Frederick Douglass’s First Trip to Muncie
On October 6, 1843 the abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass arrived in Indiana to speak against the horrors of chattel slavery. In Richmond, a rancorous crowd pelted Douglass with eggs as they jeered. The Richmond Palladium newspaper reported the incident as “a most disgraceful riot.”
Douglas fared worse in Pendleton. After arriving to speak, a drunken throng threatened violence. The orator’s attempts to dissuade the unruly crowd failed when, in Douglas’s own words, “a mob of about sixty of the roughest characters I ever looked upon ordered us, through its leaders, to be silent, threatening us, if we were not, with violence.”
Douglass later wrote, that in Pendleton, “I attracted the fury of the mob, which laid me prostrate on the ground under a torrent of blows. Leaving me thus, with my right hand broken, and in a state of unconsciousness.” A local Quaker pulled Douglass to safety, although his hand never healed properly.
Despite such hostility, Douglass continued to lend his oratorical skills and stature to the abolitionist movement in the years leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Frederick Douglas was born a slave in 1818 on a Maryland plantation. As a child, his “owners” passed him around to different farms until 1830 when he was “loaned” by Thomas Auld to his brother, Hugh Auld. Hugh’s wife Sophia taught Douglass the alphabet, which he later used to teach himself to read and write. In 1833 he was “lent” again to a farmer who regularly beat him.
Four years later, in 1837, Douglas was working at the docks on the Choptank River when he met and fell in love with Anna Murray. Murray was born free and worked as a laundress. She convinced Douglass that escape was possible, while offering resources to assist him in the effort.
On September 3, 1838, Douglass escaped with clothing and money provided by Murray. He reached New York City and was hidden by an abolitionist. Murray followed shortly thereafter and married Douglass. The couple then settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
In New Bedford, Douglass frequented abolitionist meetings, boldly sharing first-hand accounts of his life in bondage. His experiences in the south and his talents as an orator propelled him to become an influential abolitionist. In 1843, he traveled west as a speaker and agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s “Hundred Conventions Project.” The project’s central objective sought to turn public opinion against slavery. The tour brought him through Indiana, which led to the malicious incidents in Richmond and Pendleton.
Despite this early enmity, Douglass later gained international recognition and respect. After the Civil War, he continued to advocate for Black political, cultural, and economic rights. During the Reconstruction era, he became the president of the Freedman’s Savings Bank, was nominated as the candidate for vice-president on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1872, served as a U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, and became an ambassador to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Throughout this period, Douglas delivered anti-racist orations and championed equal rights of all citizens. He became a strong supporter of Republican candidates, in political acknowledgement of their role in crushing the Confederacy and with Emancipation. Douglas supported the presidential campaigns of Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1880, he traveled around the United States to stump for the Republican Party presidential candidate, James A. Garfield.
In September, he traveled throughout Indiana with Ohio lawmaker James “Private” Dalzell. On September 1 in Noblesville, the press reported that approximately 10,000 people turned out to hear Douglass speak. On the following day, he arrived in Richmond. However, this time instead of rotten eggs, the crowd hailed Douglass with cheers. He then traveled to Fountain City to speak at the Underground Railroad house of Levi and Catharine Coffin.
On September 8, he was invited by Muncie’s all-Black Garfield and Porter Club to stump for Garfield and the Indiana Republican Party’s candidate for governor, Albert Porter. The speech was to take place at the courthouse, but after 5,000 people arrived in inclement weather, the event moved across the street to the Wysor Opera House. The Muncie Daily News reported that Douglass received a standing ovation so loud that it “endangered the roof of the opera house.”
We only have excerpts from his speech, but Douglass is quoted in part as saying: “I wear on my back today marks received from the lash of the taskmaster. I was a fugitive, escaping from slavery to freedom. There was no place in all this broad land where I could lie down and feel myself free. Neither on the high mountain nor in the low valley could I claim freedom. I had no place wherever to lay my head, but today this land knows no such bondage. No slave clanks his fetters or rattles his chains. That these fetters have been broken and chains cast off is due to the Republican party.
I came from a very low condition — the lowest perhaps to which humanity can be subject. Oh, it is terrible. When I look upon that condition I am made to exclaim: Oh, the depth, the depth, the depth from which I came! But, thanks to God, thanks to the logic of events, thanks to the boys in blue, and thanks to the Republican party, I stand before you as a man, a citizen of a country whose future is brighter than that of any other man on the globe.”
