England town, Douglass began the life of a
freeman, from which, relieved now of the incubus of slavery, he soon
emerged into the career for which, in the providence of God, he seemed
by his multiform experience to have been especially fitted. He did not
find himself, even in Massachusetts, quite beyond the influence of
slavery. While before the law of the State he was the equal of any
other man, caste prejudice prevented him from finding work at his
trade of calker; and he therefore sought employment as a laborer. This
he found easily, and for three years worked at whatever his hands
found to do. The hardest toil was easy to him, the heaviest burdens
were light; for the money that he earned went into his own pocket.
If it did not remain there long, he at least had the satisfaction of
spending it and of enjoying what it purchased.

During these three years he was learning the lesson of liberty and
unconsciously continuing his training for the work of an anti-slavery
agitator. He became a subscriber to the _Liberator_, each number of
which he devoured with eagerness. He heard William Lloyd Garrison
lecture, and became one of his most devoted disciples. He attended
every anti-slavery meeting in New Bedford, and now and then spoke on
the subject of slavery in humble gatherings of his own people.

IV

In 1841 Douglass entered upon that epoch of his life which brought the
hitherto obscure refugee prominently before the public, and in which
his services as anti-slavery orator and reformer constitute his chief
claim to enduring recollection. Millions of negroes whose lives had
been far less bright than Douglass's had lived and died in slavery.
Thousands of fugitives under assumed names were winning a precarious
livelihood in the free States and trembling in constant fear of the
slave-catcher. Some of these were doing noble work in assisting others
to escape from bondage. Mr. Siebert, in his _Underground Railroad_,
mentions one fugitive slave, John Mason by name, who assisted thirteen
hundred others to escape from Kentucky. Another picturesque fugitive
was Harriet Tubman, who devoted her life to this work with a courage,
skill, and success that won her a wide reputation among the friends
of freedom. A number of free colored men in the North, a few of them
wealthy and cultivated, lent their time and their means to this cause.
But it was reserved for Douglass, by virtue of his marvellous gift of
oratory, to become pre-