CHAPTER III.

THE CRUSADER.

At the beginning of August, 1841, an anti-slavery convention was held at New Bedford, where Douglass heard not only Garrison, but Parker Pillsbury, a Universalist clergyman named Bradburn, and other leading Abolitionists; and he became so much interested that he determined to take a holiday, the first he had that summer, and go with his wife to attend the next series of meetings at Nantucket. He had already become somewhat noted as a speaker to colored people; but he felt greatly embarrassed when, on the evening of Wednesday, August 11, as is recorded in the "Liberator," he was called out, for the first time in his life, to address a white audience. "My speech on this occasion," he says, "is about the only one I ever made of which I do not remember a single connected sentence. It was with the utmost difficulty that I could stand erect, or that I could command and articulate two words without hesitation and stammering. I trembled in every limb." He has since told me, that he did manage to thank the champions of his race for their devotion, and also to express his hearty sympathy with their methods. It was then too late in the evening to say more. The impression he made was so favorable, however, that

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he was persuaded to open the last session of the Nantucket convention the next morning, when, as is related by Garrison, "After apologizing for his ignorance and reminding the audience, that slavery is a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and thrilling reflections." He could not safely tell his real name, or his master's, or where he had lived in the South; but according to Parker Pillsbury, he succeeded in proving that he had been there by giving "a most sidesplitting specimen of a slave-holding minister's sermon," on the text, "Servants, obey in all things your masters." A passage from this very effective parody will be found in the next chapter, where Miss Holley quotes it as she heard it, two years later, in Buffalo. The meetings had begun tamely, but gradually gained in fervor; and now The crowded congregation had been wrought up almost to enchantment, as he turned over the terrible apocalypse of his experiences in slavery." Then Garrison arose; and as Douglass says, his speech was one never to be forgotten by those who heard it. Those who had heard him oftenest, and had known him longest, were astonished. It was an effort of unequalled power, sweeping down, like a very tornado, every opposing barrier." Garrison says himself, "I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment." He began by declaring that Patrick Henry never spoke more eloquently in the cause of liberty. Then, according to Pillsbury, he asked, "Have we been listening to a thing, a piece of property, or to a man?"

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"A man! A man!" shouted full five hundred voices. "And should such a man be held a slave in a republican and Christian land?" "No, no! Never, never!" "Shall such a man ever be sent back to slavery from the soil of old Massachusetts?" shouted Garrison, with all his power of voice. "Almost the whole assembly sprang with one accord to their feet, and the walls and roof of the Athenæum seemed to shudder with the 'No, no!' loud and long continued in the wild enthusiasm of the scene. As soon as Garrison could be heard, he caught up the acclaim, and superadded: 'No! a thousand times no! Sooner the lightnings of heaven blast Bunker Hill monument, till not one stone shall be left standing upon another.'" (Pillsbury, "Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles," pp. 325-8.)

Before Douglass returned to New Bedford, he accepted an invitation from Mr. Collins, agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, to enter into its service as a lecturer, and go to and fro with him, telling his story wherever he could find an audience. His salary was to be four hundred and fifty dollars a year. He was very unwilling at first, not only because he would be dangerously exposed to discovery and arrest, but because he distrusted his own ability. The Abolitionists insisted on his enlisting in their forlorn hope; "and I finally consented to go out for three months, for I supposed I should have got to the end of my story and my usefulness in that length of time." He has been out before the public, pleading for his race, almost fifty years, and he has not yet got to the end of his usefulness.

The next place where he seems to have attracted

....

much notice was Hingham, where he spoke at the Plymouth County convention, November 4. According to an article copied into the "Liberator," from the "Hingham Patriot," he reminded those who saw him of Spartacus, the rebel gladiator, as presented by Forrest. "A man of his shrewdness, and his power, both intellectual and physical, must be poor stuff, thought we, to make a slave of. Any way, we would not like to be his master." . . "He is very fluent in the use of language, choice and appropriate language, too; and talks as well, for all we could see, as men who have spent all their lives over books." "His master valued him at $2,000. He told us that he could distinguish a slave-holder or a slave by the cast of his eye, the moment he saw one." He seems, even then, to have done much more than tell his own experience. He did, it is true, in favoring the presentation of petitions as a means of attracting notice, relate how he learned himself who the "Bobolitionists" were, by hearing what they asked of Congress; but he went on to express his decided preference for moral suasion over political action. "We ought to do just what the slave-holders don't want us to do, that is, use moral suasion." He called the pledge of the North to return fugitives "the bulwark of / slavery;" for it "discourages very many from making any attempt to gain their freedom." . . ." This is the Union whose dissolution we want to accomplish; and he is no true Abolitionist who does not go against this Union. The South cares not how much you talk against slavery in the abstract. They will agree with you, yet they will cling to it as for life; and it is this pledge, binding the North to the South, on which

they rely for its support." This is, of course, simply what he had been taught by Garrison, Phillips, and Collins. What was most original in his speeches at this time was the zeal with which he lashed the churches of the North for their alliance with those in the South.

The most important work done by the Abolitionists in 1841 was in Rhode Island. This State was still under the charter of 1663, which had originally been very liberal, but had now become plainly unjust. The voters must not only be white, but must also be holders, or eldest sons of holders, of real estate, so that almost two-thirds of the men were disfranchised; and the majority of the Representatives were elected by a portion of the State inhabited by only about onethird of its citizens. Thus it was perfectly possible for fifteen hundred men to get the control of a legislature which ruled over fifty thousand adults. About seven hundred of the disfranchised men were colored.

A movement to enlarge the suffrage, and equalize the representation, began in 1790, was renewed in 1829, and assumed formidable proportions in 1841. The Legislature was willing to make some changes, but not enough to satisfy the suffragists. These Dorrites, as they were called, on account of being led by Mr. T. W. Dorr, were mostly Democrats, and were determined to have full justice done to the white man at once. Those of them who wished to do something for the colored man also were overruled by the others, and persuaded to make a compromise. A new constitution was proposed in November, 1841, allowing all white men to vote, but postponing the question of enfranchising colored