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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 402 Print image (115K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 402 Print image (115K) |
| Untitled 11/7/99 9:52 PM Once initiated into ny nav life of freedom and assured fcy Mr. Johnson that I need not fear recapture in that city, a corparatively uninportant question arose as to the name fcy which I should be kncwn thereafter in ny nav relation as a free wan. The name given me fcy rry dear nether was no less pretentious and long than Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I had, hcwsver, while living in l^kryland, dispensed with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey. Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal nyself from the slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called rryself Johnson; but in New Bedford I found that the Johnson family was already so numerous as to cause some confusion in distinguishing them, hence a change in this na seemed desirable. Nathan Johnson, mine host, placed great erphasis upon this necessity, and wished me to allow him to select a name for me. I consented, and he called me ky ny present name—the one ty which I have been knewn for three and forty years—Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the "Lady of the Lake," and so pleased was he with its great character that he wished me to bear his name. Since reading that chaining poan nyself, I have often thought that, considering the noble hospitality and rtBnly character of Nathan Johnson—black man though he v\/as—he, far more than I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that, if any slave-catcher had entered Ms domicile with a view to ny recapture, Johnson would have shewn himself like him of the "stalwart hand." The reader way be surprised at the iirpressions I had in sore 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. M^ "Columbian Orator," almost ny 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 nust be the general condition of the people of the free States. In the country from which I cam a white iran holding no slaves was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken m and men of this class were conterptuously called "poor white trash." Hence I supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were ignoran poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the North nust 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 lyfessachusetts that wDuld prevent a colored rran frcm being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him. There, too, the black nan's children attended the public schools with the white man's children, http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/Afro-Amer/dugl210.txt Page 8 of 17 |