The autobiographies of Frederick Douglass are a milestone of US literary, political, and social history.
To deepen my appreciation for our history and the ongoing crises, racial and otherwise, I have been enjoying the final autobiography of Frederick Douglass, of the three that he wrote. This is the longest and, for obvious reasons, most comprehensive, where he can provide details about his escape and controversial activities that had been too sensitive previously, and cover later parts of his career. It is a paragon of style, incisive analysis, and emotional impact. Not having a great deal to add myself, I give over this blog to a few selected quotes.
Douglass (then named Bailey, and in his late teens), was sent by his master to a Mr. Covey, who specialized in "breaking" unruly slaves, by supervising and working them relentlessly, and whipping them weekly. Finally, after an escape attempt, Douglass he has had enough and fights back, come what may. What comes is that Covey gives in completely, and is cowed for the rest of the year from laying a finger on Douglass.
This battle with Mr. Covey, undignified as it was and as I fear my narration of it is, was the turning point in my "life as a slave." It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty. It brought up my Baltimore dreams and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I was a man now. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect, and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be a free man. A man without force is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, though it can pity him, and even this it cannot do long if signs of power do not arise. p. 591 in the American library edition of the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass.
Douglass took a long tour in Britain, where he marvels at the discrimination he is not experiencing. It remains a deep statement about the work that still now remains.
I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life. The warm and generous cooperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the prompt and liberal manner in which the press has rendered me its aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder, everywhere evinced; the cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion, have embraced me and lent me their aid; the kind hospitality constantly proffered me by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the entire absence of everything that looks to me like prejudice against me, on account of the color of my skin, contrast so strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and amazement at the transition. In the southern part of the United States, I was a slave - thought of and spoken of as property; in the language of the law, "held, taken, reputed, and adjudged to be a chattel in the and of my owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes, whatsoever". In the Northern States, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at any moment like a felon, and to be hurled into the terrible jaws of slavery- doomed, by an inveterate prejudice against color, to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the question)- denied the privileges and courtesies common to others in the use of the most humble means of conveyance- shut out from the cabins on steamboats, refused admission to respectable hotels, caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with impunity by any one, no matter how black his heart, so he has a white skin. But now behold the change! Eleven days and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand miles of perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchial government. Instead of the bright blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, gray fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as a 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 the same parlor- I dine at the same table- and no one is offended. No delicate nose grows deformed in my presence. I find no difficulty here in obtaining admission into any place of worship, instruction, or amusement, on equal terms with people as white as any I ever saw in the United States. I meet nothing to remind me of my complexion. 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." pp. 688-689, ibid.
Douglass looks at the pre-civil war politics of Southern resentment and entitlement, upon the growing spread and success of the abolition movement, which had been Douglass's work for the prior decade.
... Mr. Calhoun and other southern statesmen were more than ever alarmed at the rapid increase of anti-slavery feeling in the North, and devoted their energies more and more to the work of devising means to stay the torrents and tie up the storm. They were not ignorant of whereunto this sentiment would grow if unsubjected and unextinguished. Hence they became fierce and furious in debate, and more extravagant than ever in their demands for additional safeguards for their system of robbery and murder. Assuming that the Constitution guaranteed their rights of property in their fellow men, they held it to be in open violation of the Constitution for any American citiazen in any part of the United States to speak, write, or act against this right. But this shallow logic they plainly saw could do them no good unless they could obtain further safeguards for slavery. In order to effect this the idea of so changing the Constitution was suggested that there should be two instead of one President of the United States- one from the North and the other from the South- and that no measure should become a law without the assent of both. But this device was so utterly impracticable that it soon dropped out of sight, and it is mentioned here only to show the desperation of the slaveholders to prop up their system of barbarism against which the sentiment of the North was being directed with destructive skill and effect. They clamored for more slave States, more power in the Senate and House of Representatives, and insisted upon the suppression of free speech. At the end of two years, in 1850, when Clay and Calhoun, two of the ablest leaders the South ever had, were still in the Senate, we had an attempt at a settlement of the differences between the North and South which our legislators meant to be final. What those measures were I need not here enumerate, except to say that chief among them was the Fugitive Slave Bill, frames by James M. Mason of Virginia and supported by Daniel Webster of Massachusetts- a bill undoubtedly more designed to involve the North in complicity with slavery and deaden its moral sentiment than to procure the return of fugatives to their so-called owners. For a time this design did not altogether fail. Letters, speeches, and pamphlets literally rained down upon the people of the North, reminding them of their constitutional duty to hunt down and return to bondage any runaway slaves. In this the preachers were not much behind the press and the politicians, especially that class of preachers known as Doctors of Divinity. A long list of these came forward with their Bibles to show that neither Christ nor his holy apostles objected to returning fugatives to slavery. Now that that evil day is past, a sight of those sermons would, I doubt not, bring the red blush of shame to the cheeks of many. pp. 722-723, ibid.
In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln, the North sought ways to avoid war ... does this attitude sound familiar?
While this humiliating reaction was going on at the North, various devices to bring about peace and reconciliation were suggested and pressed at Washington. Committees were appointed to listen to Southern grievances, and, if possible, devise means of redress for such as might be alleged. Some of these peace propositions would have been shocking to the last degree tot he moral sense of the North, had not fear for the safety of the Union overwhelmed all moral conviction. Such men as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Henry B. Anthony, Joshua R. Giddings, and others- men whose courage had been equal to all other emergencies- bent before this southern storm, and were ready to purchase peace at any price. ... Everything that could be demanded by insatiable pride and selfishness on the part of the slave-holding South, or could be surrendered by abject fear and servility on the part of the North, had able and eloquent advocates.
Happily for the cause of human freedom, and for the final unity of the American nation, the South was mad, and would listen to no concessions. It would neither accept the terms offered, nor offer others to be accepted. It had made up its mind that under a given contingency it would secede from the Union and thus dismember the Republic. pp.770-771, ibid.
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| Douglass's influence can be appreciated in small part by this piece in his honor by N. Clark Smith. |
