Easton

Come what may, cost what it may, inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the breeze as your religious and political motto no compromise with slavery no union with slaveholders william lloyd garrison boston may first eighteen forty five end of preface letter from wendell phillips esq from narrative of the life of frederick douglass an american slave written by himself by frederick douglass letter from wendell phillips esq boston april twenty second eighteen forty five my dear friend you remember the old fable of the man and the lion where the lion complained that he should not be so misrepresented when the lions wrote history i am glad the time has come when the lions write history we have been left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the involuntary evidence of the masters one might indeed rest sufficiently satisfied with what it is evident must be in general the results of such a relation without seeking farther to find whether they have followed in every instance indeed those who stare at the half-peck of corn a week and love to count the lashes on the slave's back are seldom the stuff out of which reformers and abolitionists are to be made i remember that in eighteen thirty eight many were waiting for the results of the west india experiment before they could come into our ranks those results have come long ago but alas few of that number have come with them as converts a man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women before he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life i was glad to learn in your story how early the most neglected of god's children waken to a sense of their rights and of the injustice done them experience is a keen teacher and long before you had mastered your a b c or knew where the white sails of the chesapeake were bound you began i see to gauge the wretchedness of the slave not by his hunger and want not by his lashes and toil but by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul in connection with this there is one circumstance which makes your recollections peculiarly valuable and renders your early insight the more remarkable you come from that part of the country where we are told slavery appears with its fairest features let us hear then what it is at its best estate gaze on its bright side if it has one and then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture as she travels southward to that for the colored man valley of the shadow of death where the mississippi sweeps along again we have known you long and can put the most entire confidence in your truth candor and sincerity every one who has heard you speak has felt and i am confident every one who reads your book will feel persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth no one-sided portrait no wholesale complaints but strict justice done whenever individual kindliness has neutralized for a moment the deadly system with which it was strangely allied you have been with us too some years and can fairly compare the twilight of rights which your race enjoy at the north with that noon of night under which they labor south of the mason and dixon's line tell us whether after all the half-free colored man of massachusetts is worse off than the pampered slave of the rice swamps in reading your life no one can say that we have unfairly picked out some rare specimens of cruelty we know that the bitter drops which even you have drained from the cup are no incidental aggravations no individual ills but such as must mingle always and necessarily in the lot of every slave they are the essential ingredients not the occasional results of the system after all i shall read your book with trembling for you some years ago when you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace you may remember i stopped you and preferred to remain ignorant of all with the exception of a vague description so i continued till the other day when you read me your memoirs i hardly knew at the time whether to thank you or not for the sight of them when i reflected that it was still dangerous in massachusetts for honest men to tell their names they say the fathers in seventeen seventy six signed the declaration of independence with the halter about their necks you too publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you round in all the broad lands which the constitution of the united states overshadows there is no single spot however narrow or desolate where a fugitive slave can plant himself and say i am safe the whole armory of northern law has no shield for you i am free to say that in your place i should throw the manuscript into the fire you perhaps may tell your story in safety endeared as you are to so many warm hearts by rare gifts and a still rarer devotion of them to the service of others but it will be owing only to your labors and the fearless efforts of those who trampling the laws and constitution of the country under their feet are determined that they will hide the outcast and that their hearths shall be spite of the law an asylum for the oppressed if some time or other the humblest may stand in our streets and bear witness in safety against the cruelties of which he has been the victim yet it is sad to think that these very throbbing hearts which welcome your story and form your best safeguard in telling it are all beating contrary to the statute in such case made and provided go on my dear friend till you and those who like you have been saved so as by fire from the dark prison-house shall stereotype these free illegal pulses into statutes and new england cutting loose from a blood-stained union shall glory in being the house of refuge for the oppressed till we no longer merely hide the outcast or make a merit of standing idly by while he is hunted in our midst but consecrating anew the soil of the pilgrims as an asylum for the oppressed proclaim our welcome to the slaves so loudly that the tones shall reach every hut in the carolinas and make the broken-hearted bondman leap up at the thought of old massachusetts god speed the day till then and ever yours truly wendell phillips chapter one of narrative of the life of frederick douglass an american slave written by himself by frederick douglass Chapter 1.

I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot County, Maryland.

I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.

By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant.

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I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot County, Maryland.

I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.

By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant.

I spent two years of childhood on this plantation in my old master's family.

It was here that I witnessed the bloody transaction recorded in the first chapter, and as I received my first impressions of slavery on this plantation, I will give some description of it, and of the slavery as it there existed.

The plantation is about 12 miles north of Easton in Talbot County and is situated on the border of Miles River.

The principal products raised upon it were tobacco, corn, and wheat.

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