Measuring Heads, Reading Faces

The fourth chapter takes off from Douglass’s meeting in Edinburgh with the phrenologist George Combe in order to investigate Douglass’ complex attitudes towards mid-century racial science and visual culture. Douglass’ own suspicion of the prevailing assumption that physical appearance offered a reliable guide to character was intensified by the awareness that the novelty of his appearance was drawing audiences, already familiar with the performances of blackface minstrel troupes, which toured Scotland at the same time. It also helps to explain his willingness to overrule his Irish publisher over which portrait to use for the frontispiece of a new edition of his Narrative, after arriving in Glasgow with only a few copies left. Following the dispute in some detail, the chapter goes on to suggest why Douglass disliked the first portrait so much and took great pains to have it replaced.

The Affinity Scot

Douglass plays with the language of kinship, in particular to claim a kind of fictive Scottish ancestry, even if the mediaeval nobles whose name he adopts don’t exactly epitomise the values he seeks to promote. The chapter reads this gesture in relation to the ways in which contemporary Scottish-American ethnic identities are often articulated in the United States and explores how Douglass is remembered today amid renewed interest in how Scotland’s history has been shaped by transatlantic slavery and the struggle for emancipation.

Douglass, Scott and Burns

Douglass was an astute reader of two major Scottish writers, Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Familiarity with the first led him to adopt a historically-resonant Scottish surname, a choice he expected audiences in Scotland to appreciate; but he also appreciated how Scott’s narratives could be used to interpret the relationships between masters and the people they enslaved. Douglass also knew Burns’ work well and visited his birthplace in Ayr. And while he went on record as a great admirer, careful analysis of his speeches and letters suggest a more ambivalent assessment, which may owe something to the poet’s own ambiguous attitudes to abolitionism. The chapter closes with reflections on why Douglass might have preferred to associate himself with the ancient ‘Black Douglas’ rather than accept the designation as the ‘black O’Connell’, heir to the contemporary Irish leader Daniel O’Connell.

The Voyage Home

Through a close reading of Douglass’s farewell speech in London, the newspaper coverage of the racist discrimination he faced once again from the Cunard shipping company, and his subsequent account of the episode, this chapter shows how Douglass returned to the United States, equipped with the skills and confidence to embark on a new phase of his career, breaking away with his mentor William Lloyd Garrison with a strong sense of his own, distinctive, role in the antislavery struggle to come.

Dark, Polluted Gold

Outlines the main issue that dominated Douglass’s speeches in Scotland in 1846: the campaign to persuade the Free Church of Scotland to return the funds it had raised from pro-slavery churches in the United States. Learning valuable lessons as a tactician and sharpening his oratorical skills, Douglass made the campaign his own, supported by antislavery networks in Scotland, especially the Glasgow Emancipation Society. But the potentially corrupting power of money preoccupied the abolitionists in other ways too. Some of his fellow-campaigners expressed concerns about Douglass’s own financial circumstances, worried that he might be ‘bought’ by rival organisations. Others were particularly upset at his consenting to the solicitation of contributions that were used to purchase his freedom. Douglass responded with robust justifications of his conduct. The chapter closes by assessing the impact of his lectures on his audiences, focusing on two women who recorded their impressions in private correspondence.

The Voyage

Introduces Frederick Douglass in the context of his incident-packed voyage on the Cunard ship Cambria from Boston in August 1845 during which some racist passengers tried to prevent him from delivering a lecture at the invitation of the Captain. Summarising his early experiences, the chapter goes on to explain how Douglass escaped from slavery and, though a fugitive, became a leading antislavery campaigner in Massachusetts and why he and other black abolitionists crossed the Atlantic in the 1830s and 1840s. Douglass would spend nearly two years away from his family in Britain and Ireland, a third of that time in Scotland, and frequently remarked on the relative freedom he enjoyed in public spaces there.