Freed from jail and sent back to Baltimore to learn caulking, Douglass survives a brutal four-on-one beating by white apprentices at Gardiner's shipyard — an attack no court would hear, since Maryland law barred Black testimony against white men.
White mechanics' hostility to Black shipyard laborThe beating that nearly cost Douglass his left eyeThe magistrate's refusal to issue a warrant without white witnessesLearning caulking and earning wages he was forced to surrender