My Bondage and My Freedom
monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death. Expose
slavery, and it dies. Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is
to the root of a tree; it must die under it. All the slaveholder asks
of me is silence. He does not ask me to go abroad and preach _in favor_
of slavery; he does not ask any one to do that. He would not say that
slavery is a good thing, but the best under the circumstances. The
slaveholders want total darkness on the subject. They want the hatchway
shut down, that the monster may crawl in his den of darkness, crushing
human hopes and happiness, destroying the bondman at will, and having
no one to reprove or rebuke him. Slavery shrinks from the light; it
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be
reproved. To tear off the mask from this abominable system, to expose
it to the light of heaven, aye, to the heat of the sun, that it may
burn and wither it out of existence, is my object in coming to this
country. I want the slaveholder surrounded, as by a wall of
anti-slavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and
his system glaring down in letters of light. I want him to feel that he
has no sympathy in England, Scotland, or Ireland; that he has none in
Canada, none in Mexico, none among the poor wild Indians; that the
voice of the civilized, aye, and savage world is against him. I would
have condemnation blaze down upon him in every direction, till, stunned
and overwhelmed with shame and confusion, he is compelled to let go the
grasp he holds upon the persons of his victims, and restore them to
their long-lost rights.
Dr. Campbell’s Reply
From Rev. Dr. Campbell’s brilliant reply we extract the following:
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, “the beast of burden,” the portion of “goods and
chattels,” the representative of three millions of men, has been raised
up! Shall I say the _man?_ If there is a man on earth, he is a man. My
blood boiled within me when I heard his address tonight, and thought
that he had left behind him three millions of such men.
We must see more of this man; we must have more of this man. One would
have taken a voyage round the globe some forty years back—especially
since the introduction of steam—to have heard such an exposure of
slavery from the lips of a slave. It will be an era in the individual
history of the present assembly. Our children—our boys and girls—I have
tonight seen the delightful sympathy of their hearts evinced by their
heaving breasts, while their eyes sparkled with wonder and admiration,
that this black man—this slave—had so much logic, so much wit, so much
fancy, so much eloquence. He was something more than a man, according
to their little notions. Then, I say, we must hear him again. We have
got a purpose to accomplish. He has appealed to the pulpit of England.
The English pulpit is with him. He has appealed to the press of
England; the press of England is conducted by English hearts, and that
press will do him justice. About ten days hence, and his second master,
who may well prize “such a piece of goods,” will have the pleasure of
reading his burning words, and his first master will bless himself that
he has got quit of him. We have to create public opinion, or rather,
not to create it, for it is created already; but we have to foster it;
and when tonight I heard those magnificent words—the words of Curran,
by which my heart, from boyhood, has ofttimes been deeply moved—I
rejoice to think that they embody an instinct of an Englishman’s
nature. I heard, with inexpressible delight, how they told on this
mighty mass of the citizens of the metropolis.
Britain has now no slaves; we can therefore talk to the other nations
now, as we could not have talked a dozen years ago. I want the whole of
the London ministry to meet Douglass. For as his appeal is to England,
and throughout England, I should rejoice in the idea of churchmen and
dissenters merging all sectional distinctions in this cause. Let us
have a public breakfast. Let the ministers meet him; let them hear him;
let them grasp his hand; and let him enlist their sympathies on behalf
of the slave. Let him inspire them with abhorrence of the
man-stealer—the slaveholder. No slaveholding American shall ever my
cross my door. No slaveholding or slavery-supporting minister shall
ever pollute my pulpit. While I have a tongue to speak, or a hand to
write, I will, to the utmost of my power, oppose these slaveholding
men. We must have Douglass amongst us to aid in fostering public
opinion.
The great conflict with slavery must now take place in America; and
while they are adding other slave states to the Union, our business is
to step forward and help the abolitionists there. It is a pleasing
circumstance that such a body of men has risen in America, and whilst
we hurl our thunders against her slavers, let us make a distinction
between those who advocate slavery and those who oppose it. George
Thompson has been there. This man, Frederick Douglass, has been there,
and has been compelled to flee. I wish, when he first set foot on our
shores, he had made a solemn vow, and said, “Now that I am free, and in
the sanctuary of freedom, I will never return till I have seen the
emancipation of my country completed.” He wants to surround these men,
the slaveholders, as by a wall of fire; and he himself may do much
toward kindling it. Let him travel over the island—east, west, north,
and south—everywhere diffusing knowledge and awakening principle, till
the whole nation become a body of petitioners to America. He will, he
must, do it. He must for a season make England his home. He must send
for his wife. He must send for his children. I want to see the sons and
daughters of such a sire. We, too, must do something for him and them
worthy of the English name. I do not like the idea of a man of such
mental dimensions, such moral courage, and all but incomparable talent,
having his own small wants, and the wants of a distant wife and
children, supplied by the poor profits of his publication, the sketch
of his life. Let the pamphlet be bought by tens of thousands. But we
will do something more for him, shall we not?
It only remains that we pass a resolution of thanks to Frederick
Douglass, the slave that was, the man that is! He that was covered with
chains, and that is now being covered with glory, and whom we will send
back a gentleman.
LETTER TO HIS OLD MASTER. 11. To My Old Master, Thomas Auld
SIR—The long and intimate, though by no means friendly, relation which
unhappily subsisted between you and myself, leads me to hope that you
will easily account for the great liberty which I now take in
addressing you in this open and public manner. The same fact may remove
any disagreeable surprise which you may experience on again finding
your name coupled with mine, in any other way than in an advertisement,
accurately describing my person, and offering a large sum for my
arrest. In thus dragging you again before the public, I am aware that I
shall subject myself to no inconsiderable amount of censure. I shall
probably be charged with an unwarrantable, if not a wanton and reckless
disregard of the rights and properties of private life. There are those
north as well as south who entertain a much higher respect for rights
which are merely conventional, than they do for rights which are
personal and essential. Not a few there are in our country, who, while
they have no scruples against robbing the laborer of the hard earned
results of his patient industry, will be shocked by the extremely
indelicate manner of bringing your name before the public. Believing
this to be the case, and wishing to meet every reasonable or plausible
objection to my conduct, I will frankly state the ground upon which I
justfy(sic) myself in this instance, as well as on former occasions
when I have thought proper to mention your name in public. All will
agree that a man guilty of theft, robbery, or murder, has forfeited the
right to concealment and private life; that the community have a right
to subject such persons to the most complete exposure. However much
they may desire retirement, and aim to conceal themselves and their
movements from the popular gaze, the public have a right to ferret them
out, and bring their conduct before the proper tribunals of the country
for investigation. Sir, you will undoubtedly make the proper
application of these generally admitted principles, and will easily see
the light in which you are regarded by me; I will not therefore
manifest ill temper, by calling you hard names. I know you to be a man
of some intelligence, and can readily determine the precise estimate
which I entertain of your character. I may therefore indulge in
language which may seem to others indirect and ambiguous, and yet be
quite well understood by yourself.
I have selected this day on which to address you, because it is the
anniversary of my emancipation; and knowing no better way, I am led to
this as the best mode of celebrating that truly important events. Just
ten years ago this beautiful September morning, yon bright sun beheld
me a slave—a poor degraded chattel—trembling at the sound of your
voice, lamenting that I was a man, and wishing myself a brute. The
hopes which I had treasured up for weeks of a safe and successful
escape from your grasp, were powerfully confronted at this last hour by
dark clouds of doubt and fear, making my person shake and my bosom to
heave with the heavy contest between hope and fear. I have no words to
describe to you the deep agony of soul which I experienced on that
never-to-be-forgotten morning—for I left by daylight. I was making a
leap in the dark. The probabilities, so far as I could by reason
determine them, were stoutly against the undertaking. The preliminaries
and precautions I had adopted previously, all worked badly. I was like
one going to war without weapons—ten chances of defeat to one of
victory. One in whom I had confided, and one who had promised me
assistance, appalled by fear at the trial hour, deserted me, thus
leaving the responsibility of success or failure solely with myself.
You, sir, can never know my feelings. As I look back to them, I can
scarcely realize that I have passed through a scene so trying. Trying,
however, as they were, and gloomy as was the prospect, thanks be to the
Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed, at the moment which
was to determine my whole earthly career, His grace was sufficient; my
mind was made up. I embraced the golden opportunity, took the morning
tide at the flood, and a free man, young, active, and strong, is the
result.
I have often thought I should like to explain to you the grounds upon
which I have justified myself in running away from you. I am almost
ashamed to do so now, for by this time you may have discovered them
yourself. I will, however, glance at them. When yet but a child about
six years old, I imbibed the determination to run away. The very first
mental effort that I now remember on my part, was an attempt to solve
the mystery—why am I a slave? and with this question my youthful mind
was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times than
others. When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave-woman, cut the blood
out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the
corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery. I had, through
some medium, I know not what, got some idea of God, the Creator of all
mankind, the black and the white, and that he had made the blacks to
serve the whites as slaves. How he could do this and be _good_, I could
not tell. I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God
responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over