Douglass arrived in New York on September 4, 1838, having attained only a few months before what would have been in a freeman his legal majority.  But, though landed in a free State, he was by no means a free man.  He was still a piece of property, and could be reclaimed by the law’s aid if his whereabouts were discovered.  While local sentiment at the North afforded a measure of protection to fugitives, and few were ever returned to bondage compared with the number that escaped, yet the fear of recapture was ever with them, darkening their lives and impeding their pursuit of happiness.

But even the partial freedom Douglass had achieved gave birth to a thousand delightful sensations.  In his autobiography he describes this dawn of liberty thus: 

“A new world had opened up to me.  I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life.  I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.  My chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy.”

But one cannot live long on joy; and, while his chains were broken, he was not beyond the echo of their clanking.  He met on the streets, within a few hours after his arrival in New York, a man of his own color, who informed him that New York was full of Southerners at that season of the year, and that slave-hunters and spies were numerous, that old residents of the city were not safe, and that any recent fugitive was in imminent danger.  After this cheerful communication Douglass’s informant left him, evidently fearing that Douglass himself might be a slave-hunting spy.  There were negroes base enough to play this role.  In a sailor whom he encountered he found a friend.  This Good Samaritan took him home for the night, and accompanied him next day to a Mr. David Ruggles, a colored man, the secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee and an active antislavery worker.  Mr. Ruggles kept him concealed for several days, during which time the woman Douglass loved, a free woman, came on from Baltimore; and they were married.  He had no money in his pocket, and nothing to depend upon but his hands, which doubtless seemed to him quite a valuable possession, as he knew they had brought in an income of several hundred dollars a year to their former owner.

Douglass’s new friends advised him to go to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where whaling fleets were fitted out, and where he might hope to find work at his trade of ship-calker.  It was believed, too, that he would be safer there, as the anti-slavery sentiment was considered too strong to permit a fugitive slave’s being returned to the South.

When Douglass, accompanied by his wife, arrived in New Bedford, a Mr. Nathan Johnson, a colored man to whom he had been recommended, received him kindly, gave him shelter and sympathy, and lent him a small sum of money to redeem his meagre baggage, which had been held by the stage-driver as security for an unpaid balance of the fare to New Bedford.  In his autobiography Douglass commends Mr. Johnson for his “noble-hearted hospitality and manly character.”