Frederick Douglass

9 Key excerpts on "Frederick Douglass"

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  Three African-American Classics

  Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

  • W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Dover Publications

    (Publisher)

  NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF Frederick Douglass Passage contains an image

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  Perhaps the most powerful and influential black American of his time, Frederick Douglass (1818—1895) embodied the tumultuous social changes that transformed the United States during the nineteenth century. In a career of unprecedented breadth, Douglass rose from the oppression of his slave’s birth to become an internationally famous writer and orator, one of the most visible spokesmen for the Abolition movement before the Civil War and a key player in the political intrigues that followed the enfranchisement of the emancipated slaves after the Confederate surrender. An effective molder of public opinion, Douglass was a tireless lecturer and essayist and the editor of a succession of periodicals that solidified his renown while contributing significantly to the public discourse on a variety of issues.

  Douglass’ own experiences as a former slave formed the basis of his immensely captivating presence as an orator, and served as a major component of the three autobiographies published during his lifetime. The first of these, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , appeared in 1845, a few years after Douglass’ dramatic 1841 début into the world of professional moral oratory. Written in part to counter the incredulity of audiences dubious that a speaker of Douglass’ eloquence could have emerged virtually unaided from such a lowly background, and featuring introductions by noted white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, the Narrative

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  A Nation Divided

  Ten Portraits of Those Who Formed It

  • Paul D. Escott(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • University of Virginia Press

    (Publisher)

  Frederick Douglass

  The Outsider as Resolute Prophet

  F ew abolitionists began life more differently than Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was born into a prominent, influential, and well-educated family; he was born into slavery, never knew his father, and quickly lost most contact with his mother. Stowe never knew financial insecurity; Douglass began with nothing and often worked to the point of exhaustion to make ends meet and support a large family. Yet both made an indelible mark in the campaign against slavery, and both achieved notoriety, fame, and influence. Each became a well-known author, and Douglass in addition became a famous lecturer whose image was one of the best known in the nineteenth century.

  Frederick Douglass’s rise and achievements were remarkable. He was an independent person who showed, throughout his life, both enormous resourcefulness and personal courage. After learning to read largely on his own, he continued a thorough self-education and developed such a mastery of language that his three autobiographies attracted a wide readership. His skill as an orator impressed many thousands in the United States and in the British Isles. Yet America’s racist white majority never embraced a Black man demanding the inclusion of his people. Douglass often faced physical violence and racist hate, and at various times he withstood scathing attacks even from fellow abolitionists and Black leaders. As one of the two or three most famous, most effective figures in the abolitionist cause, he played a role in the coming of the Civil War, and during the conflict he fought successfully to influence Abraham Lincoln and federal policy.

  The independence that Douglass demonstrated throughout his life was perhaps his most remarkable trait. It bolstered him through innumerable confrontations with white racism and gave him an honest, authentic voice. To chart a lonely course for oneself, to go against the grain of society, to challenge even one’s allies and supporters is uncommon because it is enormously difficult. Human beings need acceptance and a substantial degree of affirmation from their fellows, and for that reason true independence is psychologically demanding and rare. Frederick Douglass repeatedly assailed established views, challenged consensus, and stood alone. He never wavered in his fight for emancipation and equal rights, guided by religious faith and a determination to help the oppressed men and women of his race. From the Bible he drew the strength and inspiration to be a prophet, lashing out at his country over the wrongs it inflicted on African Americans. In the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, as well as his own experience, he found the goals of freedom and equal rights for which he fought unceasingly.

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  Frederick Douglass

  A Biography

  • Charles W. (Charles Waddell) Chesnutt(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  If it be no small task for a man of the most favored antecedents and the most fortunate surroundings to rise above mediocrity in a great nation, it is surely a more remarkable achievement for a man of the very humblest origin possible to humanity in any country in any age of the world, in the face of obstacles seemingly insurmountable, to win high honors and rewards, to retain for more than a generation the respect of good men in many lands, and to be deemed worthy of enrolment among his country's great men. Such a man was Frederick Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer force of character and talents that neither slavery nor caste proscription could crush must ever remain as a shining illustration of the essential superiority of manhood to environment. Circumstances made Frederick Douglass a slave, but they could not prevent him from becoming a freeman and a leader among mankind.

  The early life of Douglass, as detailed by himself from the platform in vigorous and eloquent speech, and as recorded in the three volumes written by himself at different periods of his career, is perhaps the completest indictment of the slave system ever presented at the bar of public opinion. Fanny Kemble's Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, kept by her in the very year of Douglass's escape from bondage, but not published until 1863, too late to contribute anything to the downfall of slavery, is a singularly clear revelation of plantation life from the standpoint of an outsider entirely unbiased by American prejudice. Frederick Douglass's Narrative is the same story told from the inside. They coincide in the main facts; and in the matter of detail, like the two slightly differing views of a stereoscopic picture, they bring out into bold relief the real character of the peculiar institution. Uncle Tom's Cabin

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  My Bondage, My Freedom

  • Frederick Douglass(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Start Publishing LLC

    (Publisher)

  When a man raises himself from the lowest condition in society to the highest, mankind pay him the tribute of their admiration; when he accomplishes this elevation by native energy, guided by prudence and wisdom, their admiration is increased; but when his course, onward and upward, excellent in itself, furthermore proves a possible, what had hitherto been regarded as an impossible, reform, then he becomes a burning and a shining light, on which the aged may look with gladness, the young with hope, and the down-trodden, as a representative of what they may themselves become. To such a man, dear reader, it is my privilege to introduce you.

  The life of Frederick Douglass, recorded in the pages which follow, is not merely an example of self-elevation under the most adverse circumstances; it is, moreover, a noble vindication of the highest aims of the American anti-slavery movement. The real object of that movement is not only to disenthrall, it is, also, to bestow upon the Negro the exercise of all those rights, from the possession of which he has been so long debarred.

  But this full recognition of the colored man to the right, and the entire admission of the same to the full privileges, political, religious and social, of manhood, requires powerful effort on the part of the enthralled, as well as on the part of those who would disenthrall them. The people at large must feel the conviction, as well as admit the abstract logic, of human equality; the Negro, for the first time in the world’s history, brought in full contact with high civilization, must prove his title first to all that is demanded for him; in the teeth of unequal chances, he must prove himself equal to the mass of those who oppress him — therefore, absolutely superior to his apparent fate, and to their relative ability. And it is most cheering to the friends of freedom, today, that evidence of this equality is rapidly accumulating, not from the ranks of the half- freed colored people of the free states, but from the very depths of slavery itself; the indestructible equality of man to man is demonstrated by the ease with which black men, scarce one remove from barbarism — if slavery can be honored with such a distinction — vault into the high places of the most advanced and painfully acquired civilization. Ward and Garnett, Wells Brown and Pennington, Loguen and Douglass, are banners on the outer wall, under which abolition is fighting its most successful battles, because they are living exemplars of the practicability of the most radical abolitionism; for, they were all of them born to the doom of slavery, some of them remained slaves until adult age, yet they all have not only won equality to their white fellow citizens, in civil, religious, political and social rank, but they have also illustrated and adorned our common country by their genius, learning and eloquence.

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  American Political Thought

  The Philosophic Dimension of American Statesmanship

  • Morton Grodzins, Richard Stevens(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Frederick Douglass Herben J. Storing One of the major themes of American statesmanship and political thought is the indelible impression made upon the American polity by the institution of slavery. Few men understood that institution so well as Frederick Douglass. Few men labored so wisely and effectively to destroy it. Few men saw so deeply into its implications. Douglass never abandoned the perspective of the black American. He was always and deliberately a partisan, in the sense that he adopted the stance and the duties of one who speaks for only a part (though in this case a uniquely important part) of the political whole. Yet few men deserve so fully the rank of American statesman. Douglass began his public career when, not three years after his escape from slavery and while leading the hard life of a common laborer in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he accepted an invitation to speak a few words at an 1841 anti-slavery convention on his experiences as a slave. He spoke so well that he was invited by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Sociey to become one of its agents, telling of his experiences throughout the eastern states. But it was not enough for him to follow the advice of his white abolitionist friends: “Give us the facts,” they said, “we will take care of the philosophy,” Douglass’ mind was always working; he could not talk about slavery without thinking about it. “It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs—I felt like denouncing them.” 1 Inevitably doubts were expressed whether a man who reasoned so well and in such fine and eloquent language could ever have been a slave. Partly in response to these doubts Douglass wrote the first of his several autobiographical works, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, published in 1845. 2 The facts were established—at considerable risk to Douglass, for his whereabouts thereby became known in Maryland—but the small volume is a good deal more than a narrative

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  Early Black American Writers

  • Benjamin Brawley(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Dover Publications

    (Publisher)

  Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass has a place not only in the literature of the Negro but in the oratory of the world. His career was a romance of progress from the lowly estate of a slave to an exalted place in the life of his people and the nation. He was born at Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland, probably in February, 1817. His father was an unknown white man, and his mother, Harriet Bailey, a slave. In his early years he was taken to Baltimore as a servant, but he learned his letters and thenceforth was eager for a education. When about thirteen years of age he got hold of a book of speeches called The Columbian Orator, and stirring appeals for liberty awoke in him something that he never lost. At sixteen he was sent to work on a farm. The lash was freely applied to the slaves; but one day the stalwart youth resisted the attempt to whip him, and nevermore was he thus corrected. In 1836 he planned with some others to escape, but the plot was divulged and he was thrown into jail. His master then arranged for his return to Baltimore, where he learned the trade of a calker and eventually was permitted to hire his time. In September, 1838, he made his escape to New York, being then twenty-one years of age. The events of his life at this time he himself has told in the selections below. Having conferred with David Ruggles, an alert and helpful Negro, and having married Anna Murray, who had come from Baltimore, he went to New Bedford, Mass., with a letter of introduction to Nathan Johnson, another Negro of public spirit. This man was helpful in innumerable ways, and from a reading of The Lady of the Lake suggested instead of Bailey the name Douglas, though as used later this was spelled with the s doubled. For the next three years the young man from Maryland worked around the docks of the city. In 1841, at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, an abolitionist who had heard him speak to the Negro people asked him to address the meeting

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  The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass

  In Pursuit of American Liberty

  • Nicholas Buccola(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • NYU Press

    (Publisher)

  The Douglass Monthly from 1860 to 1863. In his speeches and writings, Douglass drew on his experiences as a slave and his study of natural rights philosophy in an attempt to convince his listeners and readers of the evil inherent in the slave system. In addition, Douglass lent his skills of persuasion to other progressive causes such as women’s suffrage, temperance, the abolition of capital punishment, equal rights for immigrants, and universal public education.

  During the Civil War, Douglass used his voice and his pen to push President Abraham Lincoln and other Republican leaders to acknowledge that the conflict was about slavery and could not be resolved without the abolition of that institution.8 In addition, once he felt that the war was being waged for the right reasons and when he became convinced that black soldiers would be granted equal pay and treatment by Union commanders, he used his influence to recruit on behalf of the Union cause. After the war, Douglass continued his work as a progressive reformer, turning his attention to achieving equal citizenship for freedmen as well as continuing to speak and write in favor of the causes listed above.

  During the 1870s and 1880s, Douglass established himself as a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. His support was rewarded with several opportunities to serve in Republican administrations. First, in 1871, he was selected by President Ulysses S. Grant to serve as secretary to a commission charged with the task of investigating the annexation of Santo Domingo. Then, in 1874, Douglass was again called into service by President Grant, this time to serve as the president of the Freedman’s Saving and Trust Company, an institution established to provide financial assistance to freed slaves. In 1877, Douglass was appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to serve as U.S. Marshal in the District of Columbia before he was appointed to become Recorder of Deeds for the District in 1880. Douglass’s last appointment came when he agreed to serve as American consul-general to Haiti from 1889 to 1891. Douglass continued to agitate on behalf of progressive causes until the day he died. On February 20, 1895, he attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. Shortly after he returned home to prepare to lecture that evening, he collapsed and died instantly.9

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  A Will to Be Free

  • Booker T. Washington(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Start Publishing LLC

    (Publisher)

  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

  Preface

  In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with Frederick Douglass, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a stranger to nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made his escape from the southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his curiosity excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the abolitionists,—of whom he had heard a somewhat vague description while he was a slave,—he was induced to give his attendance, on the occasion alluded to, though at that time a resident in New Bedford.

  Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!—fortunate for the millions of his manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful thraldom!—fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of universal liberty!—fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has already done so much to save and bless!—fortunate for a large circle of friends and acquaintances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits of character, by his ever-abiding remembrance of those who are in bonds, as being bound with them!—fortunate for the multitudes, in various parts of our republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the subject of slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or roused to virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against the enslavers of men!—fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into the field of public usefulness, “gave the world assurance of a Man,” quickened the slumbering energies of his soul, and consecrated him to the great work of breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free!

  I shall never forget his first speech at the convention—the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind—the powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory, completely taken by surprise—the applause which followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous remarks. I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment; certainly, my perception of the enormous outrage which is inflicted by it, on the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered far more clear than ever. There stood one, in physical proportion and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a prodigy—in soul manifestly “created but a little lower than the angels”—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the love of God and humanity! Capable of high attainments as an intellectual and moral being—needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing to his race—by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!

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  The Election of 1860 Reconsidered

  • A. James Fuller(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • The Kent State University Press

    (Publisher)

  To use Frederick Douglass as a vehicle to explore the abolitionist response to the election of 1860, it is necessary to first explore his political activities in the years leading up to that critical election. Doing so is very fortuitous because in his twenty years as an abolitionist before 1860, Douglass had been a member for a time of each major antislavery camp: first the Garrisonians, then the Liberty Party, and finally the militant abolitionist conspiracy led by John Brown. At the same time Douglass had observed and sometimes supported more moderate antislavery political efforts by the Free Soilers in 1848 and 1852 and then the newly formed Republican Party in 1856. Briefly tracing Douglass’s early political career yields significant insights about the political goals of various abolitionist groups that will help explain their response to Lincoln’s candidacy in 1860.

  Fig. 26. Frederick Douglass, 1860. (Library of Congress)

  Although abolitionists worked together in groups, they also made political decisions as individuals based on unique personal factors. Douglass’s unusual personal history, first as a runaway slave and then a leading voice of Northern free blacks, shaped his politics. Changes in his personal circumstances between the early 1840s and 1860 definitely affected his political behavior. Throughout these years, it appears that three goals that guided Douglass’s response to antebellum political events. First, as an abolitionist, Douglass sought the immediate and complete emancipation of his slave brethren. Second as a black man, Douglass fought to overturn discriminatory practices he saw his people encounter in every phase of their lives in the “free” states. Finally, as a sensitive and ambitious individual, Douglass used the political stage as a means to win the respect of members of both the free blacks and white abolitionist communities. In the 1860 election, all three of these factors would play a large role in guiding Douglass’s behavior.

  The abolitionists’ ambivalence toward moderate antislavery political activity had its roots in the origins of the immediatist movement in the early 1830s, well before Douglass had escaped from his youthful enslavement in Maryland. Abolition emerged as a by-product of the upsurge of religious revivalism popularly known as the Second Great Awakening. The original abolitionist principles and objectives revealed the deep influence of evangelical tenets. Revivalist assumptions led may churchmen to regard slavery as a product of personal sin and to demand emancipation as the cost of repentance. Early abolitionists therefore focused on a campaign of “moral suasion” to use religious institutions to reach and convert the consciences of slaveholders rather than pursuing political or governmental means to achieve emancipation.1

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