Disguised as a sailor, Frederick Douglass rides the rails out of Baltimore to free soil

Baltimore in 1838 was a city of shipyards and slave patrols, and Frederick Douglass had spent years working the docks under both. On September 3, dressed as a free black sailor and carrying borrowed identification papers, he boarded a northbound Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad train, likely from the Canton Depot. He rode to Havre de Grace, crossed the Susquehanna by ferry to Perryville, took a train to Wilmington, then a steamboat to Philadelphia, and continued on to New York City, completing the journey in less than 24 hours. He later wrote: "A new world had opened upon me."…