African American Literary Anthology: Slavery, Freedom and Voice

In the month of August 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with Frederick Douglass, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a stranger to nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made his escape from the southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his curiosity excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the abolitionists, —of whom he had heard a somewhat vague description while he was a slave, —he was induced to give his attendance, on the occasion alluded to, though at that time a resident in New Bedford.

This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of great eloquence and 
power; but I think the most thrilling one of them all is the description Douglass gives of his feelings, as he stood soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being a freeman, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay—viewing the receding vessels as they flew with their white wings before the breeze, and apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit of freedom.