For Frederick Douglass, escape didn't bring freedom from fear

Having fled enslavement in the American South, the man who became an abolitionist figurehead continued to dread capture

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On 3 September 1838, a man in his early twenties boarded a northbound train from Maryland. Dressed as a sailor and carrying borrowed identity papers, he headed for New York - leaving behind a lifetime of enslavement.

Today we know that man as Frederick Douglass, though at that time he still went by his birth name, Frederick Bailey. His escape became one of the best-known stories of the 19th-century abolitionist movement, but it wasn't until nearly a decade later that he finally escaped the fear of a return to servitude.

He was born into enslavement, though the exact year is uncertain. “He thought he was born in 1818,” explains Clare Elliott, assistant professor at Northumbria University. “But there’s always a question mark over the birth dates of enslaved people.”

Separated from his family, he grew up in a plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. His early years were marred by deprivation and violence, which he described in his autobiography,