Life and Times, Second Part

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opposition to his views. PhrenologyPhrenology, or "the science of the mind," was developed by German physician Franz Josef Gall and his student Johannes C. Spurzheim. Phrenologists gathered data by external examination of the skull and portions of the eye and nose area in forty-two separate zones identified with particular mental functions, personality traits, or feelings. Practitioners of this pseudoscience were among the first to attempt to study the brain without invasive procedures. O[rson] S[quire] and L[orenzo] N[iles] Fowler, Phrenology: A Practical Guide to Your Head (1969; New York, 1980), vi-xviii. explained everything to him, from the finite to the infinite. I look back to the morning spent with this singularly clear-headed man with much satisfaction.

It would detain the reader too long, and make this volume too large, to tell of the many kindnesses shown me while abroad, or even to mention all the great and noteworthy persons who gave me a friendly hand and a cordial welcome; but there is one other, now long gone to his rest, of whom a few words must be spoken, and that one was Thomas Clarkson—the last of the noble line of Englishmen who inaugurated the anti-slavery movement for England and the civilized world—the life-long friend and co-worker with Granville Sharpe, William Wilberforce, Thomas Fowell Buxton, and other leaders in that great reform which has nearly put an end to slavery in all parts of the globe. As in the case of George Combe, I went to see Mr. Clarkson in company with Messrs. Garrison and Thompson. They had by note advised him of our coming, and had received one in reply, bidding us welcome. We found the venerable object of our visit seated at a table, where he had been busily writing a letter to America against slavery; for, though in his eighty-seventh year, he continued to write. When we were presented to him, he rose to receive us. The scene was impressive. It was the meeting of two centuries. Garrison, Thompson, and myself were young men. After shaking hands with my two distinguished friends, and giving them welcome, he took one of my hands in both of his, and, in a tremulous voice, said, "God bless you, Frederick Douglass! I have given sixty years of my life to the emancipation of your people, and if I had sixty years more they should all be given to the same cause." Our stay was short with this great-hearted old man. He was feeble, and our presence greatly excited him, and we left the house with something of the feeling with which a man takes final leave of a beloved friend at the edge of the grave.

Some notion may be formed of the difference in my feelings and circumstances while abroad, from an extract from one of a series of letters addressed by me to Mr. Garrison, and published in the Liberator. It was written on the 1st day of January, 1846.After arriving in Dublin, Ireland, on 31 August 1845, Douglass began a series of correspondence with Garrison, which was printed in the latter's Boston newspaper, Lib., 1, 16, 29 September, 28 October 1845, 1, 27 January, 26 February, 16 April, 23 May 1846, 2 January 1847; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:vii-ix.

"My Dear Friend Garrison:

"Up to this time, I have given no direct expression of the views, feelings, and opinions which I have formed respecting the character and condition of the people of this land. I have refrained thus purposely. I wish to speak advisedly, and, in order to do this, I have waited till, I trust, experience has brought my opinion to an intelligent maturity. I have been thus careful, not

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because I think what I say will have much effect in shaping the opinions of the world, but because what influence I may possess, whether little or much, I wish to go in the right direction, and according to truth. I hardly need say that in speaking of Ireland, I shall be influenced by no prejudices in favor of America. I think my circumstances all forbid that, I have no end to serve, no creed to uphold, no government to defend; and as to nation, I belong to none. I have no protection at home, or resting-place abroad. The land of my birth welcomes me to her shores only as a slave, and spurns with contempt the idea of treating me differently; so that I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my birth. 'I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.'Ps. 39:12. That men should be patriotic, is to me perfectly natural; and as a philosophical fact, I am able to give it an intellectual recognition. But no further can I go. If ever I had any patriotism, or any capacity ltn the feeling, it was whipped out of me long since by the lash of the American soul-drivers. In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky, her grand old woods, her fertile fields, her beautiful rivers, her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked—my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slaveholding, robbery, and wrong; when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm, blood of my outraged sisters. I am filled with unutterable loathing, and led to reproach myself that anything could fall from my lips in praise of such a land. America will not allow her children to love her. She seems bent on compelling those who would be her warmest friends, to be her worst enemies. May God give her repentance before it is too late, is the ardent prayer of my heart. I will continue to pray, labor, and wait, believing that she cannot always be insensible to the dictates of justice, or deaf to the voice of humanity. My opportunities for learning the character and condition of the people of this land have been very great. I have traveled from the Hill of HowthA five-mile-long and two-mile-wide hill on a peninsula in the Irish Sea in County Dublin, forming the north shore of Dublin Bay. Seltzer, Gazetteer of the World, 806. to the Giant's Causeway, and from the Giant's CausewayA geological formation on the north coast of County Antrim in Northern Ireland, extending three miles along the coast consisting of thousands of basaltic columns of volcanic origin with several caves, platforms, and picturesque rocks. Seltzer, Gazetteer of the World, 679. to Cape Clear.Cape Clear is the southernmost point in Cork. J. Thomas and T. Baldwin, eds., Lippincott`s Pronouncing Gazetteer: A Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer or Geographical Dictionary of the World, new ed. (Philadelphia, 1883), 373. During these travels I have met with much in the character and condition of the people to approve, and much to condemn; much that has thrilled me with pleasure, and much that has filled me with pain. I will not, in this letter, attempt to give any description of those scenes which give me pain. This I will do hereafter. I have said enough,Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: have enough. and more than your subscribers will be disposed to read at one time, of the bright side of the picture. I can truly say I have spent some of the happiest days of my life since landing in this country. I seem to have undergone

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a transformation. I live a new life. The warm and generous coöperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the prompt and liberal manner with which the press has rendered me its aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder everywhere evinced; the cordiality with which members and ministers of various religiousEditorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: religous. bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion have embraced meDouglass received a warm welcome from Britain's religious reformers, especially the Unitarian community. His speeches were reprinted and commented upon favorably by journals with a religious affiliation such as the London Inquirer and the monthly magazine Christian Reformer. However, at the time that Douglass wrote this letter to Garrison, he began to receive criticism for taking an uncompromising stand on some of the British clergy's unwillingness to condemn strongly American slavery. Belfast Banner of Ulster, 19 December 1845; David Turley, " British Unitarian Abolitionists, Frederick Douglass and Racial Equality," in Liberating Sojourn, ed. Rice and Crawford, 59-70; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 127-30. and lent me their aid; the kind hospitality constantly proffered me by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the entire absence of everything that looks like prejudice against me, on account of the color of my skin, contrasts so strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and amazement on the transition. In the southern part of the United States. I was a slave—thought of and spoken of as property; in the language of law, 'held, taken, reputed, and adjudged to be a chattel in the hands of my owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, whatsoever.' (Brev., "Digest," vol. II, 229.)The digest of judicial decisions from the state of South Carolina was often called "Brevard's Digest," after the author, Associate Judge Joseph Brevard. Contemporary authors of abolitionist tracts often cited this three-volume compilation of decisions. The passage Douglass quotes, however, has not been located in any of these volumes. Joseph Brevard, Reports of Judicial Decisions in the State of South Carolina, from 1793 to 1816, 3 vols. (Charleston, S.C., 1839-40). Editorial Emendation: Brev. Digest., 224. In the Northern States, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at any moment like a felon, and to be hurled into the terrible jaws of slavery—doomed by an inveterate prejudice against color, to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the question)Douglass probably refers to the personal liberty law of Massachusetts, passed in 1788, which prohibits "peaceable inhabitants of this Commonwealth" from being "privately carried off by force, or decoyed away under various pretences, by evil-minded persons," with the probable intention of being sold into slavery. This de jure prohibition upon kidnapping fugitive slaves combined with a de facto refusal of Massachusetts's African American community to allow the recapture of former slaves. Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, 2:29-31.—denied the privileges and courtesies common to others in the use of the most humble means of conveyance—shut out from the cabins on steamboats, refused admission to respectable hotels, caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with impunity by any one (no matter how black his heart), so he has a white skin. But now behold the change! Eleven days and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand miles of perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchial government. Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, gray fog of the Emerald Isle.A nickname given to Ireland around 1795 by Dr. William Drennen, on account of its prevailing lush green fields. William Morris and Mary Morris, eds., Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (New York, 1977), 201. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man! I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as a slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab—I am seated beside white people—I reach the hotel—I enter the same door—I am shown into the same parlor—I dine at the same table—and no one is offended. No delicate nose grows deformed in my presence. I find no difficulty here in obtaining admission into any place of worship, instruction, or amusement, on equal terms, with people as white as any I ever saw in the United States. I meet nothing to remind me of my complexion. I find myself regarded and treated at every

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turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip, to tell me— 'We don't allow niggers in here.'

"I remember about two years ago there was in Boston, near the southwest corner of Boston Common, a menagerie.Boston Common is a park in downtown Boston. There was no regularly functioning menagerie but a deer park was added after the Civil War. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Boston Landmarks (New York, 1946), 100-02. I had long desired to see such a collection as I understood was being exhibited there. Never having had an opportunity while a slave, I resolved to seize this, and as I approached the entrance to gain admission, I was told by the door-keeper, in a harsh and contemptuous tone, 'We don`t allow niggers in here.' I also remember attending a revival meeting in the Rev. Henry Jackson's meeting-house, at New Bedford, and going up the broad aisle for a seat. I was met by a good deacon, who told me, in a pious tone, 'We don`t allow niggers in here.' Soon after my arrival in New Bedford, from the South, I had a strong desire to attend the lyceum, but was told, `They don`t allow niggers there.' While passing from New York to Boston on the steamer 'Massachusetts,'The 353-ton Massachusetts was built in 1841 and owned by Nathaniel Rand and George C. Gardner of Nantucket, Massachusetts. It sank in August 1853 off Sable Island, just southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The island was considered a major hazard to navigation and was the site of numerous shipwrecks. John Robinson and George Francis Dow, The Sailing Ships of New England, 1607-1907 (Salem, Mass., 1922), 30; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2678. on the night of the 9th of December, 1843, when chilled almost through with the cold, I went into the cabin to get a little warm. I was soon touched upon the shoulder, and told, 'We don`t allow niggers in here.' A week or two before leaving the United States, I had a meeting appointed at Weymouth,Douglass made a final speaking tour of New York and Massachusetts before departing for Great Britain on 16 August 1845. Douglass spoke at a meeting in Weymouth, Massachusetts, on 7 August. PaF, 31 July 1845; Lib., 1, 22 August, 5 September 1845; NASS, 14, 21 August 1845. the house of that glorious band of true abolitionists—the Weston familySix daughters of Warren Weston and his first wife, Ann[e] Bates Weston of Weymouth, Massachusetts, were active in abolitionist circles and associates of William Lloyd Garrison. The most prominent, Maria Weston Chapman, along with two of her sisters, was an active force behind the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. The others, who all remained unmarried, were Caroline (1808-82), Anne Warren (1812-c. 1890), Deborah (1814-c. 1886), Lucia (1822-c. 1864 ), and Emma (1825-c. 1890). Shy about public speaking, the Westons expressed their anti-slavery sentiments through poems and articles published in abolitionist newspapers, and operated a school on Boyd Street in Boston. Deborah Gold Hansen, "The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Limits of Gender Politics," in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women`s Political Culture in Antebellum America, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Home (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994), 45-46, 56, 61-02; Carolyn Williams, "The Female Antislavery Movement: Fighting against Racial Prejudice and Promoting Women's Rights in Antebellum America," in ibid., 171-73; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 1:550, 2:xxiv-xxv, 57; Taylor, Women of the Anti-Slavery Movement, xii-xvi, 1-2, 7, 11-12, 13, 14-18, 21-22, 25-26, 27, 43, 57-58, 99-108, 115-120. and others. On attempting to take a seat in the omnibus to that place. I was told by the driver (and I never shall forget his fiendish hate). 'I don't allow niggers in here.' Thank heaven for the respite I now enjoy! I had been in Dublin but a few days when a gentleman of great respectability kindly offered to conduct me through all the public buildings of that beautiful city, and soon afterward I was invited by the lord mayorDuring Douglass's visit to Ireland the lord mayors of Dublin were John L. Arabin (1845) and John Keshan (1846): the city's lord mayor was appointed annually. It is most likely that Douglass refers to Arabin, as he is speaking about his earliest days in Ireland. N. C. Fleming and Alan O'Day, eds., Longman Handbook of Modern Irish History (New York, 2005), 299. to dine with him. What a pity there was not some democratic Christian at the door of his splendid mansion to bark out at my approach, 'They don't allow niggers in here!' The truth is, the people here know nothing of the republican negro-hate prevalent in our glorious land. They measure and esteem men according to their moral and intellectual worth, and not according to the color of their skin. Whatever may be said of the aristocracies here, there is none based on the color of a man's skin. This species of aristocracy belongs preeminently to 'the land of the free, and the home of the brave.'Douglass quotes the last line of the first stanza of the "Star-Spangled Banner," by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), set to the British tune by John Stafford Smith (1750-1836), "To Anacreon in Heaven." Penned by Key during the War of 1812, following the Battle of Baltimore on 14 September 1814, the poem originally entitled "The Defence of Fort McHenry" became the U.S. national anthem by congressional resolution on 3 March 1931. The poem describes Key's account of the morning after the battle, and it was a popular patriotic song in Douglass's time. Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth, The Story of the Hymns and Tunes (New York, 1906), 333-35; Patriotic and National Observances, Ceremonies, and Organizations, U.S. Statutes at Large 46 (1931): 1508, codified at U.S. Code 36 (1931), sec. 301; Walter Lord, The Dawn`s Early Light (New York, 1972), 291-93, 296-98. I have never found it abroad in any but Americans. It sticks to them wherever they go. They find it almost as hard to get rid of as to get rid of their skins.

"The second day after my arrival in Liverpool, in company with my friend Buffum, and several other friends, I went to Eaton Hall,Eaton Hall, located in Chester County in western England, is the estate of the marquess of Westminster. At the time of Douglass's visit the estate was occupied by Richard Grosvenor (1795-1869), the second marquess of Westminster. Bernard Burke and John Burke, Burke`s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, ed. Peter Townsend (1826; London, 1970), 2797. the residence of the Marquis of Westminster, one of the most splendid buildings in

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England. On approaching the door, I found several of our American passengers who came out with us in the 'Cambria,' waiting for admission, as but one party was allowed in the house at a time. We all had to wait till the company within came out, and of all the faces expressive of chagrin, those of the Americans were preeminent. They looked as sour as vinegar, and as bitter as gall, when they found I was to be admitted on equal terms with themselves. When the door was opened, I walked in on a footing with my white fellow-citizens, and, from all I could see, I had as much attention paid me by the servants who showed us through the house, as any with a paler skin. As I walked through the building, the statuary did not fall down, the pictures did not leap from their places, the doors did not refuse to open, and the servants did not say, 'We don`t allow niggers in here.'"

My time and labors while abroad were divided between England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Upon this experience alone I might fill a volume. Amongst the few incidents which space will permit me to mention, and one which attracted much attention and provoked much discussion in America, was a brief statement made by me in the World's Temperance Convention,Douglass attended the World's Temperance Convention, which met in London from 4-8 August 1846 at Covent Garden Theatre, but not as an official delegate. On 7 August he nonetheless addressed the convention after "loud and repeated calls from the audience, and a very pressing invitation from the chairman." Most of the English, Scottish, Irish, and American delegates in attendance restricted their remarks to the progress of the temperance movement, but Douglass introduced the question of the American temperance movement's relationship to slavery and free blacks. Many of the delegates were not pleased with the speech. The Reverend Edward Norris Kirk of Boston, who followed Douglass on the podium, suggested that Douglass had "left an impression on the minds of those present that the temperance advocates in America had sanctioned or supported slavery." Following the convention, a few American temperance reformers rushed to the defense of their movement. Samuel L. Cox reported to the New York Evangelist: "The moral scene was superb and glorious--when Frederick Douglass the coloured abolition agitator and ultraist, came to the platform, and so spake a la mode, as to ruin the influence, almost, of all that preceded! He lugged in anti-slavery. . .no doubt prompted to it by some of the politic ones, who can use him to do what they would not themselves adventure to do in person." Douglass eventually responded to Cox's allegations in a letter that included the full text of his Covent Garden speech. Lib., 27 November 1846; London Morning Chronicle, 10 August 1846; Samuel H. Cox and Frederick Douglass, Correspondence between The Rev. Samuel H. Cox, D.D., of Brooklyn, L.I. and Frederick Douglass, a Fugitive Slave (New York, 1846), 13-14; Daniel Dorchester, The Liquor Problem in All Ages (1884; New York, 1981), 280, 330. held in Covent Garden theater, London, August 7, 1846. The United States was largely represented in this convention by eminent divines, mostly doctors of divinity. They had come to England for the double purpose of attending the World's Evangelical Alliance,In August 1846, over nine hundred delegates from Great Britain, Europe, and the United States met in London in the hope of forming an organization uniting evangelical Protestants of the Western Hemisphere. The Evangelical Alliance, as this organization was called, was extremely short-lived. On the ninth day of the conference, the Reverend J. Howard Hinton, a London Baptist, moved that the organization exclude all slaveholders. Almost immediately, members of the American delegation, led by conservative Presbyterians, protested that they could not exclude such a large number of American evangelicals. No compromise could be reached before the conference adjourned, and the 922 delegates left London resolving to form their separate national alliances. Ernest R. Sandeen, "The Distinctiveness of American Denominationalism: A Case Study of the 1846 Evangelical Alliance," CH, 45:222-34 (June 1976). and the World's Temperance Convention. In the former these ministers were endeavoring to procure endorsement for the Christian character of slaveholders; and, naturally enough, they were adverse to the exposure of slaveholding practices. It was not pleasant to them to see one of the slaves running at large in England, and telling the other side of the story. The Rev. Samuel Hanson Cox, D. D., of Brooklyn, N. Y., was especially disturbed at my presence and speech in the Temperance Convention. I will give here, first, the reverend gentleman's version of the occasion in a letter from him as it appeared in the New York Evangelist,The New York Evangelist was a Presbyterian weekly devoted to missionary work, revivalism, and social reforms such as temperance and antislavery. It was published in New York City from 1830 to 1902. In the mid-1840s it was edited by two Presbyterian ministers, George B. Cheever and W. H. Bidwell. In a letter published 10 September 1846, Samuel H. Cox called Douglass an "abolition agitator and ultraist," and claimed the speech that Douglass gave before the World's Temperance Convention had been offensive to the American delegation to that gathering. According to Cox, Douglass "allowed himself to denounce America and all of its temperance societies together, as a grinding community of enemies of his people; said evil, with no alloy of good" because they did not necessarily endorse radical abolitionism. Douglass replied to the attack in a letter of 30 October 1846, reproducing Cox's charges and refuting each in turn. Douglass's letter from Edinburgh was first printed in the Liberator on 27 November 1846. "Letter from Dr. Cox," New York Evangelist, 10 September 1846; Lib., 27 November 1846; Cox and Douglass, Correspondence, 5-16. the organ of his denomination. After a description of the place (Covent Garden theater) and the speakers, he says:

"They all advocated the same cause, showed a glorious unity of thought and feeling, and the effect was constantly raised—the moral scene was superb and glorious—when Frederick Douglass, the colored abolition agitator and ultraist, came to the platform, and so spake, à la mode, as to ruin the influence almost of all that preceded! He lugged in anti-slavery, or abolition, no doubt prompted to it by some of the politic ones, who can use him to do

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