The Free Man's New Name

In September 1838, a twenty-year-old man stepped off a train in New York City wearing a borrowed sailor's uniform and carrying forged papers. Frederick Bailey had escaped slavery in Baltimore. For twenty years, he had been called property. Called chattel. Called boy. His name belonged to the man who owned him. When Frederick reached the safety of New Bedford, Massachusetts, his host Nathan Johnson was reading Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake.…