In New York Douglass had changed his name in order the better to hide his identity from any possible pursuer.  Douglass’s name was another tie that bound him to his race.  He has been called “Douglass” by the writer because that was the name he took for himself, as he did his education and his freedom; and as “Douglass” he made himself famous.  As a slave, he was legally entitled to but one name,—­Frederick.  From his grandfather, Isaac Bailey, a freeman, he had derived the surname Bailey.  His mother, with unconscious sarcasm, had called the little slave boy Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.  The bearer of this imposing string of appellations had, with a finer sense of fitness, cut it down to Frederick Bailey.  In New York he had called himself Frederick Johnson; but, finding when he reached New Bedford that a considerable portion of the colored population of the city already rejoiced in this familiar designation, he fell in with the suggestion of his host, who had been reading Scott’s Lady of the Lake, and traced an analogy between the runaway slave and the fugitive chieftain, that the new freeman should call himself Douglass, after the noble Scot of that name [Douglas].  The choice proved not inappropriate, for this modern Douglass fought as valiantly in his own cause and with his own weapons as ever any Douglass [Douglas] fought with flashing steel in border foray.

Here, then, in a New England town, Douglass began the life of a freeman, from which, relieved now of the incubus of slavery, he soon emerged into the career for which, in the providence of God, he seemed by his multiform experience to have been especially fitted.  He did not find himself, even in Massachusetts, quite beyond the influence of slavery.  While before the law of the State he was the equal of any other man, caste prejudice prevented him from finding work at his trade of calker; and he therefore sought employment as a laborer.  This he found easily, and for three years worked at whatever his hands found to do.  The hardest toil was easy to him, the heaviest burdens were light; for the money that he earned went into his own pocket.  If it did not remain there long, he at least had the satisfaction of spending it and of enjoying what it purchased.

During these three years he was learning the lesson of liberty and unconsciously continuing his training for the work of an anti-slavery agitator.  He became a subscriber to the Liberator, each number of which he devoured with eagerness.  He heard William Lloyd Garrison lecture, and became one of his most devoted disciples.  He attended every anti-slavery meeting in New Bedford, and now and then spoke on the subject of slavery in humble gatherings of his own people.

IV