Frederick Douglass autobiographies and other writings that break the bonds of oppression

Born a slave Frederick Douglass emerged as one of the main leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery in the United States in the decades before the Civil War. From his youth until his death in 1895, this great man was concerned with the universal struggle for freedom of people everywhere. Because as he once observed as the belief of him; “Under the skin, we are all equal and each of us must join the fight to promote human brotherhood.” He, through his own efforts, rose from slavery, taught himself to read and write, developed great talents as a lecturer, editor, and organizer, became a leading figure in American life, and gained an international reputation as the spokesman for his people.

Douglass’s best-known work is his first autobiography, The narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, which was published in 1845. Told in 125 pages, the story of Douglas’s life spans from early childhood to his escape from slavery and changed his surname from Bailey to Douglas in 1838. The vivid detail, dignity of tone, and the sincerity of the writing itself left no doubt in the minds of all who read it that Douglass had suffered the horrors he had been describing in powerful lectures for several years. He powerfully highlights in detail the struggle for identity of a black man who in the mid-19th century realized his own exclusion from the American myth of liberty and justice for all. His autobiographical record epitomizes the experience of many pre-Civil War slaves, but in its narrative skill, it also suggests how the writer’s striving for individuality and freedom partakes of a more nearly universal pattern, particular to men and women of all ages. color.

The book is the most important resource available on Douglass. For virtually all that is known of his early years comes from the Narrative itself, even though it ends half a century before his death.

The book received generally positive reviews and became an immediate bestseller. Within three years of its publication, it had been reprinted nine times with 11,000 copies in circulation in the United States; and already translated into French and Dutch. At the time, some skeptics wondered if a black man could have produced such an eloquent piece of literature. A man who claimed to have known Douglass as a slave even said that he was incapable of writing such a book.

The success of the book caused Douglass’s friends and mentors to fear that the resulting publicity would draw the attention of his former owner to him and that he would try to get his “property” back. To take their minds off of him and avoid the possibility of being caught, they encouraged him to tour Ireland, as many other ex-slaves had done. Therefore, Douglass sailed on the Cambria for Liverpool on August 16, 1845, arriving in Ireland as the Irish potato famine was beginning. He was in Britain for two years making highly successful conference appearances.

Douglas gradually expanded and elaborated on his Narrative in three later versions: My slavery and my freedom (1855) and two different editions of Life and work of Frederick Douglas (1881,1882)

Douglass published three versions of his autobiography during his lifetime (and revised the third), each time expanding on the previous one.

the 1845 narrative, which was its biggest seller, was followed by My slavery and my freedom in 1855. In 1881, after the Civil War, Douglass took out Life and work of Frederick Douglasswhich he revised in 1892.

The first two accounts of his experiences belong to the tradition of runaway slave narratives that were popular in the North before the Civil War. The final volume, published when Douglas was in his sixties, reveals one of the most remarkable and successful lives of the 19th century. The first version balanced a more detailed account of his life as a slave with the impressive record of his intellectual growth and personal achievements since he joined forces with the abolitionists in 1841. It spoke of his intimacy with the garrison wing of the abolitionist movement, of his successful tour lecture tours of the British Isles, the purchase of his freedom for $700 by a group of his female admirers, two English women, and his move to Rochester, New York, where he published the first issue of the increasingly outspoken weekly. he published during the thirteen years in December 1847 first as the north star later as Frederick Douglas Weekly and Monthly.

The third of Douglas’s autobiographies subsumed the first two by adding to them the events of his career just before, during, and after the Civil War and traces the growing area of ​​his fame and influence, and ultimately the honored recognition of his countrymen, black and white similar.

Douglass’s autobiography is presented as a tale of self-discovery, beginning by reporting what he doesn’t know about himself. He must guess how old he is, he doesn’t know much about himself. He doesn’t know his birthday. Only through rumors could he tell the identity of him. Although he knows her mother, he spends almost no time with her. She comes to him in the dark and leaves before dawn, so she had no idea of ​​her face, as he would be fast asleep upon her arrival, so all Douglass has for an identity is a generic identity: slave. His appearance is also sober and nondescript. Like other child slaves, he wears nothing more than a shirt, no pants that would symbolize his manhood, no footwear to protect his feet from the bare earth, nothing at all to set him apart from others of his kind. Like the other child slaves, he eats cornmeal porridge from a tray placed on the ground, for which he is treated like a pig or a dog reduced to the level of animals. Everything in Douglass’s experience denies his individuality and declares his particularized lack of identity.

The narrative built by someone who has finally, but with effort, discovered his self, his identity, recalls the process he went through with language at the center of his search for this self-discovery. The book ends with Douglass claiming his name: “I subscribe, FREDERICK DOUGLASS.” The name itself is a triumph of the newly granted status of his freedom. The author has hard-won the power to subscribe, to sign his name, because it implies the ability to read and write, as well as the claim to a name. Each step of victory—learning to read, learning to write, acquiring a name—involves a painful self-assessment, but the word proves for Douglass literally a means to salvation.

Douglass’s development of identity, his eventual subscription to his new name as the sign of himself, does not lead to any claim to being unique. Rather, the identity he affirms is in part communal: “In the sincere and fervent hope that this little book may do something to shed light on the American slave system and hasten the happy day of release for the millions of my brethren in captivity, trusting faithfully in the power of truth, love, and justice, to the success of my humble endeavors, and solemnly recommitting myself to the sacred cause, I hereby subscribe myself, FREDERICK DOUGLASS.”

The “Little Book” that Douglass refers to is not to establish their difference but to declare their unity. Although he now he owns his own name, his own distinguishing clothing, his own wife, his own self-defined occupation; but just as much as when he was a half-naked child gobbling porridge with the others, he feels part of a group. Because his love for his fellow slaves, which remains a recurring theme of his story, lays the foundation for his identity: not emotionally isolated, but part of a nurturing community.

His language suggests that he, too, shares an even larger community. He evokes “truth” and “justice,” which are the proclaimed ideals of the American nation. He quotes John Greenleaf Whittier, who is generally considered “the poet of the slaves”, to express feelings that he finds difficult to express himself. Everywhere his prose resounds with biblical rhythms and allusions. Frederick Douglass is not just a slave, not just an ex-slave: he is a literati, an American, a Christian, who claims to trust and value these broader forms of communion, as well as his union with his race, and implicitly demands that others Those who call themselves Americans or Christians acknowledge their involvement with them and accept the responsibility that such acknowledgment implies.