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American Slavery, American Churches, and the Evangelical Alliance: A Speech Delivered in Sunderland, England on September 18, 1846.

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AMERICAN SLAVERY, AMERICAN CHURCHES, AND THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN SUNDERLAND, ENGLAND, ON 18 SEPTEMBER 1846

Sunderland and Durham County Herald, 25 September 1846. Other texts in Liberator, 13 November 1846; London Nonconformist, 30 September 1846.

A large crowd assembled at Atheneum Hall in Sunderland, England, on the evening of 18 September 1846 to hear an address by the "run-away slave from Maryland, America." Mayor Robert Brown chaired the meeting and Caleb Richardson, Thomas James Backhouse, John Hills, and James Hills joined other local citizens on the platform. Before introducing Douglass, the mayor appealed to the "watchful eye of public opinion" to safeguard religious and civil liberties in England. "[I]t is in the very nature of power to seek to enthral," he observed, "and however our aristocracy may be lauded as proud, wealthy, and in many instances highly intellectual and benevolent, . . . the liberties of this country could not be entrusted even to them unless in conjunction with our popularly elected and faithful House of Commons." Brown urged Douglass to rejoice in his title of "run-away slave" because "I know of no rights superior to the right of personal freedom." When Douglass rose to speak, he soon found that the controversy occasioned by antislavery campaigns against the Evangelical Alliance had traveled to Sunderland. The Reverend William Horton, Superintendent of the Sunderland Wesleyan Circuit, objected to Douglass's charge that British Wesleyans maintained fraternal ties with American slaveholders. Douglass clarified his position and answered other questions. The assembly then unanimously adopted a resolution that denounced slavery and exhorted all Christians to use the "moral means in their power" to hasten its end. Quarles, FD, 50.

Mr. Douglass then came forward and was warmly received. He spoke of the embarrassment he always felt in addressing public assemblies, and mentioned that it is now eight years since he escaped from the house of bondage. A slave who escapes from the Southern into the Northern states is free, unless he is claimed by his master. When he escaped he changed his name, to prevent detection, from Frederick Bailey to Frederick Douglass, by which he has since been known.

Three years after he escaped from Maryland into Massachusetts he attended an anti-slavery meeting and told his own wrongs and the wrongs of his brethren in bonds, and so pleased were the abolitionists with his speech, that they insisted on his going forth to New England to tell the things he had seen, felt, and heard during his period of enslave-

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ment. He did so for four years, and during the latter part of the time experienced great difficulty from being unable to convince some of those whom he addressed that he had ever been a slave. He was induced to publish a narrative giving facts and names, and he was led to this country that he might be out of the way of his master during the excitement consequent on the publication of this narrative of his experience of slavery. His identity was now proved by his master having declared that he would have him cost what it might. He had consequently left the vaunted "land of the free and home of the brave," the eagle with its beak and talons for the mane of the British lion. It was, however, his intention to return to America, as he felt he could not fully do his duty without running some risk.

He defined slavery to be the right which one man claims and enforces to a property in the bodies and souls of men. From the relation of master and slave a flood of evil necessarily arises. Cruelty is inseparable from it, for no man readily bows his neck to the yoke of a taskmaster, and there being no hope of reward there must be the fear of punishment—whips, thumb screws, gibbets, whipping posts, dungeons, bloodhounds, are the legitimate accompaniments of slavery.

He could tell of the physical evils of slavery; he had on his own back the marks of the slave driver's lash, which would go with him to his grave; he has four sisters, one brother, and an old grandmother in a state of slavery. He did not experience the most cruel treatment, inasmuch as Maryland is a slave-breeding state, and therefore it is the interest of the master to treat kindly his slave. Yet he had seen cruelties which would move the heart of the most hardened man on the shores of England. He had been awakened at midnight by the clanking of chains and the separation of families, who were torn asunder from each other. And this was the work not merely of the impious, but the religious part of the community. His own master was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and a class leader in that church.

Methodists are quite as much addicted to slave trading and slave breeding as any other class. He had seen his master tie up a young woman, a cousin of his own, cause her to stand four or five hours on the end of her toes, and lash her with a cow skin until the warm blood dripped at her feet; and in justification of this, he would quote that passage of scripture, "He that knoweth his master's will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes."1Douglass paraphrases Luke 12: 47 Not long since a man and woman

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were brought to the auction block. The auctioneer said to the audience "Here gentlemen, come forward, examine for yourselves, the woman is sound," and her limbs were brutally exposed to the gaze of the expected purchasers. Her husband stood by, and after his wife had been sold he besought the man in the eloquence of silence to purchase him also; but he was "struck off" to another man, and as they were about to be parted he besought that he might take a farewell of his wife. This privilege was denied him; in his attempt to do so, he was struck over the head with a loaded whip by the negro driver, and he dropped dead at his feet. His heart was broken. (Sensation.)

Three millions of people are denied by law the right to learn to read the name of the God who made them. He designated all the American professions with regard to freedom and equality as consummate falsehoods, and said that America is now seeking to perpetuate and extend the conquests of slavery, and waging a bloody war with Mexico that she may establish slavery on a soil where a semi-barbarous people had the humanity to put an end to it. The Americans were great religious professors, but revivals of religion and revivals of the slave trade go hand-in-hand together; the church going bell and the auctioneer's bell chime with each other; the slave prison and the church stand in the same street; and the groans of the slave are drowned by the religious shouts of his pious master. The blood-stained gold of the slave goes to support the pulpit, while the pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here are religion and robbery, devils dressed in angel's robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise. (Mr. Douglass proceeded at great length in this strain, observing that various religious bodies in this country are connected with those of the United States, and urging that no fellowship ought to take place whilst the latter continue to pursue works of blood and murder.)

At this stage of the speech, the Rev. WM. HORTON2William Horton (1800-67), Wesleyan Methodist minister born in Louth, England, joined the church at age eighteen and was accepted by the Conference in 1820. For the next nine years he worked as a missionary in the South Pacific, South Africa, and Australia. Returning to England in 1829, he received appointments to some nine different Methodist circuits before returning from the Itinerancy because of ill health in 1852. He participated in a revival movement in the Lincoln area during the early 1840s and served as superintendant of the Sunderland Wesleyan Circuit from 1845-47. The last fifteen years of his life were spent in London where he preached on a part-time basis until the year of his death. Wesleyan Methodist Magazine For 1867: Being a Continuation of the Arminian or Methodist Magazine . . . , 5th ser., 13 : 848-49 (September, 1867); London Methodist Conference Minutes, 1867, 21. Superintendent of the Sunderland Wesleyan Circuit, said he did not intend to in-

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terrupt the proceedings, but he hoped, after Mr. Douglass had concluded, he should be allowed to put to him two or three questions.

Mr. DOUGLASS said he should be happy to answer any enquiries pertinent to the subject. He next adverted to the reasons for agitating this question in Great Britain, which chiefly arose out of the great moral and political influence of this country on America. He wished the churches to remonstrate against the foul abomination; to protest in the name of God and humanity against the foul sin of slavery; and our pulpit and press to teem with the living coals of anti-slavery fire. (Applause.) He then went into details as to the conduct of the American Methodist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches, shewing that all were now apologists and defenders of slavery, although at first they were really anti-slavery churches. He declared that had he not received spiritual instruction from other sources he should have been an Atheist.

He then adverted to some recent proceedings of the Evangelical Alliance. That body met in London a few weeks ago, when the question ofAmerican slavery came before them. The Rev. Dr. Smythe, a slave holder, of South Carolina, was there; the Rev. Dr. Cox, moderator of a slave-holding General Assembly, and others interested in the maintenance of slavery were also there. The Rev. Dr. Hinton3Baptist minister John Howard Hinton (1791-1873), born in Oxford and educated at Bristol College and the University of Edinburgh, spent much of his fifty-seven-year ministerial career in London and its environs. Active in the movement to abolish slavery in the British colonies, he was a member of the Central Negro Emancipation Committee, organized in November 1837, and subeditor of the Committee's organ, The British Emancipator (1837-40). When the Committee was absorbed by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in January 1840, Hinton was retained as the subeditor of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter until 1841, when John Scoble became the new editor. As a member of the governing committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Hinton joined Scoble in 1841 to draft the Society's address to the President of the United States delivered by Joseph Sturge, served on a subcommittee that aided in the defense of the Creole mutineers in 1842, and that same year drafted a letter to Lord Stanley about escaped Arkansas slave Nelson Hackett. At the 27 August session of the Evangelical Alliance, Hinton moved to restrict membership to nonslaveholders. Illustrated London News, 10 January 1874; Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, 39, 83, 228, 272; idem, "The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1839 - 1868" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1960), 78; Abel and Klingberg, Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations, 80-81, 89, 91, 99, 206, 220-21; BFASR, 3d ser., 19: 22 (January 1874); The Christian Reformer; or Unitarian Magazine and Review, n.s., 2 : 631 (October 1846); Evangelical Alliance, Proceedings, 1846, 290, 3 3 9 - 4 0 ; DNB, 9 : 901-03 moved that slave-holders should not be admitted. This question was debated. Dr. Wardlaw,4Scottish Congregationalist minister Ralph Wardlaw (1779-1853) spent most of his life in Glasgow, where he served as pastor of the prestigious West George Street Chapel and professor of theology at the Glasgow Theological Academy. A popular and influential clergyman, Wardlaw reportedly enjoyed one of the largest incomes of any dissenting minister in Scotland. In 1818 Yale College granted him an honorary degree. Wardlaw opened his chapel to the Glasgow Emancipation Society for its first public meeting on 12 December 1833 and subsequently acted as one of the Society's vice-presidents. He resigned in 1841 because of the Society's growing enthusiasm for Garrisonianism and thereafter joined the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery, which showed a pronounced sympathy for the American Tappanites. At the 27 August meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, Wardlaw agreed with Hinton that to admit slaveholders would be to give "sanction to a great moral evil." He therefore proposed an amendment that would express the Alliance's abhorrence of slavery. Rice, "Scottish Factor," 44-47 , 68, 168, 223 - 25 , 232, 353-54; Smith, Our Scottish Clergy, 1 : 57-66; Congregational Year Book For 1855 (London, 1855), 240-43; Temperley, British Antislavery, 211-12, 226; Evangelical Alliance, Proceedings, 1846, 322-25, 425, 431; Irving, Book of Scotsmen, 540; BFASR, ser. 3, 19 : 22 (1 January 1874).
Mr. Hines,5Douglass actually refers to Adventist publisher Joshua Vaughan Himes (1805-95), who entered the ministry of the revivalistic Christian Connection Church in 1827 and worked as an evangelist in southern Massachusetts for three years before settling in Boston, where he was pastor of the First Christian Church for seven years. He subsequently founded Boston's famous Chardon Street Chapel, which under Himes's stewardship, became "a favored meeting place for reformers and prophets of all sorts." Himes was a member of the executive committee of the Non-Resistance Society and had held a life membership in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society since 1836. Himes met William Miller in 1839 and shortly after his conversion to the millenarian Millerite movement set about organizing and often financing a string of Adventist publications, including his Boston weekly Signs of the Times, renamed The Advent Herald in 1844, and The Midnight Cry weekly, established in New York City in 1842. Himes promoted Adventism even after the millenium failed to arrive in 1843 and in 1844 in the numerous journals that he edited until 1873. After the Civil War, Himes served as president of the American Advent Mission Society and under its auspices with freedmen in Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri. By the early 1880s, Himes had become a minister of the Episcopal Church and served as rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Elk Point, South Dakota shortly before his death. In May 1846 a convention of Adventists meeting in New York City appointed Himes, Robert Hutchinson, and F. G. Brown missionaries to Europe and delegates to the World's Temperance Convention and the International Evangelical Alliance. At the 27 August session of the Evangelical Alliance, Himes seconded John H. Hinton's amendment to exclude slaveholders because "a Christianity which is connected with the system of Slavery . . . must necessarily be a corrupt Christianity." Isaac C. Wellcome, History of the Second Advent: Message and Mission, Doctrine and People (Yarmouth, Maine, 1874), 83 - 84, 89 - 91, 542- 47, 609 - 13 , 620 - 21; Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People, 446, 479 - 80; Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry: A Defense of the Character and Conduct of William Miller and the Millerites . . . (Washington, D.C., 1944), 74, 8 1 , 138, 175; Garrison and Garrison, Garrison Life, 2 : 421 - 22 , 424, 427; Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Fourth Annual Report, 72; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 2: 182, 339, 341-42, 724; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 74; Clara Endicott Sears, Days of Delusion: A Strange Bit of History (Boston, 1924), 254-58; Tyler, Freedom's Ferment, 70 - 78; Evangelical Alliance, Proceedings, 1846, 296-97; Louis Billington, "The Millerite Adventists in Great Britain, 1840 - 1850, " Journal of American Studies, 1 : 191-212 (October 1967); DAB, 9 : 60 - 61. and Mr. Nelson6Douglass probably refers to Belfast Presbyterian minister Isaac Nelson (1809-88), a member of the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society, who, at the 29 August session of the Evangelical Alliance, submitted the resolution, "That, whereas it is impossible for the Conference to legislate for particular cases or exceptions, no Slaveholder be admitted to any Branch of the Alliance." Riach, "Campaign Against American Slavery," 247, 390, 531, 539; Rice, "Scottish Factor," 353; Evangelical Alliance, Proceedings, 1846, 376. ably and eloquently sustaining

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the position. The discussion caused angry feelings on the part of the American deputation, about sixty in number; and they succeeded in getting Mr. Hinton to withdraw his proposition and refer the whole subject to a large committee. On this committee were most of the American

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deputation. They sat several days; during their sittings special prayers were offered up on their behalf; and at length they decided that all slaveholders should be excluded who were such by their own fault or for their own interest. This was a loop-hole through which every slaveholder might have escaped, for they all say it is for the interest of the slave to remain in his present position; but the slave-holders considered even this modified resolution offensive—it was therefore rescinded and the Alliance dissolved.7With the exception of American Adventist clergyman Joshua V. Himes, who seconded Hinton's motion on 27 August, nearly all the U.S. delegates were determined to prevent the Alliance from taking an antislavery position. Recognizing that lengthy debate on the subject might lead to "painful collisions," English Congregationalist John Angel James suggested that the matter be immediately referred to committee. American Presbyterian Samuel H. Cox objected that James's plan would only postpone the inevitable. If "a collision must c o m e , " Cox declared, "he would rather it came at once." During the interlude between the morning and afternoon sessions, most of the American delegates "retired into another apartment; where they were engaged in earnest supplications . . . for Divine guidance." Debate on Hinton's amendment continued until shortly before adjournment when the delegates agreed to a motion offered by Rev. Francis A. Cox and seconded by Rev. Edmund Bickersteth that the subject be referred to a special committee. The committee had fifty-two members of whom sixteen were Americans. On the morning of 29 August the committee began its deliberations amid prayers "that the Holy Spirit might guide them" to an "harmonious and satisfactory" decision. The Special Committee sat for most of the day before submitting a resolution to the meeting calling upon branches of the proposed Alliance to study and to correct "by all proper means" such social evils as profanation of the Sabbath, intemperance, duelling, and slavery. The resolution noted that the delegates deplored slavery "and every other form of oppression . . . as in many ways obstructing the progress of the Gospel; and express their confidence, that no Branch will admit to Membership slaveholders, who, by their own fault, continue in that position, retaining their fellow-men in slavery, from regard to their own interests."Prior to adjournment on Saturday the Committee's report was overwhelmingly approved, but when the Conference reassembled on Monday, 31 August, both abolitionists and conservative American delegates had reconsidered their positions and rejected the committee's solution. After extensive discussion, Justice Philip C. Crampton of the Irish Established Church moved that the slavery portion of the resolution be rescinded. Crampton's amendment, together with the original resolution, was sent back to the Special Committee, which presented its final report on 1 September. The Committee's proposals, approved later the same day, rescinded the initial slavery resolution and postponed formation of an international alliance "till another general conference." In the meantime, "Members of the Alliance . . . [were] recommended to adopt such organization in their several Countries, as, in their judgement, may be most in accordance with their peculiar circumstances, without involving the responsibility of one part of the Alliance for another." The United States was designated one of six separate districts in which an independent organization would be formed. Evangelical Alliance, Proceedings, 1846, 290-459. He compared the American deputation to the Pharisees of old who, it is said, devoured widows' houses and for a

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pretence made long prayers; the conference prayed "Lord what wilt thou have us to do,"8Douglass paraphrases Acts 9 : 6 . when God had told them to break every yoke and let the oppressed go free; instead of praying for direction they ought to have prayed for honesty, for that was what they needed. If the Evangelical Alliance had denounced slavery as a crime—

Mr. HORTON: They did so. (Shouts of "order.")

Mr. DOUGLASS declared they did not; they excluded Quakers, Plymouth Brethren, and Unitarians, and they welcomed to their communion the man-stealer. (Loud applause.) Like certain persons of old, they strained at gnats and swallowed camels. Mr. Douglass condemned in similar strong terms the conduct of the Free Church of Scotland in welcoming men-stealers to its fellowship, and after bearing his testimony to the invaluable exertions made by the Wesleyans for the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies, exhorted them to still further and more extended labours. He concluded by expressing the pleasure he had in visiting Sunderland, the first ship-building port in the world, having been himself for some years brought up as a caulker in a ship-building yard at Baltimore.

The MAYOR9Robert Brown (1806-94), lawyer and politician, settled in Sunderland in 1827 and was admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court that same year. Active in numerous commercial enterprises, he served as mayor of Sunderland from 1845 to 1847 and held various local offices until his death. Antiquities of Sunderland, 7 : 62-63 (1906). then invited Mr. Horton to come upon the platform, with which invitation the rev. gentleman complied. He at once offered his hand to Mr. Douglass, (which was accepted) whilst he cordially welcomed him to Sunderland. (Applause.) He congratulated him as a free man in a free country, and one well worthy of the freedom which he possesses. They had all been delighted with his manliness, courage, powerful eloquence and lofty feelings; and he was sure that he had listened to him with the greatest possible satisfaction. He hoped that no man would be better pleased than Mr. Douglass himself to hear a word or two of explanation in reference to some subjects on which he had touched.

And first with respect to the Evangelical Alliance. In drawing up the paragraphs which state the objects of that body, especial mention is made of their desire to put down slavery, and every form of oppression and wrong. The latter words were introduced to meet the case of East Indian serfdom, which looks very like slavery. His principal object in rising, however, was to assure Mr. Douglass that the British Wesleyan

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Methodists have no fellowship whatever with the slave-holding Methodists in America. (Applause.) He agreed in all the observations which had been made on the gross hypocrisy of those professors of religion who hold property in men. If the class-leader who presumed to claim such a man as Mr. Douglass came to this country and presented to him (Mr. Horton) any credentials which he might possess, he would disown him and that man would be disowned by the Wesleyan Methodists throughout the length and breadth of this country. (Applause.)

He wished Mr. Douglass also to understand that the British Conference has on many occasions protested and remonstrated, in their official addresses, against American slavery; and when American bishops had come to this country they had embraced the opportunity of instilling right principles into their minds. Mr. Douglass had adverted to the efforts made by the Wesleyan Methodists, in connection with other denominations, to destroy slavery in the British possessions; they still retained the same views and principles, and were prepared to exert all their moral influence for the destruction of slavery in America. (Applause.) Mr. Douglass would no doubt be aware that within the last year or two a separation has taken place between the Methodists in the free and slave states—the sound and the unsound portions of the body; the former having given a practical protest against the slave-holding propensities and practices of the Methodists in the Southern States. At the same time he felt grieved and humbled that any man in any part of the world who is a slave-holder, should bear the same designation as himself. In conclusion, he did honor to the Society of Friends who uniformly keep clear of all contact with this vile and abominable system, in which respect they deserve the admiration of the Christian world. (Applause.)

Mr. DOUGLASS re-affirmed his first statement that the Wesleyan Methodists in this country hold intercourse with the Wesleyan Methodists in the United States who are slave-holders. He also maintained that the Evangelical Alliance, instead of discharging its duty on this question, had shrunk from it; and that no moral separation had taken place between the Methodists of the Northern and Southern States of America. The Wesleyans in this country had also received into their pulpits the Rev. Jas. Caughey,10Born in Ireland, Methodist minister James Caughey (1810?-91) came to the United States in his youth and was ordained a deacon by the Troy, New York, Annual Conference in 1834. Caughey embarked on an evangelical tour of Canada and Europe in 1839, reaching Liverpool in 1841, and did not return to the United States until 1847. It was for the most part a triumphant tour, Caughey claiming to have "sanctified" more than 30,000 people during his revivals, but it was controversial, too. In 1841 Dublin abolitionists in a series of public letters accused him of being a "minister of a church in America that recognizes the right of its members to sell one another" and of "spreading and strengthening the pro-slavery spirit among us. " By 1844, Caughey's revivalistic techniques were also provoking controversy. He was accused of using "decoy penitents" to "allure others to the same place" and pretending to receive "supernatural communication." His repeated use of Wesleyan pulpits "without having his name on the Minutes, and without authorized inquiry as to his character, belief, and teaching" aroused further concern. At the 1847 Liverpool Conference, the Wesleyans passed a resolution which closed Methodist pulpits to American ministers who were not "duly authorised." Caughey later explained that he had been forced to leave England by the actions of "some good men, whose prejudices, and attachment to church order, would not allow them to appreciate [his] works and motives."Four Letters to the Reverend James Caughey, . . . on the Participation of the American Methodist Episcopal Church in the Sin of Slavery . . . (Dublin, 1841); James Caughey, Methodism in Earnest: Being the History of a Great Revival in Great Britain . . ., ed. R. W. Allen and Daniel Wise (Boston, 1850), 10-11, 44, 53 - 120, 423 - 35 ; Gregory, Conflicts of Methodism, 344 - 45, 368 - 69, 390 - 91, 400, 419; BFASR, ser. 1, 2 : 246 - 47 (17 November 1841); Lib., 26 November 1841. who retains his office by the will and con-

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sent of a body, whom he denounced as pro slavery. He then explained at some length the division which took place between the Methodists of America, in the South and North, and concluded by mentioning some sections of the Methodists and Baptists who made a noble protest against slavery and refused to admit slave-holders to their communion.

The MAYOR said as Mr. Caughey's name had been mentioned and he was not present, it was only proper for him (the Mayor) to state that when in Sunderland he had frequent conversations with Mr. Caughey on this subject, and he emphatically denounced slave-holding as a sin. He might add, that Mr. Caughey was not the man to compromise his principles, whatever those principles might be. Perhaps Mr. Douglass would inform him what would be the consequences to the slave-holder supposing he should manumit his slaves—if the slaves accepted their freedom in youth, went to Canada, and returned to their former masters old and decrepit, what would the American law require at the hands of the slave-holders?

A gentleman in the body of the meeting said it had been stated by a lecturer at Newcastle that the law would compel the master to maintain them.

Mr. DOUGLASS said in such a case the laws of man and of God equally required that the master should take care of them. These were only imaginary cases, however; they never occurred. On the contrary, the American newspapers were filled with advertisements offering rewards for the capture of runaway slaves. He then narrated two humorous anecdotes, and stated how he learnt to read and write, for which we have not room.

Creator

Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

Date

1846-09-18

Description

Sunderland and Durham County Herald, 25 September 1846. Other texts in Liberator, 13 November 1846; London Nonconformist, 30 September 1846.

Publisher

Yale University Press 1979

Type

Speeches

Publication Status

Published