been consoled by the recollection of what were by far the brightest scenes in his life, before he reached fifty. He had made a great discovery, whose importance is not even yet recognized fully. He had proved that the color-prejudice is not a universal characteristic of the white race, too widely diffused and deeply seated to stand much chance of being eradicated, but merely a local idiosyncrasy, destined to become obsolete, like the peculiar dialect in which the "Biglow Papers" were at this time written. It is necessary in "the survival of the fittest," that all national peculiarities of speech, dress, food, amusement, or opinion, not limited by climate, should ultimately either become universal and cosmopolitan, or else disappear entirely. The color-prejudice is only an Americanism, and never can be anything more. It may linger long among the uncultivated; but its days are numbered. To prove this was worth a great deal to the antislavery cause; but otherwise the British sympathy called out by Douglass and Garrison was not, I think, of much value, especially as the money was never sent back from Scotland. Ireland was more responsive; but the example of O'Connell and Father Mathew does not seem to have had the slightest influence on their admirers who emigrated to America. We shall find George Thompson treated all the worse in Boston in 1850, because he was an ambassador from most of the respectable men and women in England. The fathers of the men who now seem to think that the principles of civil service reform and free trade are false and dangerous here, because they have been found true and beneficial in Great Britain, hated "the nigger," Douglass, all the more bitterly after they saw

him honored by the Britishers. I doubt if a single hunker would have been converted by hearing that the "Liberator" had got a hundred thousand subscribers in England; and the amount of national aid which came across the water to Boston does not seem to have been very great. I find no record of any other contributions so large as that which purchased freedom for Douglass, and that which, as we shall see, soon enabled him to publish a newspaper, whose name furnishes a title for our next chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

THE "NORTH STAR."

WHEN Douglass returned to the United States, April 20, 1847, he brought with him the news that the lady who had made him legally free, Mrs. Ellen Richardson, of Newcastle, had just opened a subscription for a newspaper, which he should edit in the interest of colored people. He had at first made several objections. His friends in Boston might not like it; the average American would be prejudiced against any enterprise started by British capital; he did not himself like a sedentary life; and money was more needed in Ireland, just then, than in America. All these objections were outweighed, however, by the zeal of his English friends, and the subscription was likely to be a success. The time was propitious for several reasons. His victories abroad enabled him to return in triumph. The war which had been undertaken against Mexico, for the extension of slavery, had now assumed a character of such atrocity as to justify the opening against it of a new battery, especially as Lowell and Whittier were furnishing abundance of ammunition. And the discontinuance of the "Herald of Freedom," in 1846, had left a gap which ought to be speedily filled.

The prisoner on the "Cambria" had consoled himself

by visions of what he was about to do for his race, when he could use his pen as well as his voice, and reach constantly all who sympathized with him, instead of only scattered portions intermittently. He was sadly perplexed and disappointed at finding Garrison and the other Boston Abolitionists insist that he was better fitted for speaking than writing; that editing a paper would interfere with his usefulness as a lecturer; and that there was no room for another anti-slavery journal. The field seemed, in fact, pretty full, as three new ones had been started that very year by the colored people, who are said to have got out as many as a hundred before 1855. The first on the list is dated as early as 1827; and twenty years later I find that the "Ram's Horn" was in full blast; the "Mystery" was awaiting its solution or dissolution; the "National Watchman was going its rounds busily; the "Disfranchised American" was on the war path; and the "Northern Star and Colored Farmer" was shining under the direction of the black pastor of a white congregation, Rev. S. R. Ward, who evidently believed that every farmer should hitch his wagon to a star. The "Elevator," however, was not running; the "Struggler" had either ceased or not begun to struggle; and the "Palladium of Liberty" had, I fear, been captured by the enemy, in company with the "Demosthenian Shield." But at all events, there were now so many rivals to the proposed paper, and there had been so many failures in this quarter, that the enterprise naturally seemed perilous. How far Garrison was influenced by determination that there should be order in the ranks, it is hard to say. The fact which

he brought forward in July, that he once had four hundred colored subscribers in New York City, and as many in Philadelphia, and now had not half-adozen in either place, was really a much more favorable indication than he represented it to be for Douglass; and I hardly think Garrison had a right to say that "It is quite impracticable to combine the editor with the lecturer, without either causing the paper to be more or less neglected, or the sphere of lecturing to be seriously circumscribed." He had himself been so successful in making his lecturing and his editing help each other, that it is a great pity that he did not promptly and cordially urge his young friend and disciple to go and do likewise. He declared in the "Liberator," before the money had been sent over, that he considered "such a present inexpedient;' and two days later, June 27, Douglass wrote a letter for publication, in which he said, “I have, with some reluctance, given up the idea of publishing a paper for the present." Four weeks later, in consequence of suggestions that he had been unduly influenced, he stated that he had acted "wholly on my own responsibility;" but it was mainly due to Garrison that the publication of the " North Star" was delayed nearly a year; and it finally had to appear without his approbation.

Our Douglass has so noble a nature that no opposition could damp his zeal for his race. The "Boston Post" mentioned, in May, that "The Abolitionists, headed by Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, and tailed by Mr. Frederick Douglass, the fugitive slave, are in full blast at the Broadway Tabernacle." It is further stated of Douglass that he "elaborates very eloquently