Early one Sunday morning, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) watched sailing vessels navigate the Chesapeake Bay as he stood on its banks. The sight of these majestic ships moving freely tormented him as a slave. He had grown accustomed to the sight, but this morning, his predicament as a slave weighed heavily on him. Suddenly, he cried out to God, “O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me. O God, deliver me. Let me be free.” It wasn’t the first time he had prayed for deliverance, yet this moment seemed markedly different. He sensed God’s presence in an unusual way and new conviction took hold of him. “I will run away,” he prayed out loud. “God helping me, I will.” He had prayed for his emancipation for years but this time, as Frederick wrote later, “I prayed with my legs.” He took the disguise of a free black sailor with forged papers in hand and successfully completed the perilous journey north.
As a free man, Frederick began his new life as an anti-slavery orator and accomplished writer. His autobiography was so well-written that some people thought it could never have been written by a black man. What fueled his ambition was the certain conviction that God was leading him. He left behind his chains, but not his Christian faith.
History remembers Frederick Douglass as an abolitionist crusader. Yet our history books don’t tell the whole story. The driving force in Frederick’s life was prayer. He included in his autobiography seven years after his escape his prayer on the day he fled to freedom. We join in praying, “O God, save me! God, deliver me!”