71 pages • 2 hours read
Frederick DouglassMy Bondage and My Freedom
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1855A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 20-21
Chapter 20 Summary: “Apprenticeship Life”
Douglass heard that Charles Roberts and Henry Baily, two of his co-conspirators, did not receive whippings for attempting to seek freedom. William Hamilton, however, insisted that Thomas Auld remove Douglass from the neighborhood, otherwise he’d shoot him for “tampering with his slaves” (302). However, Hamilton couldn’t get Auld and Freeland as upset as he was over the matter. As reluctant as Thomas was to give Douglass up, he knew how dangerous it would be to keep him around. He, therefore, agreed to send the young man back to Baltimore.
When Douglass arrived there, he noticed some changes. His friendship with Little Tommy, now ‘Mas Tommy, had ended. Tommy had become a man and asserted the boundary between enslaver and enslaved person. Meanwhile, Hugh hired Douglass out to William Gardiner, a shipbuilder on Fell’s Point, where Douglass went to learn to calk [sic]. Douglass had some knowledge of the trade, gained when Hugh was an enslaver builder.
After eight months, Douglass’s apprenticeship ended due to his having been in a fight, which caused his left eye to be “nearly knocked out of its socket” (305). Not long before Douglass arrived in the shipyard, free Black and white ship carpenters worked together peacefully. Some of the Black men were highly skilled laborers. Then, one day, all of the white carpenters announced that they would no longer work with Black men. They found their opportunity to go on strike after Gardiner arranged a contract to have “war vessels for Mexico ready to launch in July” and the difficulty of acquiring additional help in the summer (307).
During the brawl, four men attacked Douglass, one of whom hit him on the head with a hand-spike. They stopped only after they noticed his left eye completely closed—the result of a boot kick—and his face covered in blood. Douglass, not finished, grabbed the hand-spike to go after them until some carpenters intervened. Around 50 white men stood around and watched the fight, Douglass recalled, without ever attempting to break it up.
Douglass returned to Hugh Auld’s house and told the story of what happened. Hugh became enraged at the event, while Sophia took great pity and washed the blood from Douglass’s face. Douglass noticed, however, that Hugh was angry about the damage done to his property, not to Douglass, the human being.
Hugh took Douglass to the office of Esquire Watson with the wish to get those who had beaten Douglass arrested. However, the attorney claimed that nothing could happen unless a white witness testified under oath, and none would. The carpenters who may have wanted to would have others dissuade them from testifying out of fear of denouncement as abolitionists. After accepting that there would be no redress for this crime, Hugh withdrew Douglass from Gardiner’s employ and gave him time to heal until he could work again.
After Hugh’s business misfortunes led him to take a job as a foreman under Walter Price, he brought Douglass with him to work. At Price’s, Douglass became an expert caulker and, soon, commanded the highest wages of any journeyman in the trade in Baltimore. He soon sought out his own jobs, made his own contracts, and collected his own wages. Having the money that he earned—$1.50 per day—taken from him by Hugh made Douglass more resolved to seek freedom from enslavement.
Chapter 21 Summary: “The Author’s Escape from Slavery”
Douglass prefaces the tale of his self-liberation, which had occurred nearly 17 years before he penned this narrative, by noting that he had to be careful about what he revealed. Otherwise, an enslaver would become wise to the method, thereby making it impossible for someone currently enslaved to employ it. He uses the public examples of Henry Box Brown and William and Ellen Crafts to note that, had enslavers not discovered their methods, sundry others could have similarly gotten away. Douglass also expresses disapproval of how public the Underground Railroad had become.
Douglass liberated himself from enslavement in 1838, which had been an easy year for him. Not only was he annoyed by Hugh Auld receiving his wages, but he bristled with offense when his enslaver was unimpressed with the sum, suggesting that Douglass was either holding back some of his wages or that he was not a profitable servant. When there was a large sum, Hugh would give Douglass “a sixpence or a shilling” (321), expecting him to be grateful.
Liberating himself from enslavement wasn’t easy due to the strict regulations in effect from Baltimore to Philadelphia. Free Black travelers always had to have their papers before entering railcars. Kidnappers were everywhere. Douglass decided that he would ask Thomas Auld, who was still his enslaver, if he could hire out his time. Thomas refused, suspecting that this was only another ruse to get away. He admonished Douglass and reminded him not to think of the future. If the enslaved person behaved properly, he said, then Thomas would take care of him.
Two months later, Douglass made the same request to Hugh Auld, who was astonished at Douglass’s boldness. In the end, he granted Douglass the privilege on the following terms: He had to find his own work, collect his own wages, pay Hugh $3 weekly, board and clothe himself, and purchase his own caulking instruments. The problem was that caulking is irregular work, but this didn’t matter to Hugh; Douglass had to have the money, otherwise, he’d lose this minor freedom.
One Saturday night, Douglass planned to accompany some friends to a camp meeting, around 12 miles from Baltimore. Then, something occurred at the shipyard that needed Douglass’s attention. After tending to it, he went to the camp meeting. He remained there one day longer than he intended but didn’t worry because he had Hugh’s $3. When Douglass returned to the Auld household, however, Hugh was furious with Douglass and demanded that he bring his clothes and tools at once—Douglass had lost his partial freedom. He took revenge by saying that he would now await Hugh’s orders for all things. Instead of looking for work on Monday morning, as he usually did, he remained at home, where he stayed for the entire week. When Saturday night came, Hugh again demanded $3. Douglass said that he had none, which infuriated Hugh, who promised that he would ensure that Douglass got work and plenty of it.
After thinking the matter over, Douglass resolved that he would seek freedom on September 3, which was three weeks away. Meanwhile, he looked for work. On Monday morning, at dawn, he went to the shipyard of Mr. Butler, who liked Douglass. Douglass obtained work and brought Hugh $9 by the end of the week, which lifted Hugh’s mood. By working again steadily, Douglass had quelled any suspicions that Hugh may have had of his seeking freedom. At the end of the second week, Douglass again brought $9. In exchange, Hugh gave Douglass a quarter and told the enslaved person to make good use of it. Douglass promised that he would. Privately, he thought that it would pay his fare on the underground railroad. At the end of the third week, Douglass brought Hugh $6 and spent Friday and Saturday collecting his things. On Monday, September 3, 1838, Douglass bade farewell to Baltimore.
Chapters 20-21 Analysis
Douglass shrouds the details of his self-liberation in mystery. He withholds the details, as he notes, to protect other prospective freedom seekers. His elusiveness on the matter also allows him—a very notable public figure at the time—to hold the public’s interest in him, due to their inability to know everything about his life, despite the publication of two autobiographies. Douglass contrasts his withholding of information with the Crafts and Henry Box Brown’s publicity. Here, too, he implicitly suggests that his obligation to those who were not yet free overrode any need he may have had for attention, which seems ironic, given Douglass’s status at the time as one of the nation’s best-known orators.
Ellen and William Craft were two enslaved people who liberated themselves from plantations in Macon, Georgia. Ellen was very light-skinned—a “quadroon,” in New Orleanian parlance, meaning that she had a Black grandparent. She disguised herself as a man and traveled with William, whom she pretended was enslaved on her cotton plantation. They traveled to Philadelphia via steamboat and railcar. They stayed in the best hotels and dined well. Ellen’s disguise allowed her to feel what it was like to be a white man. She and William recounted their story in the 1860 book, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.
Henry “Box” Brown, on the other hand, shipped himself to freedom in a box—hence, his nickname—from Virginia to Philadelphia. Brown had been enslaved from birth on a Virginia plantation. He became determined to seek freedom in 1848, after enslavers sold his wife and children to a North Carolina plantation. As with Douglass, social alienation was a factor in his decision. Some, like Douglass, encouraged Brown to keep the story of his self-liberation secret, while others encouraged him to publicize it, due to the novel way in which he sought freedom. He chose the latter and began touring the country, performing his story. He later made a career as a magician. One of his main acts was emerging out of the box that he had used to mail himself to Philadelphia. The lengths to which he and other enslaved Black Americans went to liberate themselves testify to The Dehumanizing Effects of Enslavement.
Related Titles
By Frederick Douglass
