Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

by Frederick Douglass

  10 (p. 8) SLAVERY AS IT IS: Here and throughout this paragraph, Garrison offers a guarantee of the authenticity of Douglass’s report on slavery in terms that were typical of white abolitionists’ prefaces to slave narratives. The phrase “slavery as it is” may refer to Theodore Weld’s American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York: The American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), a best-selling compilation of reports in southern newspapers of brutalities suffered by slaves.

  11 (p. 11) “NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY NO! UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!’: Garrison’s flourish at the end of the preface echoes the rhetoric of the exhortatory abolitionist speech.

  12 (p. 13) In 1838, many were waiting for the results of the West India experiment: This is a reference to the emancipation of all slaves in the British West Indies; the process began with the Abolition Act of 1833, which called for abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire, and was peacefully completed on August 1, 1838.

  13 (p. 17) I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it: Evidence that was unavailable to Douglass indicates he was born in February 1818, and that he was twenty-seven years old while writing this Narra - tive. The question of his correct birth date and age plagued Douglass through his life.

  14 (p. 17) My father was a white man: Circumstantial and inconclusive evidence suggests that Douglass’s father was either Aaron Anthony, manager of the plantation Douglass was born on, or Thomas Auld, Anthony’s son-in-law.

  15 (p. 19) it will do away the force of the argument, that God cursed Ham: Noah’s punishment of his son Ham (which was to pronounce Ham’s son Canaan a slave to his brothers; see the Bible, Genesis 9:20-27) has been used to justify racism and prejudice against peoples of African descent, as some of Ham’s descendants, notably Cush, are black.

  16 (p. 20) Colonel Lloyd: Edward Lloyd V (1779-1834) was a governor of Maryland, a U.S. senator, and a slaveholder.

  17 (p. 23) If a slave was convicted of any high misdemeanor, ... he was... sold to Austin Woolfolk, or some other slave-trader: Before Douglass had reached the age of fourteen, one of his sisters, two aunts, seven cousins, and at least five other relatives, as well as other slaves he knew well, were sold farther south, many of them by the notorious Baltimore slave trader Austin Woolfolk.

  18 (p. 24) Mr. Severe was rightly named: Throughout his Narrative, Douglass is careful to give the actual names of all the individuals he mentions; he is just as careful to emphasize the irony of a name like this one (and Mr. Gore, Mr. Freeland, and others). In this case, Douglass has the local pronunciation (and thus its irony) correct, but the actual spelling was ”Sevier“; an overseer on Lloyd’s plantation, William Sevier had control over 165 slaves.

  19 (p. 28) The colonel also kept a splendid riding equipage. His stable and carriage-house presented the appearance of some of our large city livery establishments.... His carriage-house contained... three or four gigs, besides dearborns and baroucbes of the most fasbion able style: Douglass is comparing the colonel’s riding equipage—his carriages and horses—to the city’s large commercial stables, known as livery establishments. Gigs are light, two-wheeled carriages drawn by one horse; dearborns are light, four-wheeled carriages with curtained sides; and barouches are four-wheeled carriages with a covered passenger area that has facing double seats.

  20 (p. 29) enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants when they pleased: Here and elsewhere Douglass’s sarcasm is very sharp concerning the sadistic nature of slavery’s systems of control.

  21 (p. 36) My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes: Douglass uses this powerful literary device—in which the writer’s physical response or demonstration adds weight to a memory of the past—several times. See, for another example, the end of chapter II (p. 26), where he reports that as he was writing ”an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek.“

  22 (p. 37) I spent most of all these three days in the creek, ... preparing myselffor my departure: Douglass’s attention to washing implies a ritual cleansing or baptism as he prepares for a new life in the celebrated city of Baltimore.

  23 (p. 41) Baltimore: Baltimore had one of the largest concentrations of free people of color in the South; the free black community was nearly 30,000 strong.

  24 (p. 43) Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me: One of the themes in Douglass’s Narrative is that slavery was ruinous to all participants, black and white, slave and slaveholder.

  25 (p. 45) Just about this time, I got hold of a book entitled ”The Columbian Orator“: Caleb Bingham edited The Columbian Orator: Containing a Variety of Original and Selected Pieces Together with Rules Calculated to Improve Youth and Others in the Ornamental and Useful Art of Eloquence. First published in 1797, this anthology contained speeches dating from classical antiquity through the American Revolution and featured passage after passage about freedom, democracy, and courage—including the crucial ”Dialogue Between a Master and Slave.“ In addition, there was an extensive preface by Bingham on public speaking. Douglass bought a secondhand copy of the anthology for fifty cents at a bookstore on Thames Street, Baltimore. In preparation for his role in the abolition movement and as a spokesman for justice and freedom, Douglass could hardly have purchased a better guide and source book.

  26 (p. 45) one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation: Douglass is referring here not to the speeches of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), the Irish political leader and dramatist, but to the ”Speech in the Irish House of Commons in Favour of the Bill for Emancipating the Roman Catholics, 1795,“ by the Irish patriot Arthur O‘Connor.

  27 (p. 46) If a slave ... did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of as the fruit of abolition: It is likely that thirteen-year-old Douglass first read about ”abolitionists“ in the Baltimore American in August 1831, when Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in Virginia was front-page news.

  28 (p. 51) she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep: It turns out that Douglass was mistaken in his accusations against Thomas Auld regarding his grandmother’s treatment. In fact, after Betsey Bailey’s husband, Isaac, died Auld took her in and cared for her until her death in 1849. In a letter published in the North Star on September 7, 1849, Douglass apologized to Auld for the misstatement; he did so again during his famous meeting with Auld in June 1877, as Auld was dying.

  29 (p. 52) St. Michael’s: It was on this neck of land between the Miles and Broad Rivers that many of the clippers that established Baltimore as a major port city were produced.

  30 (p. 56) I have also seen Mr. George Cookman at our house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman: George Cookman was a Methodist minister, twice chaplain to the House of Representatives.

  31 (pp. 63-64) I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships:—”You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave!... There is a better day coming“-This apostrophe (a rhetorical address to a personified thing) echoes the biblical lament of Job when he speaks ”in the bitterness of [his] soul“ (see the Bible, Job 7:11, 10:1; King James Version); it ends with a line found in many Negro spirituals, ”There’s a better day a-coming.“ Perhaps the passage contains something of the teenager’s voice as well.

  32 (p. 67) I found Sandy an old adviser: Here ”old“ implies ancient wisdom won through long-cultivated experience and, perhaps, a connection with African traditions. The man’s name, Sandy, also may imply a connection between the natural and the spiritual realms.

  33 (p. 71) The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery.... So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up ... feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go ... back to the arms of slavery: This passage on drunkenness during the holidays typifies the abolitionist-temperance rhetoric of the time. Note h
ow elsewhere in this book the slaveholders’ extravagances of injustice are often enflamed by their drunkenness.

  34 (p. 79) I was never more certain of any thing: Here again—as in the incident with the root (pp. 67-68)—Sandy’s extraordinary powers are displayed; and again Douglass shares with him an experience of such powers.

  35 (p. 81) ”You yellow devil.... you long-legged mulatto devil!“: The theme of miscegenation (mixing of races) runs throughout the Narrative. Douglass knows his father is a white man; he observes that the white masters’ illicit slave children—a reproach to the white men’s wives—are sometimes singled out for special mistreatment (p. 19); here Douglass himself is vilified in terms that recall racist typologies concerning the peculiarly dangerous character of people of mixed race.

  36 (p. 81) ”Own nothing!“: Note that this advice follows several other examples of Douglass’s lesson that silence is often the best defense: ”A still tongue makes a wise head“ (p. 30).

  37 (p. 85) to strike a white man is death by Lynch law: The phrase ”lynch law“ refers to the punishment, usually by execution, of an accused person without legal procedure or authority. Lynch law was part of the slave codes (see note 4, above).

  38 (p. 88) underground railroad: This term describes the abolition movement’s practice of assisting fugitive slaves in their escape from the South to the free North and West.

  39 (p. 94) I was relieved... by the humane hand ofMR. DAVID RUGGLES : An African American born free in Connecticut, David Ruggles (1810-1849) founded the New York Vigilance Committee, an organization that helped fugitive slaves escape slavery. He aided Douglass in his escape from Maryland, and permitted Douglass to stay in his home on his way to New Bedford in 1838.

  40 (p. 94) Mr. Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable Darg case: On September 6, 1839, Ruggles was arrested for harboring Thomas Hughes, a fugitive slave from Arkansas who was pursued by his owner John P Darg.

  41 (p. 94) Anna, my intended wife: Douglass met Anna Murray (1813-1882), a free black and an abolitionist, in Baltimore. She sold one of her two featherbeds to help Douglass pay for his escape, and later joined him in New York. She and Douglass were married for forty-four years and raised five children.

  42 (p. 95) J W. C. Pennington”: After escaping from slavery in Maryland around 1831, Pennington (1807-1870) went on to teach, write, and speak against slavery, and to pastor Congregational and Presbyterian churches. He wrote The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the history of James W C. Pennington, pastor of a Presbyterian church, New York, formerly a slave in the State of Maryland (London, 1850).

  43 (p. 96) Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and at once suggested that my name be “Douglass”: The name “Douglas,” to which Douglass added an s, is from Sir Walter Scott’s 1810 poem Lady of the Lake, a historical romance set in the Scottish Highlands. Scott’s Lord James of Douglas is a wrongfully exiled Scottish chieftain, revered for his goodness and bravery. This whole paragraph, which deals with names and naming, is quite significant in a context in which slaves in America could not be sure of their ancestry, or sometimes even—as in the case of Douglass—of their father’s identity. From the slave narratives through The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), this problem of names has reflected larger problems of identity and familial linkage: the sometimes heroic, sometimes blundering and comic, quest for home and family in a world where one’s name is invented, one’s identity an improvisation.

  44 (p. 96) I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New Bedford: By “disappointed,” Douglass means “unsettled” or “surprised”; the reality of life in New Bedford was much more orderly and prosperous than the southern planters would have had Douglass believe to be the case in the free North.

  45 (p. 100) Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court ofheaven to serve the devil in”: Douglass is recalling lines from The Course of Time, by Scottish poet Robert Pollok (1799-1827): “He was a man / Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven / To serve the Devil in” (book 8, lines 616-618).

  46 (p. 102) Pilate and Herod friends!: Pontius Pilate was the Roman procurator of Judea (26-c.36 A.D.) who tried and condemned Jesus. Herod I (known as Herod the Great) was the Roman-appointed king of Judea (37-4 B.C.) when Jesus was bom; in the Bible, Herod is responsible for the extermination of infants of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16-18).

  INSPIRED BY NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE

  America has the mournful honor of adding a new department to the literature of civilization,—the autobiographies of escaped slaves.

  —Ephraim Peabody

  Slave Narratives

  The autobiographical slave narrative is a specific literary genre that includes works from as long ago as the early 1700s. A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man (1760) is generally considered the first slave narrative, although Adam Negro’s Tryall appeared in 1703. The age of Robinson Crusoe-type adventure tales included several chronicles of slavery, among them A Narrative of the Lord’s Wonderful Dealings with, j. Mur- rant, a Black, Taken Down from His Own Relation (1784) and The Interesting Narrative of Olaudab Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789). The History of Mary Prince:A West Indian Slave, the first slave narrative written by a woman, was published in 1831.

  But slave narratives did not gel as a literary form until 1845, when Frederick Douglass published his story. His articulate descriptions of the abuses perpetrated by his masters revealed horrors of slavery that previously were unimaginable to most Americans and spurred a nation-wide public outrage against slavery.

  Douglass’s narrative was followed by more slaves’ stories, including Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), published under the pseudonym Linda Brent; the author was actually Harriet Jacobs, an escaped slave who worked for a time with Douglass’s circle of abolitionists in Rochester, New York. Harriet Tubman led so many slaves to freedom as a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad that she earned the nickname “Moses.” Unable to read or write, Tubman dictated her 1869 narrative, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman.

  Slave narratives not only gave voice to many African Americans, who were previously excluded from the literary life of the nation; they also left their mark on modem literature. For example, describing her aim in writing the novel Beloved (1987), Toni Morrison said she wished “to fill in the blanks that the slave narratives left, to part the veil that was so frequently drawn.” Beloved, which includes descriptions of the Middle Passage (the delivery of Africans on ships to the Americas) and the Underground Railroad, earned Morrison a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

  VisualArt

  One of the most highly regarded artists of the twentieth century, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) produced a huge body of work. After attending Frederick Douglass Junior High School in New York City, Lawrence began forging his identity as a modern artist and became associated with the Harlem Renaissance in its later stages. Later, almost echoing Douglass’s ideas, Lawrence said, “My belief is that it is most important for an artist to develop an approach and philosophy about life—if he has developed this philosophy, he does not put paint on canvas, he puts himself on canvas.” When he was twenty-two, Lawrence painted a series of thirty-two panels titled The Life of Frederick Douglass. Executed in a simple, allegorical style and striking, vibrant colors, the panels depict many of the events Douglass describes in his Narrative—learning to read, resisting the slave-breaker Mr. Covey, planning his escape, listening to William Lloyd Garrison lecture in the North, and receiving government appointments.

  Children’s Literature

  A civil-rights activist, distinguished actor, accomplished director, and published author, Ossie Davis personifies the achievement Frederick Douglass sought for African Americans. Davis wrote and directed Escape to Freedom: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass (1978), a chronicle of Douglass’s early life through his escape to the North. The play educa
tes children on Douglass’s many accomplishments, including his books, speeches, and political appointments. Davis has been honored with the NAACP Image Award, the National Medal of Arts, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and the New York Urban League Frederick Douglass Award.

  Statuary

  Frederick Douglass was the first African American to whom a public sculpture was dedicated. The bronze statue was dedicated on June 9,1899, in Rochester, New York, with Theodore Roosevelt, governor of New York, in attendance. The cast of Douglass stands with arms held forward, palms up, as if welcoming visitors. The statue is the work of James W. Thomas, an African-American artist from Rochester. Originally erected near the train station, the statue enjoyed a prominent position in the city; in 1941 it was moved to Highland Park, near the site of Douglass’s Rochester home.

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous witb the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave through a variety of voices and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.

  Comments

  LYNN PIONEER

  My readers will be delighted to learn that Frederick Douglass—the fugitive slave—has at last concluded his narrative. All who know the wonderful gifts of friend Douglass know that his narrative must, in the nature of things, be written with great power. It is so indeed. It is the most thrilling work which the American press ever issued—and the most important. If it does not open the eyes of this people, they must be petrified into eternal sleep.