57

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 209

Canada, where they were received by Rev. Hiram Wilson. When a party
arrived in Rochester, it was the business of Mr. Morris and myself to raise
funds with which to pay their passages to St. Catharines, and it is due to truth
to state, that we seldom called in vain upon whig or democrat for help. Men
were better than their theology, and truer to humanity, than to their politics,
or their offices.

On one occasion while a slave master was in the office of a United States
commissioner, procuring the papers necessary for the arrest and rendition of
three young men who had escaped from Maryland, (one of whom was under
my roof at the time, another at Farmington, and the other at work on the farm
of Asa Anthony just a little outside the city limits,) the law partner of the
commissioner, then a distinguished democrat, sought me out, and told me
what was going on in his office, and urged me by all means to get these
young men out of the way of their pursuers and claimants. Of course no time
was to be lost. A swift horseman was dispatched to Farmington, eighteen
miles distant, another to Asa Anthony's farm about three miles, and another
to my house on the south side of the city, and before the papers could be
served, all three of the young men were on the free waves of Lake Ontario,
bound to Canada. In writing to their old master, they had dated their letter at
Rochester, though they had taken the precaution to send it to Canada to be
mailed, but this blunder in the date had betrayed their whereabouts, so that
the hunters were at once on their tracks.

So numerous were the fugitives passing through Rochester that I was
obliged at last to appeal to my British friends for the means of sending them
on their way, and when Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs. Crofts took the
matter in hand, I had never any further trouble in that respect. When slavery
was abolished I wrote to Mrs. Carpenter, congratulating her that she was
relieved of the work of raising funds for such purposes, and the characteristic
reply of that lady was that she had been very glad to do what she had done,
and had no wish for relief.

My pathway was not entirely free from thorns in Rochester, and the
wounds and pains inflicted by them were perhaps much less easily borne,
because of my exemption from such annoyances while in England. Men can
in time become accustomed to almost anything, even to being insulted and
ostracised, but such treatment comes hard at first, and when to some extent
unlooked for. The vulgar prejudice against color, so common to Americans,
met me in several disagreeable forms. A seminary for young ladies and
misses, under the auspices of Miss Tracy, was near my house on Alexander
street, and desirous of having my daughter educated like the daughters of