FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GENTLEMEN OF
EASTON, MARYLAND

Rochester, [N.Y.] 23 June 1867.

GENTLEMEN:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 17th June.
I have received many invitations in my life, but I never received one by
any persons or citizens, however distinguished, from any quarter of the
Country however populous and important, to be pressed upon any occasion however grand and imposing which I could more cheerfully accept
than the one with which you have honored me, to be present in Easton and
to assist in the Celebration of the Eighty Second Anniversary of American
Independence.¹The membership of the committee that invited Douglass to deliver a Fourth of July address in Easton, Maryland, in 1867, cannot be determined. Their letter to Douglass has not survived. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 178, 231n. Nevertheless I shall have to decline your invitation. A previous appointment for that day, in a neighboring State makes it impossible
for me to be present with you.²Rather than speaking in Easton, Douglass delivered a Fourth of July address in Portsmouth, Virginia. Norfolk (Va.) Journal, 5, 8 July 1867; New York Times, 17 July 1867. Having <said> this, I might thank you for
the invitation and for the kind sentiments with which you were pleased to
accompany it, and close my letter, but some thing more would seem lawful and proper under the circumstances.

Your letter comes from . This gives
it a peculiar interest for me. I know Easton and know it well—(not the
Easton of to day perhaps, unless like other towns to the South of us, it
has successfully resisted the Spirit of material improvement which has
distinguished our Northern towns and cities)—at any rate, I know it as it
was—five and thirty years ago.
Whatever may be its appearance to day I well remember both its appearance and character thus. Easton, forty years ago—(for then I had not
seen it) <was> a vision of human greatness—a grand seat of commerce, a
center of law and learning, remarkable for wealth and refinement. When
only eight or nine years old I had already learned to think that any slave
who had visited Easton was vastly superior <to> any who had not been
there.
But I have unpleasant memories of Easton. The longest time I ever
passed in the place was in a building which with its locks heavy locks,
thick walls, iron gratings and unwholesome atmosphere made a gloomy
impression upon me³Douglass and three other slaves hired out to William Freeman were arrested on 2 April 1836 by local constables on suspicion of plotting to escape from slavery. The constables marched the men to St. Michael’s to allow Captain Thomas Auld, Douglass’s owner, to determine their fate. After an interrogation by Auld, the constables marched the would-be fugitives twelve more miles to Easton, the county seat, to be put in jail. Douglass and the others were held in the Talbot County Jail for several days, during which time slave traders examined them as potential purchases, but all were soon released to their owner. Douglass was soon sent back to Baltimore to live in Hugh Auld’s household. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3: 130–38; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 136–38.—although, I must say, I was about as well off there
as a man could be expected to be under the circumstances. I liked the Gentleman who kept the house⁴Joseph Graham (c. 1797–?) was the sheriff of Talbot County and the keeper of its jail in 1836. By 1830, Graham was married and the father of two young daughters. He was still alive in 1878 when Douglass returned to visit Talbot County. 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 36; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 135, 348. much better than some of his his company of
which he had altogether too much to suit my taste. There [illegible] were
slave traders from Kentucky—slave traders from Alabama—slave traders

from Georgia—and they all seemed to have a hankering after me—which
but for the long whips they carried might have and the sinister expression
of their faces might have been

ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 281–82, FD Papers, DLC.