ON 12 AUGUST 1841, after delivering his first speeches before a predominantly white abolitionist audience at Nantucket’s Atheneum Hall, Frederick Douglass was invited to become a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Concerned with any publicity that could expose him to discovery and arrest by his master, he at first declined the invitation. But John A. Collins, general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, refused to take no for an answer, and Douglass reluctantly accepted his request. “Here opened upon me a new life,” he recalled in 1855, “a life for which I had had no preparation.” As we shall...

HAVING ESCAPED FROM the grasp of slavery, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey fled first to New York City, and then to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Although the three years Douglass spent in New Bedford have received relatively little attention from his biographers,¹ they were of incalculable importance to his growth as a speaker and his development as an abolitionist. While in New Bedford, Douglass moved primarily within the city’s large and thriving black community. Discouraged by the racial prejudice he encountered in New Bedford’s white churches, he joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in which he became a class leader, an...

WRITING IN 1883, esteemed abolitionist Parker Pillsbury appropriately described the antislavery meetings in New Bedford and Nantucket, Massachusetts, during August 1841 as “memorable in anti-slavery history.”¹ It was during these meetings that the Garrisonian abolitionists uncovered a remarkable new voice that would add substance and excitement to the antislavery struggle. This powerful voice could not have emerged at a more fortuitous time. By 1841 many of the local Massachusetts abolitionist societies had grown increasingly apathetic, and the antislavery crusade was sorely in need of revitalization.² When William Lloyd Garrison and his colleagues heard Frederick Douglass in New Bedford and Nantucket,...

AFTER COMPLETING the tumultuous lecture tour of Rhode Island in December 1841, Frederick Douglass returned to Massachusetts a seasoned veteran of the abolitionist crusade and an emerging leader within the antislavery movement. His probationary period as a lecturer had expired in November 1841, and his growing importance to the movement was undeniable. Everywhere he went, he attracted large and enthusiastic audiences and infused excitement into the crusade against slavery. In January 1842 he was employed by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as a full-time lecturer. For the next eight months, he traveled extensively throughout the Bay State delivering his antislavery message....

AS FREDERICK DOUGLASS’ oratorical reputation increased during the first half of 1842, so did the demand for his services. The period from August 1842 through June 1843 was one of intense agitation and antislavery activity, the likes of which he had not experienced during his brief career as an abolitionist lecturer. In early August 1842, the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society recognized Douglass’ potential as a drawing card and hired him as one of eight agents to tour western and central New York from the end of August to the end of October. As the tour was winding...

THE HUNDRED CONVENTIONS tour of the West was a milestone in the development of abolitionist rhetoric. Garrisonian abolitionists intended to awaken northern sympathy and arouse the national conscience by holding a series of 100 antislavery conventions that included meetings in Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Frederick Douglass was chosen by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society’s board of managers as one of six agents who would conduct the six-month tour. Others selected were George Bradburn, Charles Lenox Remond, John A. Collins, Jacob Ferris, and James Monroe. In addition, William A. White of Watertown, Massachusetts, and Sydney Howard Gay, managing editor...

THE HUNDRED CONVENTIONS tour of the West was so successful that in January 1844 the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society decided a similar campaign should be organized to canvass the central counties of Massachusetts. The leadership of the society planned to carry out approximately 100 conventions by sending five teams of lecturers to tour the state simultaneously. Frederick Douglass was among the lecturers hired to conduct the tour, which began in mid-February.¹ In the interim, he undertook a brief series of abolitionist lectures in New Hampshire. Although Douglass did not mention either his brief lecture tour of New Hampshire or the Hundred...

IN EARLY MAY 1844, Frederick Douglass returned home to Lynn from western Massachusetts. Now that the Hundred Conventions tour of Massachusetts had come to an end, Douglass would enter into another important period of antislavery agitation. Although overlooked by most Douglass scholars, the time from May through August 1844 marked a critical stage in his development as an abolitionist and as an orator.¹ His growing significance to the movement can be seen in his being invited by the board of managers of the American Anti-Slavery Society to be the guest of the society at their annual May meeting with all...

SINCE THE GENESIS of his career as a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1841, Frederick Douglass’ fame as an eloquent fugitive slave had steadily increased and his oratory had constantly advanced in sophistication and power. It is no surprise, then, that people began to question whether Douglass had ever been a slave. How, they wondered, could anyone who had been a slave and deprived of a formal education speak so eloquently and conduct himself with so much dignity and grace on the platform? Growing public skepticism about his past compelled him to devote a large portion of his...

IN BRINGING HIS 1892Life and Times of Frederick Douglassto a close, Frederick Douglass admitted to having lived “several lives in one: first, the life of slavery; secondly, the life of a fugitive from slavery; thirdly, the life of comparative freedom; fourthly, the life of conflict and battle; and fifthly, the life of victory, if not complete, at least assured.” The first two stages of Douglass’ life have been the focus of this study. As we have seen, his experiences as a slave and a fugitive contributed profoundly to his understanding of rhetoric and to his development as an...