Not long afterward, Douglass began to break with his former abolitionist protectors. Although still a fervent anti-slavery advocate, he didn't want to be the mouthpiece of white abolitionists who sometimes told him to "dumb down" his speeches in order to sound more like an authentic slave. He felt excluded from major political decisions made by those who ran the abolitionist societies. In addition, the Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement was simply not aggressive enough for Douglass.
In 1855, Douglass updated his autobiography and called it My Bondage and My Freedom. In it, he presented more of his views and also included some of his ideas about the anti-slavery crusade. Douglass believed that physical resistance and slave uprisings should remain viable options. Accordingly, he was a supporter of John Brown, who raided the arsenal at Harper's Ferry in 1859 as part of a plan to incite a general slave uprising in the South. Brown and his associates were defeated by U.S. troops, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee (who later became the commanding general of the Confederate forces). Brown and the surviving conspirators were executed in Virginia after a sham trial. While Douglass was not directly involved in John Brown's raid, he nevertheless fled to Canada and, soon afterward, to England in November 1859.
Six months later, Douglass learned of the death of his daughter and returned to America, where he worked for the election campaign of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, calling Lincoln a man "destined to do greater service to his country and to mankind than any man who [has] gone before him in the presidential office."
