This is the account of Frederick Douglass of his time as a
slave and as a runaway before he became a public speaker. It was published in 1845 partially, I am
told, to counter critics who charged that no runaway slave could possibly be as
eloquent and well-spoken as Douglass was.
At this time Douglass was in his late twenties based on an age overheard
from his master in 1835.
The Dover Thrift Edition I have opens with a preface by
William Lloyd Garrison, a leading figure in one wing of the abolitionist party
in New England in the time before the Civil War. Garrison expounds on Douglass’s skill as an
orator and fulminates on the terrible crime of slavery, particularly as it was
practiced in the southern states. It
also has a letter from Wendell Phillips to Frederick Douglass, praising him for
writing the “Narrative”.
This work is the work of a speaker. It reads as if Douglass is there speaking and
that gives it a certain power that is missing in the prefaces to this work. It begins where Douglass began; on a farm in
Maryland. It proceeds through his life
with regular digressions reflecting on various topics about slavery in general. He describes how he first learned to read and
then to write by various subterfuges. He
talks about how slaves were often separated from friends and family at the whim
of their owners.
He also describes the evolution of Mrs. Auld as she goes
from never having owned a slave to owning him.
The transition from being a kind and generous woman to being suspicious
and cruel is shown in a bare bones way, but that makes it all the more
remarkable as a sign of the corrosiveness of slave ownership.
Another period that is described in some detail is his time
with Mr. Covey, a poor farmer who used his reputation as a slave “breaker” to
get cheap labor. In the first sixth
months Frederick Douglass didn’t resist Covey and was reduced to little more
than a brute by hunger, exhaustion, the beatings for any cause, and the stress
of never knowing when Covey was watching.
After that sixth months Douglass collapsed and went back to his master’s
plantation. The master provided no
assistance and required Douglass to return to Covey, but when Douglass returned
he decided to resist Covey. That
resistance saved his life and brought Douglass into a spiritual freedom.
One interesting thing about the account is that almost no
one that gave Douglass material aid is ever named and this is explained as an
effort not to bring them any embarrassment or other troubles. Despite this often groups of people are
described. The exception to naming names
is for his owners; who he names and assesses.
A few get a kind word and few are described as being the most brutal of
wretches, though none is worth being a slave for.
Douglass concludes with an almost bashful account of how he
became a public speaker for abolitionists.
This edition continues with an appendix where in Douglass
lays into the common American Christianity of his day for gross hypocracy. This brief appendix could be, if read aloud, a
powerful and biting indictment.
Douglass’s style is very powerful in this book, especially
if you read it aloud or perform it. It
is well worth reading both to learn about a dark part of America’s history and
also for the incredible style. As
Douglass studied “The Columbian Orator” so this work could be fruitfully studied
by those interested in the arts of rhetoric.
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