I HAVE COME TO TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT SLAVERY: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN LYNN, MASSACHUSETTSLynn, Massachusetts

, IN OCTOBER 1841

, 20 October 1841.

Neither the exact date nor the occasion of this speech can be determined. The person who recorded it, Philadelphia pacifist Edward M. DavisDavis, Edward M.

Edward M. Davis (1811-91) was born to a prosperous Quaker family in Philadelphia. An importer of foreign goods, Davis journeyed across the Atlantic on the Sirius, the first steamship to make the journey, in 1838. Davis joined the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1834, although his abolitionist activities hurt his business. In 1841 Davis reported one of Douglass's very first public antislavery lectures while visiting Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1861 he served as personal aide to Union General John C. Fremont in St. Louis, causing the Society of Friends to expel him from their meetings. Davis also became president of the Radical Club, which advocated abolition, equal voting rights for all, and other controversial issues. He married Maria, the daughter of abolitionists James and Lucretia Mott, in October 1836, and they had three children. PaF, 20 October 1841; Leavenworth (Kans.) Advocate, 18 April 1891; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:3-5.- , said that he heard Douglass speak “when on a visit to Lynn, [Mass.]." The address “was delivered with energy," Davis wrote, “and evidently from one unaccustomed to make speeches, yet it came so spontaneously that it thrilled through every one present, and compelled them to feel for the Wrongs he had endured." PaF, 20 October 1841.

I feel greatly embarrassed when I attempt to address an audience of white people. I am not used to speak to them, and it makes me tremble when I do so, because I have always looked up to them with fear. My friends, I have come to tell you something about slavery—what I know of it, as I have felt it. When I came North, I was astonished to find that the abolitionists knew so much about it, that they were acquainted with its deadly effects as well as if they had lived in its midst. But though they can give you its history—though they can depict its horrors, they cannot speak as I can from experience; they cannot refer you to a back covered with scars, as I can; for] have felt these wounds; I have suffered under the lash without the power of resisting. Yes, my blood has sprung out as the lash embedded itself in my flesh. And yet my masterAuld, Thomas (1795- 1880)

Born in St. Michaels, Maryland, Thomas Auld (1795-1880) was the eldest son of Hugh and Zipporah Auld. Trained as a shipbuilder, Auld supervised the construction of the Lloyd sloop, the Sally Lloyd, and subsequently became its captain. In 1823 he met and married Lucretia Anthony while a boarder in the Anthony home. Shortly thereafter Auld became a storekeeper in Hillsborough, Maryland, and inherited Douglass along with ten other slaves from the estate of Aaron Anthony. He later kept a store in St. Michaels, where he also served as postmaster, before retiring to a nearby farm. The 1850 census listed him as a "farmer" with $8,500 worth of real estate. References to Thomas Auld in Douglass's Narrative and public speeches are generally uncomplimentary, although Douglass disclaimed any personal hostility toward his former owner. Reconciliation occurred in the post-Reconstruction period when Douglass visited the dying Auld in St. Michaels. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 1169 (free schedule); NASS, 25 November 1845; NS, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849; Baltimore Sun, 19 June 1877; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 342-43; Tilghman, Talbot County, 1:395; Preston, "Aaron Anthony," 5; Roberts, "Visitation of Western Talbot," 235-45. has the reputation of being a pious man and a good Christian. He was a class leader in the Methodist church. I have seen this pious class leader cross and tie the hands of one of his young female slavesBailey, Henny

Henny Bailey (1816-?), a cousin of Frederick Douglass, was one of seven children born to Milly Bailey, a slave on one of Aaron Anthony's farms and his mother's sister. As a child Henny suffered severe burns, which left her hands severely scarred and virtually useless and she was ill fitted for work; Anthony estimated her value at fifty dollars in 1826, less than half the value he placed on her younger cousin Frederick. When Anthony died in 1826, his son-in-law, Thomas Auld, inherited Bailey and four other slaves. Auld constantly abused Henny after he inherited her. Sometime before 1840, Auld granted Bailey her freedom. The last record of Henny's existence is an entry in the 1840 U.S. Census. which identifies her as a free black living in St. Michaels district. Aaron Anthony, Inventory of Negroes, Distribution of Negroes, folder 71, Aaron Anthony Ledger B, 1812-26, folders 96, 159, both in Dodge Collection, MdAA; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 91, 174, 225; Bondage and Freedom, 201. , and lash her on the bare skin and justify the deed by the quotation from the Bible, “he who knoweth his master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”Luke

³Douglass paraphrases Luke 12 : 47: “And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes."

Our masters do not hesitate to prove from the Bible that slavery is right, and ministers of the Gospel tell us that we were born to be slaves:—to look at our hard hands, and see how wisely Providence has adapted them to do the labor; and then tell us, holding up their delicate

white hands, that theirs are not fit to work. Some of us know very well that we have not time to cease from labor, or ours would get soft too; but I have heard the superstitious ones exclaim—and ignorant people are always superstitious—that “if ever a man told the truth, that one did.”

A large portion of the slaves know that they have a right to their liberty—It is often talked about and read of, for some of us know how to read, although all our knowledge is gained in secret.

I well remember getting possession of a speech by John Quincy AdamsAdams, John Quincy

The eldest son of John Adams, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) served as the American ambassador to the Netherlands, Berlin, Russia, and England during the early years of the Republic. He also held office as U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1803-08), secretary of state in James Monroe's cabinet (1817-25), and president of the United States (1825-29). From 1831 until his death, Adams sat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he opposed slavery and its extension and fought the gag rule on abolitionist petitions. In late 1831 he made his first anti-slavery speech on the floor of Congress when he introduced fifteen petitions from Pennsylvania Quakers praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Adams also defended a band of captured Africans before the Supreme Court in the Amistad case in 1841. Despite his association with the aboli-tionist cause, Adams said that he personally favored ending only the slave trade. Samuel F. Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York, 1956); Leonard L. Richards, The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams (New York, 1986); Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life (New York, 1997). , made in Congress about slavery and freedom, and reading it to my fellow slaves. Oh! what joy and gladness it produced to know that so great, so good a man was pleading for us, and further, to know that there was a large and growing class of people in the north called abolitionists, who were moving for our freedom. This is known all through the south, and cherished with gratitude. It has increased the slaves’ hope for liberty. Without it his heart would faint within him; his patience would be exhausted. On the agitation of this subject he has built his highest hopes. My friends let it not be quieted, for upon you the slaves look for help. There will be no outbreaks, no insurrections, whilst you continue this excitement: let it cease, and the crimes that would follow cannot be told.

Emancipation, my friends, is that cure for slavery and its evils. It alone will give to the south peace and quietness. It will blot out the insults we have borne, will heal the wounds we have endured, and are even now groaning under, will pacify the resentment which would kindle to a blaze were it not for your exertions, and, though it may never unite the many kindred and dear friends which slavery has torn asunder, it will be received with gratitude and a forgiving spirit. Ah! how the slave yearns for it, that he may be secure from the lash, that he may

enjoy his family, and no more be tortured with the worst feature of slavery, the separation of friends and families. The whip we can bear without a murmur, compared to the idea of separation. Oh, my friends, you cannot feel the slave’s misery, when he is separated from his kindred. The agony of the mother when parting from her children cannot be told. There is nothing we so much dread as to be sold farther south. My friends, we are not taught from books; there is a law against teaching us, although I have heard some folks say we could not learn if we had a chance. The northern people say so, but the south do not believe it, or they would not have laws with heavy penalties to prevent it. The northern people think that if slavery were abolished, we would all come north. They may be more afraid of the free colored people and the runaway slaves going South. We would all seek our home and our friends, but, more than all, to escape from northern prejudice, would we go to the south. Prejudice against color is stronger north than south; it hangs around my neck like a heavy weight. It presses me out from among my fellow men, and, although I have met it at every step the three years I have been out of southern slavery, I have been able, in spite of its influence, “to take good care of myself.”