“He observed that I might have noticed the simple manner in which he lived, adding that he had adopted this method in order to save money to carry out his purpose. This was said in no boastful tone, for he felt that he had delayed already too long, and had no room to boast either his zeal or his self-denial. Had some men made such display of rigid virtue, I should have rejected it as affected, false and hypocritical; but in John Brown, I felt it to be real as iron or granite. From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield in 1847, while I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful of its peaceful abolition.”[12] Soon after this visit with John Brown, Frederick Douglass decided on a definite step. He would move to Rochester, New York, and there he would set up his contemplated newspaper. He had been dissuaded from starting a newspaper by two things. First, as soon as he returned from England he had been called upon to exercise to the fullest extent all his abilities as a speaker. Friends told him that in this field he could render the best and most needed service. They had discouraged the idea of his becoming an editor. Such an undertaking took training and experience. Douglass, always quick to acknowledge his own deficiencies, began to think his project far too ambitious. Second, William Lloyd Garrison needed whatever newspaper gifts Douglass had for the _Liberator_. Garrison felt that a second antislavery paper in the same region was not needed. He pointed out that the way of the _Liberator_ was hard enough as it was. He did not think of Douglass as a rival. But, quite frankly, he wanted the younger man to remain under his wing. There was nothing more selfish here than what a father might feel for his own son. But Douglass was no longer a fledgling. The time had come for him to strike out for himself. Rochester was a young, new city. It was ideally located in the Genesee valley, where the Genesee River flowed into Lake Ontario; it was a terminus of the Erie Canal. Here was an ideal set-up for getting slaves safely across into Canada! Day and night action--more action--was what Douglass wanted now. There was already an intelligent and highly respected group of Abolitionists in Rochester. It was composed of both Negroes and whites. They would, he knew, gather round him. He would not be working alone. In western New York his paper would in no way interfere with the circulation of the _Liberator_. And so on December 3, 1847, appeared in Rochester, New York, a new paper--the _North Star_. Its editor was Frederick Douglass, its assistant editor Martin R. Delaney, and its object “to attack slavery in all its forms and aspects; advance Universal Emancipation; exact the standard of public morality, promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people; and to hasten the day of freedom to our three million enslaved fellow-countrymen.” * * * * *