5

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE xvii

the Boston abolitionists, but he persevered in his intention, relocating to
Rochester, New York. There he established the North Star, a newspaper ini-
tially funded with testimonials given him for that purpose while he was still
in Britain. Its first issue appeared on 3 December 1847. As Garrison had
predicted, Douglass's newspaper faced financial difficulties from the start,
having a small list of subscribers and considerable weekly costs. Douglass
mortgaged his house and accepted donations from the Garrisonians' Western
New York Anti-Slavery Society. British abolitionist Julia Griffiths moved to
Rochester temporarily in 1849 to organize the financial operations of the
North Star. Initially Douglass's new paper espoused Garrisonian tenets: it
condemned colonization schemes, proclaimed churches and the U.S.
Constitution to be proslavery in nature, and advocated disunion. However,
the North Star also included contributions by well-known blacks like Samuel
R. Ward, Amos G. Beman, William J. Wilson, Henry Bibb, and James
McCune Smith. While the paper's articles began to focus on the problem of
northern racism and self-help, it also became more political as Douglass
himself became more involved in the free black community in New York
State.¹⁰ After meeting and corresponding with wealthy landowner and phi-
lanthropist Gerrit Smith, Douglass revised his abolitionist ideology in clearer
distinction to that of the Garrisonians. In letters dating from 1849 published
in the North Star, Smith and Douglass discussed the nature of the U.S.
Constitution regarding slavery, concluding that one's method of interpreting
the document was crucial. If the Constitution was read strictly by the letter,
independently of the intentions of its framers, it could be read as an antislav-
ery document, and one that conferred upon the federal government the
power to end slavery in all its forms. If intent originating outside the letter
or the document dictated its interpretation, then the Constitution was, as the
Garrisonians held, proslavery, and disunion, rather than political abolition,
would be the best agenda for abolition societies to recommend.¹¹ Although
Douglass did not openly declare his opposition to the Garrisonian interpreta-
tion of the Constitution until the spring of 1851, he had ceased to view it as
a proslavery document by early 1849.¹² The North Star would publish until
June 1851, when, merging with the Syracuse Liberty Party Paper; it was
renamed Frederick Douglass' Paper. Ideology, political visibility, and an

^{1010. For a full discussion of the North Star's early operations, see John R. McKivigan, "The
Frederick Douglass Gerrit Smith Friendship," in Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Political Essays,
ed. Eric J. Sundquist (1990; New York, 1993), 205–32.}

^{1111. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:374–78, 417–19, 438–54.}

^{1212. Ibid., 448n.}