Following a proposal from Edinburgh World Heritage, a bronze plaque is set to be installed at 29A Waterloo Place in commemoration of a speech given by the man who would come to be known as Scotland’s anti-slavery agent, Frederick Douglass.
Born Frederick Bailey on a plantation in Maryland in early 1818, Douglass spent his young life in slavery, first in Talbot County before being sent to the Auld family in Baltimore as a domestic slave. This stroke of chance ultimately revealed what would come to set him free—literacy, and the power of the written word. Taught the basics of reading and writing by his mistress before, inevitably, his master refused to permit their lessons, Douglass instead learned from discarded copy books and young white children on the streets of Baltimore. An abolitionist before he knew the term, he survived a further decade of enslavement on another plantation before escaping to the free North.
In the first of many connections to Scotland, Douglass chose his freeman’s surname from Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Lady of the Lake’ when marrying his wife, Anna Murray in 1838. It was during this time that he first came into contact with the white abolitionist movement that he would become integral to. Led by William Lloyd Garrison — who would go on to write the preface to his most famous work, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — the abolitionist movement offered Douglass the platform to convey the horrors of slavery to the public using his powerful oratory style.
Following the publication of his first autobiography, Douglass became simultaneously a literary sensation and a man at great risk of persecution by his former owners—a state of being that aptly illustrates the cultural schism between those opposed to and in favour of slavery in America. To avoid re-enslavement, he travelled to Britain and Ireland in 1846 to embark on an anti-slavery speaking tour, where he eventually visited Edinburgh and spoke at Waterloo Place, South College Street, and the Assembly Rooms, to name just a few.
While slavery was abolished in Britain in 1834, the issue remained prescient in Scotland around the time of Douglass’ visit due to a controversy surrounding large donations made by American enslavers to the Free Church of Scotland. This series of events demonstrates the power that Douglass held, not only as an orator, but equally as a moral leader and ambassador for enslaved peoples across the world — by illustrating the connections between slavery and institutions of power globally, he was able to drive home the relevance of his fight in places that may otherwise have been able to absent themselves from accountability.
In Edinburgh, this meant the proliferation of the slogan “SEND BACK THE MONEY!”; whether written on placards which soon lined the street, or painted across Free Church buildings, or even carved into the Salisbury Crags (which Douglass himself helped chisel), the fight for freedom became something that people could recognise and further in their daily lives. That the money was never returned was not so relevant, Douglass himself admitted, because the Scottish people had been made aware of their own connections to slavery, and better equipped with the knowledge to resist it.
While we cannot listen to Douglass speak today, through the body of literature he left behind we can take that same narrative and moral journey as the Scots who flocked in their thousands to see him during that time. Although Narrative of the Life was his most well known work, Douglass eventually reworked this tale in the longer piece, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Crucially, he was at this point separated from the white abolitionist movement, meaning he was at greater liberty to write not simply to convince white audiences, but also for other African Americans as they too fought for their freedom. Moreover, Douglass’ profound sense for language, rhetoric, and poignant prose make for a reading experience that is deeply embodied—his work is not just a testimony, but rather an emotive journey through his, and thus many Americans’, lives under slavery.
The proposed monument to Douglass offers a unique opportunity for us to reflect on the importance of transatlantic anti-slavery movements in Scotland, both past and present. Douglass’ role in inspiring divestment from slavery is of ongoing relevance, having laid the groundwork for continuing discussions around wealth earned through injustice, such as those surrounding what was once the David Hume building at this very university. Only through such active remembrance and learning that those like Douglass promoted can we begin to unpick the long legacy of enslavement that persists across the world.
Photo by Richard Hedrick on Unsplash