Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/328

CHAPTER VII.

TRIUMPHS AND TRIALS.

New Experiences—Painful Disagreement of Opinion with old Friends—Final Decision to publish my Paper in Rochester—Its Fortunes and its Friends—Change in my own Views Regarding the Constitution of the United States—Fidelity to Conviction—Loss of Old Friends—Support of New Ones—Loss of House, etc., by Fire—Triumphs and Trials—Underground Railroad—Incidents.

PREPARED as I was to meet with many trials and perplexities on reaching home, one of which I little dreamed was awaiting me. My plans for future usefulness, as indicated in the last chapter, were all settled, and in imagination I already saw myself wielding my pen as well as my voice in the great work of renovating the public mind, and building up a public sentiment, which should send slavery to the grave, and restore to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness" the people with whom I had suffered.

My friends in Boston had been informed of what I was intending, and I expected to find them favorably disposed toward my cherished enterprise. In this I was mistaken. They had many reasons against it. First, no such paper was needed; secondly, it would interfere with my usefulness as a lecturer; thirdly, I was better fitted to speak than to write; fourthly, the paper could not succeed. This opposition from a quarter so highly esteemed, and to which I had been accustomed to look for advice and direction, caused me not only to hesitate, but inclined me to abandon the undertaking. All previous attempts to establish such a journal having failed,

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