A Final Escape
by Haydelle Carper
Background
When abolitionist Frederick Douglass was born in 1818, slavery was still legal in half of the United States. Douglass himself was born enslaved, and he tried to free himself multiple times before escaping permanently.
According to the paperwork he carried with him, Frederick Douglass was officially employed as a sailor, as entitled or having the right to buy a train ticket as any emancipated man—but as he stood on the train platform that fateful day in 1838, his heart pounded in his chest. He looked around worriedly, anxious and overwhelmed by the multitude of people surrounding him, each individual seeming ready to ruin his plan. Could they discern, or detect, that the papers he held didn’t actually belong to him? They belonged to an acquaintance, a free black seaman who had loaned them to Douglass to help him escape. He grasped his ticket and his luggage tight in his hands, poised to flee at any indication of danger.
“He was determined to break free.”
For two decades, Douglass had lived under slavery. Born with the name Frederick Bailey on a Maryland plantation in 1818, Douglass barely knew his mother, who was sold to another slaveholder while he was still an infant. At the age of eight, Douglass was sent to work in Baltimore for a man named Hugh Auld. Though he was still enslaved, his time in Baltimore led to a momentous discovery in his life: literacy. Auld’s wife, Sophia, taught Douglass the letters of the alphabet despite a ban on instructing slaves in reading and writing. Eventually Auld stopped the lessons, pressured by her husband, who believed like many Southern white people that if African Americans learned to read they would be more likely to revolt. Douglass’s hunger to read was not squelched, however, and he found ways to continue his education. Eventually, he learned enough to instruct other slaves on how to read and write, dispersing, spreading his lessons in literacy in defiance of a system meant to deny black people their potential while exploiting their labor. As his knowledge and awareness expanded, he became increasingly frustrated with his circumstances, and he was determined to break free.
Douglass’s determination led him to arrange his illegal train trip. Because of his subterfuge, or deceptive strategy, the journey was dangerous, but he traveled without incident from Delaware to Philadelphia and finally to New York. Douglass disembarked in the large and unfamiliar city. When he arrived, a man approached him. “Where are you going?” the man asked. Douglass, almost able to embrace his long-awaited freedom, used coded language to express his desire for help. “I always aim for the North Star,” he said, alerting the man to his need for assistance from the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a large contingent (group) of loosely organized anti-slavery activists who helped runaway slaves escape to the northern states and Canada. Because slave catchers roamed the free states, looking to collect rewards for returning slaves to the slaveholders, Douglass could have been caught and punished for escaping, as had happened to many of those fleeing the South before him. Instead, he had encountered one of the abolitionist good Samaritans who helped him reach a safe house.
Finding Freedom
Once he came into contact with the Railroad and its members, Douglass’s prospects quickly improved. His contacts were able to bring his fiancée, a free African American woman named Anna Murray, from Baltimore to New York. The couple married and soon moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Douglass was able to work without raising too much suspicion. There, he changed his last name from Bailey to Douglass, protecting himself and securing the moniker, or name, that would soon become widely known, as during the 1840s he became famous in the North as a talented speaker and writer. He traveled from city to city, lecturing growing crowds about the horrors of slavery and the need for abolition and offering a powerful perspective as one who had lived through the atrocities of slavery first hand.
In 1845 Douglass published his autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. The book is still widely read today, but at the time it was published, Douglass feared that its widespread release would lead to him being captured and sent back into slavery. Luckily, the Underground Railroad was there to assist and worked with Douglass to prepare an emergency plan, which eventually they were required to put into use. With Anna, Douglass boarded a ship hours before slave catchers came to capture him. The couple escaped across the Atlantic to England.
In England and Ireland, Douglass continued to move audiences with his powerful orations, or speeches increasing the passion behind the demands for abolition. In 1846, friends and fans of his work raised the money needed to purchase his freedom. Anna and Frederick were able to return to America, and Douglass was finally free.Frederick Douglass published the first issue of The North Star in 1847.
The Douglasses resettled in Rochester, New York, from where Frederick published a highly influential abolitionist newspaper, The North Star. Moreover, the Douglasses became “conductors” for the Underground Railroad themselves, with their home acting as an important safe haven for slaves seeking freedom. Many slaves used the railroad to reach Canada—where slave catchers could not legally capture them—and Rochester’s northern location made the Douglass home one of the escapees’ final stops before they reached safety.
Douglass’s Legacy
Frederick Douglass made lasting impacts on the United States, its people, and its policies; and his work helped advance discussions of race, slavery, and personal freedoms. For the rest of his life, he remained a key figure in the American public sphere. During the Civil War, he continued to fight for the rights of African American soldiers and for African Americans everywhere, even recruiting black soldiers to fight for the Union forces.
Besides fighting for the civil rights of enslaved African Americans, Douglass also stood out as a leader in the quest for women’s rights. He attended the famous Seneca Falls Convention, an 1848 gathering in New York that helped shape the future of the women’s rights movement. There, sharing his belief that it was unjust for women to be denied the right to vote, he gave an eloquent speech, helping to convince the attendees to pass a resolution formally requesting women’s suffrage, an idea that led to clashes with many male leaders of the time.
Douglass went from sneaking his way to freedom to confidently carving out a path for millions more to join him. Throughout his life, he tirelessly strove to be the best man he could be, setting an example for his contemporaries but also for the countless generations to come. With his love for reading, speaking, and writing always intact, Douglass emphasized just how important literacy and standing up for human rights were for African Americans and other oppressed groups