While sailing from Boston to Ireland in 1845, Frederick Douglass found himself the subject of a great deal of attention. Some of it was kind, if a bit insistent, even invasive. Douglass was on board as a fugitive; the publication of his Narrative earlier that year had brought him not only considerable notoriety in the States but very real danger, as the book’s candid inclusions of real names and details left no doubt about his status as a former enslaved person and alerted his former enslaver–and any other interested parties–to his presence in Massachusetts. Many passengers, discovering these facts, begged Read more