an orator.
To be continued.
Notes:
(1) It is noteworthy that the participants of the 1848 Seneca Falls Women’s Convention offered a “Declaration of Sentiments” with reference to the Declaration of Independence and including the affirmation… “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal,” going on to assert women’s equality in a number of areas. (History.com/topics/womens-rights/seneca-falls-convention)
(2) The obvious legal distinction between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (along with federal court interpretation of the Constitution) had not been clarified in my own thinking until I posed a question about the D. of I. to author Steve Luxenberg during a book lecture at the Atlanta History Center in February of 2019. He made the distinction in pointing out that these significant legal matters are worked out in the Supreme Court on the basis of the Constitution. (Steve Luxenberg, Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation).
(3) “At last the apprehended trouble came. People doubted if I had ever been a slave. They said I did not talk like a slave, look like a slave, nor act like a slave, and the believed that I had never been south of Mason and Dixon’s line. “He don’t tell us where he came from - what his master’s name was – how he got away – nor the story of his experience. Besides, he is educated, and is, in this, a contradiction of all the facts we have concerning the ignorance of slaves.” Thus I was in a pretty fair way to be denounced as an imposter.” (Douglass, 5347)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTE: Number references for Douglass used in this article are position references for the Kindle electronic version of The Complete Autobiographies.
Blight, D. W. (2018). Frederick Douglass. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Douglass, F. (1845). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Boston: New England Antislavery Society.
Douglass, F. (2012). The Complete Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass. Start Publishing LLC.
Hampton, H. (Producer), & Hampton, H. (Director). (1986). Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954 - 1965 [Motion Picture]. PBS.
Mayer, H. (1998). All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Rapley, R. (Writer), & Rapley, R. (Director). (2013). American Experience: The Abolitionists [Motion Picture]. PBS / Corporation for Public Broadcasting.