Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing
hearts which welcome your story, and form your best
safeguard in telling it, are all beating contrary to the
"statute in such case made and provided."  Go on,
my dear friend, till you, and those who, like you,
have been saved, so as by fire, from the dark prison-
house, shall stereotype these free, illegal pulses into
statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a
blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the house
of refuge for the oppressed,--till we no longer merely
"~hide~ the outcast," or make a merit of standing idly
by while he is hunted in our midst; but, consecrat-
ing anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the
oppressed, proclaim our WELCOME to the slave so
loudly, that the tones shall reach every hut in the
Carolinas, and make the broken-hearted bondman
leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts.

 

                 God speed the day!

 

                      ~Till then, and ever,~

                              ~Yours truly,~

                          ~WENDELL PHILLIPS~

 

  FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

 

 

  Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Fred-
erick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in
Talbot County, Maryland.  He was not sure of the
exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817
or 1818.  As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore,
to be a house servant, where he learned to read and
write, with the assistance of his master's wife.  In
1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York
City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored
woman whom he had met in Baltimore.  Soon there-
after he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.
In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massa-
chusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so
greatly impressed the group that they immediately
employed him as an agent.  He was such an impres-
sive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had
ever been a slave, so he wrote NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE
OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.  During the Civil War he as-
sisted in the recruiting of colored men for the 54th
and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and consistently
argued for the emancipation of slaves.  After the war
he was active in securing and protecting the rights
of the freemen.  In his later years, at different times,
he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission,
marshall and recorder of deeds of the District of
Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti.  His
other autobiographical works are MY BONDAGE AND
MY FREEDOM and LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK
DOUGLASS, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively.
He died in 1895.

 

 

 

                     CHAPTER I

 

 

  I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and
about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county,
Maryland.  I have no accurate knowledge of my age,
never having seen any authentic record containing it.
By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of
their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish
of most masters within my knowledge to keep their
slaves thus ignorant.  I do not remember to have ever
met a slave who could tell of his birthday.  They
seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-
time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time.  A want
of information concerning my own was a source of
unhappiness to me even during childhood.  The white
children could tell their ages.  I could not tell why I
ought to be deprived of the same privilege.  I was
not allowed to make any inquiries of my master con-
cerning it.  He deemed all such inquiries on the part