Writing to Garrison in London, Douglass remarks of the freedom he enjoys in public places: ‘There is no distinction on account of color. The white man gains nothing by being white, and the black man losing nothing by being black. “A man's a man for a’ that.”

Douglass was never afraid to flaunt his knowledge of Robert Burns. The first book he purchased after escaping from slavery was an edition of his works, which he later gave to his eldest son, Lewis. In Dundee – to laughter and cheers – he says of the defenders of the Free Church ‘that, to use the language of one of your own poets, “the De’il has business on his hands.”’ But it is in the county of Burns's birth that Douglass dwells at length on the man and his work.

In March 1846 he visited Ayr, where he was shown the monument erected in Burns's memory two decades earlier, and called on Isabella Begg, the poet's youngest sister, then in her seventies, who lived in a cottage close by with her two daughters. ‘I have felt more interest in visiting this place than any other in Scotland,’ he wrote to an American friend, ‘for, as you are aware […] I am an enthusiastic admirer of Robt. Burns.’ The second of two lectures he gave in the town's Relief Church on Cathcart Street was a long one, recounting the story of his life as a slave, his learning to read and write, his escape, his work in New Bedford, and then his new career as an abolitionist orator and author, and subsequent voyage to Britain. Wrapping up its coverage, the local newspaper reported: ‘At some future time, he said, he might be again in Ayr; and he was proud of having been in the land of him who had spoken out so nobly against the oppressions and the wrongs of slavery – he alluded, of course, to Robert Burns.’

Douglass's enthusiastic admiration may surprise some readers today. After all, it was widely known that in the summer of 1786, Burns had obtained a position on a sugar plantation near Port Antonio in Jamaica, owned by an Ayrshire doctor Patrick Douglas and managed by his brother Charles.