Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

After his return to America in April 1847, Douglass briefly immerses himself in family life. Only a few months later, he is back on the lecture circuit with Garrison. As the two make further inroads into the Midwest, they encounter more resistance from pro-slavery forces. Douglass uses these negative experiences to his advantage in subsequent addresses: “These kinds of pitiful ironies—a hero in small black communities one day and the object of racist attacks and humiliations the next—now formed a way of life for this young symbol of abolitionism” (186).

Garrison grows ill during the tour and needs to return to his home, while Douglass continues westward. Around this time, Douglass decides to launch a Black abolitionist newspaper of his own called the North Star. This move will eventually cause a rift between Garrison and Douglass as the former mentor feels himself abandoned and betrayed by his protégé.

Moving forward with his plan, Douglass purchases a printing press and sets up office space in Rochester, New York to house his new concern. Shortly afterward, he relocates Anna and his children to the Black section of Rochester. Anna isn’t initially pleased with the disruption of her life in Lynn but eventually establishes a new circle of support in the big city.

Douglass struggles to keep the paper afloat during 1847 as he tries to grow a subscriber base. Blight writes, “That he managed to keep the North Star alive through those first years is a testament to his stamina [...] He had established himself as a world-class orator. But the newspaper now became his reason to be” (195). Just as his lectures had become fierier and more judgmental toward American hypocrisy, his newspaper follows a similar tactic.

In the summer of 1848, Douglass attends the groundbreaking Seneca Falls Convention in support of women’s rights, including the right to female suffrage. Afterward, he proudly changes the masthead of the North Star to read: “Right is of No Color and No Sex.”

As Douglass struggles to keep his newspaper solvent, new allies come to his aid. The first is Gerrit Smith, a wealthy abolitionist from upstate New York. Smith makes frequent financial donations to Douglass’s journal. More importantly, he begins to change Douglass’s perspective on how best to advance the cause of abolition. While Garrison preaches that the Constitution is a tainted document, Smith believes that the federal government can invoke constitutional powers to overturn slavery at a national level. Smith nurtures a revolution in Douglass’s thinking regarding the use of the Constitution as a weapon in the abolitionist’s arsenal.

A second ally, even more important than Smith, arrives in the person of Julia Griffiths. She is a well-educated British abolitionist who moves to Rochester to act as the North Star’s managing editor. She also moves into the Douglass home and works tirelessly to help with domestic chores and to guide the fledgling newspaper at the same time.

Douglass comes to rely on her for emotional support, especially as his financial woes increase and his health deteriorates: “Calling Julia the business manager and special friend, however, is not enough. It was as though Douglass had a conjugal and a companionate mate, and they were not the same person” (212).

As Douglass falls further under the combined influence of Julia and Smith, he moves away from Garrison’s anti-government views of how best to effect change in America. The inevitable split occurs at the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) convention in 1852 when Douglass makes his new stance clear: “In an uproar the convention promptly voted to exclude the North Star from the list of favored journals. Orthodoxy held the Garrisonian church together, and Douglass was about to be excommunicated” (216-17).

An epic battle then ensues between Garrison’s followers and Douglass in 1853. Eventually, the AASS spreads false rumors about an affair between Douglass and Julia, and they blame her for alienating Douglass from his Garrisonian roots. For his part, Douglass does nothing but inflame the injured feelings of his former allies. The two factions attack each other in the pages of the Liberator and the newly renamed Frederick Douglass’s Paper. Douglass and Garrison never repair the rift between them.