ABSTRACT

The year 1845 proved to be a pivotal one both in the history of Ireland and in the personal life of Frederick Douglass. In May of that year, Douglass’s autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself, had been published in the United States to equal degrees of praise and opprobrium; 1 in September, a destructive blight appeared on the potato crop in Ireland, marking the onset of a prolonged and deadly famine. By travelling to the United Kingdom to avoid being captured and returned into slavery, unwittingly Douglass became a witness to this unfolding tragedy, which was to develop into one of the most devastating social disasters in modern European history. Concurrently with the commencement of a famine in Ireland, the ‘fugitive’ slave, for the first time in his life, felt like a free man, and rejoiced in this transformation as he found his own voice and matured from being an American abolitionist to an international human rights’ champion. 2 Neither Douglass nor Ireland would ever be the same afterwards.