THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS

Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews

VOLUME 2: 1847-54

Engraving by J. C. Buttre, from Julia Griffiths, ed., Autographs for Freedom
(Rochester, 1854).

THE
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
PAPERS

John W. Blassingame, Editor

Yale University Press New Haven and London

The preparation of this volume of the Frederick Douglass Papers was made possible through grants from the Editing Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and Yale University.

Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund

Copyright © 1982 by Yale University.

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Designed by John O. C. McCrillis and set in Times Roman type, by the Composing Room of Michigan.

Printed in the United States of America by The Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, New York.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Douglass, Frederick, 18177-1895.

The Frederick Douglass papers.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

CONTENTS: Series one, Speeches, debates, and interviews, v.

1 . Slavery United States Anti-slavery movements
Sources. 2. Afro- Americans History Sources.
I. Blassingame, John W., 1940-

E449.D733

326'.092'4

78-16687
ISBN 0-300-02661-7 (v. 2)

David B. Davis

Carl Degler

Helen G. Edmonds

Philip S. Foner

John Hope Franklin

Louis R. Harlan

Howard Lamar

Elsie M. Lewis

Augustus Low

David Montgomery

Dorothy Porter

Benjamin Quarles

George Shepperson

Clare Taylor

Howard Temperley

George B. Tindall

Charles H. Wesley

C. Vann Woodward

Acknowledgments

We have benefited, in our work on Volume Two of the Frederick Douglass
Papers, from the dedicated labor of several individuals. Before returning to
full-time teaching or research, Lawrence N. Powell of Tulane University
and Vincent Franklin of Yale University served respectively as Associate
Editor and Managing Editor of the project. Former Assistant Editor Fiona
Spiers continued to supply valuable material on Douglass's activities in the
United Kingdom. Jason H. Silverman (National Historical Publications
and Records Commission Editing Fellow in 1980-81) assisted in the final
preparation of the volume. Research Assistant Jill Katz prepared the index.

Yale graduate students Karen Greenberg, Dominic J. Parisi, Roger
Smith, David Heim, Lori Ginzberg, and Carla B. Carr spent several months
helping us to refine the speaking itinerary, locate elusive sources, proofread documents, and write drafts of annotation notes. Among our undergraduate research assistants, An-Ping Hsieh, Bahira Sherif, Nan Helm,
Cameron Bardrick, Cephas Ocloo, and Steven Hill performed a multitude
of bibliographical tasks. Jessica Dunn, Lois Jameson, Carolyn Cott, and
Joel Corn well helped to expand the data base used in our annotation.

Dolores Canty, Janet Giarratano, Camille Jordan, Fortunada Jefferson , and Jean M. Conklin typed all of our notes, drafts, and documents. We
benefited greatly from their proofreading skill and understanding of our
foibles.

Introduction to Volume 2

From 1847 to 1854, the years covered in this volume, Douglass delivered approximately 650 speeches in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Fifty-nine, or about 9 percent, of those speeches are printed
herein.

Douglass's successful tour of the British Isles strengthened his reputation as a skilled and effective antislavery orator. When he returned to the
United States in 1847, he was not only a free man but a celebrity. Committed after December 1847 to editing the North Star in Rochester, New York,
Douglass remained in demand as a lecturer and continued to accept speaking engagements, in part to raise money for his newspaper. A regular
participant at abolitionist gatherings in and around Rochester, he also spent
days, often weeks, away from his office attending antislavery meetings,
black conventions, and ceremonial events throughout the North and in
Canada.

His growing prominence as a social critic and black leader ensured
Douglass greater press coverage than he had previously enjoyed in the
United States. Although most of his public appearances, particularly those
in small towns or before predominantly black audiences, were only sketchily reported, general-circulation as well as antislavery journals increasingly
carried detailed reports of his speeches, many of which were stenographically recorded. Douglass frequently published these in his own paper,
sometimes including corrections or additions to accounts appearing elsewhere. Texts for thirty-seven of the speeches in Volume 2 can be found in
either the North Star or Frederick Douglass' Paper. Major addresses were
occasionally reprinted as pamphlets.

Douglass's primary objective between 1847 and 1854 was to hasten the
overthrow of American slavery, although his view on how that should be
accomplished changed. The speeches and two debates in this volume trace
both his shift in allegiance from strict Garrisonianism to political
abolitionism and the antagonisms that it engendered. Compared to his
earlier speeches, less was said after 1847 about his personal experiences in
bondage, more about the prejudice and discrimination that he and other free
blacks daily encountered in the northern states. Douglass argued against
colonization and voluntary emigration, urging instead that blacks work

together to create improved educational and employment opportunities. As he had since the beginning of his career, Douglass continued to fuse other
political and social reforms with his campaign against slavery and racism.
He attacked intemperance, war, and the hypocrisy that infiltrated American religion and politics, approved foreign revolutions attempting to implement the ideals of liberty and equality, and supported the domestic
women's rights movement. Speaking extemporaneously or from prepared
texts, in open fields or in spacious auditoriums, Douglass personally delivered his message of freedom and justice to thousands of people.

List of Abbreviations

Partial Speaking Itinerary, 1847-54

THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS

VOLUME 2: 1847-54