gh a new master, William
Freeland, who owned a large plantation near St Michael's, Md., treated
him with much kindness, he attempted to escape in 1836, but his plans
were suspected, and he was put in jail. From lack of evidence he was
soon released, and was then sent to Hugh Auld in Baltimore, where he was
apprenticed as a ship caulker. He learned his trade in one year, and in
September 1838, masquerading as a sailor, he escaped by railway train
from Baltimore to New York city. For the sake of greater safety he soon
removed to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he changed his name from
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to Frederick Douglass, "Douglass"
being adopted at the suggestion of a friend who greatly admired Scott's
_Lady of the Lake_. For three years he worked as a day labourer in New
Bedford. An extempore speech made by him before an anti-slavery meeting
at Nantucket, Mass., in August 1841 led to his being appointed one of
the agents of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and in this
capacity he delivered during the next four years numerous addresses
against slavery, chiefly in the New England and middle states. To quiet
the suspicion that he was an impostor, in 1845 he published the
_Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave_.
Fearing his recapture, his friends persuaded him to go to England, and
from August 1845 to April 1847 he lectured in Ireland, Scotland and
England, and did much to enlist the sympathy of the British public with
the Abolitionists in America. Before his return a sum of L150 was raised
by subscription to secure his legal manumission, thus relieving him from
the fear of being returned to slavery in pursuance of the Fugitive Slave
Law. From 1847 to 1860 he conducted an anti-slavery weekly journal,
known as _The North Star_, and later as _Frederick Douglass's Paper_, at
Rochester, New York, and, during this time, also was a frequent speaker
at anti-slavery meetings. At first a follower of Garrison and a
disunionist, he allied himself after 1851 with the more conservative
political abolitionists, who, under the leadership of James G. Birney,
adhered to the national Constitution and endeavoured to make slavery a
dominant political issue. He disapproved of John Brown's attack upon
Harper's Ferry in 1859, and declined to take any part in it. During the
Civil War he was among the first to suggest the employment of negro
troops by the United States government, and two of his