,-a.cu!,~~ on "J'ul'i ll.\ 1 2D_\3 lcia't J:\«- \ ,"'c.1/v-. ~"''-'~/ r,'\~ IN\ ""'- V v,- J, •.:, ¼ ) led hair, or gold, or pearls, or ~'i •$ ~ Qp~ (which becometh women pro­ Frederick Douglass L-o-' ....:~ ,V:, I with good works. The word in 1818-1895 ~c.. C.-,.\~~ ed "professing," would be more preaching godliness, or enjoin­ :ods, or conducting public war­ Frederick Douglass was born a slave in 1818 on a farm in Maryland. His mother, bing the duty of female minis­ an enslaved black woman named Harriet Bailey, was sent back lo lhe fields soon pparel, the aposlie proceeds to afler his birth, and he spent his early childhood with his grandmother Betsey Bailey. 1roprietics which probably pre- His father was a while man whose identity Douglass never learned; possibly he was 1esian church, similar to those Aaron Anthony, the plantation overseer who owned his mother, or Edward Lloyd, :proved among the Corinthian the landowner Anthony worked for. , "Let the women LEARN in si­ At the age of six Frederick was taken from his grandmother to serve as a com­ ection; but I suffer not a woman urp authority over the man, but panion, first, to one of Lloyd's young sons, and then, in Baltimore, to the young son 1rquietness. Herc again it is evi- of Anthony's daughler's brother-in-law, Hugh Auld. Auld's wife Sophia, unaccus­ 1en, of whom he was speaking, tomed to managing slaves, treated Frederick very well at first and began to teach to learn in silence, which could him to read, until her husband put a stop to it (see our first set of excerpts, from public ministrations to others. Douglass's first autobiography). Eager to learn, however, Frederick found ways to verse 12, is one of very general , continue his education surreptitiously. He pored over an old copy of TireCo/111111,ian ~4""--h\t.l­ in this place more properly be Orator, a collection of speeches used to teach rhetoric. The ideals expressed in &t..... L-lA I,.~ l is highly probable that women some of these speeches, as well as what he was learning about the abolition move~ k-f-h.i, n in bondage, when set free by ment from secretly reading newspapers, began to convince Frederick that slavery the restraints imposed upon wa.'iwrong and that he should resist it. b~t-H,,..... ,"'"' ·aditions and heathen customs, In 1833 he was sent back from Baltimore to the Maryland E!)SlernShore, 10 "'-'¼ v,.4{;- ! in their public assemblies, and igious services by frequent in- Thomas Auld, Hugh's brother. Frederick quickly got in trouble for organi1.inga 1 they could have had answered Sunday school for fellow slaves, at which he taught reading and writing. Auld de­ home. cided to hire him out for the year of 1834 to the farmer Edward Covey, known a... a ~ cr<.A-(..,.~ ,.f- "breaker" of rebellious slaves. After months of brutal treatment, Frederick finally ;amination and comparison of 1....,.s+-~t--u v-...) •• 1 I have endeavored to explain, attacked Covey, and after this battle was never whipped again. In 1835 Auld took 11 and 14, and I Tim. 2, 8- 12. him away from Covey and hired him to a more kindly employer. Frederick again ·~ft.~s--h-t...c.h,.n.~ compelled to adopt one of two organized clandestine literacy schooling for his fellow slaves. He also made his first ~-- I ~h..-.a.c-'1 · that the apostle grossly con­ attempt to flee slavery, in 1836, but the plan wa.... discovered and Frederick and his a subject of great practjcal im­ four companions were jailed. the fulfilment of the prophecy Although both lynching and sale to a deep-south plantation death trap were 1eful infringement of decency threatened, Thomas Auld decided to send Frederick back to his brother in Balli· he directions given to women, each in the congregations, had more. Hugh Auld placed Frederick in a shipyard and trained him as a caulker. local and peculiar customs, Frederick reestablished his tics with the Baltimore black community, again teaching common in religious assem­ reading and writing; he joined a debate club whose other members were free black e apostle thought inconsistent men and became engaged to Anna Murray, a free black woman. His resolve to es­ ror which they were met to- cape was still firm, and in September 1838, after a quarrel with Hugh Auld made 1ppose, will hesitate which of him again fear being sold south, Frederick fled Baltimore using borrowed seaman's ons to adopt. The subject is papers that falsely identified him a'> a free man. Anna Murray joined him in New lance. That it may claim the York, where they were married, and they then went on to New Bedford, Massachu• attention of Christians, is the setts, a seaport town where Frederick hoped 10 !ind work as a caulker. During his escape, Frederick used the surname Johnson ralher than Bailey to ! in the bonds of womanhood, help divert pursuit. Once arrived in New Bedford, however, he learned that Johnson SARAH M. GRIMKE. was an exceedingly common name among local blacks, and his host Nathan FRED l:RICK D0 ll'GI ASS 1061 ' "' l ; . :, .. ..) , ... Johnson, a black man active in abolition and assistance to fugitive slaves, suggested lellect could not remain that he take the surname Douglas, after a heroic Scottish nobleman in Sir Walter excerpts, from Douglass Scott's poem "The Lady or the Lake." Douglass agreed, although spelling the name well as lo describe it, an as a prominent Philadelphia black family spelled it. he was discovering al hi~ The racist objections of white workers prevented Douglass from fine.lingwork as On the speaker's plat a caulker, so he supported his growing family (he and Anna had five children by the advice or his white f r~- .... ~ t:~ ~ 1849) with unskilled labor on the docks. Douglass lost no time in informing himself ness against slavery, Drn about the abolitionist movement and local activism for black rights. He subscribed speech or a trace of the } F-ch-.....:of- to William Lloyd Garrison's The li'1erator, the leading abolitionist newspaper, and hard lo improve his diet began to speak on abolition and other black civil rights issues at gatherings in same time salting his sp1 African American churches in New Bedford. White abolitionist William Coffin from African-inHected st: heard him speak and invited him to attend a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society white southern proslavef) convention held on Nantucket Island in August 1841. Herc, at Corlin's urging, and resonant, as a flexible in with white abolitionists he much admired, preeminent among them William Lloyd tenderly moving, quiet to Garrison, on the platform, Douglass gave his first speech against slavery that ad­ From very early in his dressed a large, mixed audience: white and black men and women. His account of a platform persona that h his own sufferings in slavery was so powerful that he was hired on the spot as a paid careful attention to clot~ agent of the Society to speak against slavery around New England. He moved his leagues; his face betrayec family to Lynn, Massachusetts, and never worked on the docks again, making a liv­ with people of African d ing henceforth as an orator and later as a journalist. that emphasized its Afri1 Douglass's contact with the Boston-based abolition movement was intellectually background in virtually e formative for him. An especially strong influence was William Lloyd Garrison, conspicuously as a free m whose thinking so dominated the group that they were all known as Garrisonian received no formal educat abolitionists. The chief tenets of Garrison's philosophy were that slavery was an un­ a British audience - and Christian denial of the humanity of every person, that the United States Constitution archives in the allusions, and government were un-Christian and immoral for protecting slavery, and that By his very presence al slavery's opponents should have as little to do with this evil government as pos­ rhetoric, and his autobiog 1 sible, instead attempting to abolish slavery by persuading iL<;advocates that it was was well aware of this fac morally wrong. Garrison condemned not only violent resistance to slavery but also Ironically, as Douglass political approaches to containing it. Among Garrison's colleagues whom Douglass ences to doubt that he had met in these years, and most of whom remained his lifelong friends, were free black his own words-instead I leaders Charles Lenox Remand (Douglass would name a son after him) and pare his speeches. Douglm William C. Nell, and white abolitionists Wendell Phillips, Parker Pillsbury, Abby ing, in 1845, the Narrativ Kelley (Foster), and Amy Post. Writ1e11by Himself. Slave In the next several years, Douglass traveled all over the Northeast speaking " promoted by white aboliti1 against slavery, as far west as Indiana and as far south as New York City. He ad- readers not always above r wc....\-o dressed over one hundred meetings a year, sometimes facing violent opposition (his duced by writers who cot n,.v,~si\- right hand was broken in a brawl at a meeting in Indiana and never healed prop· make known their own ht b~I~ erly), and sometimes contending with internal quarrels in the abolition movement institution. This first versic ,A,.... $~ ......... itself. Garrison, although a paternal mentor to Douglass, brooked no deviation from concentrating on his life ir his own doctrines, and he and other while abolitionists apparently wanted little the· appearance on the speaker ~c~ i .e l.oe-.,,J.