Footnotes

Benjamin Soskis graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in History in 1998. He wishes to thank Professor David Brion Davis and Professor John Stauffer for their encouragement, guidance and friendship, and Professor John McKivigan and Sean Adams at West Virginia University for all their assistance.

[1] Philip Foner (ed.), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (6 vols; New York: International Publishers, 1950-1978), I:231 (March 30, 1847) (SOURCE); Foner, Frederick Douglass : A Biography (New York: Citadel Press, 1964), 73.

[2] Douglass was uncertain about many of the facts of his early life, and spent considerable effort trying to recover what he could of his unrecorded slave past. As he wrote in his Narrative (1845), “A want of information concerning my own [birth-date] was a source of unhappiness to me even in childhood (21).” See also Peter Walker, Moral Choices: Memory, Desire, and Imagination in Nineteenth-Century American Abolition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 209-228. Modern historians are more fortunate in the information available to them; Dickson Preston has painstakingly researched much of Douglass’s early life in Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).

[3] William McFeely, Frederick Douglass (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), 24.

[4] Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), reprint (Ebony Classics, Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1970), 115; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 58-59.

[5] Though the name was actually suggested to Douglass by his host, Nathan Johnson, scholars have pointed to the name change as a symbolic embrace of his new identity as a freeman. See Walker, Moral Choices, 255-256; George Shepperson, “Frederick Douglass and Scotland,” Journal of Negro History 38 (July 1953), 307.

[6] On the boat traveling from New Bedford to Nantucket, Douglass joined in a protest over segregation onboard. It is possible that the symbolic potency of the Cambria incident for Douglass was due in some part to its resonance with this original protest experience. See Walker, Moral Choices, 241; Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (New York: Atheneum, 1968), 13; Waldo Martin, The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 21.

[7] Cited in McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 88.

[8] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 109-112. See also Douglass’s letter from Scotland to William White, a fellow antislavery lecturer who came to his aid in Pendleton, in Philip Foner, Life and Writings , I:181. (SOURCE)

[9] John Blassingame, introduction to The Frederick Douglass Papers; Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), xlvii.

[10] Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), 282; Blassingame, I:38 (October 14, 1845). As late as 1846, nearly a year after the publication of Douglass’s Narrative and six months into his trip overseas, a Scottish minister had to convince an audience that Douglass was “not an impostor.” Blassingame et al eds., The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:195 (March 24, 1846) (SOURCE) .

[11] Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 55; Douglas Lorimer, Colour Class and the Victorians (New York: Leicester University Press, 1978), 46; R.J.M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press: 1983), 26.

[12] Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 35; Foner, Frederick Douglass, 430n.

[13] Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 38; Blassingame, The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:38n. Buffum, a carpenter, contractor, real-estate speculator and financier, had become vice-president of the MASS mostly through his financial contributions. He would eventually become mayor of Lynn and serve in the Massachusetts legislature. Though Buffum was initially selected to keep an eye on Douglass, it was soon apparent that Douglass’s independent spirit and obvious intellectual superiority would complicate that relationship. See McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 121.

[14] Blassingame, The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:63 (October 23, 1845) (SOURCE).

[15] Frederick Douglass to “My Dear Friend [Richard Webb],” January 20, 1846 (photostat), Frederick Douglass Papers, West Virginia University; Frederick Douglass to Maria Weston Chapman, March 29, 1846, Weston Sisters Papers, Boston Public Library; Blassingame, The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:63n.

[16] Letter to the Boston Times, quoted in the Liberator, October 3, 1845.

[17] Blassingame, The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:142 (January 15,1846) (SOURCE), I:63-67 (October 23, 1845) (SOURCE), I:82-85 (November 10, 1845) (SOURCE).

[18] My Bondage and My Freedom, 286; Foner, Life and Writings, I:124 (SOURCE); Blassingame, “Introduction to The Frederick Douglass Papers, liii.

[19] Eric Sundquist, “Introduction,” in Sundquist (ed.), Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 6-8 and Wilson Moses, “Writing Freely? Frederick Douglass and the Constraints of Racialized Writing,” in the same book, 70. See also Walker, Moral Choices, 212-214.

[20] Douglass, Narrative of Frederick Douglass (1845), reprint (New York,: Signet, 1968), 77.

[21] ibid, 76.

[22] So for instance, while in Ireland Douglass concentrated much of his narrative on an Irish passenger “of gigantic size” named Mr. Gough, (SOURCE) who defended Douglass against the “pro-slavery, cadaverous, lantern-jawed Americans (Blassingame, The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:139) (SOURCE).” For more regional adaptations, see Blassingame I:84 and I:91.

[23] Foner, Life and Writings, I:127 (January 1, 1846) (SOURCE).

[24] Blassingame, The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:68n (October 23, 1845) (SOURCE); II:46 (March 30, 1847); Sundquist, “Introduction,” 12. See also (SOURCE)

[25] “The Heroic Slave,” Douglass’s only novella, was published in 1853, and was inspired by the mutiny aboard the Creole. Robert Stepto has pointed out other parallels between the two men’s lives that might have attracted Douglass to Washington’s story. Both men began their escape attempts in 1835, and achieved a public recognition of their liberation in the fall of 1841. Additionally, Douglass originally escaped from Baltimore in the disguise of a sailor; Washington would become “a truer and more heroic sailor” through his mutiny. See Robert Stepto, “Storytelling in Early Afro-American Fiction: Frederick Douglass’s ‘The Heroic Slave,’ Georgia Review 36:2, 359.

[26] After the slaves reached Nassau, the British jailed the mutineers and freed the other slaves. The American government demanded either the return of the mutineers or reparations, and the ensuing negotiations between America and Britain exacerbated the tensions between the two nations over border disputes and nearly drove them to war. The mutineers were freed in 1842, and in 1855, a Anglo-American claims commission awarded the American owners of the freed slaves $110,330.

[27] Cited in Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 4. See also Lawrence Friedman, Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, 1830-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),172-173.

[28] For an extended discussion of the American antislavery celebration of August 1, see Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 116-129.

[29] See Bernard DeVoto, The Year of Decision 1846 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942); Howard Temperly, British Antislavery 1833-1870 (London: Longman, 1972) 197-206.

[30] Foner, Life and Writings, I:146 (April 15, 1846)(SOURCE); Temperly, British Antislavery, 206.

[31] Blassingame, The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:262 (May 19, 1846) (SOURCE). See also Blassingame I:125 (January 2, 1846) (SOURCE), I:221 (April 17, 1846) (SOURCE), for other examples of Douglass’s repudiation of violence.

[32]Blassingame, The Frederick Douglass Papers, I:187 (March 19, 1846) (SOURCE). For a striking expression of Douglass’s ambivalence toward violence, see his letter to Francis Jackson (January 29, 1846, Anti-Slavery Collection, Boston Public Library) (SOURCE). By 1847, after he encountered the fiery and persuasive John Brown, Douglass began to question the infallibility of Garrisonian nonresistance. By 1849, he fully embraced the right of slaves to use violence in overthrowing slavery.

[33] Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 7-8; Temperly, British Antislavery, 194.

[34] Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 12-13; Temperly, British Antislavery, 25-29; Douglas Riach, “Richard Davis Webb and Antislavery in Ireland,” in Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (eds.), Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspective on the Abolitionists (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 150.

[35] Temperly, British Antislavery, 195, 209.

[36] Douglass directly attributed much of the antislavery interest in Cork to Remond’s visit there in 1841. He wrote to Garrison, “He [Remond] is spoken of here in terms of high approbation; and his name is held in affectionate remembrance by many whose hearts were warmed into life on this question by his soul-stirring eloquence.” Frederick Douglass to W.L. Garrison, October 28, 1845 [photostat], Frederick Douglass Papers, West Virginia University. See also Shepperson, “Frederick Douglass and Scotland,” Journal of Negro History 38 (July 1953), 308 for a brief but thorough discussion of black visitors to Scotland.

[37] Lorimer, Colour, 46; Jane Pease and William Pease, They who would be free: Blacks’ search for Freedom, 1830-1861 (New York: Atheneum, 1974), 50.

[38] Foner, Life and Writings, I:126 (January 1, 1846) (SOURCE).

[39] Webb, born into a comfortable Irish Quaker family, was a founding member of the Hibernian Anti-slavery Society and a major supporter of Garrisonianism in Britain. For background on Webb, see Douglas Riach’s essay, “Richard Davis Webb and Antislavery in Ireland,” in Antislavery Reconsidered.

[40] Frederick Douglass to W.L. Garrison, September 16, 1845, Frederick Douglass Papers (photostat), WVU; Richard Webb to Maria Weston Chapman, September 16, 1845, Chapman Sisters Papers, BPL. By May 16, in a letter to Maria Weston Chapman, Webb would write, “Frederick Douglass was a very short time in my house before I found him absurdly haughty, self-possessed and prone to take offense (Weston Sisters Papers, BPL).” Webb’s most immediate problem was Douglass’s treatment of Buffum, which Webb considered inappropriately condescending and insolent (McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 121). But their conflict was more fundamentally a struggle for power, with Webb insisting that Douglass accept his supervision and instruction, and Douglass resisting those efforts.

[41] Frederick Douglass to [Richard Webb], January 1, 1846, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 39.

[42] Isabel Jennings to Maria Weston Chapman, November 18, 1845, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL. See also F.S. Beale to Chapman, November 24, 1845, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL.

[43] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:372 (September 1, 1846) (SOURCE). Dundee Courier, February 3, 1846 (SOURCE). Clare Taylor, British and American Abolitionists: An Episode in Transatlantic Understanding (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1974), 282. For more responses, see also Gerald Fulkerson, “Exile as Emergence: Frederick Douglass in Great Britain, 1845-1847,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 60 (February 1974), 72.

[44] Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 168.

[45] Lorimer, Colour, 152. For an example of an escaped slave who did not conform to Victorian conventions of respectability, note the reception of Henry “Box” Brown. Brown escaped from slavery by hiding in a box and shipping himself north, and “recreated” his escape by appearing out of a box on stage. He was lambasted by most of the British press; one paper described him as a “bejewelled darkie.” Another ridiculed his “ludicrous and semi-baboonish agility.” Strangely enough, another paper reported that Brown actually spoke quite correctly, and behaved appropriately (Lorimer, Colour, 53). It is also important to note the example of William Allen, a highly educated editor and professor who escaped to Britain in 1853 after marrying one of his white students. Though Allen was articulate, he lacked Douglass’s stage presence, and made his living as a tutor, not as an orator. Thus, we can assume that both Douglass’s respectability and theatricality were essential to his success (Pease and Pease, They who would be free, 66.)

[46] Cork Examiner, October 15, 1845. (SOURCE)

[47] Frederick Douglass to [William Garrison], January 1, 1846, Foner, Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, I:125 (SOURCE).

[48] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:201 (March 24, 1846) (SOURCE).

[49] For background information, see C. Duncan Rice, The Scots Abolitionists 1833-1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 127-136.

[50] Fulkerson, “Exile as Emergence,” 74. This was, however, a small amount of the entire total raised, around �334,000. It is also interesting to note that on the way back, the Free Church delegation also protested segregation on board a ship, and that the captain was probably the same man—Charles Judkins—who defended Douglass during the Cambria incident. If he was aware of it, Douglass did not note this irony. This striking coincidence was noted by Alasdair Pettinger in an essay “ ‘Send Back the Money’: Douglass and Racial Equality” presented at the David Bruce Centre for American Studies at Keele University in September 1995. The essay is in the collection of the Frederick Douglass Papers at West Virginia University.

[51] Frederick Douglass to Webb, November 10, 1845, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL.

[52] Foner, Life and Writings, I:136 (January 29, 1846) (SOURCE).

[53] See for example Douglass’s refutation of Chalmers’ “Doctrine of Circumstance”—which makes the distinction “between the character of a system and the character of the person whom circumstances have implicated therewith”—in Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:162 (February 12, 1846) (SOURCE).

[54] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:242-243 (May 1, 1846) (SOURCE).

[55] Foner, I:137 (February 10, 1846) (SOURCE). For a selection of Scottish folk songs on Douglass, see Shepperson, “Frederick Douglass and Scotland,” 315. The embrace of Douglass’s image into popular culture was not necessarily positive; see, for instance, Rice, The Scots Abolitionists, 145 for parodies of Douglass in song. Douglass’s slogan, though catchy, was also easily appropriated by his opponents. In Belfast, a city with a substantial Presbyterian population that sympathized with the Free Church, posters were found proclaiming, “Send Back the Nigger!” Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding , 273; Rice, The Scots Abolitionists, 132.

[56] Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding , 247.

[57] Frederick Douglass to Francis Jackson, January 19, 1846, Anti-Slavery Collection, Boston Public Library. (SOURCE)

[58] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 135. See also Rice, The Scots Abolitionists, 137 for another pessimistic assessment of Douglass’s efforts.

[59] The resolution actually barred all slaveholders except those who were in “difficult circumstances,” revealing a popularly held misconception that many Americans held slaves only because it was too difficult and dangerous to free them. Douglass devoted several lectures to disabusing his audiences of that belief. See Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, II:36n; I:411 (September 14, 1846) (SOURCE); II:41 (March 30, 1847) (SOURCE).

[60] Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 294.

[61] ibid, 284.

[62] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:414 (September 14, 1846) (SOURCE).

[63] ibid, I:422n.

[64] Foner, Frederick Douglass, 66.

[65] Freeman’s Journal, September 29m 1845; Foner, Life and Writings, I:120-122 (September 29, 1845); Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:44n.

[66] Foner, Life and Writings, I:138 (February 26, 1846) (SOURCE).

[67] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 124. Before a Paisley audience, Douglass claimed that nine-tenths of Scotland’s “crime, misery, disease, and death” were “occasioned by intemperance.” Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:209 (March 30, 1846) (SOURCE).

[68] Frederick Douglass to “My Dear Friend Garrison,” October 28, 1845 (photostat), WVU; Frederick Douglass to “My Dear Friend Garrison,” September 16, 1845 (photostat), WVU.

[69] Foner, Life and Writings, I:120 (September 29, 1845) (SOURCE).

[70] Blassingame, I:166-170 (February 18, 1846) (SOURCE). See also Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 85.

[71] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:209 (SOURCE).

[72] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:58. (SOURCE)

[73] Frederick Douglass to “Dear Friend” [Richard Webb], November 10, 1845, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL.

[74] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 140; Pease and Pease, They who would be Free, 57.

[75] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:135 (January 15, 1846) (SOURCE). See also Blassingame I:78 (SOURCE), I:183 (SOURCE). I suspect that Douglass’s insistence that intemperance was the cause of Irish poverty was linked to this need to distinguish the Irish poor from black slaves, degraded through no fault of their own. This would also explain why he was resistant to recognize the importance of the potato blight in causing urban poverty. McFeely mistakenly locates an occasion of Douglass equating wage and chattel slavery in his speech of August 25, 1846, but what he takes to be Douglass’s own comments were really his references to a recent editorial. See McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 141 and Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:343-344. (SOURCE)

[76] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 126.

[77] However, if Douglass did not explicitly embrace the causes of the working class, the working class, whether out of sympathy or curiosity, did at least embrace him. As often as accounts of Douglass’s speeches refer to the “respectably dressed females” in attendance, they just as frequently mention the presence of members of the working class in the audience. They might have been attracted to Douglass’s comic flair, his talents for mimicry, or his impressive physical stature. But very possibly, the working classes perceived an unspoken affinity and an inherent sympathy in the figure of Douglass that they found encouraging, and that might have taken the place of an explicit statement of programmatic solidarity. See Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 19; Riach, “Richard Davis Webb,” 152. For examples and analysis of Douglass’s mimicry, see Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:43 (SOURCE); I:151-154 (SOURCE); I:360 (SOURCE) and Blassingame, “Introduction,” xxxii. Douglass’s most popular mimic routine was his parody of a proslavery preacher, delivering a sermon entitled, “Slaves, Obey your masters.” For examples of the working class appreciation of Douglass’s imposing size, see Shepperson, 314; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 132.

[78] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 121. Chapman reasoned that Buffum, richer than Douglass, was less likely to be tempted by money. Douglass, however, assumed Chapman was thinking more along racial lines.

[79] Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 190-191. For a more general discussion of contemporary attitudes toward blacks, see George Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny 1817-1914 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), chapter 2.

[80] Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 283. In a letter to Chapman, Webb even went so far as to call Douglass “a reclaimed wild beast.” There is no known record of a Clique member reprimanding Webb for that remark. Cited in Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 191.

[81] Taylor, 260. Compare these criticisms to the general concerns of white abolitionists that their black colleagues let self-interest and the “tawdry goals” of material uplift distract them from their dedication to strict antislavery principle. Pease and Pease, They who would be Free, 14.

[82] Frederick Douglass to Maria Weston Chapman, March 29, 1846, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL.

[83] Cited in Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 110.

[84] Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 254.

[85] Richard Webb to Chapman, May 16, 1846, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL; Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 259.

[86] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:249 (May 18, 1846) (SOURCE).

[87] Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 272. Webb called Sturge “snuffling, secretive, bigoted and destitute of magnanimity” but somehow also “benevolent & munificent.” Webb also suggested that if Sturge knew Douglass’s as fully as he himself did, “he would not touch him with a pair of tongs.”

[88] Frederick Douglass to “My Dear Ms. Chapman,” August 18, 1846, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL.

[89] Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 110. Webb also offered judgments of Remond similar to his critiques of Douglass, claiming the former “behaved very often like a spoiled child (Blackett, 79).” Douglas Riach, in his essay on Webb and Irish Antislavery, suggests that Webb’s “persistent maliciousness towards Frederick Douglass,” and his attempts to check his independence stemmed partly from his desire to win the favor of American abolitionists (Riach, “Richard Davis Webb,” 160).

[90] See Douglass’s letter of April 28, 1846 to Wendell Phillips, in which Douglass claims that he has difficulty writing to Phillips because of his feelings of inferiority. “Do not scold me for this for I tell you the truth when I say that I have for you such grateful regard and admiration that I cannot bring myself to approach you familiarly.” (photostat, Frederick Douglass Papers, West Virginia University).

[91] Frederick Douglass to MW Chapman, August 18, 1846, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL.

[92] Frederick Douglass to Chapman, March 29, 1846, Weston Sisters Papers, BPL.

[93] Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 241.

[94] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:484 (December 23, 1846) (SOURCE).

[95] Cited in Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 184.

[96] Cited in Foner, Frederick Douglass, 62.

[97] Cited in Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, “Introduction,” lv.

[98] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, II:5 (February 2, 1847) (SOURCE).

[99] Cited in Fulkerson, “Exile as Emergence,” 72.

[100] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:36 (October 1, 1845) (SOURCE).

[101] Douglass, My Bondage, My Freedom, 281; Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 188. These beliefs resurfaced in the resistance to Douglass’s role as an editor, with the establishment of The North Star in 1847.

[102] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, “Introduction,” xlviii-lii.

[103] Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 95; Pease and Pease, They who would be Free, 50; Fulkerson, “Exile as Emergence,” 74.

[104] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:35 (October 1, 1845) (SOURCE), I:42 (October 14, 1845) (SOURCE), I:86 (November 10, 1845) (SOURCE), I:401 (SOURCE).

[105] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:274 [May 22, 1846] (SOURCE).

[106] ibid, I:180 (March 10, 1846). See also, I:193. (SOURCE)

[107] ibid, I:255 (May 18, 1846) (SOURCE).

[108] ibid, I:295 (May 22, 1846) (SOURCE).

[109] Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 5; Moses, “Writing Freely?,” 74; Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:400 [September 11, 1846] (SOURCE). The special treatment Douglass received was probably due to the fact that his father was white, and most likely his master, Thomas Auld. See McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 13.

[110] Walker, Moral Choices, 224; Moses, “Writing Freely?,” 69-73.

[111] Stepto, “Storytelling,” 358.

[112] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:375 (September 1, 1846) (SOURCE).

[113] Foner, Life and Writings, I:133 (January 27, 1846) (SOURCE).

[114] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 136.

[115] Foner, Life and Writings, 126 (January 1, 1846) (SOURCE); Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:222 (April 17, 1846) (SOURCE).

[116] Foner, Life and Writings, I:169 (May 23, 1846) (SOURCE). Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:269-299. (SOURCE)

[117] Frederick Douglass to “My Own Dear Sister Harriet,” July 1846 [photostat], Frederick Douglass Papers, WVU.

[118] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:416 (September 14, 1846) (SOURCE); Foner, Life and Writings, I:126 (January 1, 1846) (SOURCE); I:181 (July 23, 1846) (SOURCE). See also Russ Castronovo, “As to Nation, I Belong to None: Ambivalence, Diaspora, and Frederick Douglass,” American Transcendental Quarterly 9:3 (September 1995) for a discussion of Douglass’s perception of exile and nationality.

[119] Foner, Life and Writings, I:149 (April 6, 1846) (SOURCE). See also Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:125 (January 2, 1846) (SOURCE).

[120] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, II:60 (May 11, 1847) (SOURCE).

[121] Frederick Douglass to “My Dear Harriet [Baily],” August 18, 1846 [photostat], Frederick Douglass Papers, WVU.

[122]See letters from Isabel Jennings, Mary Ireland, Frances Armstrong, Mary Estlin, and Jane Carr in Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 243-300. See also, Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), September 10, 1845.

[123] Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 305. Webb repeated almost the same fear about Douglass to Chapman, cited in Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 112.

[124] Henry Louis Gates Jr., “A Dangerous Literacy: The Legacy of Frederick Douglass.” The New York Times Book Review, May 28, 1995, p.16; Terry Pickett, “The Friendship of Frederick Douglass with the German, Ottilie Assing.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 73:1 (Spring 1989), 97. For a very different image of Anna Douglass, see the essay by her daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague, “Anna Murray-Douglass—My Mother as I Recall Her.” Journal of Negro History 8 (January 1923). Rosetta presents her mother as an intelligent, if uneducated, domestic executive, whose loyalty and hard work were a silent and essential element of Douglass’s successful career.

[125] While Douglass was speaking in Belfast, a rumor circulated that he was seen walking out of a Manchester brothel; Douglass was furious and charged the Free Church minister he suspected was behind the rumor with libel. Douglass eventually extracted an apology from a Rev. Thomas Smyth, but the tactic of preying upon Douglass’s sexuality would be a constant and effective weapon in the arsenal of his antagonists. Many of these attacks focused on Douglass’s controversial relationship with Julia Griffiths, a close friend whom Douglass met in Britain. Griffiths came to Rochester in 1849 in order to help Douglass edit and handle the finances of his antislavery newspaper, The North Star. She stayed for a while in his home, and her presence caused something of a scandal in the abolitionist community. Many assumed that Griffiths’ relationship with Douglass was romantic as well as professional. Douglass denied this and was deeply saddened by the charges. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 85. See letter from Thomas Smyth to ‘Gentlemen’ (July 28, 1846) apologizing for the slander, Frederick Douglass Papers, General Correspondence, Library of Congress; Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 273. Foner, Frederick Douglass, 87-90; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 163-170.

[126]Recent feminist studies of Douglass’s Narrative have demonstrated the extent to which Douglass uses the feminine as a “synecdoche” for slavery. In her essay “The Punishment of Esther: Frederick Douglass and the Construction of the Feminine,” in Sundquist (ed.) Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, Jenny Franchot suggests that Douglass feminizes slavery so that he can rhetorically “master the subject.” Another possibility is that slavery was feminized in Douglass’s mind by its connection to the dark, illiterate Anna, and through the vague but powerful image of his (literate) slave mother.

[127] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:270 (May 22, 1846) (SOURCE). Blassingame locates these self-deprecatory introductions in the conventions of Victorian rhetoric, but I maintain that they had a special meaning for Douglass as a rhetorical reenactment of his progression from bondage to freedom.

[128] Frederick Douglass to “My own Dear sister Harriet [Baily],” May 16, 1846 [photostat], Frederick Douglass Papers, WVU.

[129] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:134 (January 15, 1846) (SOURCE). See also Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, II:23 (March 30, 1847). (SOURCE)

[130] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 137, 143; Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, I:482n. See also Bill of Sale, November 30, 1846, and deed of manumission, December 12, 1846, in Frederick Douglass Collection, Reel One, Library of Congress.

[131] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, II:43 (March 30, 1847) (SOURCE). Douglass was not the only escaped slave to grapple with this issue. William Wells Brown and James Pennington also raised enough money during their travels in Britain to buy their freedom. Pease and Pease, They who would be Free, 62.

[132] Cited in Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 52. See Aileen Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 220-221 for more examples of opposition.

[133] Kraditor, Means and Ends, 222. See also Garrison’s letter to Elizabeth Pease, April 1, 1847 (SOURCE), in Walter Merrill (ed.), The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, Volume III: No Union With Slaveholders 1841-1849 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 476.

[134] See for instance the reaction of M. Welsh and the Edinburgh Ladies Antislavery Association in Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 300, or that of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in Kraditor, Means and Ends, 220.

[135] Henry Wright to Frederick Douglass, December 12, 1846 [photostat], Frederick Douglass Papers, WVU. Wright seems here to contradict his statement to Phillips in 1844, rejecting the importance of sympathy for an antislavery agent.

[136] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, II:28 (March 30, 1847) (SOURCE).

[137] ibid, I:188 (March 19, 1846) (SOURCE); I:346, 357, 374.

[138] Foner, Life and Writings, 1:200 (December 22, 1846) (SOURCE).

[139] Foner, Life and Writings, I:206 (December 22, 1846) (SOURCE).

[140] Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 190.

[141] Walker, Moral Choices, 245. See McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 147 for a letter in which Quincy calls Douglass an “unconscionable nigger.”

[142] Frederick Douglass to my Dear Friend [Amy Post], April 28, 1846 [photostat], Frederick Douglass Papers, WVU. See also My Bondage and My Freedom, 312.

[143] Frederick Douglass to Francis Jackson, January 29, 1846, Anti-slavery Collection, BPL (SOURCE).

[144] Cork Examiner, October 15 1845. (SOURCE) Not all abolitionists considered Douglass’s white blood a blessing. The daughter of Thomas Clarkson, the British abolitionist patriarch, upon first meeting Douglass, wrote: “What an extraordinary man Douglass must be! I wish he were full blood black for I fear your pro-slavery people will attribute his pre-eminent abilities to the white blood that is in his veins.” Taylor, Transatlantic Understanding, 275.

[145] Cited in Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 35.

[146] Walker, Moral Choices, 246, 254-257; Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass, 3-4. Douglass grapples with his paternity, and thus, with his racial identity, in the fascinating “Letter to My Old Master, Thomas Auld.” (SOURCE) The letter was published in the September 1848 edition of The Liberator, and was written to mark the tenth anniversary of Douglass’s escape from slavery. But in the original edition of My Bondage and My Freedom, published in 1855, a footnote asserts that the letter was actually composed while Douglass was in Britain. Whether or not this was the case, the letter certainly reflects the themes which while in Britain defined Douglass’s internal struggles. In the letter, Douglass points to his growth since his slave life, and writes of his experiences with slavery through the self-conscious lens of his recent celebrity. He also deliberately presents an inaccurate account of Auld’s treatment of slaves, for which he latter apologized. Though he states, “I entertain no malice toward you personally,” he insists on turning Auld into an antislavery “weapon (336),” depersonalizing Auld as he was himself depersonalized, both as a slave, and as an antislavery orator. The letter is a bizarre, moving, and unforgettable document of the tensions within Douglass’s identity. It deserves far more scholarly study than it had received. Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass, 6; My Bondage and My Freedom, (330-336).

[147] Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, II:4 (February 2, 1847) (SOURCE).

[148] On March 4th Douglass ordered a return ticket on the Cambria , and was told that he would not be restricted to any part of the ship as he had been in his previous trip. But when Douglass’s attempted to board the ship in the beginning of April, he was told that his place had been given to a white passenger, and that he would not be able to eat his meals or mix socially with the first-class passengers. Douglass once again complied, but wrote several angry letters to British publications, and caused such a public uproar, that eventually he received a public apology from the owner of the ships, Mr. Cunard. Foner, Life and Writings, I:233 (April 3, 1847) (SOURCE); Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 54.

[149] Foner, Life and Writings, V:52 (April 29, 1847); Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 57; Fulkerson, “Exile as Emergence,” 82.

[150]Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, II:60 (May 11, 1847) (SOURCE)1088.htm.

[151] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 148.

[152] Cited in Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 58; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 147 .

[153] Foner, Frederick Douglass, 77. According to Benjamin Quarles, there were 17 “Negro newspapers” published before the Civil War, and without exception, all “operated at a loss.” Four were in existence when Douglass decided to add his own to the list in 1847. The reasons for their unprofitability were varied. Chiefly, many of the poor black subscribers were unable to pay the subscription fees they pledged, and editors rarely had any backup capital. See Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 86-89.

[154] Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 305.

[155] Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 189-190.

[156] Cited in Robert Levine, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Representative Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 18.

[157] Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 49. Friedman discusses the extent to which Garrison did indeed consider his abolitionist circle as a type of family, and suggests that it was the “loyalty, allegiance, and intense emotional warmth” toward Garrison that was the “fundamental source of Clique cohesiveness.”

[158] Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 59-67. New Lyme was an overwhelming success, while the crowd at Harrisburg turned rowdy, pelting Garrison and Douglass with stones and rotten eggs.

[159] Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 68.

[160] Merrill, Letters of Garrison, III:532 (October 20, 1847) (SOURCE); Foner, Frederick Douglass, 81; Tyrone Tillery, “The Inevitability of the Douglass-Garrison Conflict,” Phylon 37:2 (June 76): 143.

[161] Several scholars have classified this difference as one between Garrison’s dedication to radicalism and resilient absolutism versus Douglass’s pragmatism and willingness to compromise. See Tillery, “The Inevitability of the Douglass-Garrison Conflict; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 74-75.

[162] Cited in Foner, Frederick Douglass, 76. See also “Our Paper and its Prospects,” from the first issue of The North Star, reprinted in Foner, Life and Writings, I:280 (SOURCE).

[163] Merrill, Letters of Garrison, III:533 (October 20, 1847) (SOURCE). The relationship between Garrison and Douglass deteriorated, especially after Douglass’s defection to political antislavery. By 1857, Garrison would call Douglass “one of the malignant enemies of mine” and in a sad measure of how much had changed, refused to go to England in 1860 because he knew that Douglass was already there. The two probably did not speak to each other after 1851. Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 78.

[164] Foner, Frederick Douglass, 83, Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 71.

[165] Stepto, Storytelling, 356. As with his original exile, the casualty in his departure was Anna, forced to move once again to a strange and alien place. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 154.

[166] Gregory Garvey, “Frederick Douglass’s Change of Opinion on the U.S. Constitution: Abolitionism and the ‘Elements of Moral Power’,” American Transcendental Quarterly 9:3 (September 1995), 234-236. In My Bondage and my Freedom Douglass asserted that “But for the responsibility of conducting a public journal, and the necessity imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists in this state, I should in all probability have remained as firm in my disunion views as any other disciple of William Lloyd Garrison (308).”

[167] Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 308.

[168] Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 188; Pease and Pease, “Antislavery Ambivalence,” 686.

[169] Cited in Foner, Frederick Douglass, 94. Friedman, Gregarious Saints, 193.

[170] Merrill, Letters of Garrison, III:510 (August 16, 1847) (SOURCE). It seems likely that Douglass secretly recruited Delany for his paper when they met during his Western tour, without Garrison’s knowledge. The two men decided that Delany should concentrate on expanding the paper’s reader base, traveling throughout the western country and sending back accounts of his experiences. Delany remained an editor until June 1849. In his important book, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Representative Identity, Robert Levine attempts to demonstrate the importance of Delany’s participation, “obscured by Douglass and by biographers sympathetic to Douglass.” Levine, Martin Delany, 20. It is interesting however, to note that after his falling out with Garrison, Douglass’s relationships with other black abolitionists, like Robert Purvis, Charles Remond, and William Wells Brown, significantly deteriorated. A paper whose purpose was to unify American blacks around the image of their own self-sufficiency sadly failed to unite the black abolitionist community itself. Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 77.

[171] For all his expectations, Douglass was soon disappointed by the response of the black population to The North Star. By May 1848 the newspaper had five times as many white subscribers as black. Douglass attributed their “negative interest” “to the long night of ignorance which has overshadowed and subdued their spirit.” Cited in Foner, Frederick Douglass, 86.

[172] McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 150.

[173] Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 76. More problematic was the charge that Douglass was swayed by Smith’s financial support to cater to his political demands. However, an examination of the correspondence between Smith and Douglass reveals that their relationship was based more on a mutual appreciation than on financial patronage (though Smith did heavily finance the paper). McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 151.

[174] Foner, Life and Writings, V:186 (June 4, 1851) (SOURCE).