I have heard him do so laughingly, saying, among other things that when others would do as much as he had done, we should be relieved of “the d-d niggers”. He used to boast of the commission of the awful and bloody deed. “Mr Thomas Lanman of St Michael’s killed two slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking his brains out. “I speak advisedly when I say this – that killing a slave, or any coloured person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either by the courts or the community,” he wrote. His fame grew, a quasi-modern celebrity that was followed by the first instalment of his autobiography, a “massively resonant” account of the darkest aspect of American life that deeply shocked its first readers, as Douglass doubtless intended. Soon after this decisive public breakthrough, Douglass delivered his first speech at the Anti-Slavery Society’s annual convention. Among the obiter dicta handed down from this stage of Douglass’s career, we find: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress”, and: “it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”. He also became associated with The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper whose editor, William Lloyd Garrison, was impressed with Douglass’s strength and rhetorical skill. Douglass joined a black church and attended abolitionist meetings. Once securely in the north, he sent for Murray to meet him in New York, where they married, before settling in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a thriving free black community.

Within 24 hours, Douglass was able to make his way to the safe house of an abolitionist in New York. He also carried identification papers obtained from a free black seaman. Murray had provided him with some of her savings and a sailor’s uniform. In September 1838, Douglass boarded a train to north-east Maryland. “Mr Thomas Lanman of St Michael’s killed two slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking his brains out' In fact, Douglass made two escape attempts before he was assisted in a successful route to the free states by Anna Murray, a free black woman in Baltimore with whom he had fallen in love. At first, he sought to liberate himself through education and self-improvement, but came to recognise that he would have to become a fugitive from the south, like so many others. He was born into slavery in the Chesapeake shore, Maryland. According to many accounts, the determination from his earliest years to escape bondage set Douglass apart.

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