Complete Works of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Author:Frederick Douglass [Douglass, Frederick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Delphi Main Series
ISBN: 9781913487027
Publisher: Delphi Classics
Published: 2019-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII. TRIUMPHS AND TRIALS.

New experiences — Painful disagreement of opinion with old friends — Final decision to publish my paper in Rochester — Its fortunes — Change in my own views regarding the Constitution of the United States — Fidelity to conviction — Loss of old friends — Support of new ones — Loss of house, etc., by fire — Triumphs and trials — Underground railroad — Incidents.

PREPARED AS I was to meet with many trials and perplexities on reaching home, one of which I little dreamed was awaiting me. My plans for future usefulness, as indicated in the last chapter, were all settled, and in imagination I already saw myself wielding my pen as well as my voice in the great work of renovating the public mind, and building up a public sentiment, which should send slavery to the grave, and restore to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness” the people with whom I had suffered.

My friends in Boston had been informed of what I was intending, and I expected to find them favourably disposed towards my cherished enterprise. In this I was mistaken. They had many reasons against it. First, no such paper was needed; secondly, it would interfere with my usefulness as a lecturer; thirdly, I was better fitted to speak than to write; fourthly, the paper could not succeed. This opposition from a quarter so highly esteemed, and to which I had been accustomed to look for advice and direction, caused me not only to hesitate, but inclined me to abandon the undertaking. All previous attempts to establish such a journal having failed, I feared lest I should but add another to the list, and thus contribute another proof of the mental deficiencies of my race. Very much that was said of me in respect to my imperfect literary attainments, I felt to be most painfully true. The unsuccessful projectors of all former attempts had been my superiors in point of education, and if they had failed how could I hope for success? Yet I did hope for success, and persisted in the undertaking, encouraged by my English friends to go forward.

I can easily pardon those who saw in my persistence, an unwarrantable ambition and presumption. I was but nine years escaped from slavery. In many phases of mental experience I was but nine years old. That one under such circumstances should aspire to establish a printing press, surrounded by an educated people, might well be considered unpractical if not ambitious. My American friends looked at me with astonishment. “A wood-sawyer” offering himself to the public as an editor! A slave, brought up in the depths of ignorance, assuming to instruct the highly civilized people of the North in the principles of liberty, justice, and humanity! The thing looked absurd. Nevertheless I persevered. I felt that the want of education, great as it was, could be overcome by study, and that wisdom would come by experience; and further, what was perhaps the most controlling consideration,

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