On December 3, 1847, the first number of the North Star appeared.  Douglass’s abolitionist friends had not yet become reconciled to this project, and his persistence in it resulted in a temporary coldness between them.  They very naturally expected him to be guided by their advice.  They had found him on the wharf at New Bedford, and given him his chance in life; and they may easily be pardoned for finding it presumptuous in him to disregard their advice and adopt a new line of conduct without consulting them.  Mr. Garrison wrote in a letter to his wife from Cleveland, “It will also greatly surprise our friends in Boston to hear that in regard to his prospect of establishing a paper here, to be called the North Star, he never opened his lips to me on the subject nor asked my advice in any particular whatever.”  But Samuel May Jr., in a letter written to one of Douglass’s English friends, in which he mentions this charge of Garrison, adds, “It is only common justice to Frederick Douglass to inform you that this is a mistake; that, on the contrary, he did speak to Mr. Garrison about it, just before he was taken ill at Cleveland.”  The probability is that Douglass had his mind made up, and did not seek advice, and that Mr. Garrison did not attach much importance to any casual remark Douglass may have made upon the subject.  In a foot-note to the Life and Times of Garrison it is stated:—­

“This enterprise was not regarded with favor by the leading abolitionists, who knew only too well the precarious support which a fifth anti-slavery paper, edited by a colored man, must have, and who appreciated to the full Douglass’s unrivalled powers as a lecturer in the field ...  As anticipated, it nearly proved the ruin of its projector; but by extraordinary exertions it was kept alive, not, however, on the platform of Garrisonian abolitionism.  The necessary support could only be secured by a change of principles in accordance with Mr. Douglass’s immediate (political abolition) environment.”

Douglass’s own statement does not differ very widely from this, except that he does not admit the mercenary motive for his change of principles.  It was in deference, however, to the feelings of his former associates that the North Star was established at Rochester instead of in the East, where the field for anti-slavery papers was already fully occupied.  In Rochester, then as now the centre of a thrifty, liberal, and progressive population, Douglass gradually won the sympathy and support which such an enterprise demanded.

The North Star, in size, typography, and interest, compared favorably with the other weeklies of the day, and lived for seventeen years.  It had, however, its “ups and downs.”  At one time the editor had mortgaged his house to pay the running expenses; but friends came to his aid, his debts were paid, and the circulation of the paper doubled.  In My Bondage and My Freedom Douglass gives the names of numerous persons who helped him in these earlier years of editorial effort, among whom were a dozen of the most distinguished public men of his day.  After the North Star had been in existence several years, its name was changed to Frederick Douglass’s Paper, to give it a more distinctive designation, the newspaper firmament already scintillating with many other “Stars.”