My Bondage and My Freedom

Less than a week after leaving Baltimore, Douglass arrived in New York City. Still, he wasn’t completely safe. There, he met a previously enslaved freedom seeker. Known as “Allender’s Jake” in Baltimore, he called himself “William Dixon” in New York. Tolly Allender, Dixon’s previous enslaver, had attempted and failed to recapture him. Jake had narrowly avoided recapture and warned Douglass that the city was full of Southerners and that some of the Black people in the city looked out for freedom seekers in exchange for a few dollars from people who caught them. He also warned Douglass against going to the wharves to look for work or to boarding houses for a room. Jake then began to suspect the possibility that Douglass could be involved in an attempt to recapture him. He soon left for work.

Despite this precariousness, New York in 1838 was still safer for enslaved people than it was after the passage of “the new fugitive slave bill” (335). Douglass had little money—only enough for a few loaves of bread, but nothing to pay for a room. He kept his secret for as long as he could but decided that he had to search for an honest man to help him.