Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass, a Slave | Page 8

Johnson would have shown himself like him of the "stalwart
hand."
The reader may be surprised at the impressions I had in some way
conceived of the social and material condition of the people at the
North. I had no proper idea of the wealth, refinement, enterprise, and
high civilization of this section of the country. My "Columbian Orator,"
almost my only book, had done nothing to enlighten me concerning
Northern society. I had been taught that slavery was the bottom fact of
all wealth. With this foundation idea, I came naturally to the conclusion
that poverty must be the general condition of the people of the free
States. In the country from which I came, a white man holding no
slaves was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken man, and men of
this class were contemptuously called "poor white trash." Hence I
supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were ignorant,
poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the North must
be in a similar condition. I could have landed in no part of the United
States where I should have found a more striking and gratifying
contrast, not only to life generally in the South, but in the condition of
the colored people there, than in New Bedford. I was amazed when Mr.
Johnson told me that there was nothing in the laws or constitution of
Massachusetts that would prevent a colored man from being governor
of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him. There, too, the

black man's children attended the public schools with the white man's
children, and apparently without objection from any quarter. To
impress me with my security from recapture and return to slavery, Mr.
Johnson assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave out of New
Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their lives to
save me from such a fate.
The fifth day after my arrival, I put on the clothes of a common laborer,
and went upon the wharves in search of work. On my way down Union
street I saw a large pile of coal in front of the house of Rev. Ephraim
Peabody, the Unitarian minister. I went to the kitchen door and asked
the privilege of bringing in and putting away this coal. "What will you
charge?" said the lady. "I will leave that to you, madam." "You may put
it away," she said. I was not long in accomplishing the job, when the
dear lady put into my hand TWO SILVER HALF-DOLLARS. To
understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money,
realizing that I had no master who could take it from me,--THAT IT
WAS MINE--THAT MY HANDS WERE MY OWN, and could earn
more of the precious coin,--one must have been in some sense himself a
slave. My next job was stowing a sloop at Uncle Gid. Howland's wharf
with a cargo of oil for New York. I was not only a freeman, but a free
working-man, and no "master" stood ready at the end of the week to
seize my hard earnings.
The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being
fitted out for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The
sawing this wood was considered a good job. With the help of old
Friend Johnson (blessings on his memory) I got a saw and "buck," and
went at it. When I went into a store to buy a cord with which to brace
up my saw in the frame, I asked for a "fip's" worth of cord. The man
behind the counter looked rather sharply at me, and said with equal
sharpness, "You don't belong about here." I was alarmed, and thought I
had betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents,
called fourpence in Massachusetts. But no harm came from the
"fi'penny-bit" blunder, and I confidently and cheerfully went to work
with my saw and buck. It was new business to me, but I never did
better work, or more of it, in the same space of time on the plantation

for Covey, the negro-breaker, than I did for myself in these earliest
years of my freedom.
Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford three
and forty years ago, the place was not entirely free from race and color
prejudice. The good influence of the Roaches, Rodmans, Arnolds,
Grinnells, and Robesons did not pervade all classes of its people. The
test of the real civilization of the community came when I applied for
work at my trade, and then my repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so
happened that Mr. Rodney French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen,
distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for