The Frederick Douglass Megapack by Frederick Douglass
Author:Frederick Douglass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: slavery, slaves, slave, civil war, history
ISBN: 9781479402939
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2014-05-25T16:00:00+00:00
MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, [Part 3]
LIFE AS A FREEMAN
CHAPTER XXII
Liberty Attained
TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOMâA WANDERER IN NEW YORKâFEELINGS ON REACHING THAT CITYâAN OLD ACQUAINTANCE METâUNFAVORABLE IMPRESSIONSâLONELINESS AND INSECURITYâAPOLOGY FOR SLAVES WHO RETURN TO THEIR MASTERSâCOMPELLED TO TELL MY CONDITIONâSUCCORED BY A SAILORâDAVID RUGGLESâTHE UNDERGROUND RAILROADâMARRIAGEâBAGGAGE TAKEN FROM MEâKINDNESS OF NATHAN JOHNSONâMY CHANGE OF NAMEâDARK NOTIONS OF NORTHERN CIVILIZATIONâTHE CONTRASTâCOLORED PEOPLE IN NEW BEDFORDâAN INCIDENT ILLUSTRATING THEIR SPIRITâA COMMON LABORERâDENIED WORK AT MY TRADEâTHE FIRST WINTER AT THE NORTHâREPULSE AT THE DOORS OF THE CHURCHâSANCTIFIED HATEâTHE LIBERATOR AND ITS EDITOR.
There is no necessity for any extended notice of the incidents of this part of my life. There is nothing very striking or peculiar about my career as a freeman, when viewed apart from my life as a slave. The relation subsisting between my early experience and that which I am now about to narrate, is, perhaps, my best apology for adding another chapter to this book.
Disappearing from the kind reader, in a flying cloud or balloon (pardon the figure), driven by the wind, and knowing not where I should landâwhether in slavery or in freedomâit is proper that I should remove, at once, all anxiety, by frankly making known where I alighted. The flight was a bold and perilous one; but here I am, in the great city of New York, safe and sound, without loss of blood or bone. In less than a week after leaving Baltimore, I was walking amid the hurrying throng, and gazing upon the dazzling wonders of Broadway. The dreams of my childhood and the purposes of my manhood were now fulfilled. A free state around me, and a free earth under my feet! What a moment was this to me! A whole year was pressed into a single day. A new world burst upon my agitated vision. I have often been asked, by kind friends to whom I have told my story, how I felt when first I found myself beyond the limits of slavery; and I must say here, as I have often said to them, there is scarcely anything about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. It was a moment of joyous excitement, which no words can describe. In a letter to a friend, written soon after reaching New York. I said I felt as one might be supposed to feel, on escaping from a den of hungry lions. But, in a moment like that, sensations are too intense and too rapid for words. Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be described, but joy and gladness, like the rainbow of promise, defy alike the pen and pencil.
For ten or fifteen years I had been dragging a heavy chain, with a huge block attached to it, cumbering my every motion. I had felt myself doomed to drag this chain and this block through life. All efforts, before, to separate myself from the hateful encumbrance, had only seemed to rivet me the more firmly to it. Baffled and
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