However, if Douglass's visit can be considered an entry in the transatlantic travel log, it must also be viewed as entirely exceptional in its particulars. Douglass became a celebrity in Great Britain like no other black American abolitionist before him, and perhaps like no other abolitionist. And though he had undoubtedly heard reports from returning black colleagues, Douglass was overwhelmed by the reception he received in Ireland, the first major stop on his tour after a three-day stay in Liverpool. Indeed, he would write to Garrison, after leaving the Emerald Isle for Scotland, "I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life since landing in this country. I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life."[38] (SOURCE)
The new life began in earnest with Douglass's arrival in Dublin. While in Dublin, Douglass and Buffum stayed at the house of Richard Davis Webb, Douglass's British publisher and a fellow Garrisonian.[39] Webb helped to plan and coordinate most of Douglass's touring schedule while he was in Britain; and though their relationship was soon to sour, in the first few weeks a mutual appreciation prevailed. Thus in letters written on the same day, Douglass could call Webb "the very impersonation of old-fashioned, thorough-going anti-slavery principle," while Webb could hail Douglass as a "marvellous [sic] fine fellow."[40] After five happy weeks in Dublin, during which he sold over 100 copies of the Narrative and dined with the Lord Mayor, Douglass moved on to Cork, where he stayed with the Jennings family.[41] Mr. Jennings was a prosperous merchant, and his house was one of bustling charm, culture and high-minded conversation. Douglass became especially close to one of the Jennings' eight children, Isabel, the first of his several foreign female confidantes. Isabel, like so many foreign women, was immediately taken with Douglass and sang his praises to all who would listen. As she wrote to Maria Weston Chapman, one of the leading female Garrisonians and the organizer of the annual AASS Bazaar, "He is the first intelligent slave who has ever visited Cork and it is only natural that he should excite more sympathy than any of the others...There never was a person who made a greater sensation in Cork amongst all religious bodies."[42]
This reaction was by no means restricted to Ireland. After three months, Douglass left Ireland for Scotland, and by May, 1846, had moved on to England. Intensely charismatic, Douglass left a trail of antislavery converts and enthusiastic admirers in his wake. As one enchanted listener exclaimed after hearing Douglass speak in Taunton, England, "[we] had heard pretty conclusive evidence that evening, that the colour of the skin had nothing to do with the power of the mind, and that a bright intellect could shine through a dark coat." A reporter from Dundee, Scotland declared, "I never witnessed so much enthusiasm manifested in any cause as during the 4 evenings of the recent discussions." And an inspired devotee in Bristol wrote to Maria Chapman, "Wherever he [Douglass] goes he arouses sympathy in your cause & love for himself."[43]
In order to appreciate the nature of Douglass's celebrity and understand the environment that helped to promote it, it is useful to examine briefly the prevailing attitudes toward class and color in Victorian Britain. As noted earlier, Britain had long been considered a place free from the racial prejudice that plagued America. Even the most devoted American abolitionists were at times guilty of subtle forms of racial prejudice, demonstrated in their paternalistic attitudes and in their reluctance to admit free blacks into their inner social circles. As Lawrence Friedman writes, "White immediatists seemed less and less frequently to distinguish between the majority of Northern blacks who were poorly educated, lacking formal religious training and steady employment, and the lower middle-class minority of somewhat better educated and more formally devout black abolitionists with whom they had the closest contacts."[44] Though not formally educated, Douglass would most certainly locate himself in this second category, and it was in Britain that he could most explicitly define himself in those terms.
Though recent scholarship has demonstrated that Victorian Britain was by no means free of racial prejudice, as Douglas Lorimer points out, the British perspective was ethnocentric rather than racist. Rather than referring to some degrading biological inheritance, conventional British attitudes toward blacks derived primarily from the more fundamental attitudes toward the poor. Thus Douglass—polite, polished and with impeccable credentials—was able to win the respect of Victorian Britain and gain access to polite society not merely because he elicited their sympathy, but because he could be identified with respectable, middle-class values.[45] The Cork Examiner's assessment of Douglass was echoed throughout Britain: he indeed possessed "the ease and grace of a gentleman—a gentleman of nature and society."[46] (SOURCE)
Douglass's reception in Britain was therefore not representative of the general treatment of blacks, but only demonstrated Britain's receptivity to the "black gentleman." Nonetheless, Douglass continued to hold Britain before the eyes of America as a place of racial equality. As he was fond of pointing out, in Britain he was treated with the respect and civility reserved for whites back home. He wrote in a letter to Garrison, "The truth is, the people here know nothing of the republican negro hate prevalent in our glorious land. They measure and esteem accord[ing] to their moral and intellectual worth, and not according to the color of their skin. Whatever may be said of the aristocracies here, there is none based on the color of a man's skin. This species of aristocracy belongs predominantly to 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.'"[47] (SOURCE) We can detect in Douglass's comment the ironic representation of America that was developed in his narration of the Cambria incident. Douglass's reception confirmed for him the paradoxical nature of his journey and of his relationship to the United States. Fleeing the guilty talons of the American eagle, the derelict symbol of American liberty, he had found safety in the outstretched paws of the British lion.[48] (SOURCE) Glorying in the luxuriant irony of these images, Douglass suggested it was only in exile that he could truly feel at home.
Douglass's popularity, or at least his celebrity, was reinforced by the public and highly visible controversies in which he was engaged. The most dramatic of these was the abolitionist struggle with the Free Church of Scotland.[49] The story of the controversy begins with the "Disruption" of 1843, a schism in the Scottish church over the issue of lay patronage and state intrusion. Led by Thomas Chalmers, a brilliant Evangelical minister from Glasgow, approximately a quarter of the ministers and close to half of the laity of the Church of Scotland seceded and formed the Scottish Free Church. Chalmers dreamed of establishing a religious institution that would provide for the spiritual and educational needs of the entire populace, and was thus in dire need of funds to build new schools and churches and to train new ministers and teachers. A massive fund-raising campaign was initiated, and the Free Church turned to its supporters in the United States, many of whom were Southern Presbyterians. Sending a delegation of distinguished representatives to the United States in 1844, the Free Church was able to raise £3000, much of which did indeed come from Southern slave owners.[50] This transaction immediately caught the attention of American abolitionists (as well as those merely looking for a chance to exploit the weakness of the Free Church), who viewed it as another example of organized religion's failure to support the antislavery cause. Led by the Glasgow Emancipation Society and the indefatigable American Garrisonian Henry Clarke Wright, abolitionists urged the Free Church to "Send Back the Money."
Wright was also an uncompromising supporter of nonresistance and anti-Sabbatarianism, and his reputation for eccentric radicalism provided the Free Church with an ample target for their counterattacks. Soon after his arrival, Douglass joined Wright in championing the "Send Back the Money" campaign, but was wary of becoming too closely associated with Wright's multi-cause radicalism.[51] Nonetheless, Douglass reveled in his agitational role; as he wrote to an American friend, "Old Scotland boils like a pot...It would indeed be a grand antislavery triumph if we could get her to send back the money."[52] (SOURCE) Douglass traveled all over Scotland giving speeches attacking the conduct of the Free Church and refuting the strained logic of their desperate defenses.[53] In a characteristic speech before a Scottish audience, Douglass began by demonstrating the cruelty of slavery and then explained that the vile system could only exist if it was made reputable through the support of American churches. He then demonstrated how the Free Church's acceptance of the "blood-stained money" effectively sanctioned this unholy alliance between religious institutions and slave interest. Finally, he concluded by leading the audience in the stirring refrain: SEND BACK THE MONEY. "There is music in the words, my friends," Douglass announced. "I want men, women, and children to send forth this cry wherever they go. Let it be the talk around the fireside, in the street, and at the market-place—indeed, everywhere. It is a fitting subject even on the Sabbath day." (SOURCE) [54]
Douglass's routine was immensely popular, and was responsible for much of his celebrity status. Indeed, contemporary Scottish culture incorporated his visit into numerous folk songs and poems, often with a comic, anti-Free Church bias. As Douglass himself commented, "the very boys in the street are singing out, 'Send back that money."[55] (SOURCE) However, his uncompromising rebuke of the Free Church did aggravate some listeners, who believed that a less hostile and more conciliatory attitude would produce better results.[56] Many ministers sympathetic to the Free Church refused to grant Douglass access to speak in their churches, though eventually, Douglass was always able to find an open pulpit. Joined by George Thompson, a close friend of Garrison's and an active agent in many British reform movements, Douglass and Wright intensified their efforts during the meeting of the Free Church General Assembly in May and June of 1846. The Free Church undoubtedly felt the pressure of the antislavery reprimand, and their General Assembly was the scene of an almost comic attempt to ratify cryptic and convoluted resolutions that would demonstrate their antislavery convictions without alienating their slaveholding sympathizers. Torn between the need to hush the antislavery uproar and to maintain their ties with Southern Presbyterians, the Assembly eventually arrived at the uneasy compromise of condemning slavery but denying that slaveholders were necessarily unchristian sinners who should be refused fellowship.
This resolution was as far as the Assembly would bend—the money was never sent back. Douglass and his abolitionist peers never achieved that grand gesture that would "break upon the confounded slaveholders and their [allies] like a clap from the sky."[57] (SOURCE) Moreover, it is not clear whether the abolitionists achieved a legitimate reinvigoration of antislavery sentiment in Scotland, or merely encouraged the expression of grudges held against the Free Church. As one scholar concludes, "In all, Douglass achieved little beyond getting some very stiff backs up and shattering Southerners' hopes that they might share their communion with their Scottish brethren in quiet confidence-restoring comfort."[58] At the very least, the visibility of the Free Church controversy gave Douglass a forum to display his talents and charisma, which were emphatic antislavery statements in and of themselves.
But Douglass would not have to look far to find another oratorical punching-bag, as abolitionists soon revived their slogan "No Union With Slaveholders!" in their battle with the Evangelical Alliance. The Alliance, an international association of American, British, and European churches, had excluded Quakers and Unitarians from membership, two denominations at the forefront of British abolition. Insulted by that gesture, the antislavery community was especially sensitive to any perceived failure of the Alliance to condemn American slavery. At first, led by the efforts of Free Church delegates eager to redeem themselves in the public eye, the Alliance decided to refuse membership to slave owners.[59] However, this decision was made after the American delegates were already accepted, and it served merely to incite American anger against what they perceived as a British conspiracy to interfere in their domestic affairs. The Americans demanded a retraction of that resolution, and the Alliance was bullied into compliance, ultimately adopting a policy of official silence on the issue of slavery altogether.
Abolitionists were furious; how could the Evangelical Alliance admit slaveholders but not Quakers or Unitarians? Douglass immediately incorporated an attack on the Alliance into his speeches, adeptly recycling many of the arguments from his 'Send Back the Money' campaign. He was joined in his efforts by Garrison, who, arriving in August with an invitation from the Glasgow Emancipation Society, had quickly dedicated himself to the establishment of an "Anti-Slavery League for all England." The League, meant to rival the anti-Garrisonian British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), was formed with the support of the Chartists Henry Vincent and William Lovett, and made the prosecution of the Evangelical Alliance one of its primary objectives. Douglass and Garrison, often accompanied by George Thompson, traveled across Britain, forming auxiliaries of the League and implicating the Alliance in the support of slavery. This was Garrison's chance to see the impact of celebrity upon the escaped slave he first saw stammering before an audience in Nantucket five years before. Needless to say, Garrison was impressed. Even Webb, never quick to compliment Douglass, admitted that he had an air "that makes Garrison a mere baby beside him."[60] And Garrison would write home to his wife, perhaps with a hint of jealousy that anticipated the impending split between the two men, "Douglass was with me, and, of course, where he goes, the lion of the occasion."[61]
Indeed, by the end of 1846, Douglass had developed a lecturing style that blended pathos and humor, irony and sincerity, and that was best exercised when aimed at the self-righteous and hypocritical. At a mass meeting at Exeter Hall on September 14, 1846, with over 6000 people in attendance, Douglass parodied the Alliance's perfunctory attempts to deal with what one minister infelicitously called "the impediment" of slavery ("one might have thought it was his newly married wife," quipped Douglass).[62] (SOURCE) But Douglass's wit and Garrison's stature once again fell short. Much like the dilemma faced by the Free Church, the Evangelical Alliance could not risk insulting its American delegates by categorically denouncing all slaveholders. Rather than continuing to debate the contentious issue of slavery, the delegates voted to postpone indefinitely the formation of an international alliance.[63]
Douglass's time in Britain was not wholly consumed by these highly visible controversies. Indeed, another major source of Douglass's celebrity in Britain was his general support of popular reform movements. In just one week in London, Douglass spoke at two Anti-Slavery meetings, a Peace meeting, a "Complete Suffrage" meeting, and a Temperance meeting.[64] While in Ireland, he also lent his name to the Irish Repeal movement and befriended Daniel O'Connell, whose eloquence and antislavery commitment Douglass had always admired.[65] Douglass arrived in Britain amidst a flurry of reform-minded activism, and the nation's burgeoning social consciousness complemented his own sympathetic nature. Douglass was a man with a generous heart; he himself had suffered too much to be blind to the sufferings of others. When he arrived in 1845, Ireland's poor were just beginning to feel the first brutal effects of the potato famine that would ultimately decimate their population. Strangely enough, though, Douglass rarely mentioned the poor in his letters home. In fact, it was not until he was (safely) in Scotland that he would discuss the Irish poor in any detail. On February 26, 1846, Douglass sent Garrison a letter from Montrose, including one of the most vivid and unsettling depictions of urban poverty in Victorian letters. Before offering a description of an Irish hut ("of all place to witness human misery, ignorance, degradation, filth and wretchedness...pre-eminent"), Douglass proclaimed:
Douglass attributed "the immediate cause" of extreme poverty in Ireland to intemperance ("stopping his ears," in a sense, to the increasingly ominous reports of the potato blight), and it was toward the temperance movement that Douglass directed most of his energy not exhausted by antislavery efforts. Indeed, Douglass's first recorded speech in Britain, on August 31, 1845, was dedicated specifically to the temperance movement.[67] He even took the temperance pledge himself from Father Theobald Matthew, the famous Irish temperance advocate who converted millions to the cause (Douglass claimed he was number 5,487,395 of "Father Matthew's children").[68]
Douglass quickly realized that if he let it, "the cause of temperance alone would afford work enough to occupy every inch of my time,"[69] (SOURCE) and so he wisely developed links between temperance and abolition that would allow him to address temperance without shirking his abolitionist duties. In his speeches, he often elaborated upon themes developed in his Narrative, explaining how his master used alcohol to keep his slaves drunk, degraded, and dependent. Though by then a strict teetotaler, Douglass admitted, "I used to love the crittur [Scottish slang for alcohol]." After one sip he "felt like a president" and forgot his desire to escape.[70] (SOURCE) He made the link between the two causes even more explicit in a speech in Paisley, Scotland, declaring, "I am a temperance man because I am an antislavery man; and I am an antislavery man because I love my fellow man." (SOURCE) [71] And conversely, before an Irish crowd, he used the metaphor of inebriation to describe the corrupting influences of slavery: "I believe...that if we could but make the world sober, we would have no slavery. Mankind has been drunk."[72] (SOURCE)
On the one hand, these associations express Douglass's deep humanitarian impulse, one that acutely perceived the unity of all suffering, and that sought to remedy it through the most effective means possible. As he wrote to Garrison from Ireland, "I see much here to remind me of my former condition, and I confess I should be ashamed to lift up my voice against American slavery, but that I know the cause of humanity is one the world over." (SOURCE) On the other hand, the practical necessity of establishing these links demonstrates what Douglass himself admitted early in his trip, that he was a "man of one idea."[73] Many scholars have been critical of this attitude, faulting Douglass and Garrison for failing to live up to the promise of their Chartist collaboration. Imagining Douglass's respectable audience gingerly stepping over the bodies of beggars to reach the church door, they suggest that Douglass, despite his refusal to keep his eyes closed and his heart sealed, effectively ignored the British poor and never developed any lasting relationship with the lower classes.[74] Indeed, despite his moving letter to Garrison, Douglass repeatedly resisted the comparison between British "wage slavery" and American chattel slavery. He told an audience in Glasgow that "they were wrong when they applied this term [slavery] to any relations of life in this country. It was not the relation of master to servant...but it was the relation in which a human was made the property of his fellow man."[75] (SOURCE) The differentiation, however, does not necessarily undermine the authenticity of Douglass's heart-felt response to Irish poverty. As one historian has written, though he was greatly affected by his encounters with the Irish poor, if "he had pity, he had no cure."[76] Douglass realized, with some reluctance, that to use his talents and to serve the cause of humanity most effectively, he must remain, above all, an antislavery man. Thus, his reluctance to embrace working-class reform does not imply a narrow-minded callousness, but an understanding of the power, and the limits, of his own celebrity.[77]