We know that on many occasions, Douglass drew large crowds. In March 1846, nearly 1,200 people filled George's Chapel in Dundee; a month later, two meetings on the same night in Paisley attracted similar numbers to each; and on 1 May he addressed an audience of 2,000 people paying sixpence a head at Edinburgh's Music Hall. Newspaper reports tell us how his words elicited cheers, applause, laughter, sharp intakes of breath and sometimes hisses of disapproval. Many of these meetings were great social occasions, and ‘soirées’, ‘tea parties’ and ‘public breakfasts’ offered refreshments and musical entertainment. If the presence of women at political meetings was still occasionally frowned upon in the press, antislavery gatherings open to the public were usually mixed and the men and women sometimes sat together. ‘The immense room was filled to overflowing,’ wrote a reporter at the Music Hall. ‘The orchestra was crammed from top to bottom, and hung with a galaxy of ladies and gentlemen, like a drop scene of a theatre. The room itself, and all the passages, were crowded – hundreds could not get seats.’

But it is harder to tell how his campaign speeches in Scotland transformed his listeners – emotionally, intellectually. The speeches denouncing the Free Church are distinctive in their repeated use of the same slogan – the rhythmic ‘send back the money’ that was often chanted by his audience, providing – as such formulae often do – a sense of shared feeling that temporarily binds disparate people together. Douglass and his fellow speakers rarely analyse what these emotions might be, beyond congratulating themselves on the ferment of antislavery sentiment they have induced.

Some measure of their impact may be indicated by the ‘ladies of Kirkcaldy’ who, according to the Fife Herald, inspired by Douglass's visit in June, ‘recently formed themselves into an Anti-Slavery Society, to co-operate with other institutions of the same kind in this country, for the purpose of collecting money or articles of some value to be sent to the American Anti-Slavery Bazaar’. In doing so, they were following the example of nearly thirty women across Britain and Ireland whose names appeared in a list of those credited with supporting the cause in the second Irish edition of Douglass's Narrative, published a few months before.