Douglass Flees U.S. First Going to Ireland During Great Potato Famine

Ann Coughlin, an Irish Frederick Douglass scholar, explains what it was like for Douglass, a man still enslaved, on board the Cambria headed for the British Isles. Douglass left his wife, Anna, and small children, for a two year tour of Ireland, Scotland and Britain to promote Anti-Slavery while working for the abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. Frederick Douglass found Ireland and its people accepting of his color. The Irish had been under the rule of Britain with separate codes of living for hundreds of years, parallels to his life in the United States. Douglass first learned in Ireland what it was like to be treated as a man, not chattel.