American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with Erica Armstrong Dunbar, part 3 of 4

Do you respect me in class now? And completely get out of here. Can you rob her of rolling? So, which brings us to Douglass' paper, why did he want to start a paper? What did that mean to him? Right. His thoughts about starting, Douglass' starts up. Douglass is, oh, I'm done dying, OK? We're done. OK. Douglass begins thinking seriously about starting his own paper while he's abroad. And he receives sort of a very warm response by some of his sort of newer anti-slavery friends in England who suggest that there's room for another anti-slavery paper and he would be the perfect person to do it. He had a reputation for himself.

His narrative was published. His autobiography was published and well received. And that there was now a sort of few local colored the newspapers that existed. And that Douglass could really contribute to the periodicals and these sort of, the newspapers of the time. So, he begins to think about the need for black voice through a paper with an emphasis not only on anti-slavery but on some of the other sort of pressing issues that were surely going to follow emancipation, things like the improvement of life circumstances for free people of color, education, suffrage for women. So, in many ways, while the liberator was clearly the anti-slavery

newspaper, it was the bullhorn for the movement, Douglass really sort of saw this as an opportunity to carve out a sphere for himself as a publisher. And also, really, as a public intellectual, that the newspaper would allow him to cement his stature as this, as an intellectual as an example of freedom and of possibility. And he saw it as something that would complement the liberator not necessarily serve as competition, but I'm not certain that William Wood Garrison felt that way at all. So, where did the troubles begin? So, Garrison hears that Douglass is thinking about starting

this newspaper. I'm sorry, I'm okay with a rule. We're just talking about the stresses in that relationship. Right. So, Garrison quickly learns that Douglass is thinking about starting his own paper. And he really sort of convinces him to hold off on that, to not do it. And of course, for Garrison, while he suggests that his real need is for, or really the Douglass's real place is on the circuit, is giving speeches and lectures, promoting his book, but also serving the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, clearly Garrison's concerned about competition with a paper, that much of the liberator's success had to do with black subscriptions, and that if Douglass was to form his own paper,

what would happen to those subscriptions? Would they be transferred over to a new readership for Douglass' paper, could those two exist without being extremely competitive? So Garrison's concerned, Douglass and he began a western tour together once he returns from abroad. And once again, the sort of mentor, mentee relationship is tested. On a couple of different levels, it's clear that not only has Douglass began to rethink some Garrisonian tactics, he begins to think differently about westward expansion, about the free soil party eventually. He begins to question the role of the Constitution in this fight about slavery.

And it becomes clearer and clearer in Douglass' speeches, but there is a bit of a divide that exists between Garrison and Douglass. So while on this western tour, Garrison becomes ill, and he's unable to really continue with the tour, and according to some accounts he convinced Douglass, who supposedly did not want to continue without him, to go on, to continue with the tour, to continue the responsibility of speaking out against slavery, and to do it in his absence. Garrison becomes ill towards the end of this tour. And according to some accounts, he tells Douglass to go on without him.

And Douglass is hesitant to do so. He really thinks twice about whether or not he should leave Garrison. Garrison says, go ahead, this is our cause, go ahead, do it without me. And so Douglass does. And while Garrison is happy that the tour is going on, there are some misgivings that Garrison demonstrates in some of the letters he wrote to his wife and to other people, about who his mentee was really becoming. If he was sort of becoming maybe too big for his bridges, he had supposedly, at least according to Garrison, failed to inquire about his well-being, that he was ill and he writes to his wife. You know, Douglass never even writes to see if I'm okay. And so, you know, Douglass, of course, says that he did

on several occasions attempt to reach out through other people, but that he was busy on this tour. And so it does make Garrison raise an eyebrow about his friend. But that in conjunction with the paper, with starting the North Star and feeling slighted that Douglass would eventually go ahead and found the paper, the North Star, even though Garrison didn't want him to, all of these things sort of culminate into a very kind of rocky relationship, that while they're still publicly respectful of one another and still sort of considered themselves friends, we see their relationship on this sort of steep decline by the late 1840s. And many ways it shows Garrison really resistant to change,

hesitant to accept anything but his own plans. Part of this is the nature of who Garrison was as a man. And in many ways, Douglass was just as strong a personality, but in many ways demonstrates a more sort of malleable character, someone who's able to sort of shift between worlds of hope and pragmatism, that in many ways as Douglass begins to rethink politics in ways that Garrison simply won't hear, he himself, Douglass, becomes the master of his own fate. And in many ways, throws off some of the paternalistic aspects of his relationship with his mentor, that as a black man who was now free,

who has a reputation, that he no longer needed Garrison in the same kinds of ways that he needed him in 1841, that he was his own man, and he wouldn't be held back, held down, or confined by anyone, even William Lloyd Garrison. Why do you think Douglass was more pragmatic or open to different solutions? He, you know, it's free soil politics. He'll, he'll, he'll, John Brown. Very, very right. Why, why is he so much more open than Garrison? I think that Douglass is able to see things, let me start over. In many ways, I think Douglass is becoming a statesman in a way that Garrison never could be, never wanted to be. Part of this has to do with who Douglass was, as a person,

that he was once again that authentic voice of slavery, ending in freedom. And many ways, like we see with his, the purchase of his, of his freedom, Douglass became very pragmatic when it had to do with his life and with securing his own freedom. And in many ways, he reflects this for the rest of Black America that while Garrisonian tactics were in principle, on occasion, accurate, just, earnest, that they simply were not pragmatic. They weren't practical. They weren't options that he thought would eventually lead to the end of slavery. And ultimately, this is what Douglass needs. He needs for slavery to be eradicated, and he needs it to happen

as quickly as possible. He would not hold on to theories and practices that showed no result. Garrison would, out of principle, that was not Douglass's experience. He had family members who were still enslaved. He left his siblings on a plantation. He knew many people in Baltimore who were still trapped in the institution of slavery. So for him, it was for Douglass. It was a very real experience. In a way that while Garrison was completely sympathetic and involved and engaged and an activist, there were simply things that Garrison would not be connected to in the same way that Douglass was. It was not his lived experience. Douglass lived through slavery. Douglass was pragmatic about how to end it. And as the late 1840s moved forward, especially as we move

into the 1850s, as draconian laws, court cases, throughout the 1850s really began to not only cement slavery, but to curtail the rights of free people of color. Douglass was really forced with a choice of riding the boat that was going to, in a circuitous kind of way, eventually arrive at freedom or to stand his ground with Garrisonian tactics that may never arrive at emancipation. So he's practical and it's because of his experience, his kinship networks, his friendships with people who are still enslaved that leads Douglass to become the statesman, become more involved in politics in a way that Garrison never could and never really wanted to.

Great, thank you. Now, so he moves up to Rochester. In terms of the anti-slavery movement, how is Rochester different from Boston? It's interesting when you look at Douglass' writings when he explains living in Rochester, he often uses the word isolating. In some ways, Rochester, although it has a very active anti-slavery movement and their activists who sort of come in and out, it's not Boston, it's not New York, it's not Philadelphia. So the urbanity is not present in Rochester, but that also opens Douglass up for opportunity. His location allows him to be very involved in the Underground Railroad, to help slaves who, by the 1850s, moving north to or fleeing north to Philadelphia,

New York, and Boston really means nothing after the fugitive slave act of 1850, that shuttling enslaved people to Canada was really what Douglass became involved in. So he wrote that he would often open his newspaper in the mornings, he would come and find 10 or 11 fugitive slaves sitting on the doorstep, waiting for him to arrive in his office so that he could help shuttle them to freedom. Freedom now meant something very different in the 1850s than it did for Douglass. For Douglass, it meant passage to eventually to New York and then Massachusetts, for these folks it meant leaving the country. And so Douglass was really able to do two things, aside from starting this paper and being still very connected to any slave recircles, he was also able to facilitate the fugitive slave effort and having people leave the country.

And why did he call his paper the North Star? In many ways, the North Star makes total sense as a name for his paper, most fugitives. If they knew anything about direction, maps, or the route to freedom, it was followed the North Star and that would eventually lead you to liberty, to freedom. So it made a lot of sense for Douglass to use this term. It was something that was familiar to fugitives, who might be reading his paper. It was a testament to what Douglass thought about his own experience but also about what that paper could be. It was the North Star not just to discussions about slavery, but it went far deeper than that.

It was about suffrage. It was about the improvement of conditions for free blacks. It was about civil rights. And all of these things sort of culminate with this title of the North Star, which was familiar and made complete sense. Great. Now, who was Julia Griffiths and what was her relationship to Douglass? Julia Griffiths was an anti-slavery activist. She was someone that Frederick Douglass became acquainted with while he was abroad. And she really sort of fronted a large portion of the money necessary to start his paper, the North Star. It was very expensive to have a paper like the North Star and for many, many years, Douglass dips into his own savings to keep the paper moving, has to, I believe, mortgage his home

in order to do so, that it was a smaller paper with assuming smaller subscription levels and it was an expensive task. So to have someone come in and offer funds to start the paper, but then she came to the United States to work with Douglass to help manage the paper. And really, we see a friendship develop between the two of them. A friendship that, even for Frederick Douglass, as an anti-slavery activist and a public intellectual, was really pretty dangerous ground to tread. At the end of the day, she was a white woman. And their close friendship, she eventually moves into their home and with Anna, who's at home, taking care of Douglass' children, it causes speculation, it causes rumor, mongering,

throughout the anti-slavery community. And while Douglass at first says, oh, it's nothing to pay attention to. For that moment, we see Douglass forgetting himself, forgetting that although he was Frederick Douglass, although he was the editor of the North Star and a famed writer in a public intellectual, he was still a black man living in the 1840s, in 1850s, in America. And that his close relationship with a white woman would be scandalous even among anti-slavery activists. And there was no confusion that many anti-slavery activists, although they pushed for the ends of slavery, were very uncomfortable about interracial, anything.

Friendships, let alone relationships that could be more than, that could be romantic. So for a moment, Douglass forgets this. He sort of steps outside of himself and thinks that he can conduct relationships with whomever he wants, however he wants, and quickly realizes that it's a problem, and that it could be damaging for his relationships with other anti-slavery activists. So we see them begin to sort of cool their public connection with each other, although she remains very friendly with him until the end of his career. It's a moment where the anti-slavery community is really tested. The anti-slavery community putting forth an image about ending slavery, but a real discomfort

about a relationship, one that could be romantic between Douglass and a white woman. And how does Garrison react to this? What is the state of their relationship at this point? Garrison by this point, by the time that Douglass has his newspaper up and running, their relationship is really on life support. And Garrison says in private circumstances he wonders about the nature of this relationship. And he's really angry with Douglass for many things. This relationship was, many ways, a scapegoat in his anger with Douglass, but he begins to question whether or not Douglass is too big for the movement.

If his popularity, his relationships, his speaking tours have now placed him as a sort of mega pop star of the movement, sort of eclipsing William Lloyd Garrison. He's now top billing everywhere. And this, for a relationship that was already strained at best, this was not quite the nail in the coffin, but we see that the slippery slope of their relationship quickly plummets afterwards and by 1851, their differences are really irreconcilable. Thank you. Can I shift my legs for just a moment? No, no, we have another one. I'm just going to stand up and walk around for that. Well, I feel bad because then lighting will change.

Okay, we're rolling. So Douglass at one point talks about Brown being a thorn in his side and clearly by 59, you know, he knows Brown has done some very violent things in Kansas. It's probably, it has to be apparent that it's becoming dangerous to be pals with John Brown. Why does Douglass remain loyalty? In a lot of ways, his relationship, Douglass' relationship with John Brown, shows once again how Douglass is viewing the end of slavery and beginning to think about tactics that we're simply unheard of and not spoken about, not agreed upon as a garrisonian, that violence could be one of the remedies or measures used to attain freedom.

And while it was clear that Douglass did not believe that John Brown, at least in the sort of final year of his life, was making a whole lot of sense, at least in this as Douglass as a pragmatist and as someone who's practical, he respects Brown. He respects that Brown put everything into this fight to end slavery, and that in a way that the anti-slavery activists with whom Douglass had been working over the course of a decade had never done. No one ever put themselves in harm's way, in the manner that John Brown did. He was really, he was a renegade. He was someone who knew that he might meet his end quickly and violently.

And while anti-slavery activists encountered violence, they certainly were molested and harassed at meetings and as they traveled. It was never sort of planned engagement, a planned physical altercation, which is what Brown was good at doing. And so in some ways I think Douglass really respected him. When we look at the narrative, Douglass uses physical violence as an example of his maturation, of his masculinity. And I think in some ways he sees that in Brown. He sees the need for violence at certain times. Yet he believes, and he tells John Brown that to raid a federal arsenal is sure to meet with disaster, that it wasn't, not only was it not practical,

it was crazy, that there was no way this would be a successful journey. It would not end the institution of slavery. It would end up disastrous. And for this reason, Douglass could not engage. And although Brown sort of begs him to come along, he refuses. And he refuses because at this point by 1859, Douglass is a statesman. He's a politician. He's an activist. He's a father. He's a husband. There's a lot at stake for Douglass. And he is, in many ways, the... He's the voice for Black America. He's one of the few voices of Black America in the 19th century. And a way that Brown wasn't. Brown did not carry that responsibility on his shoulders. His reputation, his goals for ending slavery.

We're pretty individualistic. It was what he wanted. His family was involved in it as well. But Douglass was a different person with a different meaning for many people. And at this point, having four million people really depending upon people like Douglass to eventually secure their freedom, made the stakes way too high for Douglass to gamble on a sort of erratic, crazy plan to attack a federal arsenal, that would not be a prove a good outcome for anyone. But especially for Douglass. And Douglass was also mindful of his reputation at the time that he was a serious, well-respected man who needed to be careful about the activist with whom he engaged. And at this point, Brown had painted himself as a very sort of erratic and difficult to many of the anti-slavery community, scary man.

And in many ways, Douglass had to distance himself from him. I'm going to take change. Douglass wasn't crazy.