6

634 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

Civil War and the Preservation of Memory," Cultural Resource Management, 25:5- 9
(2002).
4.24-25 The odd proceedings. . .escape from slavery] Douglass's manumission
was undertaken by friends and admirers whom he met during his first antislavery tour
of the British Isles. In August 1846 Anna Richardson, a Quaker abolitionist from
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, wrote Hugh Auld asking him whether Douglass's
freedom had a price. Auld replied in October that he would manumit Douglass for
£150 sterling. At that time, if not before, Anna Richardson together with her sister-in-
law, Ellen Richardson, took steps to raise the purchase money and made arrangements
with American abolitionists, in particular Ellis Gray Loring of Boston, to handle the
details of the negotiation. On 24 November 1846, Walter Lowrie of New York City,
whom Loring had apparently deputed to carry on the negotiations, notified Hugh Auld
that the £150 had arrived in New York and directed him to produce proof of legal
ownership of Douglass. At about this time, Lowrie also engaged the services of J.
Meredith, a prominent Baltimore attorney, to act as go-between and to take care that
the papers were in order. Less than a week later Thomas Auld filed a bill of sale in
Talbot County signifying the transfer of Douglass to Hugh Auld, and on 5 December
1846, Hugh Auld filed Douglass's manumission papers in Baltimore County. Exactly
one week afterward the transaction was consummated, with Hugh Auld handing over
to Lowrie via Meredith a copy of the bill of sale from Thomas Auld, a deed of manumission
for Douglass, and a receipt showing he had received $711.66 for Douglass's
freedom. All these papers were placed in Douglass's hands shortly thereafter.
Douglass to the Editor, Belfast Protestant Journal, in Lib.,
28 August 1846; Talbot
County Records, V.60, 35-36, 30 November 1846, MdTCH (a copy is found on reel
1, frames 637-39, FD Papers, DLC); Deed of Manumission for "'Frederick Bailey.
otherwise called Frederick Douglass," 12 December 1846. Hugh Auld's Receipt of
Payment, 12 December 1846, Walter Lowrie to Ellis Gray Loring, 15 December
1846, all on reel 1, frames 637-43, FD Papers, DLC; NASS, 11 November 1847; NS,
3 December 1847; Glasgow Christian News, 23 December 1847.
4.26 the John Brown raid...flight across the ocean] Douglass departed for
England from Quebec City on 19 November 1859 under the threat of prosecution for
"murder, robbery, and inciting to servile insurrection in the State of Virginia" in connection
with John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. Douglass was lecturing in
Philadelphia when the news reached him of Brown's first attack on 16 October 1859.
Fearing that letters found on Brown might be used to incriminate him, Douglass fled
from Pennsylvania, making a circuitous and unobtrusive trip back to Rochester, New
York. If not for the action of John W. Hurn, an admiring telegraph operator who
delayed transmission of the order for Douglass's arrest by three crucial hours,
Douglass might not have evaded the sheriff in Philadelphia. In early November,
Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia requested federal help in apprehending Douglass,
and federal officials did indeed visit Rochester, reportedly to seize Douglass. By that
time, however, Douglass had fled to Canada and was making final preparations to sail