Douglas Unchained

August 11, 1841 - Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, spoke before an audience in the North for the first time. During an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island, he gave a powerful, emotional account of his life as a slave. 

What language do they speak in Massachusetts!

Frederick Douglas, the John Shaft of Ex Slaves. A man who not only escaped slavery, but spent a large number of years within the reaches of slavers telling audiences how wrong it was. See there was still a fugitive slave law on the books that said that slave catchers could travel into northern states to reclaim the property which had escaped. Even though at one point he changed his last name to Johnson  to be safe, he still gave a speech about his life to the anti slavery society. It probably wasn't hard to piece together who he was after that.

Some of the highlights included learning to read in secret, teaching other slaves to read in secret which was totally illegal. He even beat the stuffing out of a man known as a slave breaker he was sold to for trying to escape, who whipped him every day until the day Frederick went Django all over him. The man never whipped Douglas again.

You don't even wanna know where I'm gonna put this.

So on August 11^th 1841 he spoke before an audience in the North, during an Ani-Slavery Convention. It wasn't an informal book club in the basement of the Barnes and Noble, is was the comic-con of Anti-slavery Conventions. He gave such an amazing speech about the terrible lives of those in slavery and his daring escape that he was immediately asked to become the Full Time lecturer for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. 

Slavery is wrong, did I stutter?