Some Thoughts on Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass will have his statue dedicated on the Easton Courthouse lawn on June 18, 2011. His was quite a life’s journey. A few years after his birth in 1817 near Easton, he was moved (actually, he walked) to the Wye Plantation, where the white man probably his father, Aaron Anthony, worked as an overseer. His mother, Harriett Bailey, died when he was about seven, and Douglass lived with his maternal grandmother until he went to Wye House.

Wye House still exists, and it was and is the sort of plantation that you picture when you hear “Tara’s Theme” from Gone With The Wind. Started in the mid-seventeenth century by the Lloyds, a Welsh family which still owns it in the eleventh generation, the plantation with numerous outbuildings at its peak counted 42,000 acres, tended by 1,000 slaves. The house is some seven miles from Easton, Maryland, down Route 33 towards St. Michaels. Turn right onto Route 370 (Unionville Road) over the Miles River, then pass both Miles River Road and Tunis Mills Road, and you will come to Bruffs Island Road, Copperville, where the Wye House and what remains of the Wye Plantation is located. A reenactment of Douglass’s 1881 visit there took place in October, 2009. The Douglass re-enactor said it was the first time that Douglass had been allowed into the main house!

That main house is a seven-part late-18th and early 19th century Georgian and Federal style building with Doric columns, gables and pavilions. The plantation had an Orangery, with imaginative eighteenth century heating ducts that still survive and work. Recently, African religious artifacts have been discovered in the framework, a reminder of those who built it. The Orangery is said to be the only surviving eighteenth century Orangery in North America. It was and is an outpost of civilized culture and genteel living – unless, of course, you happened to be a slave.

When Douglass was about twelve, he was sent to Baltimore to work for Hugh Auld, whose wife Sophia then started teaching young Frederick the alphabet. She was, of course, breaking the law. Douglass learned to read newspapers, political tracts, and books. When Douglass was hired out to another master, he organized a classroom for the slaves and taught themthe New Testament at a weekly Sabbath School. This was eventually discovered, and the meeting dispersed by plantation owners armed with clubs and stones.

Thomas Auld took Douglass back to Wye House Plantation, where he proved rebellious. He was sent to work for Edward Covey, a brutal slave breaker, who whipped the sixteen year old boy repeatedly. Douglass wrote that he was indeed very nearly broken, both psychologically and physically, but he finally rebelled against the beatings and fought back. This seemed to end the beatings. The Covey property, Mount Misery, by the way, which is located not far from St. Michaels, was in the news again in 2003 when it was purchased as a residence by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

On September 3, 1838, Douglass successfully escaped by a ruse that he finally revealed in the last edition of his memoirs, having refused to do so while slavery still legally existed. He boarded a train at Havre de Grace, Maryland, dressed in a sailor’s uniform, carrying identification papers loaned to him by a free black sailor. He crossed the Susquehanna River by ferry there and continued by train to Wilmington, Delaware, and then on to Philadelphia and New York. The entire escape took him less than 24 hours.

In Massachusetts he joined various abolitionist societies, and read William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly journal The Liberator. As an escaped slave himself, and persuasive, he became something of a celebrity, and was once asked without warning to speak at a meeting attended by prominent abolitionists. He spoke so eloquently that he became nationally known. His autobiography was first published in 1845. It was reprinted nine times and sold many thousands of copies. I recommend the final edition, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, revised by the author in 1892, noted in the Bibliography that concludes this e-book.

Douglass went to Great Britain where he gave many lectures. At this time he became officially a free man, for his freedom was purchased from the Lloyd family by British supporters. It cost them $711.66. Upon his return to the United States, Douglass (he took that name from Scott’s hero in The Lady of the Lake) established the North Star journal. The name refers to the guiding star in the Big Dipper that points north, which as previously noted was used by escaping slaves as their directional signal. Douglass believed that education of black persons was crucial, and was an early advocate for the desegregation of schools.

When the Civil War began, Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the nation. He became a recruiter for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment in which his son Lewis fought at the Battle of Fort Wagner, South Carolina. After the Civil War he was appointed to several important political positions, such as President of the Freedman’s Savings Bank, Marshal of the District of Columbia, and Minister (Ambassador) to the Republic of Haiti. His distinguished legacy lives on today, for all Americans.

Easton resident William S. Shepard has long been interested in the Civil War, and the battlefield sites of that conflict. As we now observe the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of Civil War hostilities, this is a good time to refresh our knowledge of our past. Frederick Douglass, his first subject for the Chestertown Spy, will be honored with a statue on the Easton Courthouse lawn on June 18, 2011.

Shepard’s book, ‘Maryland In The Civil War,’ is available at https://amzn.com/B004PYDHWA , and if a reader lacks Kindle, the software may be downloaded free to your computer.”