7

HISTORICAL ANNOTATION 635

to Great Britain. Although he was criticized by some blacks for displaying cowardice,
Douglass replied that he could expect no justice from a slaveholding judge and jury
and that "there is no more dishonor in trying to keep out of the way of such a court,
than there would be in keeping out of the way of a company of hungry wolves."
Douglass to Amy Post, 27 [October] 1859, Amy Post Papers, NRU; Douglass to John
W. Hurn, 12 June 1882, Frederick Douglass Mss., LNArc; DM, 2:162-63 (November
1859); Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York,
1974), 114-15; idem, Frederick Douglass (Washington, D.C., 1948), 178-85.
4.28 Roderick Dhus and Douglases of the Lady of the Lake] Sir Walter Scott
(1771-1832), Scottish poet and novelist, was one of the most prominent British
authors of the early nineteenth century. Scott published The Lady of the Lake in
Edinburgh in 1810. Roderick Dhu, Ellen Douglas, and her father, Lord James of
Douglas--a medieval Scottish chieftain--are the principal characters. Walter Scott,
The Complete Poetical Works of Scott (Boston, 1900), 152-208;
John Lauber, Sir
Walter Scott, rev. ed. (Boston, 1989, 1-6; Frank N. Magill, Critical Survey of Poetry:
English Language Series, rev. ed., 8 vols. (Pasadena, Calif., 1992), 6:2903-12;
Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 5th rev. ed.
(New York, 1998), 542, 875-76.
4.31 "hair breadth escapes."] The expression is from Othello, sc. 3, line 421.
Ruffin might also be alluding to the title of William Troy's Hair-breadth Escapes from
Slavery to Freedom (Manchester, Eng., 1861). John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations: A
Collection of Passages, Phrases and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and
Modern Literature, 17th ed. (Boston, 2002), 212.
4.34 Tuckahoe plantation] Douglass's grandmother Betsey Bailey raised him on
their master Aaron Anthony's farm, located on the banks of Tuckahoe Creek near
Hillsborough, Talbot County, Maryland. Tuckahoe Creek is a tributary of the
Choptank River that forms part of the eastern boundary of Talbot County. Tuckahoe
is an Algonquin term for root or mushroom. Dickson J. Preston and Norman
Harrington, Talbot County: A History (Centreville, Md., 1983), 140, 191, 256; Paul
Wilstach, Tidewater Maryland (Indianapolis, 1931), 104-05; McFeely, Frederick
Douglass, 3, 9-10.
5.1-2 It is more...writer and speaker] Douglass launched his career as an itinerant
abolitionist lecturer in 1841. By the following year antislavery newspapers were
publishing his letters and accounts of his abolitionist activities. It was the publication
of his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in 1845 that
made him an internationally-known celebrity. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 86-92,
116-18.
5.8 Longfellow] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) was one of the more
prominent New England authors of the nineteenth century. Born in Portland, Maine,
Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin College along with Nathaniel Hawthorne. He
studied languages in Europe, accepted a professorship in modern languages at
Bowdoin College (1829-35 ), and later relocated permanently to Cambridge,