My Bondage and My Freedom was written when slavery was still in effect, and Douglass still refused to divulge his means of escaping from Baltimore to New York. He did not want to jeopardize those friends who helped him escape.
In The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), published sixteen years after the Civil War, when slavery was no longer a legal matter, Douglass reveals how he escaped. He borrowed identification papers from a friend, a free black sailor, and simply took the train to New York City.
My Bondage and My Freedom ends Douglass' story in 1855, when he was still a member of the Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement. In Life and Times, he describes how he became a close friend of John Brown, the leader of a movement dedicated to ending slavery through armed resistance and slave uprisings. Douglass then tells the reader that Brown originally planned to raid Harper's Ferry in 1858 but had to postpone the raid for a year when plans for the attack were leaked by a traitor. Douglass knew about the 1859 raid well in advance; in fact, he provided financial and spiritual support for Brown's venture even though he never felt fit enough to be a part of a military operation. Brown was arrested while Douglass was lecturing in Philadelphia, and, learning about Brown's arrest, he telegraphed his own son Lewis in Rochester, New York, and asked him to secure and hide Brown's letters. Predictably, U.S. marshals soon arrived to question and search Douglass' household in Rochester. Douglass returned to Rochester and pretended that he was heading for Michigan. Instead, he left for Canada, and, on November 12, 1859, he left Quebec for England.
