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approval of Mrs. M. W. Chapman, an influential member of the board of managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and called out a sharp reprimand from her, for insubordination†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: for my insubordination. to my superiors. This was a strange and distressing revelation to me, and one of which I was not soon relieved. I thought I had only done my duty, and I think so still. The chief reason for the reprimand was the use which the Liberty party papers†Editorial Emendation: liberty. would make of my seeming rebellion against the commanders of our Anti-Slavery Army.
In the growing city of Rochester we had in every way a better reception. Abolitionists of all shades of opinion were broad enough to give the Garrisonians (for such we were) a hearing. Samuel D. Porter and the Avery family, though they belonged to the Gerrit Smith, Myron Holly, and William Goodell school,†All three men were active in New York state's Liberty party in its early years. Myron Holley died in 1841, but the other two led the small antislavery political faction that eventually became the Radical Abolition party, with which Douglass later affiliated. John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 12, 117; Wiecek, Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism, 205, 218. were not so narrow as to refuse us the use of their church for the convention. They heard our moral suasion arguments, and in a manly way met us in debate. We were opposed to carrying the anti-slavery cause to the ballot-box, and they believed in carrying it there. They looked at slavery as a creature of law; we regarded it as a creature of public opinion. It is surprising how small the difference appears as I look back to it, over the space of forty years; yet at the time of it this difference was immense.
During our stay at Rochester we were hospitably entertained by Isaac and Amy Post, two people of all-abounding benevolence, the truest and best of Long Island and Elias Hicks Quakers.†Members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, had a long history of support for gradualist methods to end slavery across the United States. After the Revolution, many Quakers abandoned their traditional avoidance of worldly affairs and enlisted with evangelical Christians in many of the era's benevolence campaigns. In 1827-28 the denomination suffered a wrenching schism, or "Great Separation," when a faction led by Long Island minister Elias Hicks (1748-1830) withdrew from fellowship with "Orthodox" Friends and created their own separate meetings across the nation. While many of the theologically more liberal Hicksite Quakers, such as Amy and Isaac Post of Rochester, became active abolitionists, disputes over appropriate antislavery tactics caused some meetings to expel abolitionist members. In the 1840s and 1850s some of these displaced Hicksite Quaker abolitionists created their own Congregational or Progressive Friends meetings. The Garrisonians found strong support among this latter dissident sect of Quakers. Hamm, God`s Government Begun, xvii, xxi-xxiii, 201-02, 216-17; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 28, 44, 106; Hewitt, Women`s Activism and Social Change, 115-16. They were not more amiable than brave, for they never seemed to ask. What will the world say? but walked straight forward in what seemed to them the line of duty, please or offend whomsoever it might. Many a poor fugitive slave found shelter under their roof when such shelter was hard to find elsewhere, and I mention them here in the warmth and fullness of earnest gratitude.
Pleased with our success in Rochester, we—that is Mr. Bradburn and myself—made our way to Buffalo, then a rising city of steamboats, hustle, and business. Buffalo was too busy to attend to such matters as we had in hand. Our friend, Mr. Marsh, had been able to secure for our convention only an old dilapidated†Editorial Emendation: delapidated. and deserted room, formerly used as a post-office. We went at the time appointed, and found seated a few cab-men in their coarse, every-day clothes, whips in hand, while their teams were standing on the street waiting for a job. Friend Bradburn looked around upon this unpromising audience, and turned upon his heel, saying he would not speak to "such a set of ragamuffins," and took the first steamer to Cleveland, the home of his brother Charles, and left me to "do" Buffalo alone. For nearly a week I spoke every day in this old post-office†The earliest U.S. Post Office in Buffalo, New York, was located on Main and South Division Streets, in Ellicott Square. In 1842 a new, fireproof Post Office building was erected on the corner of Seneca and Washington Streets. Douglass seems to be referring to the Ellicott Square building. A Directory for the City of Buffalo ... 1832 (Buffalo, N.Y., 1832), 96, 103; Walker`s Buffalo City Directory ... 1842 (Buffalo, N.Y., 1842), 26. to audiences constantly increasing in numbers and respectability, till the Baptist church was thrown open to me;
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and when this became too small I went on Sunday into the open Park and addressed an assembly of four or five thousand persons. After this my colored friends, Charles L. Remond, Henry Highland Garnet,†Editorial Emendation: Garnett Theodore S. Wright, Amos G. Beman,†Editorial Emendation: Beaman. Charles B. Ray,†Editorial Emendation: Charles M. Ray. and other well-known colored men, held a convention here,† National Convention of Colored Men began in Buffalo on 15 August 1843, consisting of about seventy-five delegates. The president pro tem, Samuel H. Davis of Buffalo, gave the opening speech. The subjects of temperance, self-improvement, education, plans for a national Negro press, and especially abolition received the most attention. Howard Holman Bell, A Survey of the Negro Convention Movement, 1830-1861 (New York, 1969), 70, 76. and then Remond and myself left for our next meeting in Clinton†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: Chester. county, Ohio.†As part of the One Hundred Conventions tour of the western states by Garrisonian abolitionists, Douglass and Charles L. Remond addressed the annual meeting of the Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society on 4 September 1843 at Oakland, Clinton County, Ohio. The easterners arrived after the formal meeting had concluded, but an audience of nearly a thousand was gathered in only two hours to hear Douglass and Remond. Hamm, God`s Government Begun, 96; Douglas A. Gamble, "Moral Suasion in the West: Garrisonian Abolitionism, 1831-1861" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1973), 278-81. This was held under a great shed, built by the abolitionists, of whom Dr. Abram Brooke†Editorial Emendation: Brook. and Valentine Nicholson were the most noted, for this special purpose. Thousands gathered here and were addressed by Bradburn, White, Monroe, Remond, Gay, and myself. The influence of this meeting was deep and wide-spread. It would be tedious to tell of all, or a small part of all that was interesting and illustrative of the difficulties encountered by the early advocates of anti-slavery in connection with this campaign, and hence I leave this part of it at once.
From Ohio we divided our forces and went into Indiana. At our first meeting we were mobbed, and some of us got our good clothes spoiled by evil-smelling eggs. This was at Richmond,†After the end of the Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society convention in Oakland, Ohio, the touring Garrisonians split into two groups to lecture in more Indiana communities during mid-September 1843. The team of Douglass, George Bradburn, and William A. White was scheduled to hold antislavery meetings in Cambridge City, New Castle, Liberty, Pendleton, Jonesboro, and Richmond, all in east-central Indiana, where large numbers of Quakers had settled. Douglass misremembers the itinerary, having his famous confrontation with a violent antiabolitionist mob in Pendleton on 16 September and getting egged in Richmond on 28 September 1843. Hamm, God`s Government Begun, 96-101; Gamble, "Moral Suasion in the West," 278-81. where Henry Clay had been recently invited to the high seat of the Quaker meeting-house just after his gross abuse of Mr. Mendenhall,†During a 1 October 1842 political visit to Richmond, Indiana, the prominent Kentucky Whig Henry Clay had been embarrassed before an audience of several thousand supporters when a small group of local Quakers led by Hiram Mendenhall (1801-52) presented him a petition signed by over 2,000, asking him to denounce slavery and colonization. Clay responded by admonishing Mendenhall and the Friends with him "to go home and mind their own business." This incident outraged Clay's political allies, including many prominent Quakers, who had Mendenhall and several others expelled from leadership positions in their local meetings. Mendenhall had migrated from North Carolina with his family in childhood and settled in southwestern Ohio. A farmer, Mendenhall moved farther west into Indiana in the mid-1830s and prospered. He was originally a Whig in politics, but his abolitionist principles led him to the Liberty party by the time of his confrontation with Clay. Hamm, God`s Government Begun, 50-56; Ryan Jordan, "The Indiana Separation of 1842 and the Limits of Quaker Anti-Slavery," Quaker History, 89:2-3 (Spring 2000); Gamble, "Moral Suasion in the West," 221-24. because of his presenting him a respectful petition, asking him to emancipate his slaves. At Pendleton this mobocratic spirit was even more pronounced.†A mob attacked Douglass in Pendleton, Madison County, Indiana, on the morning of 16 September 1843. The previous day, Douglass, William A. White, and George Bradburn had spoken at Pendleton's Baptist church, despite rumors and threats from an excited "mob of thirty or more people," many of whom were "very much intoxicated." The next morning, with law-and-order resolutions posted prominently throughout the town, Douglass and his colleagues addressed an outdoor meeting on the wooded banks of nearby Fall Creek, where local Quakers had set up makeshift seats and stands. Menacing hecklers set upon the abolitionist trio, demolishing the speakers' platform and attacking its occupants. The mob then focused its wrath on Douglass, pursuing and severely beating him. The bleeding and unconscious Douglass was taken to the farm of Mr. and Mrs. Neal Hardy, a Quaker couple, who treated Douglass's broken right hand and other injuries. Because the bones were not properly set, the hand never regained its "natural strength and dexterity." NASS, 18 September, 19 October 1843; Lib., 13 October 1843; Mary Howitt, "Memoir of Frederick Douglass," People`s Journal, 2:302 -05 (November 1846); R[obert] C.Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad (1883; New York, 1969), 187-88; Samuel Harden, comp., History of Madison County, Indiana: From 1820 to 1874 (Markleville, Ind., 1874), 203-05; John L. Forkner and Byron H. Dyson, eds., Historical Sketches and Reminiscences of Madison County (Anderson, Ind., 1897), 749-53; J. J. Netterville, Centennial History of Madison County, Indiana, 2 vols. (Anderson, Ind., 1925), 1:321-22; Lloyd Lewis, "Quaker Memories of Frederick Douglass," Negro Digest, 5:37-41 (September 1947). It was found impossible to obtain a building in which to hold our convention, and our friends, Dr. Fussell†On his way to the Diennial Convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held in Philadelphia on 4-7 December 1843, Douglass lectured in Pittsburgh and several other Pennsylvania towns. No record exists of the warnings that Douglass remembers having received while on this tour. His reference to a Dr. Fussell is probably to either Bartholomew Fussell of York, Pennsylvania, or Edwin Fussell of Pendleton, Indiana, both Hicksite Quakers and physicians. Bartholomew Fussell was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. His nephew Edwin (?-1882) was a Garrisonian abolitionist who had braved a mob in Pendleton when he had hosted Douglass in his home the previous September. In 1844 Edwin moved to the Philadelphia area, where he continued to practice medicine. NASS, 14 December 1843; Lib., 15, 22 December 1843; Frederic May Holland, Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator (New York, 1891), 95-96. and others, erected a platform in the woods, where quite a large audience assembled. Mr. Bradburn, Mr. White, and myself were in attendance. As soon as we began to speak a mob of about sixty of the roughest characters I ever looked upon ordered us, through its leaders, to "be silent," threatening us, if we were not, with violence. We attempted to dissuade them, but they had not come to parley but to fight, and were well armed. They tore down the platform on which we stood, assaulted Mr. White and, knocking out several of his teeth, dealt a heavy blow on the back†Editorial Emendation: blow on William A. White, striking him on the back part of the head, badly cutting his scalp and felling him to the ground. Undertaking to fight my way through the crowd with a stick which I caught up in the mélée,†Editorial Emendation: mêlee I attracted the fury of the mob, which laid me prostrate on the ground under a torrent of blows. Leaving me thus, with my right hand hroken, and in a state of unconsciousness, the mobocrats hastily mounted their horses and rode to Andersonville,†Douglass misidentifies Anderson, Indiana, the county seat of Madison County, located twelve miles northeast of Pendleton. Despite the presence of several Quaker settlements, Madison County had a strong antiabolitionist reputation in the early 1840s. Hamm, God`s Government Begun, 97-98. where most of them resided. I was soon raised up and revived by Neal Hardy, a kind-hearted member of the Society of Friends, and carried by him in his wagon about three miles in the country to his home, where I was tenderly nursed and bandaged by good Mrs. Hardy till I was again on my feet, but as the bones broken were not properly set my hand has never recovered its natural
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strength and dexterity. We lingered long in Indiana, and the good effects of our labors there are felt at this day. I have lately visited Pendleton, now one of the best republican towns in the State, and looked again upon the spot where I was beaten down, and have again taken by the hand some of the witnesses of that scene, amongst whom was the kind, good lady—Mrs. Hardy—who, so like the good Samaritan of old, bound up my wounds, and cared for me so kindly. A complete history of these hundred conventions would fill a volume far larger than the one in which this simple reference is to find a place. It would be a grateful duty to speak of the noble young men, who forsook ease and pleasure, as did White, Gay, and Monroe, and endured all manner of privations in the cause of the enslaved and down-trodden of my race. Gay, Monroe, and myself are the only ones who participated as agents in the one hundred conventions who now survive. Mr. Monroe was for many years consul to Brazil, and has since been a faithful member of Congress from the Oberlin District, Ohio, and has filled other important positions in his State. Mr. Gay was managing editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and afterwards of the New York Tribune,†Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune in 1841. Following stints editing small campaign papers, the Log Cabin and the Jeffersonian, Greeley printed the first four-page, five-column issue of the Tribune on 10 April 1841. Conceived as a "cheap" political paper that honest workingmen could turn to for moral direction and nonpartisan political analysis, the Tribune was to be antislavery, anti-rum, anti-tobacco, anti-seduction, anti-grogshops, anti-brothels, and anti-gambling houses, among other things. With the financial talents of Whig lawyer Thomas McElrath, Greeley built the Tribune into a profitable enterprise, printing a daily morning edition as well as a weekly edition, which sold mainly by $2 yearly subscription. The weekly Tribune was the nation's first national newspaper, circulating around the country to general stores, offices, and legislative chambers in the East and West. Within only a few years, the Tribune became the leader in national news, and Greeley was the best-known newspaperman in the country. Among the Tribune`s editors was the abolitionist Sydney Howard Gay. Gay arrived at the Tribune in 1857, and for five years churned out editorials that earned him a reputation for thoroughness and competence. In April 1862 Gay succeeded Charles Anderson Dana as managing editor. Under Gay's management, Edward Dicey of the London Spectator proclaimed the paper "better printed, more thoughtfully written, and more carefully got up than any of its contemporaries." Because of ill health, Gay resigned as managing editor in the summer of 1865. George H. Douglas, The Golden Age of the Newspaper (Westport, Conn., 1999), 39-43; Louis M. Starr, Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action (New York, 1954), 98-116; ANB, 8:806-08. and still later of the New York Evening Post.†Sydney Howard Gay had resigned from the New York Tribune for health reasons in 1865. Gay had later worked as managing editor of the Chicago Tribune from 1867 to 1871. Shortly after that city's infamous fire, Gay returned to New York City to join the editorial staff of William Cullen Bryant's New York Evening Post, where he stayed until 1874. The New York Post had been founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1800. In addition to Gay and Bryant, the Post`s staff has featured such luminaries as E. L. Godkin, Lincoln Steffins, and James Thurber. Goerler, "Family, Self, and Anti-Slavery," 270-76.
CHAPTER VI. IMPRESSIONS ABROAD.
Danger to be averted —A refuge sought abroad—Voyage on the steamship "Cambria"—Refusal of first-class passage—Attractions of the forecastle-deck—Hutchinson family—Invited to make a speech—Southerners feel insulted—Captain threatens to put them in irons—Experiences abroad—Attentions received—Impressions of different members of Parliament, and of other public men—Contrast with life in America—Kindness of friends —Their purchase of my person, and the gift of the same to myself—My return.
As I have before intimated, the publishing of my "Narrative" was regarded by my friends with mingled feelings of satisfaction and apprehension. They were glad to have the doubts and insinuations which the advocates and apologists of slavery had made against me proved to the world to be false, but they had many fears lest this very proof would endanger my safety, and make it necessary for me to leave a position which in a signal manner had opened before me, and one in which I had thus far been efficient in assisting to arouse the moral sentiment of the community against a system which had deprived me, in common with my fellow-slaves, of all the attributes of manhood.
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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 monarchial England, from the dangers of republican slavery. A rude, uncultivated fugitive slave, I was driven to that country to which American young gentlemen 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,"†This 1,800-ton steamer of the Cunard Line made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Halifax on 4 January 1845 and was the first ship to make this journey in less than ten days. The Cambria ran the transatlantic route for the Cunard Line until the British Admiralty converted her to a troopship in 1854. J. C. Amell, Steam and the North Atlantic Mails: The Impact of the Cunard line and Subsequent Steamship Companies on the Carriage of Transatlantic Mails (Toronto, 1986), 114, 182, 199. of the Cunard line,†The Cunard Line, a British cruise ship line, was founded by shipping magnate Samuel Cunard and several partners on 23 July 1839. Formerly known as the North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, the Cunard Steam Ship Company, Ltd. won a coveted contract to act as a Royal Mail Ship, transporting mail, coin money, passengers, and goods from Britain to North America. Eighty ships were built for the Cunard Line in the nineteenth century, including the Cambria, which carried Douglass to Great Britain in 1845. Francis L. Hyde, Cunard and the North Atlantic, 1840-1973: A History of Shipping and Financial Management (London, 1975), 1, 11, 326-30; F. Lawrence Babcock, Spanning the Atlantic (New York, 1931), 1-135; DNB, 5:300. 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.†On transatlantic journeys in the nineteenth century, ships provided separate accommodations for the affluent. Cabins were private apartments equipped with all the amenities of home. Travelers in these compartments dined separately from the rest of the passengers and were attended by a private cook and servants. Steerage was the most common accommodation for most travelers. Steerage was located below deck above the ship's propellers and was lined with wooden bunks. Passengers in steerage were expected to bring their own bed linens and food. A stove was provided for cooking on deck. I. C. B. Dear and Peter Kemp, eds., The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, 2d ed. (New York, 2005), 79, 561. 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†Although Jesse and Polly Hutchinson had no fewer than thirteen children, the family name was identified primarily with the musical quartet composed of Judson (Adroniram Judson Joseph, 1817-59), John (John Wallace, 1821-1908), Asa (1823-84), and Abby (Abigail Jemina, 1829-92). This group traveled with Douglass to England aboard the Cambria in 1845 and occasionally performed at meetings where Douglass spoke. One of the Hutchinson brothers, Jesse, was the first to be identified publicly with the earliest antislavery agitation. Judson, John, and Asa Hutchinson joined the abolitionists only after meeting Frederick Douglass, who lived near their store in Lynn, Massachusetts. John W. Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 1:6, 40, 70-71, 142-46, 187-89; Carol Brink, Harps in the Wind: The Story of the Singing Hutchinsons (New York, 1947); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:158n. from New Hampshire—sweet singers of anti-slavery and the "good time coming"†Originally a poem by Charles Mackay, "The Good Time Coming" became popular in antislavery circles when set to music by composers like Henry Russell and Stephen C. Foster. The Hutchinsons made the song a standard in their performance repertoire. Charles Mackay, The Poetical Works of Charles Mackay (New York, 1876), 209-10; William W. Austin, "Susanna," "Jeanie," and "The Old Folks at Home": The Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Time to Ours (New York, 1975), 18-19, 34-35.—were fellow-passengers, and often came to my rude forecastle-deck†A short raised deck at the fore end of a vessel. 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†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: two days. after leaving Boston one part of the ship was about as free to me as another. My visits there, however, were but 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
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Captain Judkins, they would probably, under the inspiration of slavery and brandy, have attempted to put their threats into execution. I have no space to describe this scene, although its tragic and comic features are well worth description.†This incident occurred on 27 August 1845, following the celebratory dinner on board the Cambria, a tradition at the conclusion of transatlantic voyages. Douglass spoke at the invitation of Captain Judkins, who had earlier been approached by Buffum, the Hutchinsons, and some English passengers recently made familiar with Douglass's Narrative. Judkins had the steward ring the bell on the promenade deck, told the passengers that Douglass was going to make a few remarks on American slavery, and advised those who did not wish to hear him to go below. A few of the American passengers retired to the saloon in order "to take into consideration the propriety of expressing our feelings in some proper way, that the public might know the respect, or want of respect, paid to Americans on board this steamer." Apparently a number of American passengers remained on deck and threatened to break up the meeting, so that, in the eyes of one observer, "it was fully expected we should have had a general and bloody row." Judkins threatened to use irons to halt the attackers and suggested that Douglass leave the deck. Thus a riot was avoided. The incident, however, became a frequent reference point in the abolitionist press and in Douglass's later speeches. Douglass to Garrison, 1 September 1845, in Lib., 26 September 1845; PaF, 25 September 1845; New York Daily Tribune, 26 September 1845; New York Herald, 1 December 1845; NASS, 18 December 1845; Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, 1:145.- An end was put to the mêleé†Editorial Emendation: mêlee by the captain's call to the ship's company to put the salt-water mobocrats in irons, at which determined order the gentlemen†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: gentleman. of the lash scampered, and for the remainder of the voyage conducted themselves very decorously.
This incident of the voyage brought me, within two days after landing at Liverpool,†Located in northwestern England on the Mersey River, Liverpool was the second-largest city in England in this period and its most active port. Douglass arrived in Liverpool aboard the Cambria on 28 August 1845, Lib., 26 September 1845; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:683. before the British public. The gentlemen so promptly withheld in their attempted violence toward me flew to the press to justify their conduct, and to denounce me as a worthless and insolent negro. This course was even less wise than the conduct it was intended to sustain; for, besides awakening something like a national interest in me, and securing me an audience, it brought out counter statements, and threw the blame upon themselves which they had sought to fasten upon me and the gallant captain of the ship.
My visit to England did much for me every way. Not the least among the many advantages derived from it was in the opportunity it afforded me of becoming acquainted with educated people, and of seeing and hearing many of the most distinguished men of that country. My friend, Mr. Wendell Phillips, knowing something of my appreciation of orators and oratory, had said to me before leaving Boston: "Although Americans are generally better speakers than Englishmen, you will find in England individual orators superior to the best of ours." I do not know that Mr. Phillips was quite just to himself in this remark, for I found few,†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: found few in England. if any, superior to him in the gift of speech. When I went to England that country was in the midst of a tremendous agitation. The people were divided by two great questions of "Repeal;"—the repeal of the corn laws,†Douglass refers to the controversial measures of agricultural protection enacted in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1815 Britain's growing population was turning the country into a food importer rather than an exporter. As a result Parliament passed a Corn Law that prohibited the importation of wheat until the domestic price reached 80 shillings a quarter. Similar provisions were also placed on other cereals. The Corn Laws remained a center of Parliamentary debate during Douglass's first visit to England in 1845. Sir Robert Peel, fearing the conjunction of high food prices with Anti-Corn Law League agitation and mass unemployment, realized that political stability required the repeal of the Corn Laws. The Irish potato famine of 1845 provided an excuse for Peel to propose total repeal. Although he carried repeal in 1846, with full effect in 1849. Peel's decision brought havoc on his party, the Tories. Long the representatives of the pro-protectionist, landed aristocracy of England, the Tories viewed Peel's decision to repeal the Corn Laws as a betrayal of traditional party commitments. Peel's action split the Tories into a free-trading minority and a protectionist majority By 1851, however, even the Tory majority abandoned the idea of protection, and the death of the Corn Laws came to symbolize the triumph of liberal and free-trading ideas. Norman McCord, The Anti-Corn Law League, 1838-1846 (London, 1958), 15-16, 96-103, 111-16, 188-207; John Cannon, ed., The Oxford Companion to British History (Oxford, Eng., 1997), 245. and the repeal of the union between England and Ireland.†Douglass refers to the movement by "Repealers," Irish nationalists who, as early as 1810, began agitation for repeal of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland of 1800. The Act of Union had disbanded Ireland's Parliament, giving Ireland representation along with Scotland and England in the centralized London Parliament. Irish abolitionist Daniel O'Connell, having achieved Catholic Emancipation in 1829, founded the Precursor Society in 1838 and organized the Loyal National Repeal Association two years later. By the end of 1842, largely as a result of economic problems, the Repeal Association's activities had intensified, and during 1843 O'Connell held "monster meetings"--rallies for the masses--to garner popular support for the restoration of the Irish Parliament. While in theory the Repeal Association agitated for a complete restoration of the pre-1800 Irish Parliament, O'Connell's willingness to compromise with the British ultimately led to the rise of Young Ireland, a nationalist organization that advocated violence in pursuit of repeal, and a widespread contemporary view among the Irish that O'Connell had failed, despite his many accomplishments in bettering the condition of the Irish people. Alfred Webb, A Compendium of Irish Biography (1878; New York, 1970), 374-82; W. Caleb McDaniel, "Repealing Unions: American Abolitionists, Irish Repeal, and the Origins of Garrisonian Disunionism," Journal of the Early Republic, 28:243-69 (Summer 2008); S. J. Connolly, ed., Oxford Companion to Irish History (1998; Oxford, Eng., 2007), 507.
Debate ran high in Parliament, and among the people everywhere, especially concerning the corn laws. Two powerful interests of the country confronted each other: one venerable from age, and the other young, stalwart, and growing. Both strove for ascendancy. Conservatism united for retaining the corn laws, while the rising power of commerce and manufacturers demanded repeal. It was interest against interest, but something more and deeper; for, while there was aggrandizement of the landed aristocracy on the one side, there was famine and pestilence on the other. Of the anti-corn law movement, Richard Cobden and John Bright, both then members of Parliament, were the leaders. They were the rising statesmen of England, and possessed a very friendly disposition toward America. Mr. Bright, who is