Frederick Douglass -- Author

 

Frederick was back home in Massachusetts at the beginning of the new year, 1844.  After a period of rest and reacquaintance with his wife and family he was once again active, touring Massachusetts as one of the Society’s premier abolitionist speakers.  The defense of slavery implied in the questions asked by members of the audiences was less strong than what he had recently encountered.  At no location was he threatened physically.  However, he was experiencing something new and it unsettled him.

 

At these recent conventions people without personal prejudice had taken to buttonholding him after meetings and whispering, Did he really expect shrewd New Englanders to believe that he had been a slave, brutalized in the manner he described: The masquerade was too transparent.  … He might convince people in the West that only five years ago he had been in the debased condition of which he spoke so eloquently, but not citizens of the Bay State.  They were attracted to him as a person and as a speaker, but if he offered himself as an example of the product of the slave system, he was actually helping the South.

 

They had also noticed, they pointed out, that he was never very clear about the place from which he had escaped, how he got away, who had been his owner, and the like.  This vagueness, coupled with the fact that he was in his own person a contradiction of much that he said, left even open-minded people with questions (Bontemps 93-94).

 

Now he understood completely why his white abolitionist friends had advised him not to be too “learned.”  Their fears were now being realized.  He was believed by many New Englanders to be an impostor.  He would not “put the plantation in his speech”; his pride would never permit that!  He would not put aside his intellectual gifts and eloquence.  They were a part of him as much as the experiences he recounted to illustrate the evils of slavery.  He would not be false to himself to appear genuine to his listeners.  Eventually, the solution to his problem occurred to him.

 

It was a daring thing to attempt.  Perhaps it was even reckless …. To answer those people who had begun to doubt his story, to silence the whispering that threatened to destroy his value as an abolitionist agent, he would throw caution away, he would put the full account in writing.  … He would write a book.  In his book he would tell the whole world just whose slave he had been, how he had squirmed and plotted in his chains, where and when he had escaped.  The only detail he would withhold would be the manner of his getaway.  … He would reveal everything and take his chances as a fugitive in Massachusetts.  But to disclose the maneuver by which he gave his owners the slip would be to close that particular gate to other slaves.  That he would not do (Bontemps 93-94).

 

The book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, was published by the “Anti-Slavery Office” in Boston in June 1845 and was priced at fifty cents.  By fall, 4,500 copies had been sold in the United States.  Three European editions were subsequently published and in five years 30,000 copies had been sold to readers in Europe and America.

 

While he was writing his book, Frederick was tantalized with the thought of visiting England.  This coincided with what William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were considering.  Douglass’s

 

word was too good to waste on Pendleton, Indiana, or even on Massachusetts; there was an international audience that should hear him.  … the immediate goal of the British was to get their American cousins to end slavery in North America.

 

Ties between abolitionists on opposite sides of the Atlantic had long been close, and the value of enabling people to see and hear a victim of the evil they were fighting was widely recognized.  Douglass was far from the first former slave or black man to appear on British platforms, but in 1845 he was the one that ardent antislavery people most wanted to have a look at and to hear (McFeely 177-118).

 

And, of course, his journey would place him beyond the grasp of slave catchers, who would now certainly know of his existence and location in Massachusetts.  With his book he had, in effect, challenged “the slave power to return him to bondage.  Could he depend on Massachusetts to shield him” (Bontemps 104)?  Neither he nor the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society could be certain of the answer.

 

 

Works cited:

 

Bontempts, Arna, Free at Last, the Life of Frederick Douglass, New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1971.  Print

 

McFeely, William S.  Frederick Douglass.  New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.  Print.



Frederick Douglass -- The Pendleton Riot

 

In Pendleton [Indiana], the three men--one black, two white—were house guests of a local physician.  During the evening of September 14, 1843, they “learned that a mob had threatened to come down from … a miserable, run-drinking place [Andersonville], about six miles distant,” to drive the race-mixing abolitionists away.  Warned but not deterred, the three went the next morning to the Baptist church.  “Frederick spoke,” reported [William] White [a Harvard graduate of about Douglass’s age] in a letter to the Liberator, “and there was no interruption, though I observed a great number of men, such as do not usually attend our meetings”  The Baptists noticed them too; when the three speakers returned for the afternoon meeting, they were told they could not use the building because the church authorities feared it would be pulled down.

 

When the abolitionists tried to conduct their meeting from the steps outside the church, about thirty of the uninvited guests began to heckle.  A local man reasoned with them and achieved sufficient quiet for Bradburn to be heard.  His speech went on until a rainstorm abruptly did the hecklers’ job for them.  In the evening, the citizens of the town, opposed to slavery or simply embarrassed, met and passed a resolution that the men should be allowed to speak.  “The next morning being pleasant,” White continued, “we held our meeting in the woods, where seats and stands had been arranged.”  At the start of the meeting, White spotted only seven of their challengers among the hundred men and thirty women who had gathered.  The scene was very like that of a camp meeting.  The proceedings were opened with a song.  Then Bradburn rose to speak, and as he rolled into his attack on slavery, White and Douglass noticed that “the mob continued to collect, but were quiet.”  The men were menacing, their faces fixed in sneers.  White fixed his eyes on one man about his age who stood barefoot, a pair of homespun pants slung from his hips and a shirt slouched across his body so loosely that it bared his shoulders.  The nakedness of this insolence fascinated and terrified the well-bred eastern gentleman.  After several minutes, at a signal, the men got up and walked out.

 

“In a few moments we heard a shout, and saw the mob coming through the woods, thirty or more in number, two by two, armed with stones and eggs,” and led by a man in a coonskin cap.  The audience rose for a hasty exit, but White pleaded with them to sit down again.  A few of the men and all of the women did.  The cry from under the coonskin cap was “Surround them,” and the thirty circled the audience, some stationing themselves at the foot of the speakers’ stand.  Stones were thrown at the speakers, but did no real damage.  Old eggs were hurled and splattered on the speakers’ faces; the three endured the drip and stink in stoical silence.  The audience too was quiet, and the stymied hecklers were at a loss as to what to do next.  The peacemaker of the day before tried again, but as he spoke, one man called out to the speakers, asking why they didn’t go down south with their message.  Bradburn replied: his challenger, James Jackson, offered a rebuttal; and White invited him up onto the platform to continue the debate.  Jackson rose to the bait and made, said the Harvard man, “a most ridiculous spectacle, interlarding his speech with copious oaths, and ending off by saying he could not talk, but he could fight—that he had too much good blood in his veins to let us go on.”  On this point, another man jumped up onto the platform, saying that he saw that nothing would be done unless he did it, and seized hold of the table, overturned it, and began to pull the stand to pieces.  His buddies now all joined in the wrenching of timbers, pushing protesting members of the audience out of the way.

 

Douglass was sandwiched between two antislavery people concerned for his safety, but thinking White was in danger, he ran into the midst of the pulling and prying and grabbed a piece of lumber to use as a club.  In doing so, he violated not only the Garrisonian insistence on nonviolence, but also white America’s stern law that black men were not to raise weapons except against other black men.  There were screams: “kill the nigger, kill the damn nigger.”  Furious men pursued Douglass, who ran for his life.  White, not injured (and with his hat still on his head), followed in pursuit.  The swing of one club broke Douglass’s right hand.  Running up, White was able to grab and slow another piece of lumber as it was swung with lethal force; it could have killed the downed black man.  A stone hit White on the head; deflected by his hat, it nevertheless opened a gash that bled profusely.

 

Douglass never forgot those moments with William White.  In what may be the most affectionate latter he ever wrote, he recalled it all (three years later) for his friend: “I shall never forget how like two very brothers we were ready to dare, do, and even die for each other.  Tragic, awfully so, yet I laugh when I think how comic I must have looked when running before the mob, darkening the air with mud from my feet.  How I looked running you can best describe but how you looked bleeding I shall always remember.  … Dear William, from that hour … have you been loved by Frederic Douglass.”

 

With White on the ground, his head gashed and his mouth bleeding from a blow that knocked out teeth, and Douglass lying nearby cradling his painful hand, the attackers got on their horses and rode off.  Members of the antislavery audience helped Neal Hardy, “a kind-hearted member of the Society of Friends,” ease the men into his wagon.  Hardy took them home and with his wife got their wounds bandaged.  (The fracture was not properly set; his right hand bothered Douglass for the rest of his life.)  Two days later, they were on the platform in Noblesville, Indiana (McFeely 108-112).

 

Meanwhile the ringleader of the riot at Pendleton was arrested.  He pleaded guilty and was jailed in Indianapolis.  His cronies from Andersonville did not abandon him there, however.  Three hundred of them, mounted and armed with rifles, galloped into the city and demanded his release.  Governor Whitcomb promptly pardoned the man.

 

From that point onward the series of conventions seemed to run together in Douglass’s consciousness.  He spoke many more times in Indiana before leaving, and it is possible to follow the general direction of the return sweep through Ohio and western Pennsylvania in the antislavery press, but to Douglass the audiences began to look much alike.  Tumult and threats began to form a kind of pattern.  At the same time experience was adding to his own devices for dealing with hecklers and quieting bullies.  When tension became great, he introduced humor and convulsed the crowd with laughter.  When he had angered them with old testament denunciation till the lid seemed ready to blow, he cunningly struck a note of soft pathos.

 

… He did retain however some of the questions that were thrown at him most frequently.  Always someone wanted to know, often in a whining voice, if it was not true that slaves were better off in slavery.  Were they not content and happy?  An equal number of people in these western towns wondered if Negroes could take care of themselves, if given their freedom.  Others asked if the masters were not generally kind.  Wouldn’t most slaves choose to remain in slavery if given the choice?  Were not Negroes too lazy to work except in bondage?  On the other hand, wasn’t there danger that slaves, if emancipated, would all rush North and take work away from white men?  Shouldn’t they be returned to Africa?

 

…

 

… The voice droned on, a muttering debate between the slavery advocate and his conscience.  “They can’t be improved, the Negroes, they need masters to care for them.  They made no progress in Africa.  They are not like white people.  They are an inferior race.  And you—you are meddling with what does not concern you.  Mind your own business.  You abolitionists are only making the condition of the Negro worse by your infernal agitation.  You have pushed the relations between the races back fifty years.  You will never in God’s world put an end to slavery.  And there’s another thing—if God wanted slavery abolished, he would have done it long ago.  The Bible sanctions slavery.  The Savior said nothing against it” (Bontemps 87-88).

 

 

Works cited:

 

Bontempts, Arna, Free at Last, the Life of Frederick Douglass, New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1971.  Print.

 

McFeely, William S.  Frederick Douglass.  New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.  Print.



Writing "Alsoomse and Wanchese" -- Editing

 

This past December I finished the first draft – 35 chapters – of my Roanoke historical novel manuscript and began the lengthy task of editing.  Here is some of what I want to say about editing.

 

Editing encompasses everything from placing commas correctly to word, phrase, and sentence selection.  Narrating dialogue is much easier for me to do than narrating character thoughts and emotions.

 

Initially, I edit five chapters, go back to the first chapter, and edit the five chapters again.  Then I edit the next five chapters, go back, and edit a second time.  Ideally, the double editing makes the writing much better.  That is not always the result.  Sometimes the revisions are not much better than the original.

 

I do my first writing without much regard for articulate expression.  It is enough for me to get the story into words on a sloppy disc.  Thereafter, I work mostly on expression until I feel satisfied with the result.

 

After the double read-through, I edit the entire manuscript without going back.  I always find original flaws overlooked or flaws added in the previous editing.  I liken this to weeding a large, overgrown planting area.  The tallest weeds have to go first.  Afterward, I am able to see the smaller weeds.  I want them to be entirely gone after the second read-through.  They never are.  Something always needs to be improved.

 

After I have edited the manuscript three times, I have my wife do a read-through.  She is a voracious reader.  I trust her judgment.  It is difficult judging your own work.  It helps considerably to have another pair of eyes assess it.  Those eyes must, however, belong to somebody who recognizes good writing.  After my wife’s involvement, I make necessary changes and read through the manuscript again.

 

I am currently double-editing chapters 21 to 25.  A year has passed since I wrote those chapters.  I had forgotten several scenes.  Reading them was like reading another writer’s work.  Most pleased me.  Here is one such forgotten scene (edited one).

 

Inside, darkness.  She could see along the walls, mostly because she was familiar with what was kept there, wooden utensils, Machk’s bows, cutting and sharpening tools, planting and weeding poles, mortar and pestle, scraping stones, baskets containing seeds for cattapeak planting -- dark shapes recognized by a once friend now considered a personal enemy.

It had been the injury to Machk that had begun her and Nana’s estrangement. It was, unmistakably, Samoset’s death that had closed all communication between them. Until now.

Nana, lying on her raised bed in the most distant corner of the back room, was watching her.

“Nana! Get up!”

Lying on her right side, she did not stir.

“Be useful! Keep the fire burning while Wapun pries upon oysters, while your brother fishes to add to the pot!”

Nana rose to a sitting position.

“You smell! How long since you bathed? Machk and Wapun have to sleep here, also!”

“What business is it of yours? I do not want you here.” Her tone was more factual than emotional.

“Our men are trained from boyhood to accept torture and flaming death without self-pity or complaint!” Alsoomse’s demeanor was harsh. “We are taught to accept what is not fair and to continue to perform our duties as though the gods favor us. Get up! Be a Roanoke woman! Samoset is not worth grieving!”

Anger flashed in Nana’s dark eyes.

“Yes, Samoset! He is not worthy of your grief, or whatever it is that makes you such a lifeless coward!  Get up! Get up if no more than to hit me, you ugly, manless imitation of a woman!”

Nana stood. “You!” She pointed. “With your deformed face!” She jabbed her forefinger. “You brought that on yourself! Machk could have been killed! Get out of this house!”

“No! Not unless you take your stinking body now to the creek!”

Nana stepped close.

“You do not have the courage to hit me!”

Nana swung.

Alsoomse caught and held high Nana’s right fist. “I am still here. Try again!”

“I hate you!”

“Of course you do!”

Nana yanked her right hand loose.

Alsoomse slapped her friend’s face.

Eyes large, Nana looked at her.

“That is for allowing Samoset to use you!” Alsoomse slapped her with her left hand. “That is for abandoning your friends, who did not abandon you!”

Nana swung. Alsoomse allowed Nana’s right hand to strike her deformed cheek. Despite herself, she winced. Pain coursed through the roots of her teeth.

Nana’s left hand covered reflexively her nose and mouth.

“Get it out! Get it all out,” Alsoomse exclaimed, ‘but go this time for the other cheek!”

Staring at her, Nana burst into tears.

 

 

I chose randomly a scene from an earlier chapter to illustrate the kinds of changes I make during my double read-through.  I have divided the scene into five parts, the end of each part marked with asterisks. The first section within each part is my original writing, the second section is the result of my first read-through, and the third section is the result of my second read-through.

 

 

According to Osacan, Nana had explained, Nootau had fallen in love with a Choanoac girl. Odina had looked across the indoor fire at Mushaniq, seated on a mat beside Sokanon. She is jealous, Alsoomse had concluded, as jealous as me. Sokanon had found her man! At Croatoan. She had found a face full of pain.

 

According to Osacan, Nana had explained, Nootau had fallen in love with a Choanoac girl. Odina had looked across the indoor fire at Mushaniq, seated on a mat beside Sokanon. She is jealous, Alsoomse had thought, as jealous as me. Sokanon had found her man! At Croatoan. She had found a face full of pain.

 

“Osacan said Nootau fell in love with a Choanoac girl,” Nana had explained in Sooleawa’s longhouse. Odina had looked then across the indoor fire at Mushaniq, seated beside Sokanon. Odina is envious, Alsoomse had recognized, jealous as I am, that Sokanon found her man! Where I found a face full of pain!

 

***

 

She would have to be fair-minded. Careful. She had lost – she hoped temporarily -- one best friend. Her other best friend, Odina, seemed uncertain how to relate to her. Sokanon’s good fortune and her misfortune were not her cousin’s fault. Sokanon was a far better cousin than she deserved. She wanted to speak her feelings, her thoughts!

“Will you tell us stories any more?” Pules had asked. “Not … yet” was all she had been able to answer.

 

She would have to be fair-minded. And careful. She had lost – temporarily, she hoped -- a best friend, Nana. Odina seemed uncertain how to relate to her. Sokanon’s good fortune and her misfortune were not her cousin’s fault. Sokanon was a far better cousin than she deserved. She wanted desperately to speak what she thought and felt!

“Will you tell us stories any more?” Pules had asked. “Not … yet” was all she had been able to answer.

 

She had also recognized that she needed to be fair-minded. And careful. Nana now disliked her. Odina seemed uncertain how to relate to her. Her particular misfortune had been nobody’s fault but her own. How despicable that she should begrudge Sokanon’s good fortune! Sokanon was a far better cousin than she deserved! She wanted desperately to speak what she thought and felt!

“Will you tell us stories any more?” Pules had asked.

“Not … yet” had been all she had been able to answer.

 

***

 

Sokanon had spoken privately to her mother before Alsoomse and the others had entered Sooleawa’s house, having gone first to Odina’s house. During the conversations that had crossed the fire pit Alsoomse had observed closely her taciturn aunt. Sooleawa had always treated Alsoomse distantly. Her disapproval had increased after Nadie’s death. At times Aunt Sooleawa had been somewhat distant toward her own daughter. Alsoomse had thought perhaps that such behavior at certain stages of a mother/daughter relationship was normal. This evening Sooleawa was joyous.

 

Sokanon had spoken privately to her mother before Alsoomse and the others had entered Sooleawa’s house, having gone first to Odina’s. During the conversations that had crossed the fire pit Alsoomse had observed closely her taciturn aunt. Sooleawa had always treated Alsoomse distantly. Her disapproval had increased after Nadie’s death. At times Aunt Sooleawa had been somewhat distant toward Sokanon. Alsoomse had thought perhaps that such behavior was normal at certain stages of every mother/daughter relationship. This evening Sooleawa had been joyous.

 

Sokanon had spoken privately to her mother before Alsoomse and the others had entered Sooleawa’s house, having gone first to Odina’s. During the conversations that had crossed the fire pit Alsoomse had observed closely her taciturn aunt. Sooleawa had always treated Alsoomse distantly. Her disapproval had increased after Nadie’s death. At times Aunt Sooleawa had been somewhat distant toward Sokanon. Alsoomse had thought perhaps that such behavior was normal at certain stages of every mother/daughter relationship. This evening Sooleawa had been joyous.

 

***

 

As for her own return, only Wapun and Pules seemed pleased to see her.

Alsoomse thought perhaps because she could not talk nobody wished to ask her questions. Without being conscious of it they had been excluding her from their conversations. She could understand why Machk did not want to provide details about his injury and its reason. No doubt Sokanon wanted to avoid doing so, also. Talk, therefore, had coalesced on one subject: how had Sokanon and Mushaniq met and how long did Mushaniq intend to remain at Roanoke.”Indefinitely,” he had answered, bringing color to Sokanon’s cheeks.

 

As for her own return, only Wapun and Pules seemed pleased to have her.

Perhaps because she could not talk, nobody wanted to ask her questions. Consequently, they were excluding her from their conversations. She could understand why Machk did not want to provide details about his injury. Sokanon wound not have wanted to speak about it, also. Talk, therefore, had coalesced on one subject: how had Sokanon and Mushaniq met and how long did Mushaniq intend to remain at Roanoke. ”Indefinitely,” he had answered, bringing color to Sokanon’s cheeks.

 

As for her return, only Wapun and Pules seemed pleased to see her.

Perhaps because she could not talk, nobody wanted to ask her questions. Therefore, they were excluding her from their conversations. She could understand why Machk did not want to provide details about his injury. Sokanon would not have wanted to speak about either injury. Talk, not surprisingly, had coalesced on one subject: how had Sokanon and Mushaniq met and how long did Mushaniq intend to stay? ”Indefinitely,” he had answered, bringing color to Sokanon’s cheeks.

 

***

 

Alsoomse’s moroseness was sundered by Tihkoosue’s sudden entrance. Seeing her, he froze. Recovering, he took two steps toward her, knelt on one knee, extended tentatively his right arm. His face contorted. He touched her left shoulder.

“I have missed you so much!”

Their liquid eyes communicated.

Alsoomse patted the vacant space beside her.

 

Noise came suddenly from outside. Tihkoosue burst into the room. Seeing Alsoomse, he froze. Recovering, he took two steps toward her, knelt on one knee, tentatively extended his right arm. His face contorted. He touched her left shoulder.

“I have missed you so much!”

Their liquid eyes communicated.

Alsoomse patted the vacant space beside her.

 

Noise came suddenly from outside. Tihkoosue burst into the room. Seeing Alsoomse, he froze. Recovering, he took two steps toward her, knelt on one knee, tentatively extended his right arm. His face contorted. He touched her left shoulder.

“I have missed you so much!”

Their liquid eyes communicated.

Alsoomse patted the vacant mat beside her.

 

***

 

I am not pleased with some of my changes.  I hope my single read-through beginning probably next month will produce better results.



Frederick Douglass -- Adversity on the Tour

 

Toward the end of January, 1842, Douglass returned to Boston to attend the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Society.  A feature of this gathering was the report of the general agent.  Collins assured the leaders of abolitionism that Douglass had proven his worth to the cause.  Together the two of them had visited more than sixty towns and villages, and Douglass had displayed a free and forcible manner of speaking, given unforgettable descriptions of slavery and flavored his discourse with humor and satire (McFeely 94).

 

The inevitable offer for him to continue was made; he accepted.  Soon he was off on another round of speaking engagements.  This time, in Massachusetts and western New York, his listeners would not be as receptive and sympathetic as those he had spoken to previously.  He and his fellow speakers would be reaching the fringes of anti-slavery sentiment, where abolitionists on the whole were not taken seriously.

 

The number of their adherents remained relatively small.  They were tolerated [in most places in the North] as a sort of lunatic fringe of their day, an absurd crowd working a bit too closely with a kindred outfit in the British Empire where slavery had already been abolished.  The North didn’t fear abolitionists; it scoffed at them.

 

…

 

Above all, the antislavery North was convinced that the abolitionist agitation was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.  Anyone could see that it did not change the situation one way or the other.  If these fanatics insisted on continuing their useless hullabaloo, they could only blame themselves when respectable people became irritated and refused to let them hold meetings in public auditoriums or when the police failed to protect them from ruffians who hurled eggs and overripe fruit at their speakers.

 

In the eyes of the South the number of abolitionists was not insignificant.  To the slave power they were neither quaint nor misguided nor lunatic.  They were criminal.  The South ignored the pious words [of the abolitionists] renouncing violence.  It wanted to hang Garrison and all his cronies.  For the abolitionists, alone among the advocates of freedom, had found the slaveholder’s exposed nerve; the moral issue.  By touching it over and over again they had begun to drive the South crazy (McFeely 70).

 

Yet Frederick Douglass continued to be effective.  By April his schedule of engagements was published in the abolitionist press, and his speeches were commented upon in Concord’s Herald of Freedom, New York’s Anti-Slavery Standard, and Boston’s Liberator.

 

A reader of the Liberator wrote to say how impressed he had been by a Douglass address at Northbridge.  Another, attending a meeting at Nantucket and hearing Douglass for the first time, offered a confession.  He hadn’t cared much for abolitionism or abolitionists in the past, and what he had heard about this runaway slave called Douglass had left him cold.  He had been totally unprepared to find the young man “chaste in language, brilliant in thought, truly eloquent in delivery” (McFeely 71).

 

Douglass now began to share rostrums with the most famous white abolitionists, including Wendell Phillips, the outstanding orator of the movement, and William Lloyd Garrison himself.

 

At the annual meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1843 General Agent John A. Collins announced the boldest proposal in the Society’s history, “a series of 100 Conventions in the Western States.”

 

This called for a band of brave men, tried and true campaigners in the cause of freedom, to sweep through the towns of New Hampshire, Vermont, western New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, awakening a drowsy people to the iniquities of slavery and enlisting new recruits  to the thin ranks of active abolitionists.

 

…

 

Of course Douglass was an obvious choice.  … If anyone in the abolitionist movement seemed naturally fitted to carry the flaming doctrine into untouched new areas, it was this gifted and personally impressive mulatto.

 

…

 

Collins had calculated that the tour would last six months, and the plan agreed upon was that the agents would work singly or in pairs in small villages and outlying districts, regrouping periodically in the larger towns for mass meetings which would consolidate interest thus awakened.

 

…

 

The first town they hit was Middlebury, Vermont.  To their surprise, Middlebury had prepared for their arrival.  The town was placarded with signs describing Douglass as a convict recently escaped from the State prison.  … The Vermonters, despite their long and tested fondness for freedom, stayed away in force.  The first convention of the One Hundred was a sorry failure.

 

…

 

Douglass and [Charles L.] Remond [a free black abolitionist] and the other companions of the unsuccessful Vermont attempt started the New York state series in Albany and worked along the Erie Canal.  The responses they received ranged from apathy to aversion.  Once or twice Douglass thought he detected a mob spirit, but hostility failed to reach a point of physical violence, and the conventions continued (McFeely 74-76).

 

Yet Frederick worked diligently and persistently.  He and George Bradburn, a Unitarian minister, were to speak in Buffalo.  A friend whose responsibility it was to make arrangements for their convention had obtained only a deserted, dilapidated room that had formerly been used as a post office.  Douglass and Bradburn appeared in this room on schedule for the first meeting and found but a few cabmen in work clothes there to pass time between jobs.  Bradburn told Douglass he would not speak to “such a set of ragamuffins,” and took the first steamer to Cleveland to visit his brother.  Douglass, however, remained a week, spoke every day in the old room; and his audiences grew in number and respectability each day.  Eventually, a church was offered to him, but his audiences had increased in number so much by then that he had to hold the Sunday meeting in the park.

 

Douglass, with George Bradburn rejoining him, and William A. White traveled into Indiana.  At Richmond, standing on the platform before a hostile audience, Douglass had his best clothes “spoiled by evil-smelling eggs.”  In the next town, Pendleton, Douglass narrowly escaped death.

 

 

Work cited:

 

McFeely, William S.  Frederick Douglass.  New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.  Print.