MY SLAVE EXPERIENCE IN MARYLAND: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ON 6 MAY 1845, at the Broadway Tabernacle ChurchBroadway Tabernacle Church

Broadway Tabernacle, 950 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10001 Constructed in 1836 partly for the purpose of accommodating “large bodies of Christians on anniversaries and other occasions,” the Broadway Tabernacle Church was one of the largest churches in New York City, comfortably seating 2500 persons. It was chiefly a Congregational church. The great revivalist, Charles Grandison Finney, was its first pastor. Lewis Tappan of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was one of the more illustrious abolitionists in the congregation. It is now called the Marbridge Building. History of the Broadway Tabernacle Church . . . (New York, 1846), 3–4.

National Anti-Slavery Standard, 22 May 1845. Other texts in New York Evangelist, 8 May 1845; Liberator, 16 May 1845; Concord (N.H.) Herald of Freedom, 16 May 1845.

Douglass’s Narrative was only days from publication when he addressed the Twelfth Annual Convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City’s capacious Broadway Tabernacle on 6 May 1845. The National Anti-Slavery Standard exulted that the attendance was “larger than it has been for several years,” though the Liberator believed the gathering would have been larger still had the meeting been properly advertised. The New York correspondent of the American Traveller thought the crowd had been “drawn together by idle curiosity to hear women speak in public.” The clergy was “pretty numerously represented . . . , curious to see and hear what might be said and done, especially in regard to their position,” the Liberator reported. Even the prominent American Colonization Society leader, Ralph Randolph GurleyGurley, Ralph Randolph

, put in an appearance, as did the English socialist Robert Dale OwenOwen, Robert Dale

and a few Liberty party men. GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. called the meeting to order and, after Reverend Henry GrewGrew, Henry

offered a prayer, Francis JacksonJackson, Francis

A leading figure among Boston Garrisonians, Francis Jackson (1789-1861) was president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1837 until his death and secretary of the Boston Vigilance Committee in the 1850s. He presided over the 1841 Nantucket convention where Douglass launched his abolitionist career. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Jackson moved to Boston as a young man to become a prosperous merchant and minor city government official. Jackson's considerable wealth was frequently put at Garrison's disposal to keep the Liberator in print. Lib., 22 November 1861; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 128-31; ACAB, 3:386; NCAB, 2:318. A leading figure among Boston Garrisonians, Francis Jackson (1789–1861) was president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1837 until his death and secretary of the Boston Vigilance Committee in the 1850s. He presided over the 1841 Nantucket convention where Douglass launched his abolitionist career. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Jackson moved to Boston as a young man to become a prosperous merchant and minor city government official. Jackson’s considerable wealth was frequently put at Garrison's disposal to keep the Liberator in print. Lib., 22 November 1861; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 128-31; ACAB, 3:386; NCAB, 2:318. read the Treasurer’s Report and James B. SandersonSanderson, Jeremiah Burke

Born into the free black community in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Jeremiah Burke Sanderson (1821–75) became a leader in the antislavery movement during the 1840s. From his barbershop, a popular meeting place for African American men, he sold issues of the Liberator. He also joined the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society, later becoming its secretary. After a successful lecture tour of the Northeast, he addressed the 1845 meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1853 he was appointed to the National Council of the Colored People and attended several black state conventions after moving to California in 1854. He remained active in politics, promoting the causes of black people against Jim Crow laws and of black education in California for the rest of his life. Kathryn Grover, The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (Amherst, Mass., 2001), 170, 172–75, 180, 231, 276, 314; Jack Salzman, ed., Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 5 vols. (New York, 1996), 5:2385; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:387–88n. , a black friend of Douglass from New Bedford, hailed the progress of abolitionism. Wendell PhillipsPhillips, Wendell

Boston-born and Harvard-educated Wendell Phillips (1811-84) ranked second only to Garrison in influence in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Bored with the legal profession and influenced by his antislavery fiancee, Ann Terry Greene, Phillips dedicated himself to abolitionism beginning in 1837. A highly gifted orator, Phillips was in demand as a lecturer even in nonabolitionist circles. Besides abolition, Phillips championed woman suffrage, prohibition, penal reform, Indian rights, and legislative protection for workers. When Garrison retired from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1865, Phillips assumed the post and led abolitionists until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986); Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); DAB, 14:546-47. urged abolitionists to secede from national political and religious bodies. Jane Elizabeth HitchcockJones, Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock

Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock Jones (1813–96), born in Vernon, New York, became an antislavery lecturer in the early 1840s and was among the band of antislavery reformers who moved to Salem, Ohio in 1845, in order to give new impetus to the Garrisonian movement in the West. Active in the Western Anti-Slavery Society, she coedited until 1849 the Society ’s organ, the Anti-Slavery Bugle, helped organize local antislavery societies, and wrote The Young Abolitionist, a children’s guide to slavery and abolition. In 1846 she married Benjamin Smith Jones (1812–62), a Quaker abolitionist and coeditor of the Bugle. From 1850 to 1856 she devoted most of her energies to the women's rights movement, resuming her antislavery labors before the Civil War. She served on the executive committee of the Western Anti-Slavery Society and as general agent of the Ohio Woman's Rights Association. In 1862 she returned to Vernon, New York, where she lived in quiet retirement. Douglas A. Gamble, “Garrisonian Abolitionists in the West: Some Suggestions for Study, Civil War History, 23 : 58–59 (March 1977):, Edward T. James et al., eds., Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass, 1971), 2: 285–86. , a lecturing companion of Abby KelleyFoster, Abigail Kelley

Abby Kelley (1811-87) was born in Pelham village, Worcester County, Massachusetts, the seventh daughter of Wing Kelley, a farmer, and Diana Daniels, his second wife. Kelley was heavily influenced by her Quaker upbringing, but she later broke from the church because of its relative conservatism. Although her early schooling was scanty and deficient, Kelley saved and borrowed money in order to attend the New England Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island. At age nineteen she returned home and then began a career of teaching in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she became an abolitionist through the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1838 Kelley spoke at Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia as it was being attacked by an angry protesting mob. In the same year she joined the New England Anti-Slavery Society, previously a male-only organization. She began a career as a lecturer, at both women's and men's gatherings, especially in conservative Connecticut. Kelley married Stephen Symonds Foster, another radical abolitionist, on 21 December 1845. Traveling together on the reform circuit, they were among the most prominent antislavery lecturers in the 1840s and 1850s. Sterling, Ahead of Her Time; EAAH, 2:39-40. Perhaps the best known female American abolitionist. Abigail Kelley Foster (1810-87) was born in Pelham, Massachusetts. She was educated at the Friends School, Providence, Rhode Island, and later taught at a similar establishment in Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1837 she joined the antislavery movement and two years later, following the path blazed by Angelina Grimké, embarked on a career as an abolitionist lecturer. Her talents led Garrisonian abolitionists to choose her as an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, provoking antifeminist abolitionists to bolt the organization. She continued to lecture and raise funds for the Garrisonians and in 1845 married Stephen S. Foster. another prominent abolitionist lecturer. In the 1850s both Fosters became outspoken advocates for women's rights in addition to abolition. Quarrels with Garrison over political action led Abby Foster and her husband to become inactive in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the late 1850s. Ill health forced her to be less active as a reformer after the Civil War, but in 1873 she attracted considerable publicity for woman suffrage by refusing to pay taxes on the family farm in protest against her disenfranchisement. The Fosters and Douglass had lectured together in Rhode Island in November and December 1841. Jane Hanna Pease, “The Freshness of Fanaticism: Abby Kelley Foster: An Essay in Reform" (PhD. diss., Univ. of Rochester, 1969); C. B. Galbreath, “Anti-Slavery Movement in Columbiana County," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 30: 391-92 (1921); DAB, 6: 542-43. , followed with another appeal for disunion. William C. BellBell, William C.

Douglass refers to William C. Bell (?–1845), the general agent of the antislavery newspaper the True American, which Cassius M. Clay was preparing to issue from Lexington, Kentucky. A socialist and a critic of popular religion, Bell was also an educational reformer and offered a theory of “practical education” in his Analysis of Pope's Essay on Man . . . (Lexington, Ky., 1836), NASS, 10 July 1845: Lib., 2 May 1845: Asa Earl Martin, The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky Prior to 1850 (Louisville, Ky., 1918), 115. urged moderation and publicized an antislavery newspaper that he and Cassius M. ClayClay, Cassius M.

had recently established in Kentucky. Doug-

lass, the last speaker of the long session, talked for only a half hour. Offering a preview of his forthcoming Narrative, he publicly divulged the specific facts of his slave background for the first time. NASS, 15 May 1845.

Frederick Douglas[s] was next introduced to the audience, Mr. GarrsonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. observing that he was one who, by the laws of the South, had been a chattel but who was now, by his own intrepid spirit and the laws of God, a man. He proceeded:—I do not know that I can say anything to the point. My habits and early life have done much to unfit me for public speaking, and I fear that your patience has already been wearied by the lengthened remarks of other speakers, more eloquent than I can possibly be, and better prepared to command the attention of the audience. And I can scarcely hope to get your attention even for a longer period than fifteen minutes.

Before coming to this meeting, I had a sort of desire—I don’t know but it was vanity—to stand before a New-York audience in the TabernacleBroadway Tabernacle Church

Broadway Tabernacle, 950 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10001 Constructed in 1836 partly for the purpose of accommodating “large bodies of Christians on anniversaries and other occasions,” the Broadway Tabernacle Church was one of the largest churches in New York City, comfortably seating 2500 persons. It was chiefly a Congregational church. The great revivalist, Charles Grandison Finney, was its first pastor. Lewis Tappan of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was one of the more illustrious abolitionists in the congregation. It is now called the Marbridge Building. History of the Broadway Tabernacle Church . . . (New York, 1846), 3–4. . But when I came in this morning, and looked at those massive pillars, and saw the vast throng which had assembled, I got a little frightened, and was afraid that I could not speak; but now that the audience is not so large and I have recovered from my fright, I will venture to say a word on Slavery.

I ran away from the South seven years ago—passing through this city in no little hurry, I assure you—and lived about three years in New Bedford, Massachusetts, before I became publicly known to the anti-slavery people. Since then I have been engaged for three years in telling the people what I know of it. I have come to this meeting to throw in my mite, and since no fugitive slave has preceded me, I am encouraged to say a word about the sunny South. I thought, when the eloquent femaleJones, Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock

Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock Jones (1813–96), born in Vernon, New York, became an antislavery lecturer in the early 1840s and was among the band of antislavery reformers who moved to Salem, Ohio in 1845, in order to give new impetus to the Garrisonian movement in the West. Active in the Western Anti-Slavery Society, she coedited until 1849 the Society ’s organ, the Anti-Slavery Bugle, helped organize local antislavery societies, and wrote The Young Abolitionist, a children’s guide to slavery and abolition. In 1846 she married Benjamin Smith Jones (1812–62), a Quaker abolitionist and coeditor of the Bugle. From 1850 to 1856 she devoted most of her energies to the women's rights movement, resuming her antislavery labors before the Civil War. She served on the executive committee of the Western Anti-Slavery Society and as general agent of the Ohio Woman's Rights Association. In 1862 she returned to Vernon, New York, where she lived in quiet retirement. Douglas A. Gamble, “Garrisonian Abolitionists in the West: Some Suggestions for Study, Civil War History, 23 : 58–59 (March 1977):, Edward T. James et al., eds., Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass, 1971), 2: 285–86. who addressed this audience a while ago, was speaking of the horrors of Slavery, that many an honest man would doubt the truth of the picture which she drew; and I can unite with the gentleman from KentuckyBell, William C.

Douglass refers to William C. Bell (?–1845), the general agent of the antislavery newspaper the True American, which Cassius M. Clay was preparing to issue from Lexington, Kentucky. A socialist and a critic of popular religion, Bell was also an educational reformer and offered a theory of “practical education” in his Analysis of Pope's Essay on Man . . . (Lexington, Ky., 1836), NASS, 10 July 1845: Lib., 2 May 1845: Asa Earl Martin, The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky Prior to 1850 (Louisville, Ky., 1918), 115. in saying, that she came far short of describing them.

I can tell you what I have seen with my own eyes, felt on my own person, and know to have occurred in my own neighborhood. I am not from any of those States where the slaves are said to be in their most degraded condition; but from Maryland, where Slavery is said to exist in its mildest form; yet I can stand here and relate atrocities which would make your blood to boil at the statement of them. I lived on the plantation of Col. LloydLloyd, Edward V

Edward Lloyd V (1779–1834) of Wye House was the scion of Talbot County’s first family. One of the state’s largest landowners and slaveowners, he was also Maryland’s most successful wheat grower and cattle raiser. As a charter member of the Maryland Agricultural Society, a founder of at least two banks, and a speculator in coal lands, he became the wealthiest of a long line of Lloyds that extended back to colonial Maryland. In slaves alone, his huge holdings increased from 420 in 1810 to 545 in 1830. An eager student of politics as an adolescent and a frequent auditor of political debate at the Annapolis State House, Edward V became a Republican delegate to the state legislature when he reached the age of majority in 1800. The following year, he helped secure passage of a bill removing all restrictions to white male suffrage. As a U.S. congressman (1806–08), Lloyd voted against a bill to end the African slave trade. He also served as Maryland’s governor (1809–10), a state legislator (1811–16), U.S. senator (1819–26), and state senator (1826–31). Edward V married Sally Scott Murray on 30 November 1797 and had six children with her. 1810 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 342; Oswald Tilghman, comp., History of Talbot County, Maryland, 1661–1861, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1915), 1:184–210; Hulbert Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore: Seventeen Maryland Rivers (New York, 1944), 283–90; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 26, 30, 48–54, 57–58, 74, 82; BDAC, 1403. on the eastern shore of Maryland, and belonged to

that gentleman’s clerkAnthony, Aaron

Aaron Anthony (1767-1826), Frederick Douglass's first owner and possibly his father, was born at Tuckahoe Neck in what later became Maryland's Caroline County. Anthony's father was a poor and illiterate farmer who died when Aaron was only two years old. Despite his impoverished origins, Anthony acquired a rudimentary education and a small amount of property. He became the captain in 1795 of the Sally Lloyd, the family schooner of Edward Lloyd IV, the wealthiest planter in Talbot County. In 1797 he increased his wealth through his marriage to Ann Catherine Skinner, the daughter of an old and prominent Eastern Shore family, who brought with her the slave family into which Douglass was later born. Soon thereafter, Anthony became chief overseer and general manager of the Lloyd family's thirteen farms, one of the largest estates in the United States. He remained in this position for the rest of his life, all the while accumulating land and slaves of his own. By the time of his death in 1826, Anthony had become a moderately wealthy planter in his own right, accumulating three farms totaling 597 1-2 acres, thirty slaves worth $3,065, and personal property. His entire estate was valued at $8,042. Anthony Family Bible, Oxford Museum, Oxford, Md.; Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folders 93, 58, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Inventory of Estate of Aaron Anthony, 13 January 1827, Talbot County Inventories, box 13, 5-9, MdTCH; Charles B. Clark, ed., The Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia, 3 vols. (New York, 1950), 1:491-92; Footner], Rivers of the Eastern Shore, 285, 299-304; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 22-30; idem., "Aaron Anthony" (unpublished paper, Easton, Maryland, 1977), MdTCH. . He owned, probably, not less than a thousand slaves.⁷Douglass exaggerates the number of slaves owned by Colonel Edward Lloyd V. In 1790 Lloyd's father, Edward Lloyd IV, owned 305 slaves; by 1861 his grandson, Edward Lloyd VII, had 700 slaves, and these included chattel in Mississippi. There were only 167 slaves on Lloyd’s Home House plantation or “Great House Farm” at the time of Douglass's residence. Douglass may have taken on faith a saying perhaps still current during his childhood: “God Almighty never intended any white man should own a thousand niggers, but Colonel Lloyd [Edward IV] had 999.” Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore, 280–81; Tilghman, Talbot County, 1 : 225. Cf. Douglass, Narrative, xii, 27–28.

I mention the name of this man, and also of the persons who perpetrated the deeds which I am about to relate, running the risk of being hurled back into interminable bondage—for I am yet a slave;—yet for the sake of the cause—for the sake of humanity, I will mention the names, and glory in running the risk. I have the gratification to know that if I fall by the utterance of truth in this matter, that if I shall be hurled back into bondage to gratify the slaveholder—to be killed by inches—that every drop of blood which I shall shed, every groan which I shall utter, every pain which shall rack my frame, every sob in which I shall indulge, shall be the instrument, under God, of tearing down the bloody pillar of Slavery, and of hastening the day of deliverance for three millions of my brethren in bondage.

I therefore tell the names of these bloody men, not because they are worse than other men would have been in their circumstances. No, they are bloody from necessity. Slavery makes it necessary for the slaveholder to commit all conceivable outrages upon the miserable slave. It is impossible to hold the slaves in bondage without this.

We had on the plantation an overseer, by the name of Austin GoreGore, Austin

Austin Gore (1794-1871), also referred to as Orson Gore in the Lloyd family account and cash books, was the overseer of Edward Lloyd V's Davis's Farm plantation, where in 1822 a young slave named Bill Denby died. A friend of Gore's later challenged Douglass's assertion that Gore coolly murdered Denby, insisting that he was "a respectable citizen living near St. Michaels, and. . .a worthy member of the Methodist Episcopal Church;. . .all who know him, think him anything but a murderer." Lloyd apparently tolerated Gore's brutal actions, because he later promoted him to be overseer of the much larger Wye House plantation. The 1830 U.S. census listed Gore as the head of a household that contained three boys and two girls under age ten, his wife, and an elderly woman. A. C. C. Thompson, 'To the Public--Falsehood Refuted," reprinted in NASS, 25 November 1845, and in Lib., 12 December 1845; Land Papers--Maintenance of Property, Land Volume 39, reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi; 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 14. , a man who was highly respected as an overseer—proud, ambitious, cruel, artful, obdurate. Nearly every slave stood in the utmost dread and horror of that man. His eye flashed confusion amongst them. He never spoke but to command, nor commanded but to be obeyed. He was lavish with the whip, sparing with his word. I have seen that man tie up men by the two hands, and for two hours, at intervals, ply the lash. I have seen women stretched up on the limbs of trees, and their bare backs made bloody with the lash. One slave refused to be whipped by him—I need not tell you that he was a man, though black his features, degraded his condition. He had committed some trifling offence—for they whip for trifling offences—the slave refused to be whipped, and ran—he did not stand to and fight his master as I did once, and might do again—though I hope I shall not have occasion to do so—he ran and stood in a creek, and refused to come out. At length his master told him he would shoot him if he did not come out. Three calls were to be given him. The first, second, and third, were given, at each of which the slave stood his ground. Gore, equally determined and firm, raised his musket, and in an instant poor DerbyDemby, Bill (slave)

Bill Demby (Denby) (c. 1802-22) though Douglass in his second autobiography thought it could have been Denby. Demby lived with twenty-three other slaves, including his family, on "Davises Farm," one of several Talbot County plantations owned by Edward Lloyd V. His family had been Lloyd property since the latter decades of the seventeenth century. Plantation records indicate that Denby, a prime field hand, died sometime during the year 1822. Return Book, 1 January 1822, 1 January 1823, Land Papers--Maintenance of Property, Land Volume 39, reel 10, Lloyd Family Papers, MdHi; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 72-73, 213. was no more. He sank beneath the waves,

and naught but the crimsoned waters marked the spot. Then a general outcry might be heard amongst us. Mr. Lloyd asked Gore why he had resorted to such a cruel measure. He replied, coolly, that he had done it from necessity; that the slave was setting a dangerous example, and that if he was permitted to be corrected and yet save his life, that the slaves would effectually rise and be freemen, and their masters be slaves. His defence was satisfactory. He remained on the plantation, and his fame went abroad. He still lives in St. Michaels, Talbot county, Maryland, and is now, I presume, as much respected, as though his guilty soul had never been stained with his brother’s blood.

I might go on and mention other facts if time would permit. My own wife had a dear cousin who was terribly mangled in her sleep, while nursing the child of a Mrs. HicksHicks, Mrs. Giles

. Finding the girl asleep, Mrs. Hicks beat her to death with a billet of wood, and the woman has never been brought to justice.¹⁰The actions of Mrs. Giles Hicks are more fully described in Douglass, Narrative, 41–42; idem, Bondage and Freedom, 125–26. It is not a crime to kill a negro in Talbot county, Maryland, farther than it is a deprivation of a man’s property. I used to know of one who boastedLambdin, Thomas H. W.

Douglass typically identifies the person as Thomas Lanman, a ship carpenter, but it likely Thomas H. W. Lambdin (c. 1807-?) had labored at a number of trades by 1850; shipwright, schoolteacher, town bailiff for St. Michaels (1848), and miller (1850). In 1850 he was married, had five young children, and owned real estate valued at $1,000. In a rebuttal to Douglass's negative characterization, a Maryland friend described Lambdin as "too good-natured and harmless to injure any person but himself." In January 1848 Lambdin was elected the town bailiff of St. Michaels. A. C. C. Thompson, "To the Public-Falsehood Refuted," reprinted in theNASS, 25 November 1845 and in Lib.; Douglass, Narrative, 41; Tilghman, Talbot County, 2:395. that he had killed two slaves, and with an oath would say, “I’m the only benefactor in the country.”

Now, my friends, pardon me for having detained you so long; but let me tell you with regard to the feelings of the slave. The people at the North say—“Why don’t you rise? If we were thus treated we would rise and throw off the yoke. We would wade knee deep in blood before we would endure the bondage.” You’d rise up! Who are these that are asking for manhood in the slave, and who say that he has it not, because he does not rise? The very men who are ready by the Constitution to bring the strength of the nation to put us down! You, the people of New York, the people of Massachusetts, of New England, of the whole Northern States, have sworn under God that we shall be slaves or die! And shall we three millions be taunted with a want of the love of freedom, by the very men who stand upon us and say, submit, or be crushed?

We don't ask you to engage in any physical warfare against the slaveholder. We only ask that in Massachusetts, and the several non-slaveholding States which maintain a union with the slaveholder—who stand with your heavy heels on the quivering heart-strings of the slave, that you will stand off. Leave us to take care of our masters. But here you come up to our masters and tell them that they ought to shoot us—to take away our wives and little ones—to sell our mothers into interminable bondage, and sever the tenderest ties. You say to us, if you dare to carry out the principles of our fathers, we'll shoot you down. Others may tamely submit; not I. You may put the chains upon me and fetter me, but I am not a slave, for my master who puts the chains upon me, shall stand in as much dread of me as I do of him. I ask you in the name of my three millions of brethren at the South. We know that we are unable to cope with you in numbers; you are numerically stronger, politically stronger, than we are—but we ask you if you will rend asunder the heart and [crush] the body of the slave? If so, you must do it at your own expense.

While you continue in the Union, you are as bad as the slaveholder. If you have thus wronged the poor black man, by stripping him of his freedom, how are you going to give evidence of your repentance? Undo what you have done. Do you say that the slave ought not to be free? These hands—are they not mine? This body—is it not mine? Again, I am your brother, white as you are. I’m your blood-kin. You don’t get rid of me so easily. I mean to hold on to you. And in this land of liberty, I’m a slave. The twenty-six States that blaze forth on your flag, proclaim a compact to return me to bondage if I run away, and keep me in bondage if I submit. Wherever I go, under the aegis of your liberty, there I’m a slave. If I go to Lexington or Bunker Hill, there I’m a slave, chained in perpetual servitude. I may go to your deepest valley, to your highest mountain, I’m still a slave, and the bloodhound may chase me down.

Now I ask you if you are willing to have your country the hunting-ground of the slave. God says thou shalt not oppress: the Constitution says oppress: which will you serve, God or man? The American Anti-Slavery Society says God, and I am thankful for it. In the name of my brethren, to you, Mr. President,Garrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. and the noble band who cluster around you, to you, who are scouted on every hand by priest, people,

politician, Church, and State, to you I bring a thankful heart, and in the name of three millions of slaves, I offer you their gratitude for your faithful advocacy in behalf of the slave.