Editor

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whites. In contrast to the United States where he was "caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with impunity by any one [with] a white skin," in England he met "nothing to remind me of my complexion." He discovered that the British "measure and esteem men according to their moral and intellectual worth, and not according to the color of their skin."

Like many American blacks who have breathed the freer air of a foreign land, Douglass looked back upon his native land with bitterness and ambivalence. As much as he loved the promise of America, its practices made him feel like an alien. In 1846 he wrote Garrison about his impressions gained from living abroad.

In thinking of America . . . when I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slaveholding, robbery and wrong; when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters; I am filled with unutterable loathing, and led to reproach myself that anything could fall from my lips in praise of such a land. America will not allow her children to love her.

Unlike American whites, Douglass could not find freedom in the United States. That, he found in Great Britain. While there, a group of Englishmen raised $710 and purchased his freedom. Although some white abolitionists in America castigated him for acknowledging property rights in men by buying his freedom, Douglass was practical. After all, the whites were not subject to be returned to slavery. He was. They were not subject to be separated from their families. He was. Douglass would not stand on philosophical and legal niceties if he could avoid the slaveholder's lash. And, more importantly, the plans he had for the future could only be carried out by a free man.

T

he great project Douglass had in mind was the publication of a newspaper. Douglass felt that by publishing a newspaper he could help to elevate blacks, both slave and free. His British friends agreed with him and raised more than $2,000 for that purpose. White abolitionists in the United States were dismayed. They did not want to lose a talented lecturer nor to have another abolition tract competing with the Liberator, the Anti-Slavery Standard, and other papers. At first Douglass reluctantly acquiesced and returned. to the lecture platform. So many people urged him to establish the paper, however, that in the fall of 1817 he decided

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to move to Rochester, N.Y., and publish the North Star. He hoped the paper would help dispel the notion of the black man's inferiority and be the means of "making them acquainted with their own latent powers, by enkindling their hope of a future and developing their moral force." On December 2, 1847, the first issue of the North Star appeared with the motto, "Right is of no sex-Truth is of no colorGod is the father of us all, and we are all Brethren."

From 1847 to 1860 Douglass published the journal, changing its name to Frederick Douglass' Paper in 1851. Between 1858 and 1863 he also published Douglass' Monthly Magazine. The number of subscribers, black and white, varied between 3,000 and 4,500 and were located in 18 states and two foreign countries. Despite financial difficulties Douglass was able to publish his journal continuously for 13 years. It was the most successful black newspaper before the Civil War. But success was gained as a result of considerable personal sacrifice. The sacrifices would have been even greater if Douglass had not been able to depend on his family for support. Anna was a frugal household manager and helped Douglass in his endeavors. His sons Lewis and Charles folded, wrapped, and delivered papers while his daughter Rosetta served as his. secretary, taking dictation and handling subscriptions. Anna celebrated each new issue of the paper by preparing a sumptuous meal for the family.

Much of the economic support for the paper came from Douglass' lectures. The lectures also enabled him to sign up new subscribers. Often he offered free copies of his books as bonuses for subscriptions. Although plagued by slow or nonexistent payments, Douglass was aided by several agents who sold his paper-Martin R. Delany, William Wells Brown, George T. Downing-by black conventions and organizations of black women, English reformers, and American philanthropists. Representatives Gerrit Smith, Horace Mann, Joshua Giddings, and Senator Charles Sumner, advocates of political action to bring about emancipation, all were enthusiastic in their support of the paper. An Englishwoman, Julia Griffiths, served as his office manager.

Several other black newspapers were published between 1847 and 1860. Samuel Ringgold Ward, a minister in white churches, edited the Impartial Citizen in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1848. Louis H. Putnam edited the Colored Man's Journal in New York City from 1851 to 1861; W. H. Day, a graduate of Oberlin College, published the Alienated American in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1852 to 1856. Miflin W. Gibbs, a Philadelphia free Negro who had emigrated to Cali

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fornia, edited the Mirror of the Times in San Francisco from 1855 to 1862 and in 1856 the Rev. Jabez Campbell began publishing the long-running journal of the African Metho dist Episcopal Church, the Christian Recorder. These able editors battled valiantly in the cause of abolition and equal ity for free blacks. Among them, Frederick Douglass w without peer.

Douglass believed that although blacks should a cept aid from whites in their struggles, they had to be thei "own representatives and advocates." Blacks, he said, hai to work "not exclusively, but peculiarly-not distinct from but in connection with our white friends." In their struggle all blacks, slave and free, rich and poor, were united. The were one under the burden of prejudice, proscription, difranchisement, and the charge of inferiority. Suffering with the slave, Douglass attacked everything and everyone wh supported that accursed system.

Douglass explored practically every aspect of the slavery question in his newspaper editorials. From 1847 1851 he had followed William Lloyd Garrison in denounc ing the Constitution as a pro-slavery document. But h association with Charles Sumner, Gerrit Smith, and others caused him to change his mind, and in 1851 he argue that the Constitution could be used "in behalf of emanci pation." Frustrated by the slowness of Garrison's moral suasion, Douglass sought more powerful instruments to use in destroying slavery. He called for international action to encourage emancipation and urged Englishmen to speak out against American iniquities. When Northern whites, claiming to be "free soil" men, fought against the extension of slavery into new territories, Douglass upbraided them and their efforts which he saw as an evasion of the real issue.

The efforts to shut the slave power out of the Territories. one by one, will keep the country in a constant commotion with Border Ruffian outrages, assassinations, incendiarisms, conspiracies, civil wars, and all manner of sickening horors. The only true remedy for the extension of slavery, is the immediate abolition of slavery. For while the monster lives he will hunger and thirst, breathe, and expand. The true way is to put the knife into its quivering heart.

Garrison and his followers contended that abolition ists should not vote because America's government was proslavery. For a white man, whose skin automatically guaran teed his admission to the ballot box, such action was a protest against the system. A black man, on the other hand, was automatically barred from the ballot box because of his skin

Racial Uplift

color. In Douglass' eyes when blacks supported Garrison on this point, they were acquiescing in discrimination. As early as 1780 Paul Cuffee and other blacks in Massachusetts had denounced taxation without representation. In 1838 sailmaker James Forten, Bishop Morris Brown, and abolitionist Robert Purvis and other blacks worked to defeat a Pennsylvania bill disfranchising blacks. They told the Legislature that "when you have taken from an individual his right to vote, you have made the government, in regard to him, a mere despotism; and you have taken a step towards making it a despotism to all." During the next 12 years blacks in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Connecticut repeatedly demanded the right to vote. Such prominent blacks as Philip A. Bell, Charles B. Ray, Theodore S. Wright, Henry Highland Garnet, Charles L. Reason, George B. Vashon, Charles H. Langston, and William H. Day urged blacks to participate in politics. So many of these men were his friends that Douglass could not easily ignore the rising tide against Garrison's rejection of politics, a rejection that was fast becoming a principle.

An uncompromising advocate of immediate abolition, Douglass was convinced by the 1850s that anti-slavery advocates had to obtain a political foothold to be effective. Consequently, he joined the Liberty and Free Soil parties to ensure that emancipation would not be ignored by the major parties, and his editorials began to reflect this new view. It was mandatory, he argued, for the oppressed to participate in the political process. Before the Civil War this participation gave the friends of freedom a chance to "pluck executive patronage out of the hands of the pliant tools of the whip and the chain; to turn the tide of the National Administration against the man-stealers of this country and in favor of even a partial application of the principles of justice."

uring much of the 19th century some influential whites argued that blacks and whites could not live together in amity. Consequently, in 1817 they organized the American Colonization Society to encourage free blacks to return to Africa. Since the organizational meeting was held in the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives, it was a powerful society. Among its members were Speaker of the House Henry Clay, Gen. Andrew Jackson, and the author of the "Star-Spangled Banner," Francis Scott Key. Between 1817 and 1860 the society sent about 15,000 ex-slaves to Liberia. Many masters freed their slaves with the express