Remembering Black Douglass

When abolitionist Frederick Douglass arrived in Scotland on a speaking tour in 1846 from the United States, 13 years had passed since Britain enacted the Slavery Abolition Act.

Colonial slaves had gradually been freed and Britain's slaveowners were financially compensated for their loss of "property".

Douglass's 19-month visit to Britain and Ireland began in 1845; seven years earlier he had fled slavery himself from the US' slave-owning South for the free North.

"One of the things about his travels in Scotland was his Scottish surname," said Alasdair Pettinger, author of the forthcoming book, Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846: Living an Antislavery Life. "He picked up the fact that Douglas [or Douglass] was a name that resonates in Scottish history."

Douglass often connected with Scottish audiences by referring to the "Black Douglas".

"When he addressed audiences, he quite enjoyed the fact that he could make a connection to the 'Black Douglas', which, being black himself, was quite an opportune connection," said Pettinger. 

He was born around 1818 as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. By the time he arrived in Massachusetts as a fugitive, he needed a new name. Nathan Johnson, a free person of colour who gave him shelter, had been reading a narrative poem by the Scottish author Walter Scott - The Lady of the Lake, which had a character named James Douglas.

Douglass impressed Scottish audiences with powerful speeches opposing slavery in the US, which had yet to end the practice. He worked as Scotland's anti-slavery agent from an address in Edinburgh, where there is now a commemorative plaque in his honour, and toured the country's cities and towns - including Glasgow, Paisley, Dundee and Perth - between January and October 1846. Delighting in the warm Scottish welcome, he described a "conglomeration of architectural beauties" in Edinburgh, and even contemplated settling in the capital with his family.

He demonstrated his literary knowledge of Scotland by visiting the birthplace of Robert Burns. According to Pettinger, the first book Douglass bought after escaping from slavery was an edition of Burns, and he was known to quote the 18th-century Romantic poet as another way of engaging with Scottish audiences.

Douglass arrived amid controversy over the separation of the Free Church from the Church of Scotland. The Free Church required funds, which saw it accept donations from pro-slavery churches in the US. Douglass latched on to the issue and denounced the Free Church by repeatedly calling to "send back the money" on his tour. At Edinburgh's Music Hall, 2,000 people attended his talk.

 The Scottish capitalists' appetite for making money fed off the back of human misery. Scottish merchants and doctors often staffed Africa-bound British slave ships that took enslaved African people and transported them to colonies in the Caribbean.  By around 1800, a staggering 30 percent of slave plantations in Jamaica, where there are still Scottish surnames and place names, were owned by Scots. As Scotland's Tobacco Lords reaped great wealth from their investments, Glasgow boomed. Glasgow, street names mark the city's merchants who amassed extraordinary wealth from the transatlantic slave trade, like Glassford Street, named after Scottish Tobacco Lord, John Glassford.  Other connections include Jamaica Street, named after the island where slave plantations saw the city's industrialists grow fat on the proceeds of sugar and rum.  In Edinburgh, Henry Dundas, a prominent Scottish politician who infamously delayed Britain's abolition of slavery by 15 years, is immortalised by a statue in the capital.

As for Douglass, he visited Scotland again between 1859 and 1860. After his first tour, he arrived back in the US in 1847 a free man, after supporters in England made provisions to buy his liberty.

“In the country, this conflict is not so apparent; but, in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile etc; it is seen pretty clearly. The slave-holder with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, labouring white men against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white men almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from his, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers.” 

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/scotland-hosted-abolitionist-profiting-slavery-181124233607376.html