The excitement of being free was soon tempered by loneliness and fear of being captured and kidnapped. In the North, there are plenty of "man-hunters," who are eager to take fugitive slaves back to their owners for a fee. Fortunately, he met David Ruggles, an abolitionist who advised him to move to New Bedford, Massachusetts, about fifty miles south of Boston, where he could easily find work. Here, Douglass mentions for the first time his wife, Anna Murray (a freed woman whom he had met in Maryland), who joined him in New York City. They were married on September 15, 1838, and immediately traveled to New Bedford, where they stayed with Nathan Johnson, an abolitionist. Johnson suggested that Frederick change his last name in order to hide from slave hunters. Douglass explains: "I gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of choosing me a name, but told him he must not take from me the name of 'Frederick.' I must hold on to that, to preserve a sense of my identity." To replace "Bailey," Johnson chose "Douglass," a character in Sir Walter Scott's long romantic poem The Lady of the Lake. Oddly, the name of the banished nobleman in that poem, James of Douglas, is spelled with a single s.
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