1. United Secession Church, 16 Abbey Close (Rev. William Nisbet)
2. Exchange Rooms, Moss Street.
3. United Secession Church, 21 George Street (Rev. Robert Cairns)
4. Free Church of Scotland, High Church, Orr Square (Rev. John McNaughtan)
5. Church of Scotland, Abbey (Rev. Patrick Brewster)
6. West Relief Church, Canal Street (Rev. James Banks)

Alongside his companion James Buffum, Douglass addressed numerous meetings in Paisley during March and April 1846. For the last meeting on 25 April, they were joined by fellow campaigners Henry Clarke Wright and George Thompson. All four abolitionists then made their base in Edinburgh for the final push of the campaign against the Free Church of Scotland during the lead up to its General Assembly at the end of May.  In September Douglass returned to Paisley with William Lloyd Garrison whom he accompanied on two tours of Scotland during Garrison’s three-month visit to Britain in the autumn.

Five years’ earlier, a recession had hit the town hard, forcing many mills to close. Across Scotland in 1842, there were mass meetings, strikes and threats of civil disobedience, and the police and army were put on high alert.  The Chartists, with their political demands, were somewhat outflanked by these protests provoked by economic distress, but they were not inactive. In Paisley the moderate Chartist, Patrick Brewster, formed a Society for the Protection of the Destitute Poor, earning him a year-long suspension from his post as a Church of Scotland minister.

Brewster was also an active abolitionist, an honorary member of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, but Douglass would have taken exception to his claim that the British worker was ‘as much at the mercy of his Master, as if he was a Negro Slave.’  In his first speech in Paisley Douglass acknowledged ‘the evils stalking abroad in this land’ but insisted – in what might have been a dig at Brewster – that they ‘are nothing like American slavery. I protest against the use of the term slavery being applied in such a manner – it is an awful misnomer.’

Another Paisley clergyman, with whom Douglass had a rather less cordial relationship, was John MacNaughtan of the Free Church, who had dismissed him as an ‘ignorant runaway slave who had picked up a few sentences.’  At the West Relief church on 25 April, Douglass gave his response:

The man whose pockets are lined with the gold with which I ought to have been educated, stands up charging me with ignorance and poverty. The man who enjoys his share of the three thousand pounds taken from the slaveholder, and robbed from the slave, stands up to denounce me as being ignorant. Shame on him.

There is no record of Douglass meeting Peter Burnet, an African American who had lived much of his life in the town, after accompanying his employer to Scotland during the Revoutionary War. Known as ‘Black Peter’, he made a living as a weaver and was a friend of the poet Robert Tannahill. By the time of Douglass’ visit, Burnet was in his eighties and in ailing health (he died the following year), but it seems unlikely that they wouldn’t have been made aware of each other’s presence.

	United Secession Church, 16 Abbey Close.  Douglass spoke here at least seven times during March and April. On 25 April he tells his audience that they stand alongside campaigners from England, Ireland, Mexico, Canada, and ‘even the red Indians’, to form ‘an anti-slavery wall’ surrounding the United States. The graveyard survives, but the church itself is no more, its site now an open green space next to the Town Hall.
	Exchange Rooms, Moss Street.  Douglass and Buffum were guests of honour at a soirée here on 17 April. In his speech Douglass insists how effective British public opinion could be in changing American perceptions of slavery. He singles out Charles Dickens for praise, but warns that racist attitudes are not confined to the US. ‘Some of the people here were about as bad,’ he says. Opened in 1837, it is one of the few non-ecclesiastical buildings to survive from the period.
	United Secession Church, 21 George St. Douglass returned to Paisley with Garrison on 23 September. A ‘Great Anti-Slavery Meeting’ was moved here – then the largest church in the town – from its original venue, when it was discovered that tickets were changing hands at three times their face value. The building no longer exists and the site is now occupied by shops and flats.
	Free Church of Scotland, High Church, Orr Square.  The church of the minister John MacNaughtan who insulted Douglass, prompting several sharp responses in speeches in Paisley and elsewhere. The church has since been converted to residential accommodation.
	Paisley Abbey, Church of Scotland.  The outspoken Patrick Brewster had a difficult relationship with the Church of Scotland, but was minister at the Abbey when Douglass was in Paisley, and shared a platform with him on several occasions.   It remains a place of worship, a prominent landmark in the town.
	West Relief Church, Canal Street. Douglass addressed his seventh meeting in the town here on 25 April, alongside Buffum, Wright and Thompson, shuttling between here and the church in Abbey Close. ‘They found when they came to town that the excitement was so great, they would have two large meetings.’ The building still stands, but is no longer in use.
	Monument to Patrick Brewster, Woodside Cemetery (not on map).  John G Mossman’s monument (1863) forms part of the heritage trail in the cemetery, located to the west of the town centre.

The full text of newspaper reports of Douglass’ 1846 speeches in Paisley (and elsewhere in Scotland) will be added to this site during 2019.  For an overview, see this list of his speaking engagements.

1. York Temperance Hotel, 19 Nicolson Street.
2. United Secession Church, 19 Rose Street (Rev John McGilchrist)
3. Waterloo Rooms, 29 Waterloo Place.
4. Music Hall, 54 George Street.
5. Brighton Street Chapel.
6. 45 Melville Street.
7. Council Chambers.
8. Theatre Royal.
9. 33 Gilmore Place.
10. 10 Salisbury Road.
11. 5 South Gray Street.
12. 7 Montpelier.

Frederick Douglass loved Edinburgh. ‘It is a beautiful city,’ he wrote, ‘the most beautiful I ever saw – not so much on account of the buildings as on account of its picturesque position.’  He briefly entertained the idea of bringing his family over and settling permanently, but he was soon convinced of the need to return to the United States and rejoin the abolitionist campaign on the front lines. ‘I know it will be hard to endure the kicks and cuffs of the pro-slavery multituude, to which I shall  be subjected; but then, I glory in the battle, as well as in the victory.’

He arrived for the first time in April 1846, and embarked on an intense schedule of a dozen or so lectures in the month leading up to the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland that opened at the end of May. He and his fellow campaigners, James Buffum, Henry Clarke Wright and George Thompson, exerted pressure on the church’s leaders to take an unequivocal stand against their Presbyterian counterparts in the United States for their willingness to placate slaveholders.  The Assembly was to be the culmination of the ‘Send Back the Money’ campaign. It was even said that Douglass was observed carving the slogan in large letters of the slopes of Arthur’s Seat with ‘two fair Quakeresses’, probably Jane Smeal and her step daughter Eliza Wigham, active members of the Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society.

With Thomas Chalmers in failing health (he died the following year), it was left to William Cunningham and Robert Candlish to manage the few dissenting voices in the Free Church.  The abolitionists attended the Assembly and an outburst from Thompson momentarily disrupted proceedings, but the leadership held firm. Buoyed by vigorous editorials on the issue by Hugh Miller in the Witness, they engineered a compromise that effectively closed the debate.

Disappointed, the campaigners went their own ways from the capital in June to pursue their activities in Ireland and England. But Douglass returned in the autumn with Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison as they looped twice around Scotland, promoting their new venture the Anti-Slavery League.  They enjoyed the hospitality of several leading Edinburgh abolitionists including the Wighams, and the Rev. James Robertson, secretary of the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society.

Douglass records meeting several leading figures in the city, including the publishers Robert and William Chambers (who reviewed his Narrative in theirJournal). And he later recalled with fondness his breakfast with phrenologist George Combe, whose best-known work, Douglass claimed, ‘relieved my path of many shadows.’

As elsewhere in Scotland, Douglass found himself competing for audiences with blackface minstrel shows, including crowds who flocked to see the Ethiopian Serenaders, whose tour overlapped with his in Edinburgh in October.  He later denounced such performers as ‘the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature,’ but chose to pointedly ignore them on this occasion.

In his letters from Edinburgh we get rare glimpses of the private Douglass – fatigued by the relentless campaigning and missing his wife Anna and their children.  In one of his ‘fits of melancholy’, he tells a family friend, he saw a fiddle for sale in a music shop. He promptly bought it and took it back to his hotel and played a Scots air. ‘I  had not played ten minutes before I began to feel better and – gradually I came to myself again and was lively as a crikit and as loving as a lamb.’

	York Temperance Hotel, 19 Nicolson Street. Advertised as ‘combining the elegance and comfort of a first-rate Hotel with the quiet and home-like character of a genteel family residence’, this was Douglass’s main base when in Edinburgh. The site was subsequently occupied by a number of entertainment venues, most recently the Festival Theatre.
	United Secession Church, 19 Rose Street. Douglass spoke here on 28 and 29 April and on 7 May (with Buffum, Thompson and Wright).  Letters to the Witness newspaper pointed to the church being a beneficiary of compensation paid to slaveholders in the wake of West Indian Emancipation, suggesting the hypocrisy of the abolitionist campaign’s exclusive focus on the Free Church.
	Waterloo Rooms, 29 Waterloo Place. At a ‘Public Breakfast’ on 1 May ‘Mr Douglass especially enchained the attention of his audience,’ according to a report, ‘alternately humorous and grave – argumentative and declamatory – lively and pathetic. None who heard him will ever forget the impression.’  The building is now a restaurant.
	Music Hall, 54 George Street. Douglass spoke here numerous times in May and June (with Buffum, Thompson and Wright). On 25 May, ‘the orchestra was crammed from top to bottom, and hung with a galaxy of ladies and gentlemen, like a drop scene of a theatre.’ Built in the 1780s, the grand building, as the Assembly Rooms, remains one of the city’s main venues.
	Brighton Street Chapel. Douglass spoke here on 31 July (alone) at a meeting of the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society, and three times in the autumn (with Garrison). In his October speech Douglass told how the previous morning in Liverpool he had encountered a former slave he had known in Baltimore. The church no longer stands, the site now occupied by the National Museum of Scotland.
	45 Melville Street. The home of George Combe, the leading British exponent of phrenology.  Douglass visited him there (with Buffum and Thompson) on 7 June, Combe noting in a letter that ‘he has an excellent brain’ and praising his eloquent speeches, but expressing reservations about his uncompromising stance towards the Free Church. The building is now occupied by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
	Council Chamber. On 6 June, Douglass attended a packed meeting held to confer the freedom of the city on George Thompson in recognition of ‘his exertions in the cause of negro emancipation in the West Indies, and for his advocacy of the abolition of the corn laws.’ In his acceptance speech Thompson diplomatically promised to abstain from referring to the campaign against the Free Church.
	Theatre Royal, Shakespeare Square. The Ethiopian Serenaders performed here in October to Douglass’ likely irritation. He would no doubt have preferred to see the African American actor Ira Aldridge in The Black Doctor in April 1847 but by then Douglass was crossing the Atlantic back home. The theatre was demolished in 1860 and the site was later occupied by the city’s main post office, now converted to offices.
	33 Gilmore Place. Douglass stayed here at the end of July and possibly on other occasions. This was the home of James Robertson, secretary of the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society, a body formed that summer in an attempt to unify the various strands of Scottish abolitionism. Robertson spoke alongside Douglass and Garrison at several of their autumn engagements in Scotland.
	10 Salisbury Road. The home of John Wigham, Jr, cousin of the John Wigham who lived at 5 South Gray Street. Douglass stayed here at the end of October, penning his response to charges against him made by the American Presbyterian Samuel Cox, revealing his ‘pretensions to abolition as brazen hypocrisy or self-deception.’
	5 South Gray Street. Douglass probably visited the home of John Wigham, of the Edinburgh Emancipation Society. His wife Jane and daughter Eliza, both active in the – more radical – Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society, were among Douglass’ most loyal supporters in the city.
	7 Montpelier. Home of Mary Welsh, an abolitionist who continued to be active in the Glasgow Women’s Anti-Slavery Society, after moving to Edinburgh. Douglass may have visited, as Welsh was in the same social circle as the Wighams. A detached house with generous grounds at the time, the site is now occupied by tenements next to Bruntsfield Primary School.
	Broughton Place Church (Not on map). Venue for the United Associate Synod, which Douglass attended on 8 May for its debate on slavery. Although it passed a motion that met his approval, he was not permitted to voice his thanks. The building has been restored and is currently occupied by an upmarket auction house.
	Tanfield Hall, Canonmills (Not on map). Venue for the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, which Douglass and his fellow abolitionists attended on 30 May. Situated at the foot of Dundas Street, beside the Water of Leith, it was used as a meeting hall from 1839. The site was redeveloped as a modern office building in 1991.

For the full text of newspaper reports of Douglass’ 1846 speeches in Edinburgh (and elsewhere in Scotland) see this list of his speaking engagements.

1. Royal Hotel, 54 Nethergate.
2. United Secession Church, ‘George’s Chapel’, School Wynd (Rev. George Gilfillan)
3. United Secession Church, Bell Street (Rev. W. B. Borwick)
4. United Secession Church, Tay Square (Rev. James R. McGavin)
5. Relief Church, ‘James’ Church’, Bell Street (Rev. James Reston).
6. Free Church of Scotland, St David’s Church, Ward Road (Rev. George Lewis)

Douglass was welcomed to Dundee in January 1846 by the United Secession minister George Gilfillan who had him speak at his church in School Wynd, despite the objections of some of those on the managing committee, who subsequently resigned. The author of three volumes of Literary Portraits, who counted Carlyle and de Quincey among his friends, Gilfillan later proclaimed Douglass ‘the Burns of the African race’. He had embraced the antislavery cause after hearing the English abolitionist George Thompson speak in Glasgow in 1836 and was close to two ministers on the committee of the Glasgow Emancipation Society.

On their way between the chapel and the manse on Paradise Road they would have passed close by the flax-spinning mills that would produce the thread that would be woven into Osnaburg linen and exported to the plantations in the Americas to be worn by slaves.¹ Douglass himself recalled that as a child he ‘was kept almost naked’ except for ‘a coarse tow linen shirt, reaching only to my knees.’  Perhaps Gilfillan told Douglass of the recent protests when six young women at Baxter’s mill were sentenced to ten days’ imprisonment with hard labour for taking the afternoon off after their request for a modest pay rise in line with other operatives was refused.

The Free Church of Scotland was the target of many of Douglass’ speeches.  When in Dundee he singled out George Lewis, the minister of St David’s Church, for particular attention. Lewis had been a member of the Free Church delegation that sought financial support in the United States and he wrote memorably about the trip in Impressions of America and the American Churches (1845). At a meeting on 10 March, Douglass invited his audience to imagine Lewis calling on his master in Maryland to beg for funds. ‘Mr Douglass’s mimicry of the Rev. Mr Lewis was in very bad taste,’ remarked the Perthshire Advertiser. His audience, though, were thrilled by the impersonation.

In his winter meetings in Dundee, Douglass spoke alongside his companion James Buffum and the controversial peace campaigner Henry Clarke Wright.  In the autumn he returned with George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the Boston antislavery newspaper, the Liberator.

	Royal Hotel. On his first visit to Dundee, Douglass wrote to Boston abolitionist Francis Jackson from here. ‘I am now in old Scotland – almost every hill, river, mountain and lake of which has been made classic by the heroic deeds of her noble sons.’ The hotel (now private accommodation) probably served as his base there on this and subsequent visits.
	United Secession Church, School Wynd. Gilfillan’s church was packed to overflowing for Douglass’ first three lectures here on 27, 28 and 29 January 1846. At an ‘Anti-Slavery Soirée’ there on 10 March 1846 the chapel again ‘was crowded to excess, each passage being literally crammed’ and Douglass crafted a theatrical performance that by the end was drowned in cheers.  The site is now occupied by the Overgate Shopping Centre.
	United Secession Church, Bell Street.  To meet demand, for his fourth meeting in Dundee, Douglass, Buffum and Wright moved to this larger venue on 30 January, where Douglass delighted the packed hall with a mocking imitation of a pro-slavery sermon. He returned on 28 September with Garrison.  The building still stands, now a music centre, and a plaque on the wall honours Douglass’ visit.
	United Secession Church, Tay Square. Douglass spoke here with James Buffum on 9 February. They both read extracts from George Lewis’ travel book which demonstrated the unchristian character of American slavery that the Free Church had chosen to ignore. It is not known how much of the original building survives as part of what is now the Nethergate Medical Centre.
	Relief Church, Bell Street.  Garrison and Thompson were the main speakers here on 23 October 1846, with Douglass merely proposing a poetic vote of thanks to the managers of the chapel, reciting John Greenleaf Whittier’s ‘Our Countrymen in Chains.’  Later an ironmongers and a shoe warehouse, the site is now occupied by Abertay University.
	St David’s Church, Ward Road.  The church of George Lewis, who had travelled to the United States as part of a fund-raising delegation in 1844. Douglass challenged Lewis to publicly debate the Free Church’s reluctance to break ties with American presbyterians, but he evidently declined the offer, although his travel account in many ways supported the abolitionist arguments.  The site is now occupied by a hostel and public gardens.

The full text of newspaper reports of Douglass’ 1846 speeches in Dundee (and elsewhere in Scotland) will be added to this site during 2019. For an overview, see this list of his speaking engagements.

Note

1. Some primary sources which attest to the wearing of osnaburg linen clothing by enslaved people in the United States: ‘As to the clothing of the slaves on the plantations, they are said to be usually furnished by their owners or masters, every year, each with a coat and trousers, of a coarse woolen or woolen and cotton stuff (mostly made, especially for this purpose, in Providence, R. I.), for Winter, trousers of cotton osnaburghs for Summer, sometimes with a jacket also of the same; two pairs of strong shoes, or one pair of strong boots and one of lighter shoes for harvest; three shirts; one blanket, and one felt that.’ (Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seabord Slave States, London 1856, p112).  ‘Of course I was required to strip off my only garment, which was an Osnaburg linen shirt, worn by both sexes of the negro children in the summer’ (Jacob Stroyer, My Life in the South, Salem, 1885, p. 12)  ‘As to their clothing, two good strong suits were given every year – in the summer, white Osnaburgs; in the winter, a kind of jeans, partly cotton and mostly wool, and stout brogans.’ (from Chapter V, ‘The Negro – How He Was Housed, Fed, Clothed, Physicked, and Worked’ in Robert Q Mallard, Plantation Life Before Emancipation, Richmond VA, 1892, p. 32).

Kirkcaldy had been eagerly anticipating Frederick Douglass for some time. Already on 23 April, the Fife Herald was reporting that ‘a movement is going on here at present to get Messrs Douglass and Buffum … to visit Kirkcaldy.’  On 30 April, the same paper noted that a similar ‘movement is in progress to secure a visit to Cupar.’

There is no record of Douglass making it to Cupar, but when a visit to Kirkcaldy was finally confirmed (for 19 May), only Buffum showed up, Douglass having been called to London.  However, shortly after his return to Edinburgh, he made his way across the Firth of Forth to address a meeting at Bethelfield Chapel of the United Secession Church on Monday 1 June. The building still stands and, as Linktown Church, continues to serve as a place of worship for the Church of Scotland today.

Slavery Excitement. – The denizens of the Lang Toun are not so excitable on many subjects as some others; nevertheless, there are exceptions to all general rules; and such has been the case with them ever since the anti-slavery public meeting held here on the 19th ultimo, in consequence of the exposure then made by Mr Buffum of the horrid system of slavery as practised in America, and also the countenancing of the American Churches by the Free Church party in this country. Our worthy citizens have become highly incensed against that inhuman system, as well as against its pious aiders and abettors, and freely denounce them both; while our very streets and lanes, and our youngsters, have loudly re-echoed the cry, SEND BACK THE MONEY!!!

As a consequence of the excitement referred to above, another public meeting was held in Bethelfield Chapel on the evening of Monday last, at which there were about 1400 persons present, and which was addressed by Messrs Douglas and Buffum.

At half-past seven o’clock, the Rev. James Bayne of the United Secession Church here introduced the speakers with a few remarks as to the object of the meeting; after which, Mr F. Douglas rose amid a general burst of welcome, and addressed the meeting in a long and eloquent speech, in which he vindicated his own and Mr Buffum’s motives in coming to this country, which were for the sole purpose of diffusing a true knowledge of the state and condition of the slave population of the American Union. In doing so, he stated a great variety of facts which had come under his experience and observation while he was in slavery, the recital of which caused great sensation among the audience. Mr Douglas also dwelt upon the loose state of religious discipline in the Southern States, and commented, in severe terms, upon the conduct of the Free Church in holding fellowship with the man-stealers of America – thereby countenancing them in their wrong-doing.

The meeting was also addressed by Mr Buffum, and after a second address by Mr Douglas, broke up.

Fife Herald, and Kinross, Strathearn, and Clackmannan Advertiser, 4 June 1846

On Monday 23 March, Frederick Douglass and James Buffum travelled to Ayr, where they were welcomed by Rev. Robert Renwick of the Relief Church, Cathcart Street.

Renwick took them to Alloway to visit the cottage where Robert Burns was born and the Monument built to honour his memory, completed in 1828.

Douglass knew Burns well. The first book he bought after escaping from slavery was an edition of Burns, which he later gifted to his son Lewis, and he was presented with another edition in Scotland in 1846. He often quoted lines from Burns in his speeches.

The letter went on to pay a generous tribute to the poet – whose past trials and tribulations somewhat resembled Douglass’s own:

I have ever esteemed Robert Burns a true soul but never could I have had the high opinion of the man or his genius, which I now entertain, without my present knowledge of the country, to which he belonged – the times in which he lived, and the broad Scotch tongue in which he wrote. Burns lived in the midst of a bigoted and besotted clergy – a pious, but corrupt generation – a proud, ambitious, and contemptuous aristocracy, who, esteemed a little more than a man, and looked upon the plowman, such as was the noble Burns, as being little better than a brute. He became disgusted with the pious frauds, indignant at the bigotry, filled with contempt for the hollow pretensions set up by the shallow-brained aristocracy. He broke loose from the moorings which society had thrown around him. Spurning all restraint, he sought a path for his feet, and, like all bold pioneers, he made crooked paths. We may lament it, we may weep over it, but in the language of another, we shall lament and weep with him. The elements of character which urge him on are in us all, and influencing our conduct every day of our lives. We may pity him, but we can’t despise him. We may condemn his faults, but only as we condemn our own. His very weakness was an index of his strength. Full of faults of a grievous nature, yet far more faultless than many who have come down to us in the pages of history as saints.¹

In Rochester, New York, nearly two years after his return from Britain in April 1847, Douglass was invited to address a Burns Supper. He reflected on his travels in Scotland, his meeting with the poet’s sister, and clearly could have gone on at length.

But, ladies and gentlemen, this is not a time for long speeches. I do not wish to detain you from the social pleasures that await you. I repeat again, that though I am not a Scotchman, and have a colored skin, I am proud to be among you this evening. And if any think me out of my place on this occasion (pointing at the picture of Burns), I beg that the blame may be laid at the door of him who taught me that ‘a man’s a man for a’ that.’²

In Ayr, that evening and the evening following, the abolitionists addressed enthusiastic audiences at the church.  This is the report of the first speech that appeared in the Ayr Advertiser later that week.

LECTURES ON AMERICAN SLAVERY

During the last few days much interest has been excited by the visit to our town of Mr Frederick Douglass, a run-away slave, who has delivered two Lectures on the condition of three millions of his countrymen in America , and detailed the horrors of that system by which they are held in bondage. He is possessed of a surprising natural eloquence, which enables him to plead with great effect the wrongs of his dusky brethren, and the novelty of his appearance on the platform, as well as the harrowing scenes he depicted, elected from the audience the most unequivocal expressions of their sympathy. He is a tall young man, intelligently featured, with a dark complexion, and his whole appearance entirely belies the notion of the inferiority of the negro race.

On Monday evening, Mr Douglass delivered his First Lecture in the Relief Church, to a very large and attentive audience.

The Rev. Mr RENWICK occupied the chair, and after prayer, explained how the lecturer and his friend Mr Buffum, by whom he has been accompanied in all his travels, were introduced to him – stating, that it was only from an earnest desire to see the Anti-Slavery cause prosper, that he had interested himself in their behalf, and expressing his detestation of those laws by which man held his brother man in servitude and bondage. He concluded by introducing Mr Douglass.

Mr DOUGLASS began by expressing the embarrassment, and yet the pleasure he felt in appearing before an assembly of freeman. Denied as he had been all the blessings of education – for death was the penalty in slaveholding countries of teaching a slave to read – he could not be expected to make that appearance before them which he should wish; at the same time he rejoiced that they would receive him as a brother, and though he had little to attract their attention, he yet hoped the wrongs of his countrymen would excite their sympathy, and incline them to give him a candid hearing.

The little education he had received had been entirely by stealth, as he had passed twenty-one years of his life in slavery, and bore on his back the marks of its stripes. He was delighted to think that a bright day was apparently dawning on the slave – that all the world were looking with interest on whatever tended to remove that curse from the earth. If the nineteenth century was distinguished for anything, it was for a universal desire to do away with oppression amongst the great family of mankind. In every land – not only Christendom, but in heathen countries – efforts were making in favour of freedom. It was only the other day that the news came in that the Bey of Tunis had emancipated all the slaves in his dominions.

He was here to tell them the horrors of slavery – not as he read them in the books, but as he had felt them. But it would be presumptuous were he to pretend to tell of all slavery’s evils. The sin was so wide-spread, so foul, so abominable, that he was forbid to reveal the darkest secrets of that prison-house. He had not come to ask England for military aid, but to stir up that moral flood that would overleap all barriers, and hold to the light the fearful secrets that slavery knew. In America it was so interwoven in the hearts of the people and with their institutions that it would require from all countries a concentrated tide of indignation to sweep it away.

He then entered into a long explanation of the absolute power which the master possessed over his slaves, contrasting it with the state of the working classes in this country, who were sometimes represented as little better, and showing that the most galling point in the slave’s lot was just the fact that he was a slave – a marketable commodity – and esteemed no better than the brutes that perish.

What was a slave-owner? One who ruled as to what, how, and when another should work; what, how, and when he should eat; how, whom, and when he should marry; and could tear asunder those whom God had united; who could dispose of the children; who was irresponsible to man, even for life. He could torture by the burning brand, by the thumb-screw, the chain, the whipping-post and the dungeon, and none to question what he did. This was slavery.

He then stated what he considered the reasons for its popularity in America. Every one was interested in it. Ministers upheld it from the pulpit, and senators defended it in the assembly. They had 25,000 ministers who preached peace and charity on the Sabbath, and left their places of worship to torture their slaves! The slave-market and church stood side by side, and the sound of the church-going bell chimed with the bell of the slave-auctioneer.

In Britain, horror was felt for this state of things, and he thanked the public for all the expressions they had given of their detestation of them. No one knew the great influence which the public voice had upon the slave-holders. It made them tremble, even surrounded as they were by the sanctions of popularity; and every demonstration of hatred wafted across the Atlantic, had the effect of rendering their situation more and more uneasy. It was impossible to estimate the keenness of the blow inflicted on them even by the well-known lines of the poet Campbell, on the American flag –

“United States, thy banner bears
Two emblems – one of fame;
Alas! the other that it bears
Reminds us of your shame.

The white man’s liberty in types,
Stands blazened by your stars;
But what’s the meaning of these stripes?
They mean your negroes’ scars.”³

Such things cut them sorely, and wounded their national pride, and be believed these lines had had more effect than a thousand lectures.

He then entered into a long vindication of his coming to this country. His personal safety had rendered it necessary, and his voice reaching the slave-holders from the free soil of Britain, would have a far more powerful influence than when raised in the midst of slave institutions, where prejudice and hatred prevailed. After adverting to the glaring inconsistency of the slave-holding principles, and the great pretensions of the Americans to Christianity, and declaring his convictions, that if the precepts of true religion were properly understood and acted on, slavery would instantly cease, he concluded by thanking the audience for the attention bestowed on him, promising to resume the subject on Tuesday evening.

The CHAIRMAN said, that after the very eloquent address they had just listened to, could any one longer entertain the opinion which had been industriously propagated in this country, that the slaves were of an inferior race, and doomed only to be the menials of the white? A most convincing proof to the contrary had this evening been presented to them, and he was confident every one had listened with the most profound interest to the long and able address of their friend Mr Douglass. He then introduced Mr Buffum to the meeting.

Mr BUFFUM gave a short account of his acquaintance with Mr Douglass, and introduced many heart-rending stories of the sufferings of the slaves, which had come under his own observation. He then traced the progress of opinion on the slave question in the United States for the last ten years, and spoke of it as now occupying a most promising position in the public mind; while referring to some obstacles which stood in the way, he severely rebuked the Free Church for the part they had taken in encouraging slavery by sending a deputation to America, who had held fellowship with the slave-holders, and taken their blood-stained money. This subject was, however, to be more fully treated in the second lecture.

Mr DOUGLASS intimated, that he would be happy to listen to any arguments which might be advanced on the following evening, against the sentiments then to be delivered with reference to the conduct of the Free Church.

The remarks of the various speakers throughout the night were repeatedly and enthusiastically cheered. Mr Renwick having pronounced the blessing, the meeting dispersed, shortly after 10 o’clock.

Ayr Advertiser, 26 March 1846

Notes

1. Frederick Douglass to Abigail Mott, Ayr, 23 March 1846, in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series Three: Correspondence, Volume 1: 1842–52, edited by John R. McKivigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 111-15 (misdated 23 April 1846). For a more detailed discussion of this letter see Alasdair Pettinger, Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 151-55.
2. J[ohn] D[ick], ‘Burns’ Anniversary Festival’, North Star, 2 February 1849, partially reprinted in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Volume 2: 1847-54, edited by John W. Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 148. This speech is further discussed in Pettinger, Frederick Douglass, pp. 157-60.
3. Thomas Campbell, ‘The United States of North America’ in The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845), p. 318.

On Tuesday 24 March, Frederick Douglass and James Buffum addresssed their second meeting at the Relief Church, Cathcart Street.  We reproduce below the reports in the Ayr Advertiser (26 March) and Ayr Observer (31 March).

SECOND LECTURE

On Tuesday evening Mr Frederick Douglass delievered his Second and more interesting Lecture in the Relief Church. On this occasion the house was crowded in every available part – pews and passages being alike in request.

The Rev. Mr RENWICK again occupied the chair, and after offering up a short prayer, stated that in order to remove all doubt as to the character of Mr Douglass, he could assure the audience that he came accredited by the most unexceptionable testimonials. As a proof of his sincerity he would only say that the raising of money was not the object he had in view, but solely the dissemination of sound and experimental information as to the state of his oppressed countrymen in America. Having commended the cause and its pleader to the kind attention of the assembly, the Rev. gentleman concluded by introducing Mr Douglass.

Mr DOUGLASS said – I feel much delight in presenting myself to such a large and respectable audience as I now see before me. I am always delighted to meet with those who, in sympathising affection, assemble to consider the wrongs of their race. It is the peculiar characteristic of Christianity that it is a code of mercy, – that it interests itself in the welfare of man, – and is ever ready to lend its ear to the distressed, and to send them succour.

I am here tonight to let you know the wrongs, the miseries, and the stripes of three millions of human beings for whom the Saviour died; and though time would fail me to give all the details of the horrid system by which they are held, I yet hope to place before you sufficient facts to enlist your sympathies in their behalf. Having last night directed attention to the relations of master and slave, and to the perversion of Christianity by the slave-holders, I now wish to state a few facts which have come under my own experience.

[SLAVERY BREAKING UP FAMILIES]

I was born a slave. My master’s name is Thomas Auld. Besides me, he had other relations of our family whom he counted as his own property, and at this moment I have four sisters and one brother in the same state of degradation and bondage from which I myself have happily escaped. I have a grandmother who has reared twelve children, all of whom have been driven to the Southern slave market and sold; and now she is left desolate and forlorn, groping her way in the dark, without one to give her a cup of water in her declining moments.

Thus does slavery break asunder the parental and domestic ties; the mother is separated from her children – the husband from the wife – and the brother from the sister; while all are driven about, like beasts of burden, at the will of their oppressors. And yet among this class are to be found individuals of the most exalted virtue – true and honourable to each other, while uniting in hatred of those who call themselves their masters, and sometimes even living as man and wife, – joined no doubt by Him whose tie no one can break asunder, though unacknowledged by their heartless taskmasters.

I have an old aunt sold away 1000 miles from my grandmother, and three or four other relations are sharing the same doom, – all participating in the wrongs of the slave, who is denied every right, – moral, social, political, and religious, – and stript entirely of all that distinguishes man as a rational being. I was born in this condition myself. I owe my liberty and my learning all to stealth; and, in order to give you some idea of the manner in which I learned to read, I must communicate a little of my history.

[HIS EDUCATION]

When seven years old, I was sent by my master to his son-in-law’s, and there had the fortune to find a kind, and tender-hearted mistress.² She was newly married, and her family never having kept slaves, I was treated by her with great lenity. She taught me my letters, and continued to instruct me till she learned that by so doing she was breaking the laws – for in America the crime of teaching a slave is punishable, in some parts, with death for the second offence. Her husband found out what she had been engaged in, and stopped her, at the same time saying that this was the very way to render slaves unmanageable, – which is indeed the true philosophy of all slaveholding. She did stop, but my master’s words sunk into my heart, young as I was, and the opposition thus given to my progress only incited me the more in the pursuit of education.

I obtained a primer – applied to boys on the street, when sent on messages, to instruct me – stealthily embraced every opportunity of advancement, till in four years I could in some measure read the Scriptures; and many a time have these hands (holding them up) lifted from the street the soiled waste leaf, cleaned and dried it, and then pored over it till I had mastered its contents.

When somewhat grown up, I was put into the ship-yard to pick oakum, boil pitch, and otherwise assist the carpenters. Here I learned the first rudiments of writing, by observing the marks which the workmen made on the wood, when fitting it for any particular part of the ship, and having mastered all that could be safely communicated here, I had again recourse to the boys on the streets, boasting of my little powers in order to excite them to a trial, by which I might learn what I was yet all but ignorant of. Many a time have they taken the chalk from me, with the contemptuous sneer, ‘can a nigger write?’ and displayed their superior powers, gratifying at once their own vanity and my most earnest wishes.

About this time I fell in with some old copy books of my young master, and by writing on the spaces betwixt the lines, soon rendered myself pretty expert at penmanship. By similar means I acquired a knowledge of figures, and learned the multiplication table, frequently the sand being the only place I had to practise on.

Thus persevering, I at length acquired, unknown to my master, a considerable knowledge of the English language, writing, and arithmetic, and it was just as he said, for the more learning and information I picked up, the more did I become convinced that I was held unjustly in slavery; the more did I see the unhallowed nature of those bonds which held me and my brethren from the rights of man, and the more determined was I to gain my liberty.

I looked on my cruel taskmasters with the utmost horror, and shuddered at the very presence of men who had robbed me of father, mother, and friends, – who had stripped me of every right which God had given to me – and who would, if they had been able, have crushed every aspiration after freedom in my bosom. I determined to be free, and from the age of ten years, was continually planning means to snap my chain; but it was not till I was twenty years old that I succeeded in what I had long toiled for.

The means of my escape I have never revealed, lest I should disclose to the cruel slaveholder what may be of use to his victims. The time may come when I may disclose this,¹ but never will it be said that I have held up the lamp to the tyrant, in order to show the way by which he may overtake those who make their escape from him. I will not let him know the deadly enemies that continually surround him when pursuing the run-away, nor the unseen hands that are raised to strike him the deadly blow. I will not tell him the evils that hover over his path, nor ease the terrors that I know rankle in his breast; I would rather show him that even when surrounded by those whom he thinks he has subdued and humbled, he is yet in the midst of death, and that the negro crouching at his feet, has it in his heart to level him with the dust.

After my escape, I arrived at New Bedford, where I was engaged rolling oil casks on the quay, and doing anything that presented itself; yes, ladies and gentlemen, you must know that the individual who now addresses you even occupied at that time the elevated position of a chimney-sweep. (Cheers and laughter.) I must say that I worked harder then than when in slavery; but the work was pleasant, for I had an end to serve by it. I had not the mortification of seeing my wages taken by a cruel master, and spent in luxuries by him and his friends. No; I wrought for myself – I wrought for my wife, and I was contented and happy.

[BECOMES AN ABOLITIONIST LECTURER]

Mr. Douglass proceeded to state the circumstances which had first led to his appearance in public. He had been requested to address an abolitionist meeting by an individual who had heard him officiate in a Methodist class, and he thus described his sensations in appearing before an audience of white men:– ‘I was called on to tell what I had suffered, and what I thought and knew of slavery. I hesitated – I trembled. Accustomed to consider white men as my bitterest enemies, I dared not for some time look them in the face. I found, however, what I had never seen before, that the countenances of the audience were illumined with kindness – that I was indeed among a band of brothers – and so I proceeded to tell my simple tale. It had the desired effect. The woes of slavery coming from one who had seen them—who had felt them, created an impression on the meeting which was productive of great good.’

From that time he was taken under the auspices of the Abolitionist Society, and his humble labours had been blessed in the cause of his fellows. He had awakened an influence which was every day increasing, and swelling the tide which he hoped would soon beat down the prison walls of slavery. He had to practice all possible acts to conceal himself from the pursuit of those who thirsted for his blood; for, as he eloquently expressed himself – ‘there is no spot on the vast domains over which waves the star-spangled banner where the slave is secure; – go east, go west, go north, go south, he is still exposed to the bloodhounds that may be let loose against him; – there is no mountain so high – no valley so deep – no spot so sacred, but the man-stealer may enter and tear his victim from his retreat.’ (Cheers.)

As he had always, when lecturing, concealed the name of his master, and likewise changed his own, and at the same time withheld all the details of his escape, and where he had been born, suspicions were raised by the slaveholders, who were very much disturbed by his appearance in public, that he was an impostor. To counteract this he at length resolved to write his life, which he accordingly did, but this only exposed him still more to the rage of his persecutors. An answer was published to his life by one of them – a Mr. Thomson, a friend of his master’s – who, as argument against him, contended that he had none of the features of a slave, and particularly of the individual he represented himself to be. He could face white men – was learned – had not the crouching character of the negro – and, in short, was very different from the generality of slaves.³

Mr. Douglass at length felt that it was no longer safe to remain in America, as every means were being taken for his apprehension; he accordingly crossed the Atlantic, and he rejoiced that he now found in the paw of the British Lion that safety which had been denied him under the wide-spread wings of the American Eagle.

In reply to the defence of the slave-holders, which represented him as a ‘recreant slave,’ and his former master as all that was kind and charitable, he wrote an answer, which was published in the American abolitionist journals. He told them that ‘Frederick the free was a very different person from Frederick the slave; that although they had represented him as having been but an ordinary slave when in his master’s hands, (and, indeed, he did not claim to be anything extraordinary yet,) they must remember that emancipation made a slave a man, and little did they know his thoughts even when he was in their thraldom.’⁴ (Great applause.)

He told them, likewise, that they were greatly deceived if they judged of the minds of their slaves by their carriage before them. The poor wretches well knew, that if they showed the least symptoms of intelligence, heavy punishment awaited them, and thus they felt it to be [in] their interests to look as much as possible like insensible brutes.

[SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY]

Mr. Douglass, after dwelling on the controversy which had been raised on his account in America, and the good which was likely to result from it, proceeded to give some details of slavery in connection with Christianity. He said – ‘My master was a class-leader in a Methodist Chapel, and considered in every way, according to the standard of the place, an exemplary and pious man; yet I have seen the monster come home from his meeting, tie up my own cousin, and with his own hands apply the whip to her bare back till the warm red blood was dripping to her heels, and at the same time quoting the Scripture passage – “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes!” It is quite customary to brand slaves, as the people in this country mark their cattle, but by a process the most cruel and agonising. The arm of the slave is stripped, or whatever part the instrument is to be applied to, and the branding iron, almost red hot, broils the name of the master into the quivering flesh of the wretched victim, causing the most excruciating agony. I have seen all this done by men calling themselves Christians; and not only this, but deeds of darkness too revolting to be told, and from which humanity would shudder.

[‘]A girl whom I knew had her ear nailed to a post, for attempting to escape, and yet so desperate had the cruelties inflicted on her person rendered her, that even this did not hold her, as she tore herself away from it, and escaped, leaving the half of her ear attached to the nail. She did escape, but so great was the effect of the injuries she received, that she, like many others, became an idiot. Thousands are thus bored and beaten, and all done under the sanction of the majesty of LAW, and in a country, too, which boasts of her liberty!

[‘]About five years ago,’ Mr. Douglass continued, ‘it was discovered that slavery had her stronghold in the church, – that under the very droppings of the sanctuary the chains and fetters of the slaves were forged, and that indeed Christianity had become so linked with slavery, that it was time for some great effort to be made to remedy the awful state of affairs. An effort was made. The churches in the northern states stood out against the accursed system, and declared that they could no longer hold fellowship with slave-tolerating bodies. Large denominations were rent in twain, but the cause of the poor slave prospered.⁵ Public opinion became arrayed on his side, and the feelings of the country were enlisted in his behalf.

[THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND]

[‘]The cause was triumphing gloriously, when it was doomed to receive a blow from an unsuspected quarter. The Free Church of Scotland, finding that they required money to build their churches and pay their ministers, resolved to send a deputation to American to endeavour to raise this. A mission came. They were met by a Committee of the Anti-slavery Society in New York, and beseeched and implored not to go among the slave-holders, as they would stain the cause of Christ, and stab that of the slave. They were told the state of public sentiment, and that nothing would give the slave-holders greater delight than to have their practices sanctioned by the descendants of Knox. They were told that if they went among them, the slaveholders would cast it in the teeth of the abolitionists, – “See, the religious intelligence of Scotland is on our side, and we care not for your enmity,” and thus they would give them cause for triumph.⁶

[‘]But the deputation heeded us not. They went to the southern states. They entered the pulpits, they joined in fellowship, and they engaged in the Lord’s Supper with the very men who were the props of slavery! They took their blood-stained money – money wrung from the groans, the sweat, the tears, and the blood of the slave, and now they are at home quietly enjoying the accursed thing. Was not this too bad? Was it Christian? I ask you was it a fair representation of the feelings and opinions of the people of Scotland, or of this audience? (Cries of No, No.) I was wont, when addressing an American assembly, to refer to the various movements in the cause of freedom going on in different parts of the world, and among them to the rise of the Free Church, and you may well conceive the grief I felt at hearing of this act. Look for a moment at what the slave holder does, and then you will have some idea of the body with which this Church has linked herself. He is a being who considers his slave only valuable to him as a brute is valuable, and who takes it upon him to degrade his soul and grind his faculties in every possible manner, – who separates all his social ties, and crushes him to the dust, – who bereaves him of all that makes life worth enjoying, and looks upon him only as a soulless and senseless creature. This is slavery, and it rises before us a solitary horror; yet to this monstrous curse has the Free Church allied herself – received it into her bosom, and welcomed it into her fellowship!’

Mr. Douglass dwelt long and eloquently on this part of his subject, gathering warmth as he advanced, and calling loudly, at every sentence, on the Free Church to SEND BACK THE MONEY! He brought every possible view of the subject before the audience, sometimes harrowing up their feelings with recitals of blood, and again persuasively and mildly reasoning the point; at one time cutting with the most vigorous sarcasm, and again assuming all the solemnity of a man deeply in earnest. He said it was not against the Free Church as a Church he aimed his arguments – his prepossessions were in her favour – but against her alliance with the curse of slavery, and stated that any other Church, even the one under whose roof he then stood, would meet with the same castigation if found perpetrating the same abomination. The only remedy for the evil was to send back the money, an exclamation which he vehemently repeated time after time.

This subject occupied his attention till a late period of the evening, the audience all the while expressing their entire concurrence in the sentiments advanced, and energetically cheering him throughout the time he discussed it. He concluded by calling on the members of the Free Church to exert their influence in the cause of the poor slave, and stated that a movement had already risen among them, particularly in the north, which he hoped would yet have the effect of revoking the act of the General Assembly, and cause them to send back the money. Mr. Douglass took his seat amid prolonged applause.

Mr BUFFUM shortly addressed the meeting, following up the arguments of the previous speaker, by showing the character of the ministers in the slave-holding States. One of them he knew made it his boast how well he could apply the whip to the back of his female slaves; another kept bloodhounds to let loose on those who ran off; and an elder he knew could only engage in the exercises of the sanctuary with warmth and zeal if he had scourged a slave before coming; with many similar examples of brutality. He concluded by exhibiting a number of instruments used among the slave-holders, consisting of collars, handcuffs, fetters, whips, &c., which excited feelings of the utmost horror in the minds of the audience, as he accompanied them with accounts of how he had got possession of them, they having been for the most part taken from the persons of runaway slaves.

Mr DOUGLASS proposed a vote of thanks to the managers of the Relief Church, and stated that there was some probability of his again visiting Ayr, concluding by an eloquent apostrophe to Burns and his love of liberty.

Mr RENWICK having pronounced the blessing, the meeting dispersed.

Ayr Advertiser, 26 March 1846

ANTI-SLAVERY MEETING: SECOND LECTURE

On Tuesday evening last, Mr Frederick Douglas delivered his second lecture in the Relief Church, which was crowded in every part.

The chair was again occupied by the Rev. Mr Renwick who, after engaging in prayer, stated that, to remove all doubt as to the character of Mr Douglas, he could assure the audience he was not an imposter, that he came aided by the very best testimonials; and, as a proof of his sincerity, he would only say that he came not here pleading for money, but merely for the purpose of giving information as to the state of his countrymen in America. The rev. gentleman concluded by recommending to the attention of the audience the cause and its pleader, and introduced Mr Douglas.

Mr Douglas said – He had great pleasure in standing there that night before so large and intelligent an audience. He was always delighted to meet with those who assembled to consider the condition and wrongs of their fellow men. He was there for the purpose of bringing before them the wrongs of a people for whom Christ died; and, although time would not permit him to give all the details of the miseries of three millions of human beings, yet he would strive to place before them sufficient facts to enlist their sympathies in behalf of these slaves.

[SLAVERY BREAKING UP FAMILIES]

Having last night directed attention to the relation of masters and slaves, he would content himself that evening with stating a few facts regarding slavery, as they had come under his own observation. He was born a slave. His master’s name was Thomas Auld. He had a number of other slaves; and at present four sisters of his (the lecturer’s) and one brother were in slavery in the United States. He had a grandmother who had reared twelve children, all of whom had been driven to the southern market for sale; and now she was desolate, and without one to give her a drop of water in her declining years.

Hence it would be seen that slavery took the children from the slave mother, the husband from the wife, and the brother from the sister, and sold them for the sake of poor paltry gold. Slaves lived together without the form of marriage, because marriage was not respected by the slave-masters; yet there were cases where such persons lived together honourably and true to each other – joined, no doubt, by him whose ties no one could break asunder. But the slave-holder tore these parties asunder. He had an aunt sold a thousand miles away from his grandmother, and three or four other relatives who had shared the same doom. Slaves were denied every right – moral, social, political, and religious – and stripped entirely of all that distinguished man as a rational being.

[HIS EDUCATION]

He (the lecturer) was never taught to read English, having learned all he knew by stealth; and in order to give some idea of how he learned to read, he communicated a little of his history. When about seven years of age, he was sent by his master to his son-in-law’s house. When he went there to live he found Mrs Auld a very kind, warm-hearted woman, and disposed to treat him as a human being. She never had had a slave under her control before, being but newly married. She treated him very kindly; and also commenced to learn him the letters of the alphabet, until she succeeded in teaching him to spell words of three or four letters. But she learned that by so doing she was breaking the law. As soon as his master found out what was going on, he told her to stop immediately, because it would never do to instruct a negro. Mrs Auld ceased to instruct him; but the words of his master sunk deeply into his heart.

Young as he was, the opposition thus given to his progress only incited him the more in the pursuit of education. When sent on an errand, if he met with little boys playing on the streets, he would ask them to give him lessons, which they readily did. In four years he could in some measure read the Scriptures; and many a time had he lifted from the street, the soiled and waste leaf, cleaned and dried it, pored over it till he had mastered its contents.

When grown up, he was put into a ship-yard, for the purpose of waiting upon the men, boiling pitch and running errands. Having thus occasion to be often in the ship-yard beside the men, he observed them making marks upon the wood when giving it out for a particular part of the ship; and in a little he was able to make a letter – which letter he found was L. He inquired what L was for, and was told it stood for larboard. Again, he found he was able to make an S, and inquired what S was for, and was told it stood for starboard. In this way he mustered all that could be safely communicated there, and he again had recourse to the boys on the streets, boasting of his little powers in order to excite them to a trial, by which he learned what he was as yet all but ignorant of. He would say to them – ‘Boys, I can write.’ They would reply, ‘No, you cannot write, negroes cannot write’; and in order to show him their superiority (gratifying at once their own vanity and his most earnest wishes), they would take out their chalk, and make an excellent capital, and in this way he got a good idea of how to write. He made all the letters without the aid of a teacher or a book.

About this time he fell in with some old copy books belonging to his young master, and by writing on the spaces between the lines, he soon rendered himself pretty expert in penmanship. The he went on still further. He got a book, and by similar means learned the multiplication table – frequently the sand being the only place he had to practice on. Then persevering, he at last acquired, unknown to his master, a considerable knowledge of the English language, writing and arithmetic; and it was just as his master said – it convinced him that he was held unjustly to slavery, and determined him the more to gain liberty.

He looked upon slave-holders, no matter what was their profession of religion, as robbers. He shuddered at the very presence of men who had robbed him of father, mother, and friends – who had stripped him of every right which God had given him, and who would, if they had been able, have crushed every aspiration after freedom in his bosom. He determined to be free; and from ten years of age he was constantly devising some plan by which he might snap the chain and get his freedom; but it was not till he was nearly twenty-one years of age that he accomplished his object.

About seven years ago he succeeded in escaping from slavery. The mode of that escape he had resolved to keep secret; for should he publish how he escaped, it would be the means of making known to the slave-holder that which might be of use to his victims. He was anxious to keep the slave-holders in utter darkness. The time might come when he would disclose this; but never would it be said that he had help up the lamp to the tyrant, in order to show the way by which he might prevent slaves from making their escape. He would not tell him the evils that he knew hovered over his path; he would rather show him that, even when surrounded by those he thought he had subdued, he was yet in the midst of death, and that the negro had it in his heart to level him with the dust.

About seven years ago he went to live in New Bedford, where he did anything that presented itself. ‘Yes ladies and gentlemen (bowing to the audience), you must know that your humble servant occupied at one time the elevated situation of a chimney-sweep.’ (Laughter.) It might be said that he worked harder after he became a free man than he did when a slave; but this work was not hard because he had some object to work for – he wrought for himself and for his wife, and he felt contented and happy.

[BECOMES AN ABOLITIONIST LECTURER]

After being in New Bedford for about three years, he was asked to attend an anti-slavery meeting, having by this time succeeded in getting himself into good circumstances. After some persuasion, he resolved to attend; and when there was called again by a white gentleman, who had heard him speak in a Methodist meeting. That gentleman was anxious that he should tell what he knew of the working of slavery, to aid the abolitionists to the cause of the slaves. He went forward, trembling, and spoke a few words against slavery, which created great excitement. His words had the desired effect.

The abolitionists then insisted upon his going out into the United States. He, however, had to keep concealed the facts of his case. He had to conceal the name of his master, the name of the town and country from which he had ran. He had to conceal himself from the pursuit of those who thirsted for his blood; for there was no spot on the vast domains over which waves the star-spangled banner where the slave is secure. Go east, go west, go north, go south, he is still exposed to the bloodhounds that may be let loose against him; there is no mountain so high, no valley so deep, no spot so sacred, but the man-stealer may enter and tear his victim from his retreat. (Cheers.)

Suspicions were raised by the slave-holders, who were very much disturbed by his appearing in public, that he was an imposter. To counteract this, he at length published his life, which only exposed him still more to the rage of his persecutors. It was asked, ‘Why does he not tell me who was his master?’

Mr Douglas at length discovered that it was no longer safe to remain in America, and he took an opportunity of leaving the country as soon as the excitement was somewhat over. He had to be very cautious in order to get liberated. He was yet a fugitive slave, and denied a place at home. He had trod upon the sacred soil of Britain, and he rejoiced that he had found that safety which had been denied him under the wide-spread wings of the American eagle. The slave-holders of America might haunt him in New England; but in the name of the British lion, they dare not come hither.

The publication of his narrative endangered his freedom; and since he had left, an answer had been published by a Mr Thomson, a friend of his master, who, as an argument against him, contended that he had none of the features of a slave, and particularly of the individual he represented himself to be. He could face white men, was learned, had not the crouching character of the negro, and in short, was very different from the generality of slaves. In reply to the defence of the slave-holder, which represented him as a ‘recreant slave,’ and his former master as all that was kind and charitable, he wrote an answer, which was published in the American abolitionist journals. He told them that Frederick the free was a very different person from Frederick the slave; that although they had represented him as having been but an ordinary slave when in his master’s hands (and indeed, he did not claim to be anything extraordinary yet), they must remember that emancipation made a slave a man, and little did they know his thoughts even when he was in their thraldom. (Great applause.) He was, however, aware that no sensible, unprejudiced person would credit such a ridiculous publication – it had falsehood upon every passage.

When he was a slave, his master knew him by the name of Frederick Augustus Washington Baillie; but in order to prevent himself from being identified, he had called himself Frederick Douglas.⁷ He told them, likewise, that they were greatly deceived if they judged of the minds of their slaves by their carriage before them. The poor slaves knew that if they showed any symptoms of intelligence, heavy punishment awaited them; and thus they felt it to be their interest to look as much as possible like insensible brutes in the presence of their master.

[SLAVERY AND CHRISTIANITY]

Mr Douglas, after some farther remarks, alluded to the wrongs of the slaves. He said he would like to call their attention to some of the laws of slavery. He could not better appeal to them than by exposing to them these laws. He had told them of the slave holders’ religion. He ought to have told them that his own master was a class-leader in a Methodist chapel, and considered in every way, according to the standard of the place, a very pious individual; yet he has seen that man tie up his (Mr D.’s) own cousin, a young woman, and, with his own hands, whip her on the bare back till the warm red blood was dropping to her heels, at the same time quoting the Scripture passage – ‘He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.’ This he had seen.

It was quite customary to brand slaves – just as customary as it is to mark cattle in this country. The process is one of a most horrible and agonising description. The arm of the slave is stripped where the instrument is to be applied, and the branding iron, almost red-hot, broils the name of the master into the quivering flesh of the unhappy man, causing the most excruciating agony. This he had seen done by men calling themselves christians; and not only this, but deeds of darkness to revolting to be told, and from which humanity would shudder.

He knew a girl who attempted to escape from slavery. She was overtaken and carried back; and her cruel master deliberately nailed her ear to a post; but yet so desperate had the cruelties inflicted on her person rendered her, that she tore away from the post, leaving the half of her ear behind her. She succeeded after all in escaping; but she is not now the woman she once was. Thousands are thus bored and beaten, and all done under the sanction of the majesty of law, and in a country, too which boasts of its liberty.

About five years ago, continued Mr Douglas, it was discovered that slavery had her stronghold in the church – that under the very droppings of the sanctuary the chains and fetters of the slaves were forged, and that indeed Christianity had become so linked with slavery, that it was time for some great effort to be mad to remedy the awful state of affairs. An effort was made. The churches in the northern states stood out against the accursed system, and declared that they should no longer hold fellowship with slave-holding bodies. Large denominations were rent in twain; but the cause of the poor slave prospered. Public opinion became arrayed on his side, and the feelings of the country were enlisted in his behalf.

[THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND]

The cause was triumphing gloriously, when it was doomed to receive a blow from an unsuspected quarter. The Free Church of Scotland, finding that it required money to build its churches, and pay its ministers, sent a deputation to the United States, for the purpose of soliciting aid to the cause of Christ in this country. A mission came, and when it arrived in the United States, its members were met at New York by a Committee of the Anti-Slavery Society, and beseeched not to go among the slave-holders, so they would state the cause of Christ and state that of the slaves. They were told the state of public sentiment; and that nothing would give the slave-holders greater delight than to have their practices sanctioned by the descendants of Knox.

But the deputation heeded them not: they went among the slave-holders, entered the pulpits, joined in fellowship, and engaged in the Lord’s Supper with the very men who were the props of slavery. They took their blood-stained money – money wrung from the groans, the sweat, the tears, and the blood of the slave; and now they were at home quietly enjoying the accursed thing. Was not this too bad? Was it Christian? Was that mission a fair representation of the feelings and opinions of the people of Scotland, or of this audience? (Cries of No, no.)

He was wont, when addressing an American assembly, to refer to the various movements in the cause of freedom, going on in different parts of the world, add amongst them to the rise of the Free Church, and they might well conceive the grief he felt at hearing of this act. Look for a moment at what the slave-holder does, and then they would have some idea of the body with which this Church had linked herself. He is a being who considers his slave only valuable to him as a brute is valuable, and who takes it upon him to degrade his soul and grind his faculties in every possible manner – who separates all the social ties, and crushes him in the dust – who bereaves him of all that makes life worth enjoying, and looks upon him only as a soulless and senseless creature. This is slavery, and it rises before us a solitary horror; yet to this monstrous curse the Free Church allied herself; she has received it into her bosom, and welcome it into her fellowship.

After dwelling upon this point for some time, and with much ability, showing the grievous sin against humanity of which the Free Church had been guilty, he went on – growing warmer as he proceeded – to show that it was with men-stealers that the Church had allied herself. The slave-holder took that which belonged to another. He (the lecturer) maintained that the body of the slave belonged to himself. His hands, the strength of his arms, and the passions of his heart, God had given to him; and if God had given him all the power which he possessed, what right had any man to take it away?

After some farther remarks, he said – If there was a church of sheep-stealers – if the minister in the pulpit was a sheep-stealer, precentor was a sheep-stealer, if all the congregation were sheep-stealers – what would this audience say of a church that went and took this sheep-stealing church by the hand? The cases were the same, only the case that had occurred was a more infamous.

He charged the Free Church of Scotland with going to a land of men-stealers, while they had a good right to know that all these men possessed was the gains of man-stealing.

He charged them with going to the United States, with an understanding that they were going among men upholding the cause of slavery, and with an intention to take the money of slave-masters to build Free Churches and pay Free Church ministers.

He charged them, while here, with preaching only such doctrines as would be received by slave-holders, and with having adopted the name of Free Church while they were particularly doing the work of a slave church.

He then called upon the Free Church, if they were willing to do anything against slavery, to SEND BACK THE MONEY! Let the cry go abroad among the community here – SEND BACK THE BLOOD-STAINED MONEY! The Free Church had it in their power to do more for the anti-slavery causes than any other Church had the power to do; but he was afraid they would take money from anybody.

O’Connell, with all his fondness for money, could not find it in his heart to take the blood-stained American dollars; but the Free Church had none of these scruples.⁸ Better would it be for them to go begging upon their hands and knees, than to sin their souls with the blood of men in slavery; for it would be required of them at the day of judgment.

Mr Douglas then, after a few farther comments, concluded, reiterated in his remarks the cry – SEND BACK THE BLOOD-STAINED MONEY!

Mr Buffum then rose and addressed the meeting at some length. He said it would be presumption on his part to detain them with any remarks regarding the wrongs of the slaves, after what had been advanced by his friend Mr Douglas. He showed the character of the ministers in the slave-holding States. One of them he knew made it his boast how well he could apply the whip to the back of his female slaves; another kept bloodhounds to let loose on those who ran off; and an elder he knew could only engage in the exercises of the sanctuary with warmth and zeal if he had scourged a slave before coming; with many similar examples of brutality. He then rebuked the Free Church for the part they had taken in encouraging slavery.

He exhibited a number of instruments used by the slave-holders for punishing runaway slaves: they consisted of iron collars, handcuffs, fetters, whips, &c., and excited feelings of horror and indignation in the minds of the audience. Mr B. accompanied the exhibition with accounts of the way in which he got possession of the various instruments. He concluded by saying that he felt, except for their conduct in the matter of the slave dollars, no enmity at all to the Free Church.

Mr Douglas again rose, and expressed his thanks, and those of his friend Mr Buffum, to the managers of the Relief Church, for having so kindly thrown upon its doors, to allow himself and friend to address them on the subject of slavery. At some future time, he said, he might be again in Ayr; and he was proud of having been in the land of him who had spoken out so nobly against the oppressions and the wrongs of slavery – he alluded, of course, to Robert Burns. Mr Douglas thanked the audience for the attention with which they had listened, and sat down amidst much applause.

Mr Renwick pronounced the blessing, and the meeting broke up.

Ayr Observer, 31 March 1846

Notes

1. Douglass did not reveal the details of his escape until 1881 .  See Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time (Hartford, CT: Park Publishing Co., 1881), pp. 196-201.
2. Hugh and Sophia Auld, who lived in Baltimore.
3. A.C.C.Thompson made these claims in the Delaware Republican, reprinted as ‘To the Public – Falsehood Refuted’, Liberator, 12 December 1845.
4. Douglass here paraphrases his response to Thompson’s allegations in a letter to Wiliam Lloyd Garrison, Perth, 27 January 1846 (Liberator, 27 February 1846, reprinted inThe Frederick Douglass Papers, Series Three: Correspondence, Volume 1: 1842–52, edited by John R. McKivigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 85).  A slightly different version appeared in an appendix to Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, 2nd Irish edition (Dublin: Chapman and Webb, 1846), p. cxxvii.
5. The Presbyterian Churches in the United States had split on North-South lines in 1837 and the Baptist and Methodist Churches followed in 1844-45, but the Northern Churches were not exempt from censure from abolitionists. See Hilrie Shelton Smith, In His Image, But…: Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972), pp. 74–128; Milton Sernett, Black Religion and Ameriican Evangelicalism:  White Protestants, Plantation Missions, and the Flowering of Negro Christianity, 1787–1865 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1975), pp. 36–58; and John R. McKivigan, The War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1810–1865 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
6. A remonstrance, dated ‘New York, April 2, 1844’ was addressed to the members of the Free Church delegation to the United States, and signed by the executive committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, repr. Liberator, 26 April 1846 (from the New-York Commercial Advertiser) and published as Letter from the Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to the Commissioners of the Free Church of Scotland (Edinburgh: Myles Macphail, [1844]).
7. Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. He changed his name several times after his escape from slavery, eventually settling on ‘Douglass’, suggested by his host in New Bedford, Nathan Johnson, who had been reading Walter Scott‘s ‘Lady of the Lake’. On Douglass’ decision to adopt ‘one of Scotland’s many famous names’, see Alasdair Pettinger, Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 107–14.
8. In a notorious speech at a meeting of the Repeal Association in Dublin on 11 May 1843, Daniel O’Connell declared his intention to refuse ‘blood-stained money’ from pro-slavery Repeal groups in the United States. The speech was reported in the Liberator, 9 and 30 June 1843, and in the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, 9 August 1843.

Douglass  speeches condemned American slavery and suggested how people in Scotland could help the movement calling for its abolition. A striking man and a powerful speaker, Douglass won many to the cause. He was even the subject of several songs.

On Tour

Frederick Douglass arrived in Liverpool on the Cambria on 28 August 1845 and departed from Liverpool on the same ship in April 1847.

In over 18 months he travelled extensively in Britain and Ireland, giving lectures in dozens of cities and towns. He was in Scotland for most of the first half of 1846, returning again in July, September and October the same year.

Home to some of the more radical anti-slavery sentiment in Britain, Scotland gave Douglass a warm welcome. The Edinburgh and Glasgow Emancipation Societies had been formed in 1833 and – in the wake of the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies – they called for the abolition of slavery in other parts of the world, especially the United States. When the American abolitionist movement began to split in the late 1830s, the Scottish Societies tended to take the side of William Lloyd Garrison, whose uncompromising followers stood aloof from party politics and held radical views on women’s rights.

Douglass spoke at public meetings across the country.  For further details see the list of speaking engagements.

Many of these meetings drew large crowds. On the 1 May at the Music Hall, Edinburgh, an audience of 2000 had bought tickets at sixpence each. Douglass was not always the only speaker on these occasions, but undoubtedly the main attraction. Other anti-slavery campaigners with whom he shared the platform included:

• James Buffum, his travelling companion from Massachusetts
• Henry Clarke Wright, the American activist who had been in Britain since early 1843
• William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society and editor of its influential magazine, The Liberator – who toured Britain in 1846
• George Thompson, an English militant who had long been associated with the Glasgow Emancipation Society

Speeches

Douglass was a powerful, charismatic speaker, and a talented mimic who could rouse the indignation of the crowd as well as make them laugh.

Above all Douglass spoke about American slavery. He could speak about it from first-hand experience – and of course could rely on an appreciative audience when telling of his own escape from it.

But he also approached the subject more generally. For as well as raising his listeners to a deep sense of injustice of slavery, he wanted to get them to think what could be done about it. Again and again he stressed the value of the moral pressure that Britain could put on the United States. The example of its own act of abolition of slavery in the West Indies was itself a powerful way of isolating the Americans on the international scene. The anti-slavery propaganda of travel books – such as Charles Dickens’ American Notes(1842) was important too, as were the protests that resulted in reduced sentences or improved conditions for anti-slavery campaigners who fell foul of the law.

But he was also keen to identify those who seemed to undermine this strategy, those British writers and church leaders who – wittingly or not – reassured the slaveholders of the American South that their sins were not so bad as some made out. One of Douglass’ targets was the geologist Charles Lyell, whose recent travel account was one of the ‘misrepresentations of slavery as would have the effect of cooling that British indignation against slavery which had existed for many years’.

However the main target of his withering sarcasm during his visit was the Free Church of Scotland. The Free Church had formed when a large minority of ministers – and with them their congregations – seceded from the established Church of Scotland in 1843, tired of the way the government was interfering in their internal affairs. Deprived of public money, the breakaway church sought to raise funds among friendly Presbyterians in England, Wales, Ireland and the United States. But the fact that some of the funds raised in the United States came from churches in the slaveholding South drew strong criticism from the abolitionists. Convinced that this gesture amounted to an uncritical endorsement of the churches there, who refused to condemn slavery or expel slaveholding members, a campaign calling for the Free Church to return the money was well under way when Douglass arrived in 1846.

‘Send back the money’ was to be a recurring slogan at many of the meetings he addressed in Scotland. In Dundee in March 1846 he ends his speech with these words:

When the Free Church says – Did not Abraham hold slaves? the reply should be, Send back that money! (Cheers). When they ask did not Paul send back Onesimus? I answer, Send you back that money! (Great cheering). That is the only answer which should be given to their sophistical arguments, adn it is one which they cannot get over. (Great cheering). In order to justify their conduct, they endeavour to forget that they are a Church, and speak as if they were a manufacturing corporation. They forget that a Church is not for making money, but for spreading the Gospel. We are guilty, say they, but these merchants are guilty, and some other parties are guilty also. I say, send back that money! (Cheering). There is music in that sound. (Continued cheering). There is poetry in it.

Impact

Douglass was clearly a sensation. ‘Send Back the Money’ set the country alight. The slogan was apparently carved out of the turf of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, and there were a number of songs that were inspired by the campaign.

Not surprisingly he made some enemies among the supporters of the Free Church of Scotland. Hissing was reported in some newspaper accounts – to which the orator cleverly responded:

it was said by a very learned man that when the cool voice of truth falls into the burning vortex of falsehood there would always be hissing.

And it is probably true that in some quarters it was his stand against the Free Church rather than his stand against slavery that impressed. The radical speeches of Garrison and Wright probably alienated some of those they might otherwise have reached. A small minority in the church did voice concern about the propriety of the American donations: James Macbeth and John Willis founded the Free Church Anti-Slavery Society in May 1847, but it had little impact. The money was not returned and eventually Macbeth, Willis and others emigrated to Canada.

Nevertheless Douglass did help to keep the anti-slavery issue alive in Scotland – and other former slaves from the United States followed in his footsteps in the 1850s. He remembered his time in Scotland with some fondness and before he returned to the United States, friends and supporters raised funds which enabled him to buy his freedom, sparing him of the fear of recapture, and also made it possible for him to set up his own newspaper, The North Star in 1847.

Here you can learn about the 1846 visit to Scotland by the anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass, drawing on research for this book, published in November 2018.

Resources here include pages on

• who he was,
• why he came to Scotland
• how he engaged with Scottish literature and history, and
• other African Americans who toured the country in the mid-nineteenth century.

There is also

• a detailed itinerary, listing all Douglass’ known speaking engagements, and
• a log of recent efforts to enhance public awareness of Scotland’s historical connections to the Atlantic slavery system and the struggle for black emancipation.

In the course of 2019, transcriptions of all the newspaper reports of Douglass’ speeches were added, supported by contextual introductions and editorial annotations.

Born a slave in Maryland, Douglass escapes to the North and writes a best-selling account of his life. In 1845, fearing recapture, he seeks refuge in Great Britain. On his return to the United States, he sets up his own newspaper and becomes a leading spokesman for black America and campaigner for civil rights.

From Slave to Free Man

Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Maryland in 1818 on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. As a boy he was taken away from the Great House Farm to Baltimore, as the family servant of Thomas and Sophia Auld. Later he was hired out to work on plantations across the Bay, but in 1836 returned to Baltimore, where he was employed in the shipyards. With the help of Anna Murray, a free black woman from the city, he escaped to the north by train to New York, disguised as a sailor. He was just twenty years old.

He was soon reunited with Anna, whom he married. They moved to New Bedford, a whaling port in Massachusetts, and within three years, he was lecturing on behalf of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, speaking at public halls across New England. At first he simply told of his own experiences in Maryland, but before long, he found ‘it did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them.’

Across the Ocean

He recounts this story in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself published in 1845. The book was written partly to answer those who heard his accomplished speeches and doubted he ever was a slave. It was an instant critical and commercial success. Within five years, it had sold 30,000 copies in Britain and the United States and had been translated into Dutch and French.

But by providing the details of his experience in slavery, ‘giving names of persons, places, and dates’, he put himself in grave danger.

This statement soon became known in Maryland, and I had reason to believe that an effort would be made to recapture me…

And while there was little probability of successful recapture, if attempted openly, I was constantly in danger of being spirited away, at a moment when my friends could render me no assistance. In traveling about from place to place – often alone – I was much exposed to this sort of attack. Any one cherishing the design to betray me, could easily do so, by simply tracing my whereabouts through the anti-slavery journals, for my meetings and movements were promptly made known in advance.

So in August 1845 he set sail for England.

Leader and Statesman

On his return in 1847, Douglass settled in Rochester, New York, and consolidated his position as one of the leading anti-slavery campaigners, founding his own newspaper, the North Star (later renamed Frederick Douglass’ Paper). During the Civil War, he recruited young men for the Union Army, and in later years held a number of government posts, including that of Minister to Haiti (1889-91).

He revisited Scotland in 1859-60, but his speeches lacked the radical edge of 1846. No doubt he was shaken by the recent hanging of his friend John Brown, who had attempted to spark off a major slave insurrection by seizing the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. But he also found that British support for abolitionism was on the decline.

He died in February 1895 at Cedar Hill, the beautiful house he acquired 17 years earlier, in woodland across the Anacostia River from Washington, DC. The house is now a national monument and site of a museum devoted to this major politician and writer of the 19th Century.