Read the Following Excerpt From Fredrick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Fredirck Douglass

The publication in 1845 of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was a passport to prominence for a 20-7-year-erstwhile Negro. Upward to that year most of his life had been spent in obscurity. Born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838, going to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here for 4 years he turned his hand to odd jobs, his early hardships equally a costless man being lessened by the thriftiness of his wife. In August 1841, while attending an abolitionist meeting at Nantucket, he was prevailed upon to talk about his recollections of slavery. His sentences were halting but he spoke with feeling, whereupon the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Guild lost no time in engaging him as a total-time lecturer. For the post-obit four years the young ex-slave was one of the prize speakers of the Order, oft traveling the reform circuit in company with the high priests of New England abolitionism, William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips.

HUP's first edition of the Narrative, published in fabric in 1960

The publication of the Narrative brought to Douglass widespread publicity in America and in the British Isles. This was all he needed; henceforth his ain considerable abilities and the temper of the times would fully suffice to keep him in the limelight. His was among the most eventful of American personal histories.

Favorably endowed in physique, Douglass had the initial reward of looking similar a person destined for prominence. In that location was a dramatic quality in his very advent—his imposing figure, his deep-set, flashing eyes and well-formed nose, and the mass of hair crowning his head. An exceptional platform speaker, he had a vocalization created for public address in premicrophone America. In speaking he was capable of diverse degrees of low-cal and shade, his powerful tones hinting at a readiness to overcome faulty acoustics. His rich baritone gave an emotional vitality to every sentence. "In listening to him," wrote a contemporary, "your whole soul is fired, every nerve strung—every faculty you possess prepare to perform at a moment'due south bidding." Douglass' famed oratorical powers account in part for the large crowds that gathered to hear him over the span of half a century.

If nature equipped Douglass for a historic function, nineteenth-century America furnished an appropriate setting. Douglass came to manhood in a reform-conscious age, from which he was not tiresome to take his cue. Following the publication of his Narrative he went to the British Isles. There for two years he denounced American slavery before large and sympathetic audiences. The visits of Douglass and other ex-slaves contributed much to the anti-Amalgamated sentiment of the British masses during the Civil War.

Returning to America in 1847 Douglass moved to Rochester, where he launched an abolitionist weekly which he published for 16 years, a longevity most unusual in abolitionist journalism. Douglass' printing institution cost most $one,000 and was the first in America owned by a Negro. Douglass was a careful editor, insisting on high standards from office assistants and the contributors of weekly newsletters.

In addition to speaking and writing, Douglass took part in some other of the organized forms of action against slavery—the underground railroad. Himself a runaway, he was strongly in sympathy with those who made the dash for freedom. One time, in a heated controversy over the wisdom of giving the Bible to slaves, he asserted that it would be "infinitely amend to ship them a pocket compass and a pistol." The fees from many of his lectures went to help fugitives; at abolitionist meetings he passed the chapeau for funds to assist runaways to "get Canada nether their feet." He was superintendent of the Rochester terminus of the undercover railroad; his house was its headquarters. One of his newspaper employees related that information technology was no unusual thing for him, equally he came to work early in the morning, to discover fugitives sitting on the steps of the printing store, waiting for Douglass.

To assist further in the destruction of slavery, Douglass in 1850 became a political abolitionist. Hitherto he had been a moral-suasionist, shunning political action. But later three years in Rochester among the voting abolitionists, Douglass announced himself prepare to employ "the terse rhetoric of the ballot box," and his weekly became the official organ of the Freedom party. The fitful career of this political party was so near run, nearly of its followers having gone over to the Free Soil group. When in 1856 the small remnant of Liberty political party diehards decided to merge into the Radical Abolitionist party, Douglass was one of the signers of the phone call. In 1860 he was once more 1 of the policy-makers of the Radical Abolitionists. The insignificant vote polled by that party in the national ballot is unrecorded, but by 1860 the abolitionists were nearer to their goal than they could discern.

Douglass was a confidant of the man who became the North's Ceremonious War martyr, John Dark-brown. In November 1848, eleven years earlier Harpers Ferry, Douglass visited Dark-brown at Springfield at his invitation. The two reformers were friends from that time on. Ten years later, in Feb 1858, Brown was a house guest for three weeks at Douglass' habitation; here it was that Brownish drafted his blueprint for America, a "Conditional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States." When Brown was arrested on October xvi, 1859, for attempting to seize the authorities armory at Harpers Ferry, Douglass sped to Canada lest he be taken into custody as an accomplice.

The coming of the war had a bracing effect on Douglass; to him the conflict was a crusade for liberty. Because in his thinking the purpose of the war was the emancipation of the slaves, he was anxious that the Negro himself strike a blow. When President Lincoln called for volunteers immediately after the firing on Fort Sumter, Douglass urged colored men to class militia companies. He advised the President "How to End the War": "Let the slaves and the free colored people exist called into service and formed into a liberating ground forces, to march into the Due south and raise the banner of Emancipation among the slaves."

When information technology became clear that Lincoln could not exist rushed, Douglass' criticisms became severe. His tone grew less impatient, however, when "the slow coach at Washington" finally began to movement. Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation somewhat mollified Douglass, and he was almost won over after exposure to Lincoln'south charm at ii White Business firm visits.

Besides old to behave artillery himself, he served every bit a recruiting amanuensis, traveling through the North exhorting Negroes to sign upwardly. His beginning enrollee was his son Charles; another son before long followed suit. Douglass' success as a recruiting agent led him to await a military machine commission as an banana adjutant general nether General Lorenzo Thomas. Douglass had talked with Secretary of War Stanton and had gone abroad assertive the commission had been promised. Simply information technology never came.

Afterwards the war Douglass became a staunch supporter of the Republican party. His quadrennial delivery of the Negro vote did not get unrewarded; 3 Chiliad.O.P. presidents had political plums for him: Marshal of the District of Columbia, Recorder of Deeds for the District, and Minister to Republic of haiti.

During these last twenty years of Douglass' life he was the effigy to whom the mass of Negroes chiefly looked for leadership. Booker T. Washington and W. Due east. B. Du Bois were ready in the wings, but neither was prepared to step to the center of the stage until 1895, the year Douglass died. In the seventies and eighties the colored people looked to Douglass for counsel on the correct line to take on such matters as the annexation of Santo Domingo and the Negro exodus from the South. He had no selection but to assume such responsibilities every bit commending Clara Barton for opening an establishment in Washington to give employment to Negro women, explaining the causes for the mounting number of lynchings, and urging Negroes not to accept also literally the Biblical injunction to refrain from laying up treasures on globe.

The championing of the cause of the downtrodden points toward Douglass' major contribution to American commonwealth—that of property a mirror upwardly to it. He gave us no new political ideas; his were borrowed from Rousseau and Jefferson. Only America had no more vigilant critic, and none more loving. "The Star Spangled Banner" was one of the airs he oftentimes played on his violin; he envisioned the freedom-possessed America of patriotic song and story. Until it emerged, there would always be piece of work to do: "In a discussion, until truth and humanity shall cease to be living ideas, this struggle volition go on."

A 1969 paperback printing of HUP'southward edition of the Narrative

Douglass was a prolific writer; speeches, personal messages, formal lectures, editorials, and magazine articles literally poured from his pen. Well-nigh of this output has been brought together in a massive four-volume work by Philip Foner, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (New York, 1950–55). Non included in Foner'south collection, because of their length, are Douglass' virtually sustained literary efforts, his three autobiographies. The Narrative in 1845 was the commencement of these; we may note its distribution, reserving for a moment annotate on its general nature and its influence.

The Narrative'southward initial edition of 5,000 copies was sold in four months. Within a year iv more editions of 2,000 copies each were brought out. An additional republication occurred in 1848 and another in 1849. In the British Isles five editions appeared, two in Ireland in 1846 and three in England in 1846 and 1847. 4 of these Irish–English printings were editions of two,000 and ane was of v,000 copies. By 1850 a total of some thirty,000 copies of the Narrative had been published in America and the British Isles. To these may be added an 1848 French edition, paperbound, translated by S. K. Parkes. The nowadays text reproduces exactly that of the first edition, published in Boston in 1845.

The sales of the Narrative were boosted past good press notices. The book could count on laudatory statements from the reformist sheets, only information technology also got a column-and-a-half front-page review in the New York Tribune, lavish in its praise: "Considered merely as narrative, we have never read i more than uncomplicated, truthful, coherent and warm with genuine feeling" (June 10, 1845). Across the Atlantic the response was also encouraging. The influential Chambers' Edinburgh Journal praised the Narrative: it "bears all the advent of truth, and must, we conceive, aid considerably to disseminate correct ideas respecting slavery and its attendant evils" (January 24, 1846). An American journal, Littell'due south Living Age, pointing out that the autobiography had received many notices in the public press abroad, gave an estimate of its reach: "Taking all together, not less than one million of persons in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland and Republic of ireland have been excited by the volume and its commentators" (Apr, May, June 1846).

In 1855 Douglass published his second autobiography, My Chains and My Freedom. In this work of 462 pages, well over 3 times the length of the Narrative, Douglass expands on his life equally a freeman, and includes a fifty-eight page appendix comprising extracts from his speeches. My Chains was reprinted in 1856 and again in 1857, its total publication running to eighteen,000 copies. In 1860 it was translated into German by Ottilie Assing, who afterward became a treasured friend of the Negro reformer.

The final autobiagraphy, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, was published in 1881. In information technology Douglass had to reduce the space given to his slavery experiences in gild to narrate his Ceremonious War and postwar activities. Equally in My Bondage, however, he included excerpts from his speeches. Life and Times did non sell well. On July xix, 1889, its publishers regretfully informed Douglass that although they had "pushed and repushed" the book, information technology had become evident that "interest in the days of slavery was not as not bad as we expected." Another Boston publisher brought out the autobiography in 1892, hoping that Douglass' date as Haitian minister had made the reading public eager to take a fresh wait at his career. A revised edition was issued in 1893, but its auction was "a disappointment to united states," wrote DeWolfe, Fiske and Company on March ix, 1896, to Douglass' widow.

Life and Times was published in England in 1882 with an introductian by the well-known John Bright. A year later a French edition was brought out by the house of E. Plon and Company, and in 1895 at Stockholm a Swedish edition was issued. To these may be added a twentieth-century press; in 1941 the Pathway Printing republished Life and Times "in preparatian for the one hundredth anniversary af Douglass' first advent in the cause af emancipatian."

"Near of the narratives were overdrawn in incident and bitterly indignant in tone, but these very excesses fabricated for greater sales."

Neither Life and Times nor My Chains equaled the Narrative in sales or in influence. The final named had many advantages over its successors. As its title suggests, information technology was more storytelling in tone. It was cohesive whereas the others were not. Moreover, the Narrative was bars to slavery experiences, and lent itself very well to abolitionist propaganda. A closer look at this slim volume may propose the sources of its influence.

To begin with, it belongs to the "heroic fugitive" school of American literature. Slave narratives enjoyed a great popularity in the dues-bellum Northward. "Romantic and thrilling, they interested by the sheer horror of their revelations, and they satisfied in the reading public a craving for the sensational," writes John Herbert Nelson. Most of the narratives were overdrawn in incident and bitterly indignant in tone, but these very excesses made for greater sales.

Among the hundred or more of these slave-told stories, Douglass' has special points of merit. The title page of the Narrative carries the words, "Written Past Himself." And so it was. "Mr. Douglass has very properly called to write his ain Narrative," said Garrison in the Preface, "rather than to employ some ane else." The Douglass volume is therefore unusual among slave autobiographies, near of which were ghostwritten by abolitionist hacks. The Narrative has a freshness and a forcefulness that come up only when a certificate written in the beginning person has in fact been written past that person.

A paperback HUP edition of the Narrative from 2001

Except for the length of a few sentences and paragraphs, the Douglass autobiography would come out well in any mod readability assay. It is written in unproblematic and direct prose, complimentary of literary allusions, and is almost without quoted passages, except for a stanza from "the slave'south poet, Whittier," 2 lines from Hamlet, and one from Cowper. The details are always concrete, an element of style established in the opening line.

The Narrative is arresting in its sensitive descriptions of persons and places; fifty-fifty an unsympathetic reader must be stirred by its vividness if he is unmoved by its passion. It is not easy to make existent people come to life, and the Narrative is too brief and episodic to develop whatever grapheme in the round. But it presents a serial of sharply etched portraits, and in slave-billow Edward Covey we have i of the more conceivable prototypes of Simon Legree.

Contributing to the literary effectiveness of the Narrative is its pathos. Douglass scorned pity, but his pages are evocative of sympathy, as he meant them to be. Deeply affecting is the paragraph on his nearest of kin, creating its mood with the opening sentence: "I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than 4 or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night."

Perhaps the most striking quality of the Narrative is Douglass' ability to mingle incident with statement. He writes as a partisan, only his indignation is ever under control. Ane of the most moving passages in the book is that in which he tells about the slaves who were selected to go to the home plantation to get the monthly food allowance for the slaves on their subcontract. Douglass describes the manner in which these black journeyers sang on the manner, and tells us what those "rude and incoherent" songs really meant. He concludes, "If anyone wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him become to Colonel Lloyd'southward plantatlon, and, on allowance-day, identify himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul,—and if he is not thus impressed, it volition only be because 'in that location is no flesh in his obdurate heart.'"

Aside from its literary merit, Douglass' autobiography was in many respects symbolic of the Negro'due south part in American life. Its central theme is struggle. The Narrative is a articulate and passionate utterance both of the Negro's protest and of his aspiration. The book was written, as Douglass states in the closing judgement, in the hope that information technology would practise something toward "hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds."

The Narrative marked its author as the personification not merely of struggle but of performance. "I tin can't write to much advantage, having never had a day's schooling in my life," stated Douglass in 1842 (The Liberator, November 18, 1842). Withal three years later on this unschooled person had penned his autobiography. Such an achievement furnished an object lesson; information technology hinted at the space potentialities of man in whatever station of life, suggesting powers to be elicited.

The Narrative stamped Douglass as the foremost Negro in American reform. With the publication of this autobiographical piece of work he became the first colored man who could command an audience that extended across local boundaries or racial ties. From the day his volume saw print Douglass became a folk hero, a figure in whom Negroes had pride. His writings took on a scriptural significance every bit his accomplishments came to be shared imaginatively by his fellows.

"Douglass did not dislike whites—his close association with reformers in the abolitionist and woman's rights movements, his many friends across the color line, and the choice he made for his second married woman indicate that he was without a trace of anti-Caucasianism. The point is worth stressing."

Simply if Douglass emerged as the leading Negro among Negroes, this is not to say that the man was himself a racist, or that he glorified all things blackness. Never given to blinking unpleasant facts, Douglass did not hesitate to mention the frailties of the Negroes, as in the case of the quarrels between the slaves of Colonel Lloyd and those of Jacob Jepson over the importance of their respective masters. Douglass did not dislike whites—his shut association with reformers in the abolitionist and woman's rights movements, his many friends across the colour line, and the selection he made for his second wife indicate that he was without a trace of anti-Caucasianism. The point is worth stressing. For Douglass addressed his appeal less to Negroes than to whites—it was the latter he sought to influence. He did not propose to speak to Negroes exclusively; he wanted all America, if not all the world, for his sounding board.

A production of its historic period, the Narrative is an American book in theme, in tone, and in spirit. Pre-Civil-War America was characterized by reformist movements—woman's rights, peace, temperance, prison improvements, amid others. In the front rank of these programs for human being betterment stood the abolitionist crusade. During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, antislavery sentiment was widespread in the Western globe, just in the United States more distinctively than anywhere else the abolitionists took the role of championing civil liberties. Thus they identified themselves with the great American tradition of liberty which they proposed to translate into a universal American birthright. Moreover, the abolitionist motility shaped this state's history as did no other reform. It was destined to overshadow all other contemporary crusades, halting their progress almost completely for iv years while the American people engaged in a civil state of war acquired in large part by sectional animosities involving slavery.

The Narrative swept Douglass into the mainstream of the antislavery motility. It was a noteworthy addition to the entrada literature of abolitionism; a forceful volume by an ex-slave was a weapon of no small caliber. Naturally the Narrative was a biting indictment of slavery. The abolitionists did not think much of the technique of friendly persuasion; it was not calorie-free that was needed, said Douglass on one occasion, but burn. The Garrison–Phillips wing did not subscribe to a policy of soft words, and Douglass' volume indicated that he had non been a tiresome learner.

HUP's 2009 edition of the Narrative , with a comprehend illustration by Robert Carter, and a new Introduction by Robert Stepto replacing that of Quarles

Naturally the Narrative does not bother to take up the difficulties inherent in abolishing slavery. These Douglass would take dismissed with a wave of the hand. Similarly the Narrative recognizes no claim other than that of the slave. To Douglass the problems of social adjustment if the slaves were freed were nothing, the property rights of the masters were zilch, states' rights were nix. He simply refused to talk over these matters. Equally he viewed it, his part was to shake people out of their lethargy and goad them into action, non to discover reasons for sitting on the fence.

A final reason for the influence of the Narrative is its credibility. The book is soundly buttressed with specific information on persons and places, not a single 1 of them fictitious. Indeed, one reason that Douglass produced an autobiography was to abnegate the accuse that he was an impostor, that he had never been a slave. No i seems ever to have questioned the existence of any person mentioned in the Narrative.

Actually Douglass took pains to be as accurate as his memory and his knowledge permitted. His first master, Captain Aaron Anthony, tin can hands exist identified, since he was the general overseer for Colonel Edward Lloyd, the fifth Edward of a distinguished Eastern Shore family, the Lloyds of Wye. Anthony's responsible position in the management of the Lloyd plantations is clearly indicated in the Lloyd papers at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore. Douglass' figures on the extent of the Lloyd holdings could, of course, be only surmise on his part. For instance, Douglass states that Colonel Lloyd endemic twenty farms, whereas, equally the family unit papers evidence, he had thirteen. Douglass states that at that place were "from three to four hundred slaves" on the Home House plantation; actually for the time of which Douglass spoke there were 167 slaves on that farm, as is shown in the Lloyd inventory entitled, "1822 January…y Return Volume—A List of Negroes Stock and Farming Utensils—Corn Ingather and Wheat Stocked on the Estate of Colonel Edward Lloyd."

Every white person mentioned at St. Michael'south in the Narrative is identifiable in some ane of the county record books located at the Easton Court Business firm: Talbot County Wills, 1832–1848; Land Index, 1818–1832 and 1833–1850; and Wedlock Records for 1794–1825 and 1825–1840. Included among the xix St. Michael's whites are five for whom Douglass could supply simply final names. Sometimes, as in the case of Sheriff Joseph Graham, the occupation listed in the official records is the same as that given in the Narrative. Douglass had non always caught the name clearly: the man he called William Hamilton was undoubtedly William Hambleton; the Garrison West of the Narrative was Garretson West, and the clergyman Douglass called Mr. Ewery was very likely the Reverend John Emory.

For the Baltimore years the Douglass book mentions 6 whites. Of these city people five are listed either in Matchett'southward Baltimore Manager for 1835–6 or Matchett'due south Baltimore Director for 1837. Only one, a Mr. Butler, owner of a "send-yard virtually the drawbridge," is not readily identifiable.

For the incidents related in the Narrative we have of grade simply Douglass' word, but in one instance in that location is a coincidence worth noting. Douglass states that on i of the Lloyd plantations an overseer, Austin Gore, shot in cold claret a slave named Demby. The "Return Volume" for Jan 1, 1822, carries in the Davis Farm inventory the proper name of a "Bill Demby," aged 20. The "Return Book" for the adjacent year, 1823, carries the notation, "Nib Demby dead."

While Douglass' facts, mostly, can be trusted, can the same be said for his points of view? Did he tend to overstate his example? Information technology must be admitted that Douglass was not charitable to the slave-owning course, and that he did not practice justice to master Thomas Auld'south good intentions. Let it be said, too, that if slavery had a sunny side, information technology will non be found in the pages of the Narrative. It may as well be argued that the bondage that Douglass knew in Maryland was relatively beneficial. For a slave, Douglass' "lot was not especially a hard one," as Garrison pointed out in his Preface.

Slavery differed from place to place and elicited differing responses (surface responses peculiarly) from different slaves. Hence Douglass' treatment of slavery in the Narrative may be most equally much the revelation of a personality as information technology is the description of an institution. Simply, as the Narrative strongly testifies, slavery was not to be measured by the question whether the blackness workers on Colonel Lloyd'due south plantation were better off or worse off than the laboring poor of other places; slavery was to be measured by its blighting result on the human spirit.

It is always like shooting fish in a barrel to stir upward sympathy for people in chains, and perhaps Douglass seemed to protest too much in making slavery out equally a "soul-killing" institution. Just the get-go-hand evidence he submitted and the moving prose in which he couched his findings and observations combine to brand his Narrative one of the most arresting autobiographical statements in the entire catalogue of American reform.

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Source: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/frederick-douglass/