When Did Douglass Escape Slavery

Before Frederick Douglass became the well-nigh influential African-American of the 19^thursday century, he took a long, frightening journeying to liberty on the Underground Railroad.

Enslaved in Baltimore, he had to choose i of two routes out of bondage. One went due north through New Bailiwick of jersey, upwardly the Hudson, w to Rochester, N.Y., and across Lake Ontario to Canada. The second went across Long Island Audio to New England.

Frederick Douglass chose New England.

New Bedford, Mass.

One time he arrived, he was surprised to find that white men who held no slaves were neither ignorant nor poor. He saw 'solid wealth and grandeur,' and constitute that 'fifty-fifty the laboring classes lived in better houses …more abundantly supplied with conveniences and comforts, than the houses of many who owned slaves on the Eastern Shore.'

He was describing New Bedford, Mass.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Bailey on a Maryland plantation in February 1818, probably in his grandmother's shack. His master may have been his begetter; he had no idea. He was separated from his mother equally an infant.

As a boy he secretly taught himself to read and write. At 19 he fell in honey with Anna Murray, a free black woman who worked as a retainer.

Frederick Douglass in 1848.

Past the historic period of 20, he had worked for a half dozen masters and tried to escape several times. In the summertime of 1838 he was working as a caulker for $ix a calendar week at Butler'due south Shipyard in Baltimore – and giving all but 25 cents of his earnings to his main. Frederick Douglass was adamant to escape to liberty.

On Sept. 3, 1838, Frederick Douglass stepped onto a train in Baltimore. He was dressed in a sailor's compatible Anna Murray had fabricated for him. He carried three things: a little coin, identification papers from a complimentary blackness seaman and the names of people who could help him.

Unfortunately, the identification papers described someone who looked quite different from Frederick Douglass. He had bypassed the ticket window where his papers could be checked carefully and waited until the terminal minute to lath the train.

1 reason he had chosen his mariner'southward disguise was the typical Baltimorean'due south warm feeling toward sailors. The train conductor clearly liked sailors and only glanced at the runaway's seaman'southward papers. Every bit Frederick Douglass'due south middle pounded terrifically, the conductor pronounced him 'all right.'

Anna Murray Douglass

Intense Sensations

Frederick Douglass got off the railroad train in Havre De Grace and boarded a ferry to cross the Susquehanna River. On the boat he was approached by an African-American deckhand he knew from Baltimore. The human asked him where he was going and why. Douglass sidestepped the conversation.

Across the river, he stood on the platform for his train to Wilmington and saw a send's captain who knew him – only was looking the other way. He was too seen by a German blacksmith who recognized him, but for some reason didn't betray him.

Frederick Douglass reached Delaware without further incident and boarded a steamer to Philadelphia. In the city he found a black porter who brash him what to do. He boarded a ferry, and so the nighttime train, then some other ferry, then he disembarked on the free soil of New York City.

His sensations were 'as well intense and too rapid for words.'

Still, there was a bounty on his head. He had no coin. He knew no ane.

On a New York street he ran into an associate, a fearful escapee from slavery, who told him New York was full of slave catchers. Douglass should trust no one, the homo said, and stay away from the colored boardinghouses and wharves. Douglass spent the night sleeping behind a stack of barrels on a wharf.

The next day he risked a remark with a stranger, a sailor, who took him to the home of David Ruggles, a black journalist who helped hundreds of runaway slaves.

Where To Next?

Frederick Douglass stayed a few days with Ruggles, who helped him work out a plan. Get-go, Anna had to come to New York so they could exist married. Not an easy chore, for she couldn't read and had to navigate iii trains and iv boats. Simply she made it, and they became man and wife in David Ruggles' parlor.

New Bedford Harbor

Then they had to make up one's mind where to live. New Bedford, Mass., was the obvious solution. The whaling urban center'due south maritime industries were open to African-Americans, and many who escaped from slavery put downwards roots there. New Bedford by 1853 would have the highest population of African-Americans in the Northeast. Nearly a third had moved in that location from the South.

At any in one case before the Civil State of war, 300 to 700 fugitive slaves were estimated to live in New Bedford.

Rescuing Frederick Douglass

Ruggles gave Frederick Douglass a 5-dollar beak. He and Anna boarded a steamship for Newport, where they ran out of money. At the stagecoach end to New Bedford, they met two Quakers, William Taber and Joseph Ricketson. The men told them to get into the stage with them. When the stage driver left them off in New Bedford, he held their baggage because they couldn't pay him.

Nathan and Mary Johnson houses

Taber and Ricketson directed the newlyweds to 21-23 7th Street, a quondam Quaker coming together house now the home of Nathan and Mary Johnson. They knew the Johnsons as well-to-do free blackness abolitionists.

Nathan paid the fare and got their baggage dorsum. He then suggested his guest choose a new last name.

He was at present Frederick Douglass, and he was abode free.

With thanks to Frederick Douglass past William South. McFeely.

Images: New Bedford By English Wikipedia user Daniel Case, CC BY-SA three.0, https://eatables.wikimedia.org/westward/alphabetize.php?curid=4364093.

Tours of the Nathan and Mary Johnson backdrop are available by appointment. Click here for more than information. This story was updated in 2022.

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