The Least Lovable of the Abolitionists: The Challenges of Celebrity
Finsbury Chapel, London, England.
There was a curious ambivalence among American abolitionists towards Douglass’s British celebrity, one that reflected their attitudes towards the role of blacks in the antislavery movement as a whole. Of course, many were thrilled at Douglass’s success abroad, and assumed that his popularity could only benefit the antislavery cause. However, there were also a number of Garrisonians who questioned the blessings of Douglass’s celebrity. They assumed that without proper supervision, a black man would “get lost,” and worried that Douglass would succumb to the temptations of his new life. The AASS members charting Douglass’s progress back home were especially concerned that he would be lured away by the offers of rival antislavery groups. Douglass had suffered almost all manner of slander and defamation in his life as slave and antislavery agent, but he was particularly disturbed by these insinuations, probably because they came from his supposed friends and allies. The suggestions troubled him from the very start of his journey. Douglass correctly assumed that Buffum was meant to act as his chaperon, and was infuriated to hear his abolitionist colleagues in America suggest that Buffum handle his financial affairs, as if Douglass could not be trusted with his own purse.[78] The apprehensions of the Boston Clique were supported by what Lawrence Friedman calls their “ethnocentric missionary perspective,” which led them to view Douglass as something of a child, and called for constant vigilance in protecting him from his more ‘savage’ impulses.[79] This fear was also fed by the reports from his hosts in Britain; though he knew Douglass as a formidable opponent in their verbal sparring over details of the Narrative’s publication, Webb refused to recognize Douglass’s ability to fend for himself in his new environment. As Webb wrote to Phillips, “It would be a thousand pities that he [Douglass] should go astray—and I think he has not enough to know the side that is best and [?] credible to himself.”[80]
In a misguided and impolitic effort to prevent that fall, in March 1846 Webb showed Douglass a letter from Chapman that expressed the need to supervise Douglass lest he place his own interests before those of the antislavery cause.[81] Douglass was furious; he understood that Buffum was not subjected to a similar scrutiny. Writing back directly to Chapman, he declared, “If you wish to drive me from the Antislavery Society, put me under overseership and the work is done. Ask some one to watch over me—for evil—and let them be so simple minded as to inform me of this office, and the last blow is struck.”[82] Douglass did not necessarily object to accepting advice, generously offered, and in his letter to Chapman he called attention to Wendell Phillips as an example of a friend who was able to instruct without condescension. More than anything it was the implicit racism, the denial of Douglass’s own self-sufficiency, and in a sense, his manhood, that insulted him. As Isabel Jennings explained to Chapman, Douglass “could bear to have fault found with him if it was not taken for granted he must be wrong.”[83]
Webb took Douglass’s indignant response to Chapman’s letter as a sign of what he considered to be Douglass’s increasingly belligerent and independent spirit. Though Webb never doubted Douglass’s talents or effectiveness as an antislavery agent, as he squared off with Douglass in countless battles, he began to find his opponent haughty, supercilious, hypersensitive, and ungrateful. Webb originally attributed Douglass’s “insolence” and “headiness” to the “flattery and petting” he received in Ireland and assumed that it would disappear once the initial sensation of his visit subsided.[84] However, as Douglass’s celebrity remained intact, and his independent spirit showed no sign of waning, Webb decided that Douglass’s irritability was the symptom of an inherently flawed character. He wrote to Chapman, defending his actions and lambasting Douglass:
In all my experience of men I have never known one not insane so able and willing as he is, to magnify the smallest cause of discomfort or wounded self-esteem into insurmountable hills (?) of offense and dissatisfaction. He is in my opinion by much the least lovable and the least easy of all the abolitionists with whom I have come into intimate association. I think his selfishness intense, his affections weak…[85]
Webb’s worst fears were confirmed when Douglass agreed to speak at an annual meeting in London May 1846 of the rival, anti-Garrisonian BFASS.[86] Webb saw Douglass’s acceptance of the invitation as an indication that he was indeed susceptible to “pampering,” particularly from the founder of the BFASS, the Birmingham Quaker Joseph Sturge.[87] Douglass defended his decision to speak there, denying that he was carried away by “money temptations,” and insisting, “I will speak in any meeting where freedom of speech is allowed and where I may do any thing toward exposing the bloody system of slavery.”[88] He had no regrets and would offer no apologies. He was doing his job as an antislavery advocate, and resented these sly indictments of his conduct.
Douglass, as if trapped in the confines of a conventional slave narrative, was probably too quick to perceive persecution and condescension. But Webb was himself notorious for being overbearing and judgmental,[89] and though Douglass might have been too sensitive, and even a bit haughty, he had no intention of yielding to temptation or alienating himself from his Garrisonian colleagues. Moreover, though Douglass did oppose the sectarian impulses and paternalistic inclinations of his Garrisonian hosts, he did not reject their fellowship. Douglass was willing to adopt subordinate and deferential attitudes to the abolitionist elders whom he respected,[90] and even wrote a conciliatory letter to Chapman, firmly maintaining his innocence, but stressing his reluctance to disturb their friendship. “And if anything escaped my pen which seemed to look that way,” he wrote with a tone far from belligerent, “I hesitate not to confess my sorrow for it. Continue, I beseech you, to regard me as your friend, for so I am and so I wish to be and so I mean to be.”[91]
Additionally, Douglass frequently reminded Webb and Chapman that despite his willingness to speak before any audience willing to listen, he was firmly and unequivocally an ‘old organization’ Garrisonian.[92] At no point in Douglass’s trip was he given greater opportunity to express his fidelity to Garrisonianism than when he toured with Garrison himself at the end of 1846. Garrison arrived in Britain at a time when Garrisonianism (in the words of John Estlin) was “at a discount,” and Garrison hoped that his visit, and the establishment of the Anti-Slavery League, would help to revive it.[93] Traveling with Douglass, Garrison at times found himself before crowds resistant to his abolitionist principles, and in an inversion of conventional racial roles, it was Douglass who had to come to Garrison’s defense, reminding audiences of Garrison’s unparalleled commitment to the antislavery cause. Whereas in 1845 Garrison had been responsible for introducing Douglass to the nation, composing the preface to his Narrative, only a year later it was Douglass who justified Garrison’s right to speak before a British audience. Addressing a sympathetic crowd in Leeds, Douglass asked “Who is William Lloyd Garrison?” and then answered, “He it is who for 16 years through evil report and good report, has bourne aloft the banner of emancipation, never flinching, never quailing amidst the frowns of the powerful, nor the peltings, insults, outrages and violence of the United States’ mobs.” He then reminded the audience, with a not-so-subtle nudge to Chapman and Webb, “I love the abolitionists of England; but they ask me too much when they desire me to step from the side of Garrison.”[94] (SOURCE)
Footnotes
[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).