Frederick Douglass escaped to New York and got help from David Ruggles, an officer in the New York Vigilance Committee, also affiliated with the Underground Railroad, a network of people who harbored runaway slaves and helped transport them to safe areas in the United States and Canada. Safe for a while, Douglass sent for his fiancée, Anna Murray, and they were married on September 15, 1838. Ruggles told Frederick that in the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, he would be safe from slave catchers and he could find work as a caulker. Upon arriving in New Bedford, Anna and Frederick stayed in the home of Nathan Johnson whose last name he used for a while to avoid recapture. He eventually renamed himself Douglas after a character in the book, The Lady of the Lake, adding an extra ‘s’ at the end. After living in New Bedford for only a few months, Douglass subscribed to the Liberator, a newspaper edited by the outspoken leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, William Lloyd Garrison. Douglass immediately became caught up in the Liberator's attacks on southern slaveholders. "The paper became my meat and drink," wrote Douglass. "My soul was set all on fire." Inevitably, Douglass became involved in the abolitionist movement.
In August 1841, at an abolitionist meeting in New Bedford, Douglass spoke before the crowd attending the annual meeting of the Massachusetts branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison immediately recognized Douglass's potential as a speaker, and hired him to be an agent for the society. As a traveling lecturer accompanying other abolitionist agents on tours of the northern states, his job was to talk about his life and to sell subscriptions to the Liberator. Douglass was an immediate success on the lecture circuit. His early speeches dealt mainly with his own experiences. With dramatic effect, he told stories about the brutal beatings given by slave owners to women, children, and elderly people. He described how he had felt the head of a young girl and found it "nearly covered with festering sores." He told about masters "breeding" their female slaves. But he also used humor, making his audiences laugh when he told how he broke the slave breaker Edward Covey.
During 1842, he traveled throughout Massachusetts and New York with William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent speakers. He also visited Rhode Island, helping to defeat a measure that would have given voting rights to poor whites while denying them to blacks. Although Douglass enjoyed his work immensely, his job was not an easy one. When traveling, the lecturers had to live in poor accommodations. Douglass was often roughly handled when he refused to sit in the "Negro" sections of trains and steamships, and worst of all some of the meetings that were held in western states were sometimes disrupted by pro-slavery mobs. In Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass's hand was broken when he and an associate were beaten up by a gang of thugs. Such incidents were common on the western frontier, where abolitionists were often viewed as dangerous fanatics. Despite these incidents, Douglass was sure that he had found his purpose in life.
His abilities as a speaker grew as he continued to lecture in 1844. People gradually began to doubt that Douglass was telling the truth about himself. "How a man, only six years out of bondage, and who had never gone to school could speak with such eloquence - with such precision of language and power of thought - they were utterly at a loss to devise." With his reputation at stake, Douglass decided to publish the story of his life. During the winter of 1845, he set down on paper all the facts - the actual names of the people and places connected with his years in slavery. When Douglass showed the finished manuscript to abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, his friend suggested that he dispose of it before he was found out and shipped back to Maryland. Douglass ignored the warning and in May 1845, 5,000 copies of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass were published. William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips wrote introductions to the book.
Almost immediately, Douglass's autobiography became a best seller. The success brought by Douglass's Narrative after its publication in 1845 was due in large part to its moral force. His book is a story of the triumph of dignity, courage, and self-reliance over the evils of the brutal, degrading slave system. It is a sermon on how slavery corrupts the human spirit and robs both master and slave of their freedom. The book enjoyed widespread popularity in the North, and European editions also sold very well. However, Douglass's fame as an author threatened his freedom. Federal laws gave Thomas Auld the right to seize his property, the fugitive slave Frederick Bailey. The fear of losing his freedom prompted Douglass to pursue a dream he had long held; in the summer of 1845 he decided to go to England. There he would be free from slave catchers, and also have the opportunity to speak to English audiences and try to gain support for the American antislavery movement. By 1838 all slaves within the British Empire had been given a gradual emancipation and were free. The vigor of the English abolition movement was still very strong.
For nearly two years, Douglass traveled throughout the British Isles. Everywhere he went; prominent people welcomed him to their homes. Everywhere he spoke, enthusiastic crowds came to hear the fugitive slave denounce the system which he had grown up in. He was quite happy in his new surroundings. By the fall of 1846, Douglass was ready to return home. However, recapture remained a frightening possibility for Douglass if he returned to the United States. The problem was unexpectedly resolved when two English friends raised enough money to buy his freedom. The required amount, $711.66, was sent to Hugh Auld, to whom Thomas Auld had transferred the title to Douglass. On December 5, 1846, Hugh Auld signed the papers that declared the 28 year old Douglass a free man.
In the spring of 1847, Douglass sailed from England aboard the Cambria. He had left the United States as a respected author and lecturer and was returning with a huge international reputation. Thousands of people heard his lectures and he aroused much goodwill for the abolitionist cause in the British Isles. His tour had been an unqualified success. During his travels in England, Douglass had demonstrated some independence from the Garrison abolitionist faction, addressing a meeting sponsored by a rival antislavery group. Upon his return to America, he decided to publish a new abolitionist newspaper with the help of funds raised by his English friends. The goal of his paper would be to proclaim the abolitionist cause and fight for black equality. Garrison was opposed to the idea. This caused a strain in the relationship. Rather than publish his paper in New England where the Liberator was based, Douglass decided to move farther west to Rochester, New York. On October 28, 1847, Frederick Douglass wrote to his close friend Amy Post, a New York abolitionist, "I have finally decided on publishing the North Star in Rochester and to make that city my future home." By February 1848, Douglass began to move his family to Rochester.