s abolitionist friends, who thought the platform
offered him a better field for usefulness, he deferred the enterprise
until near the end of the year. In the mean time he plunged again into
the thick of the anti-slavery agitation. We find him lecturing in
May in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, and writing letters to the
anti-slavery papers. In June he was elected president of the New
England Anti-slavery Convention. In August and September he went on a
lecturing tour with Garrison and others through Pennsylvania and Ohio.
On this tour the party attended the commencement exercises of Oberlin
College, famous for its anti-slavery principles and practice, and
spoke to immense meetings at various places in Ohio and New York.
Their cause was growing in popular favor; and, in places where
formerly they had spoken out of doors because of the difficulty of
securing a place of meeting, they were now compelled to speak in the
open air, because the churches and halls would not contain their
audiences.

On December 3, 1847, the first number of the _North Star_ appeared.
Douglass's abolitionist friends had not yet become reconciled to this
project, and his persistence in it resulted in a temporary coldness
between them. They very naturally expected him to be guided by their
advice. They had found him on the wharf at New Bedford, and given him
his chance in life; and they may easily be pardoned for finding it
presumptuous in him to disregard their advice and adopt a new line of
conduct without consulting them. Mr. Garrison wrote in a letter to his
wife from Cleveland, "It will also greatly surprise our friends in
Boston to hear that in regard to his prospect of establishing a paper
here, to be called the North Star, he never opened his lips to me
on the subject nor asked my advice in any particular whatever." But
Samuel May Jr., in a letter written to one of Douglass's English
friends, in which he mentions this charge of Garrison, adds, "It is
only common justice to Frederick Douglass to inform you that this is a
mistake; that, on the contrary, he did speak to Mr. Garrison about it,
just before he was taken ill at Cleveland." The probability is that
Douglass had his mind made up, and did not seek advice, and that Mr.
Garrison did not attach much importance to any casual remark Douglass
may have made upon the subject. In a foot-note to the _Life and Times
of Garrison_ it is stated:--

"This enterprise was not regarded with favor b