I now find that I could have landed in no part of the United States, where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast to the condition of the free people of color in Baltimore, than I found here in New Bedford.
Reflecting on his arrival in New Bedford, Douglass describes the stark difference in the treatment and opportunities for free Black people compared to Baltimore.
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More from Frederick Douglass
The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the…
No power beneath the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or a licentious people happy.
They cannot be coaxed or driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
Still another ground of hope I find in the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors, and firm in their political convictions.