endship between the
fugitive slave and the great agitator which opened the door
for Douglass to a life of noble usefulness, and secured to the
anti-slavery cause one of its most brilliant and effective orators.

At Garrison's instance Collins offered Douglass employment as lecturer
for the Anti-slavery Society, though the idea of thus engaging him
doubtless occurred to more than one of the abolition leaders who heard
his Nantucket speech. Douglass was distrustful of his own powers. Only
three years out of slavery, with little learning and no experience
as a public speaker, painfully aware of the prejudice which must be
encountered by men of his color, fearful too of the publicity that
might reveal his whereabouts to his legal owner, who might reclaim his
property wherever found, he yielded only reluctantly to Mr. Collins's
proposition, and agreed at first upon only a three months' term of
service.

Most of the abolitionists were, or meant to be, consistent in their
practice of what they preached; and so, when Douglass was enrolled as
one of the little band of apostles, they treated him literally as a
man and a brother. Their homes, their hearts, and their often none too
well-filled purses were open to him. In this new atmosphere his mind
expanded, his spirit took on high courage, and he read and studied
diligently, that he might make himself worthy of his opportunity to do
something for his people.

During the remainder of 1841 Douglass travelled and lectured in
Eastern Massachusetts with George Foster, in the interest of the
two leading abolition journals, the _Anti-slavery Standard_ and the
_Liberator_, and also lectured in Rhode Island against the proposed
Dorr constitution, which sought to limit the right of suffrage to
white male citizens only, thus disfranchising colored men who had
theretofore voted. With Foster and Pillsbury and Parker[1] and
Monroe[2] and Abby Kelly [Kelley][3] he labored to defeat the Dorr
constitution and at the same time promote the abolition gospel. The
proposed constitution was defeated, and colored men who could meet the
Rhode Island property qualification were left in possession of the
right to vote.

[Footnote 1: Editor's Note to Dover Edition: Reverend Theodore Parker
(1810-1860) was a Unitarian minister who graduated from the Harvard
Divinity School and was active in the Boston area.]

[Footnote 2: Editor's Note to Dover Edition: James Monroe (1821-1898),
a New Englander with a