My Bondage and My Freedom | Page 8

an abused and harrowed boyhood and youth, bursting out
in all their freshness and overwhelming earnestness!
This unique introduction to its great leader, led immediately
[1] Letter, Introduction to Life of Frederick Douglass, Boston, 1841.
<10>to the employment of Mr. Douglass as an agent by the American
Anti-Slavery Society. So far as his self-relying and independent
character would permit, he became, after the strictest sect, a
Garrisonian. It is not too much to say, that he formed a complement
which they needed, and they were a complement equally necessary to
his "make-up." With his deep and keen sensitiveness to wrong, and his
wonderful memory, he came from the land of bondage full of its woes
and its evils, and painting them in characters of living light; and, on his
part, he found, told out in sound Saxon phrase, all those principles of
justice and right and liberty, which had dimly brooded over the dreams
of his youth, seeking definite forms and verbal expression. It must have
been an electric flashing of thought, and a knitting of soul, granted to
but few in this life, and will be a life-long memory to those who
participated in it. In the society, moreover, of Wendell Phillips,
Edmund Quincy, William Lloyd Garrison, and other men of earnest
faith and refined culture, Mr. Douglass enjoyed the high advantage of
their assistance and counsel in the labor of self-culture, to which he
now addressed himself with wonted energy. Yet, these gentlemen,
although proud of Frederick Douglass, failed to fathom, and bring out
to the light of day, the highest qualities of his mind; the force of their

own education stood in their own way: they did not delve into the mind
of a colored man for capacities which the pride of race led them to
believe to be restricted to their own Saxon blood. Bitter and vindictive
sarcasm, irresistible mimicry, and a pathetic narrative of his own
experiences of slavery, were the intellectual manifestations which they
encouraged him to exhibit on the platform or in the lecture desk.
A visit to England, in 1845, threw Mr. Douglass among men and
women of earnest souls and high culture, and who, moreover, had
never drank of the bitter waters of American caste. For the first time in
his life, he breathed an atmosphere congenial to the longings of his
spirit, and felt his manhood free and <11>unrestricted. The cordial and
manly greetings of the British and Irish audiences in public, and the
refinement and elegance of the social circles in which he mingled, not
only as an equal, but as a recognized man of genius, were, doubtless,
genial and pleasant resting places in his hitherto thorny and troubled
journey through life. There are joys on the earth, and, to the wayfaring
fugitive from American slavery or American caste, this is one of them.
But his sojourn in England was more than a joy to Mr. Douglass. Like
the platform at Nantucket, it awakened him to the consciousness of new
powers that lay in him. From the pupilage of Garrisonism he rose to the
dignity of a teacher and a thinker; his opinions on the broader aspects
of the great American question were earnestly and incessantly sought,
from various points of view, and he must, perforce, bestir himself to
give suitable answer. With that prompt and truthful perception which
has led their sisters in all ages of the world to gather at the feet and
support the hands of reformers, the gentlewomen of England[2] were
foremost to encourage and strengthen him to carve out for himself a
path fitted to his powers and energies, in the life-battle against slavery
and caste to which he was pledged. And one stirring thought,
inseparable from the British idea of the evangel of freedom, must have
smote his ear from every side--
Hereditary bondmen! know ye not Who would be free, themselves mast
strike the blow?
The result of this visit was, that on his return to the United States, he

established a newspaper. This proceeding was sorely against the wishes
and the advice of the leaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, but
our author had fully grown up to the conviction of a truth which they
had once promulged, but now

[2] One of these ladies, impelled by the same noble spirit which carried
Miss Nightingale to Scutari, has devoted her time, her untiring energies,
to a great extent her means, and her high literary abilities, to the
advancement and support of Frederick Douglass' Paper, the only organ
of the downtrodden, edited and published by one of themselves, in the
United States.
<12>forgotten, to wit: that in their own elevation--self-
elevation--colored men have a blow to strike "on their own hook,"
against slavery and caste. Differing from his Boston friends in this
matter,