Pros And Cons Of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a slave who escaped to freedom 1838, but many other slaves weren’t as lucky as he was. Many slaves used the same method Douglass used, forging passes, and they made their way to free states with any personal items they had, like clothing and jewelry. People would then remain free by avoiding authorities at all costs, and using aliases and fake names to avoid identification to be sold back into slavery again. There were various strategies of escaping that people used, such as forging passes and acting as ‘sailors’ as Frederick Douglass did. Others used more primitive methods, such as simply running from the authorities. Such an example of this comes from Cornelia Carney while talking about her father, “Father got

“Father lived in the woods with two other men, one white who was hiding his cousin and helping them. He’d come back on Saturdays and Sundays when he knew the Missus and Mister was out in meetings.” Cornelia Carney’s father remained close to her family as an escaped slave, and would come to visit them to continue being a part of the family. When people left, they took only the necessities like clothing, as in the example of Henry Hammond, “The clothing he took with him, as far as can be ascertained, was a black cloth body cloak, and black pantaloons, not very worn…” Henry took only an extra change of clothes, and it can be inferred that he had only those extra clothes with him due to the condition he was in during a slave. Some slaves seeked free states, while others sought to remain by their family’s side, and those that did escape only took what they needed, not anything else if they had much

Frederick Douglass is an example of this. He used a pass he had forged himself to pass of as a sailor, avoiding any confrontation with people looking to capture him. Robert Butler is also another good example of this, “He can read, and I think can write, and it is highly probable that he forged a pass to Baltimore, with intent to escape out of the State.” Forgery was a useful skill to many slaves, and those who knew how to read and write were at an advantage when it came to escaping because they could use their skills to pass off as someone else without any questions asked. Freed slaves always faced the threat of being returned to their owners, so many used their skill of forgery and aliases to pass of as another person to escape into