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not trouble us much; we had fared much harder before. We arrived at

Newport the next morning, and soon after an old fashioned stage-coach,

with “New Bedford” in large yellow letters on its sides, came down to

the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating

what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen who

were about to take passage on the stage,—Friends William C. Taber and

Joseph Ricketson,—who at once discerned our true situation, and, in a

peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get in.” I

never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way

to our new home. When we reached “Stone Bridge” the passengers alighted

for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no

breakfast, and, when asked for our fares, I told the driver I would

make it right with him when we reached New Bedford. I expected some

objection to this on his part, but he made none. When, however, we

reached New Bedford, he took our baggage, including three

music-books,—two of them collections by Dyer, and one by Shaw,—and held

them until I was able to redeem them by paying to him the amount due

for our rides. This was soon done, for Mr. Nathan Johnson not only

received me kindly and hospitably, but, on being informed about our

baggage, at once loaned me the two dollars with which to square

accounts with the stage-driver. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson reached a

good old age, and now rest from their labors. I am under many grateful

obligations to them. They not only “took me in when a stranger” and

“fed me when hungry,” but taught me how to make an honest living. Thus,

in a fortnight after my flight from Maryland, I was safe in New

Bedford, a citizen of the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Once initiated into my new life of freedom and assured by Mr. Johnson

that I need not fear recapture in that city, a comparatively

unimportant question arose as to the name by which I should be known

thereafter in my new relation as a free man. The name given me by my

dear mother was no less pretentious and long than Frederick Augustus

Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in Maryland, dispensed

with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey.

Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself from

the slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called myself Johnson;

but in New Bedford I found that the Johnson family was already so

numerous as to cause some confusion in distinguishing them, hence a

change in this name seemed desirable. Nathan Johnson, mine host, placed

great emphasis upon this necessity, and wished me to allow him to

select a name for me. I consented, and he called me by my present

name—the one by which I have been known for three and forty

years—Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady

of the Lake,” and so pleased was he with its great character that he

wished me to bear his name. Since reading that charming poem myself, I

have often thought that, considering the noble hospitality and manly

character of Nathan Johnson—black man though he was—he, far more than

I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that,

if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile with a view to my

recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like him of the “stalwart

hand.”

The reader may be surprised at the impressions I had in some way

conceived of the social and material condition of the people at the

North. I had no proper idea of the wealth, refinement, enterprise, and

high civilization of this section of the country. My “Columbian

Orator,” almost my only book, had done nothing to enlighten me

concerning Northern society. I had been taught that slavery was the

bottom fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea, I came naturally

to the conclusion that poverty must be the general condition of the

people of the free States. In the country from which I came, a white

man holding no slaves was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken man,

and men of this class were contemptuously called “poor white trash.”

Hence I supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were

ignorant, poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the

North must be in a similar condition. I could have landed in no part of

the United States where I should have found a more striking and

gratifying contrast, not only to life generally in the South, but in

the condition of the colored people there, than in New Bedford. I was

amazed when Mr. Johnson told me that there was nothing in the laws or

constitution of Massachusetts that would prevent a colored man from

being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him.

There, too, the black man’s children attended the public schools with

the white man’s children, and apparently without objection from any

quarter. To impress me with my security from recapture and return to

slavery, Mr. Johnson assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave

out of New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their

lives to save me from such a fate.

The fifth day after my arrival, I put on the clothes of a common

laborer, and went upon the wharves in search of work. On my way down

Union street I saw a large pile of coal in front of the house of Rev.

Ephraim Peabody, the Unitarian minister. I went to the kitchen door and

asked the privilege of bringing in and putting away this coal. “What

will you charge?” said the lady. “I will leave that to you, madam.”

“You may put it away,” she said. I was not long in accomplishing the

job, when the dear lady put into my hand _two silver half-dollars_. To

understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money,

realizing that I had no master who could take it from me,—_that it was

mine—that my hands were my own_, and could earn more of the precious

coin,—one must have been in some sense himself a slave. My next job was

stowing a sloop at Uncle Gid. Howland’s wharf with a cargo of oil for

New York. I was not only a freeman, but a free working-man, and no

“master” stood ready at the end of the week to seize my hard earnings.

The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being

fitted out for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The

sawing this wood was considered a good job. With the help of old Friend

Johnson (blessings on his memory) I got a saw and “buck,” and went at

it. When I went into a store to buy a cord with which to brace up my