Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

After escaping from slavery, Frederick Bailey changed his name to

Frederick Douglass and became a prominent speaker in the abolitionist

movement. He was so eloquent that proslavery opponents charged him

with being a fraud who had never been a slave and challenged him to

reveal the true facts of his life. Such an account was dangerous for

Douglass, who could have been captured and returned to slavery for

life, but he proceeded to write in specific detail the account of his

experience as a slave, in order to reveal the inhumanity of that

“peculiar institution” and help bring about its overthrow. Prefaced

with an essay by William Lloyd Garrison and with a letter by Wendell

Phillips, both leading abolitionists, Narrative of the Life of

Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself is told in

straightforward chronology and a clear style, with a wealth of

realistic detail.

Douglass’ father was a white man, rumored to be his master, and one of

the abominations of slavery that Douglass denounced was the common

practice of white men forcing slave women to be their mistresses and

begetting children whom they never acknowledged, whom they owned and

could flog or sell at whim. As an infant, Douglass was separated from

his mother, whom he saw only a few times before she died. He had to

endure the horror of seeing his aunt repeatedly flogged and to know

that such a fate was in store for him. On a plantation on Maryland’s

Eastern Shore, Douglass never had enough food, clothing, or shelter,

and he had to sleep on the ground in an unheated shack. He saw fellow

slaves killed with impunity, a...

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...f an antislavery weekly

newspaper. In addition, he became an early advocate of women’s rights,

including the right to vote. During the Civil War, Douglass recruited

troops and after the war became marshal of the District of Columbia,

minister resident and consul general to Haiti, and chargé d’affaires

for Santo Domingo. The most distinguished nineteenth century African

American, Douglass has been called the father of the Civil Rights

movement. Along with Richard Wright’s Black Boy: A Record of Childhood

and Youth (1945), his autobiography is one of the most moving in

American literature.

Works Cited

David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of

Frederick Douglass : An American Slave, Written by Himself (The

Bedford Series in History and Culture) Bedford/St. Martin's; 2nd

edition 2002