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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 181

I became myself painfully alive to the liability which surrounded me,
and which might at any moment scatter all my proud hopes, and return me
to a doom worse than death. It was thus I was led to seek a refuge in monar-
chial England, from the dangers of republican slavery. A rude, uncultivated
fugitive slave, I was driven to that country to which American young gentle-
men go to increase their stock of knowledge—to seek pleasure, and to have
their rough democratic manners softened by contact with English aristocratic
refinement.

My friend, James N. Buffum of Lynn, Mass., who was to accompany
me, applied on board the steamer "Cambria," of the Cunard line, for tickets,
and was told that I could not be received as a cabin passenger. American
prejudice against color had triumphed over British liberality and civilization,
and had erected a color test as condition for crossing the sea in the cabin of
a British vessel.

The insult was keenly felt by my white friends, but to me such insults
were so frequent, and expected, that it was of no great consequence whether
I went in the cabin or in the steerage. Moreover, I felt that if I could not go
in the first cabin, first cabin passengers could come in the second cabin, and
in this thought I was not mistaken, as I soon found myself an object of more
general interest than I wished to be, and, so far from being degraded by being
placed in the second cabin, that part of the ship became the scene of as much
pleasure and refinement as the cabin itself. The Hutchinson family from
New Hampshire—sweet singers of anti-slavery and the "good time
coming", were fellow-passengers, and often came to my rude forecastle-
deck and sang their sweetest songs, making the place eloquent with music
and alive with spirited conversation. They not only visited me, but invited
me to visit them; and in two or three days after leaving Boston one part of
the ship was about as free to me as another. My visits there, however, were
hut seldom. I preferred to live within my privileges, and keep upon my own
premises. This course was quite as much in accord with good policy as with
my own feelings. The effect was that with the majority of the passengers all
color distinctions were flung to the winds, and I found myself treated with
every mark of respect from the beginning to the end of the voyage, except in
one single instance; and in that I came near being mobbed for complying
with an invitation given me by the passengers and the captain of the
"'Cambria'" to deliver a lecture on slavery. There were several young men—
passengers from Georgia and New Orleans; and they were pleased to regard
my lecture as an insult offered to them, and swore I should not speak. They
went so far as to threaten to throw me overboard, and but for the firmness of