Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1881

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Themes

Slavery’s Baneful Effect on Blacks and Whites

Instead of blaming individuals who committed acts of cruelty, Douglass blames slavery itself. “Old Master” Captain Anthony, who whipped the beautiful young slave girl Esther because she dared to meet with the man she loved and thus denied “Old Master” exclusive sexual possession of her, nonetheless comes across as a human being victimized by a monstrous system: “Had he been brought up in a free state, surrounded by the full restrains of civilized society […] Captain Anthony might have been as humane a man as are members of such society generally” (27). Edward Covey, the “negro-breaker” with whom Frederick spent one miserable year, purchased a slave woman named Caroline, hired a field hand named Bill Smith, and then “locked the two up together every night” for one “revolting” purpose:

No better illustration of the unchaste, demoralizing, and debasing character of slavery can be found, than is furnished in the fact that this professedly Christian slave-holder, amidst all his prayers and hymns, was shamelessly and boastfully encouraging and actually compelling, in his own house, undisguised and unmitigated fornication, as a means of increasing his stock. It was the system of slavery which made this allowable, and which no more condemned the slaveholder for buying a slave woman and devoting her to this life, than for buying a cow and raising stock from her, and the same rules were observed, with a view to increasing the number and quality of the one, as of the other (97).

In blaming slavery itself for the heinous acts of individuals, Douglass offers a powerful insight into human nature and the darkness into which all human beings are capable of descending. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “the man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved” by the slave system (Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. 2006. Documenting the American South). In 1854, speaking directly to the South, Abraham Lincoln admitted that if the people of the North were in Southerners’ place, they would be exactly the same (Lincoln, Abraham. “Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854.” 1854. National Park Service, 2015). Douglass never exonerates those who committed acts of cruelty, nor does he deny that some people are natural tyrants; he is far too perceptive an observer and far too devoted to the ideals of justice and equality to commit such errors. He is also too intelligent and too honest not to see that most human beings are nowhere near as good as they think they are. Slavery not only permitted but actually encouraged the unleashing of every destructive passion humans share. In acknowledging as much, Douglass merely followed Jefferson and Lincoln, though the acknowledgement is even more compelling coming from someone with Douglass’s life experience.

Color Prejudice as an American Phenomenon

Douglass made three trips to Europe, two of which he describes in splendid detail, in part because of the breathtaking sights he saw while traveling abroad, and in part because of what he did not see. The people of Great Britain, for instance, “knew nothing of the republican negro-hate prevalent” in America (205). Europe certainly had its “aristocracies,” but there were “none based on the color of a man’s skin” (205). Upon his return to America following his first trip overseas in the mid-1840s, Douglass established his own newspaper, which he hoped not only would spread abolitionist ideas but, with Douglass himself as editor, would help break down American prejudice, for Douglass believed that “perhaps the greatest hindrance to the adoption of abolition principles by the people of the United States was the low estimate everywhere in that country placed upon the negro as a man” (215).

The Civil War and Reconstruction Era brought great changes, from emancipation to legal enfranchisement, and yet, with slavery destroyed, color prejudice nonetheless lingered. Even after the war, Douglass admitted that he would “never rise to speak before an American audience without something of the feeling that my failure or success will bring blame or benefit to my whole race” (316). As the war and its aftermath grew distant, the country became more race-obsessed than ever. From the final subjugation of the American Indian to the beginnings of overseas imperialism, the “White Man’s Burden” of subduing and “civilizing” the world’s “brown”- and “yellow”-skinned populations brought “race” to the center of every relevant public discussion. By the early 1890s, when Douglass wrote the book’s third part, color prejudice seemed worse than ever:

There is no disguising the fact that the American people are much interested and mystified about the mere matter of color as connected with manhood. It seems to them that color has some moral or immoral qualities and especially the latter. They do not feel quite reconciled to the idea that a man of different color from themselves should have all the human rights claimed by themselves (435).

Douglass often was asked about the color of his parents, whether he thought of himself as more white or Black, whether his intelligence came from his white father or from his Black/mixed-ethnicity mother, etc. He always tried to remain patient “[u]nder this shower of purely American questions” (436). Douglass even admitted that his visit to Egypt in 1886-87 served the “ethnological purpose” of “combating American prejudice against the darker colored races of mankind” (491).

Courage and the Need to Fight

As a boy, Frederick witnesses the Lloyd plantation overseer whipping a slave woman named Nellie. The overseer gets the better of Nellie, albeit not without a spirited fight on her part. Recalling the scene more than 50 years later, and remembering that the same overseer never again attempted to whip Nellie, Douglass concludes that courage constitutes the antidote to tyranny:

The doctrine that submission to violence is the best cure for violence did not hold good as between slaves and overseers. He was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest. That slave who had the courage to stand up for himself against the overseer, although he might have many hard stripes at first, became while legally a slave virtually a freeman” (33).

Frederick’s own epic fight against Edward Covey in 1834 proves the value of courage and the effect of resistance upon tyrants. Douglass recalls this event as “the turning point” in his life:

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 (115).

After the fight, Covey turns “as gentle as a lamb” toward Frederick (117).

For the rest of his life, in particular his life as a free man, Douglass was drawn to men and women of courage, both physical and moral. It was not enough to evince physical courage alone. For instance, Confederate troops often fought with courage on the battlefield, but Douglass did not admire Confederate troops as he admired those who fought for the right reasons—men like John Brown, Ulysses S. Grant, and the “GREAT MAN,” Abraham Lincoln (302).

Of all the events Douglass describes in this book, none makes a stronger impression on him than John Brown’s October 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. This raid “was but the answering back of the avenging angel to the midnight invasions of Christian slave-traders on the sleeping hamlets of Africa” (529). Douglass admits that Brown’s “zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine—it was as the burning sun to my taper light—mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the boundless shores of eternity” (530). Alas, considering the moral blight of color prejudice that plagued the nation long after 1859, even “our noblest American hero must wait the polishing wheels of after-coming centuries to make his glory more manifest, and his worth more generally acknowledged” (531). Brown’s courage, physical and moral, strikes Douglass as Christ-like:

‘I want you to understand, gentlemen,’ he said to his persecutors, ‘that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of the colored people, oppressed by the slave system, as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful.’ In this we have the key to the whole life and career of the man. Than in this sentiment humanity has nothing more touching, reason nothing more noble, imagination nothing more sublime; and if we could reduce all the religions of the world to one essence we would find in it nothing more divine (537).

Ulysses S. Grant demonstrates a subtler yet sincere combination of Brown’s physical and moral courage. As Union general and commander of the Army of the Potomac, Grant implemented all of President Lincoln’s orders regarding respectful treatment of Black troops. Later, as President of the United States, Grant enforced both the letter and the spirit of the 14th and 15th Amendments, refusing to leave the Freedmen vulnerable to terrorists such as the Ku Klux Klan. Grant, in fact, “with his characteristic nerve and clear perception of justice” (334), recommended the 15th Amendment in the first place. Douglass explains that in the 1872 presidential campaign, which split the Republican Party, he supported Grant’s reelection because Grant “had done all, and would do all, he could to save not only the country from ruin but the emancipated class from oppression and ultimate destruction” (352).

Finally, Abraham Lincoln’s statesmanlike courage combined the best in both Brown and Grant. Lincoln led no violent raids and personally commanded no armies in the field, but as president he bore full responsibility for the entire Union war effort. That effort included the Emancipation Proclamation, the recruitment of Black troops numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and the final destruction of slavery via the 13th Amendment. In his personal manner, too, Lincoln evinced great moral courage, as evidenced by his loudly and publicly greeting Douglass as “my friend” only moments after White House guards try to bar Douglass’s entrance into the building. More than 10 years after Lincoln’s assassination, in a speech delivered at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in Washington, DC, Douglass declared that “infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than was Abraham Lincoln” (415).