Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass
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the docks and learned the trade of caulking (sealing) ships. All the time, he secretly memorized written instructions for ships’ construction. Socially, some doors to free black homes and African American churches began to be open to him.
But just as Frederick was beginning to see a path out of slavery, the death of his master meant that he had to return to the Talbot County property. A subsequent owner's death resulted in Douglass, now a teenager, being assigned to several farms doing work for which he had no training or experience. In an attempt to break his assumed resistance (which was, more probably, his ineptitude) to this new labor, Frederick was sent to a “slave breaker,” Edward Covey, whose job was to beat slaves into lifelong submission to their owners. The Narrative includes horrible descriptions of his time under Covey, but ultimately the breaker was unsuccessful. Douglass somehow kept his dignity, and his intelligence and skills seemed to mark him out for other things.
Psychologically, Douglass felt that he emerged from these experiences a free man, although legally he was still enslaved. He was sent to several other locations to do farm labor, and his biggest complaint was that most of them did not provide enough food or even enough time to eat the little they were given. At one location he developed a group of friends who worked and worshipped with him. He taught them how to read and provided Sunday School lessons to those who were willing. This instruction was a great source of pride.
In 1833, the group hatched an unsuccessful plan to run away. After being jailed for a short time, Douglass was returned to his former Baltimore home, where he worked again on the docks. Eventually, he began hiring himself out and presenting his wages to his master and receiving a small percentage for himself. He developed a relationship with a free black woman, Anna Murray, who would become his wife. She helped him cultivate friendships with others in the African American community both at work and at church, and the pair began planning a free life together.
FLEEING NORTH
Douglass eventually got another chance in 1838. After an altercation with his owner about an unapproved absence at a religious camp meeting, he was even more determined to escape. With Anna's help, who provided him with a sailor's outfit and money for travel, he was able to board a train north and then take a steamboat to Pennsylvania, an anti-slavery city. From there he made it to a safe house in New York City belonging to black abolitionist David Ruggles.
Soon after, Murray joined Douglass in New York and the couple were married. They settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a whaling town that was also a center of abolitionist activity and where many former slaves had relocated. The couple were helped by Nathan Johnson, a successful businessman and abolitionist who had bought his freedom. To celebrate his liberty, Frederick (who was still known as Frederick Bailey) let Johnson choose a new last name for him. Johnson, who had been reading Walter Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake (which features characters from the Scottish Douglas family) suggested Douglass. The men may also have been thinking of Grace Douglass, a prominent African American abolitionist at the time.
The northern states had started the process of ending slavery during the American Revolution, so the practice no longer existed there. Nevertheless, racial prejudice and discrimination dominated social interaction between the races. In New Bedford, Douglass wanted to work as a ship caulker as he had in Maryland, but the white workers banned him because of his color. Douglass also found that white churches were not welcoming, so he joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and eventually became a licensed lay preacher, but was never ordained. His roles included church sexton, Sunday School superintendent, and steward. Adjusting to the new racial climate, Douglass was able to obtain regular work as a laborer on the docks.
He voraciously read newspapers but especially The Liberator, edited by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and largely funded by free African Americans. Garrison and a small army of abolition orators and lecturers regularly spoke out against slavery.
WRITER AND SPEAKER
Douglass quietly began to attend antislavery meetings. Then, in 1841, spurred by the inaccurate, sometimes even ridiculous representations of Southern slavery, he spoke for the first time as a former slave and an eyewitness of numerous atrocities. Thus commenced his career, encouraged by Garrison and others, as an abolitionist orator.
As a tall, mahogany-skinned man with a resonant baritone voice and a lion's mane of hair, he was such an impressive speaker that his mostly white audiences found it unbelievable that he had ever been a slave at all. Because of the enforced ignorance of blacks, many whites assumed that slaves were not teachable. Pseudo-scientific ideas about race abounded, none of which were complimentary to descendants of Africa, free or enslaved.
Douglass went on a speaking tour around the Eastern and Midwestern states of America organized by the Anti-Slavery Society. At some events he was jostled and injured by defenders of slavery, and publicity led to threats of further harm and kidnapping.
Some slave narratives had been ghostwritten, so to prove his authenticity Douglass set out to write his Narrative entirely by his own hand. Published in Boston in 1845 by William Lloyd Garrison, its initial print run of 5,000 copies sold in four months, and further printings soon followed.
His first trip abroad, in 1845, was a two-year lecture tour of England and Ireland, where he was constantly amazed to be treated as an equal to white people. In My Bondage and My Freedom, he recalls:
I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab – I am seated beside white people – I reach the hotel – I enter the same door – I am shown into the same parlour – I dine at the same table – and no one is offended … I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church, I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip to tell me, ‘We don't allow niggers in here!’
The talks helped the Narrative become popular in Ireland and England, with five editions produced there between 1846 and 1847. After returning to America, he began publishing an abolitionist newspaper, The North Star. He also published a fictionalized account of a slave's life, The Heroic Slave (1852).
The expectation had been that Douglass would simply tell the story of what had happened to him, but as his reading became wider he began speaking and writing on matters of politics and political philosophy. He noted in a talk in New York in 1847, “I have no love for America, as such; I have no patriotism. I have no country. What country have I? The Institutions of this Country do not know me – do not recognize me as a man.”
The Narrative is the first of three autobiographical works, including My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised 1892). As well as a glowing preface by William Lloyd Garrison, it was endorsed by prominent abolitionist Wendell Phillips. All three autobiographies were bestsellers at home and abroad and were a significant source of income for Douglass.
The backlash to Narrative was considerable. Runaways like Douglass could be recaptured anytime. Owners published their slaves’ descriptions in newspapers and often offered generous rewards for their return. Secrecy was the byword for the fugitives. Nevertheless, Douglass wrote his autobiography revealing his past in detail. He provided particulars about the names