short essay on frederick douglass

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Frederick Douglass

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 8, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

Frederick Douglass was a formerly enslaved man who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. He became a leader in the abolitionist movement , which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War . After that conflict and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, he continued to push for equality and human rights until his death in 1895.

Douglass’ 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , described his time as an enslaved worker in Maryland . It was one of three autobiographies he penned, along with dozens of noteworthy speeches, despite receiving minimal formal education.

An advocate for women’s rights, and specifically the right of women to vote , Douglass’ legacy as an author and leader lives on. His work served as an inspiration to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and beyond.

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in or around 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his exact birth date.

His mother was an enslaved Black women and his father was white and of European descent. He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother’s name), and took the name Douglass only after he escaped. His full name at birth was “Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.”

After he was separated from his mother as an infant, Douglass lived for a time with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. However, at the age of six, he was moved away from her to live and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

From there, Douglass was “given” to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, sent him to work with his brother Hugh in Baltimore. Douglass credits Hugh’s wife Sophia with first teaching him the alphabet. With that foundation, Douglass then taught himself to read and write. By the time he was hired out to work under William Freeland, he was teaching other enslaved people to read using the Bible .

As word spread of his efforts to educate fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, a farmer who was known for his brutal treatment of the enslaved people in his charge. Roughly 16 at this time, Douglass was regularly whipped by Covey.

Frederick Douglass Escapes from Slavery

After several failed attempts at escape, Douglass finally left Covey’s farm in 1838, first boarding a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. From there he traveled through Delaware , another slave state, before arriving in New York and the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles.

Once settled in New York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free Black woman from Baltimore he met while in captivity with the Aulds. She joined him, and the two were married in September 1838. They had five children together.

From Slavery to Abolitionist Leader

After their marriage, the young couple moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts , where they met Nathan and Mary Johnson, a married couple who were born “free persons of color.” It was the Johnsons who inspired the couple to take the surname Douglass, after the character in the Sir Walter Scott poem, “The Lady of the Lake.”

In New Bedford, Douglass began attending meetings of the abolitionist movement . During these meetings, he was exposed to the writings of abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison.

The two men eventually met when both were asked to speak at an abolitionist meeting, during which Douglass shared his story of slavery and escape. It was Garrison who encouraged Douglass to become a speaker and leader in the abolitionist movement.

By 1843, Douglass had become part of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s “Hundred Conventions” project, a six-month tour through the United States. Douglass was physically assaulted several times during the tour by those opposed to the abolitionist movement.

In one particularly brutal attack, in Pendleton, Indiana , Douglass’ hand was broken. The injuries never fully healed, and he never regained full use of his hand.

In 1858, radical abolitionist John Brown stayed with Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, as he planned his raid on the U.S. military arsenal at Harper’s Ferry , part of his attempt to establish a stronghold of formerly enslaved people in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia. Brown was caught and hanged for masterminding the attack, offering the following prophetic words as his final statement: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'

Two years later, Douglass published the first and most famous of his autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave . (He also authored My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass).

In it Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , he wrote: “From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom.”

He also noted, “Thus is slavery the enemy of both the slave and the slaveholder.”

Frederick Douglass in Ireland and Great Britain

Later that same year, Douglass would travel to Ireland and Great Britain. At the time, the former country was just entering the early stages of the Irish Potato Famine , or the Great Hunger.

While overseas, he was impressed by the relative freedom he had as a man of color, compared to what he had experienced in the United States. During his time in Ireland, he met the Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell , who became an inspiration for his later work.

In England, Douglass also delivered what would later be viewed as one of his most famous speeches, the so-called “London Reception Speech.”

In the speech, he said, “What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity , boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?… I need not lift up the veil by giving you any experience of my own. Every one that can put two ideas together, must see the most fearful results from such a state of things…”

Frederick Douglass’ Abolitionist Paper

When he returned to the United States in 1847, Douglass began publishing his own abolitionist newsletter, the North Star . He also became involved in the movement for women’s rights .

He was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention , a gathering of women’s rights activists in New York, in 1848.

He spoke forcefully during the meeting and said, “In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world.”

He later included coverage of women’s rights issues in the pages of the North Star . The newsletter’s name was changed to Frederick Douglass’ Paper in 1851, and was published until 1860, just before the start of the Civil War .

Frederick Douglass Quotes

In 1852, he delivered another of his more famous speeches, one that later came to be called “What to a slave is the 4th of July?”

In one section of the speech, Douglass noted, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

For the 24th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation , in 1886, Douglass delivered a rousing address in Washington, D.C., during which he said, “where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

Frederick Douglass During the Civil War

During the brutal conflict that divided the still-young United States, Douglass continued to speak and worked tirelessly for the end of slavery and the right of newly freed Black Americans to vote.

Although he supported President Abraham Lincoln in the early years of the Civil War, Douglass fell into disagreement with the politician after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which effectively ended the practice of slavery. Douglass was disappointed that Lincoln didn’t use the proclamation to grant formerly enslaved people the right to vote, particularly after they had fought bravely alongside soldiers for the Union army.

It is said, though, that Douglass and Lincoln later reconciled and, following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, and the passage of the 13th amendment , 14th amendment , and 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which, respectively, outlawed slavery, granted formerly enslaved people citizenship and equal protection under the law, and protected all citizens from racial discrimination in voting), Douglass was asked to speak at the dedication of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park in 1876.

Historians, in fact, suggest that Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd Lincoln , bequeathed the late-president’s favorite walking stick to Douglass after that speech.

In the post-war Reconstruction era, Douglass served in many official positions in government, including as an ambassador to the Dominican Republic, thereby becoming the first Black man to hold high office. He also continued speaking and advocating for African American and women’s rights.

In the 1868 presidential election, he supported the candidacy of former Union general Ulysses S. Grant , who promised to take a hard line against white supremacist-led insurgencies in the post-war South. Grant notably also oversaw passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 , which was designed to suppress the growing Ku Klux Klan movement.

Frederick Douglass: Later Life and Death

In 1877, Douglass met with Thomas Auld , the man who once “owned” him, and the two reportedly reconciled.

Douglass’ wife Anna died in 1882, and he married white activist Helen Pitts in 1884.

In 1888, he became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States, during the Republican National Convention. Ultimately, though, Benjamin Harrison received the party nomination.

Douglass remained an active speaker, writer and activist until his death in 1895. He died after suffering a heart attack at home after arriving back from a meeting of the National Council of Women , a women’s rights group still in its infancy at the time, in Washington, D.C.

His life’s work still serves as an inspiration to those who seek equality and a more just society.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Watch acclaimed Black History documentaries on HISTORY Vault.

Frederick Douglas, PBS.org . Frederick Douglas, National Parks Service, nps.gov . Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting the South, University of North Carolina , docsouth.unc.edu . Frederick Douglass Quotes, brainyquote.com . “Reception Speech. At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846.” USF.edu . “What to the slave is the 4th of July?” TeachingAmericanHistory.org . Graham, D.A. (2017). “Donald Trump’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” The Atlantic .

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Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a leader in the abolitionist movement, an early champion of women’s rights and author of ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.’

(1818-1895)

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Among Douglass’ writings are several autobiographies eloquently describing his experiences in slavery and his life after the Civil War , including the well-known work Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave .

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born around 1818 into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland. As was often the case with slaves, the exact year and date of Douglass' birth are unknown, though later in life he chose to celebrate it on February 14.

Douglass initially lived with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. At a young age, Douglass was selected to live in the home of the plantation owners, one of whom may have been his father.

His mother, who was an intermittent presence in his life, died when he was around 10.

Learning to Read and Write

Defying a ban on teaching slaves to read and write, Baltimore slaveholder Hugh Auld’s wife Sophia taught Douglass the alphabet when he was around 12. When Auld forbade his wife to offer more lessons, Douglass continued to learn from white children and others in the neighborhood.

It was through reading that Douglass’ ideological opposition to slavery began to take shape. He read newspapers avidly and sought out political writing and literature as much as possible. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator with clarifying and defining his views on human rights.

Douglass shared his newfound knowledge with other enslaved people. Hired out to William Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly church service.

Interest was so great that in any week, more than 40 slaves would attend lessons. Although Freeland did not interfere with the lessons, other local slave owners were less understanding. Armed with clubs and stones, they dispersed the congregation permanently.

With Douglass moving between the Aulds, he was later made to work for Edward Covey, who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker.” Covey’s constant abuse nearly broke the 16-year-old Douglass psychologically. Eventually, however, Douglass fought back, in a scene rendered powerfully in his first autobiography.

After losing a physical confrontation with Douglass, Covey never beat him again. Douglass tried to escape from slavery twice before he finally succeeded.

Wife and Children

Douglass married Anna Murray, a free Black woman, on September 15, 1838. Douglass had fallen in love with Murray, who assisted him in his final attempt to escape slavery in Baltimore.

On September 3, 1838, Douglass boarded a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Murray had provided him with some of her savings and a sailor's uniform. He carried identification papers obtained from a free Black seaman. Douglass made his way to the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles in New York in less than 24 hours.

Once he had arrived, Douglass sent for Murray to meet him in New York, where they married and adopted the name of Johnson to disguise Douglass’ identity. Anna and Frederick then settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which had a thriving free Black community. There they adopted Douglass as their married name.

Douglass and Anna had five children together: Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Redmond and Annie, who died at the age of 10. Charles and Rosetta assisted their father in the production of his newspaper The North Star . Anna remained a loyal supporter of Douglass' public work, despite marital strife caused by his relationships with several other women.

After Anna’s death, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a feminist from Honeoye, New York. Pitts was the daughter of Gideon Pitts Jr., an abolitionist colleague. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College , Pitts worked on a radical feminist publication and shared many of Douglass’ moral principles.

Their marriage caused considerable controversy, since Pitts was white and nearly 20 years younger than Douglass. Douglass’ children were especially displeased with the relationship. Nonetheless, Douglass and Pitts remained married until his death 11 years later.

Abolitionist

After settling as a free man with his wife Anna in New Bedford in 1838, Douglass was eventually asked to tell his story at abolitionist meetings, and he became a regular anti-slavery lecturer.

The founder of the weekly journal The Liberator , William Lloyd Garrison , was impressed with Douglass’ strength and rhetorical skill and wrote of him in his newspaper. Several days after the story ran, Douglass delivered his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket.

Crowds were not always hospitable to Douglass. While participating in an 1843 lecture tour through the Midwest, Douglass was chased and beaten by an angry mob before being rescued by a local Quaker family.

Following the publication of his first autobiography in 1845, Douglass traveled overseas to evade recapture. He set sail for Liverpool on August 16, 1845, and eventually arrived in Ireland as the Potato Famine was beginning. He remained in Ireland and Britain for two years, speaking to large crowds on the evils of slavery.

During this time, Douglass’ British supporters gathered funds to purchase his legal freedom. In 1847, the famed writer and orator returned to the United States a free man.

'The North Star'

Upon his return, Douglass produced some abolitionist newspapers: The North Star , Frederick Douglass Weekly , Frederick Douglass' Paper , Douglass' Monthly and New National Era .

The motto of The North Star was "Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren."

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'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'

In New Bedford, Massachusetts, Douglass joined a Black church and regularly attended abolitionist meetings. He also subscribed to Garrison's The Liberator .

At the urging of Garrison, Douglass wrote and published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , in 1845. The book was a bestseller in the United States and was translated into several European languages.

Although the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass garnered Douglass many fans, some critics expressed doubt that a former enslaved person with no formal education could have produced such elegant prose.

Other Books by Frederick Douglass

Douglass published three versions of his autobiography during his lifetime, revising and expanding on his work each time. My Bondage and My Freedom appeared in 1855.

In 1881, Douglass published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , which he revised in 1892.

Women’s Rights

In addition to abolition, Douglass became an outspoken supporter of women’s rights. In 1848, he was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls convention on women's rights. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution stating the goal of women's suffrage. Many attendees opposed the idea.

Douglass, however, stood and spoke eloquently in favor, arguing that he could not accept the right to vote as a Black man if women could not also claim that right. The resolution passed.

Yet Douglass would later come into conflict with women’s rights activists for supporting the Fifteenth Amendment , which banned suffrage discrimination based on race while upholding sex-based restrictions.

Civil War and Reconstruction

By the time of the Civil War , Douglass was one of the most famous Black men in the country. He used his status to influence the role of African Americans in the war and their status in the country. In 1863, Douglass conferred with President Abraham Lincoln regarding the treatment of Black soldiers, and later with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of Black suffrage.

President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation , which took effect on January 1, 1863, declared the freedom of enslaved people in Confederate territory. Despite this victory, Douglass supported John C. Frémont over Lincoln in the 1864 election, citing his disappointment that Lincoln did not publicly endorse suffrage for Black freedmen.

Slavery everywhere in the United States was subsequently outlawed by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution .

Douglass was appointed to several political positions following the war. He served as president of the Freedman's Savings Bank and as chargé d'affaires for the Dominican Republic.

After two years, he resigned from his ambassadorship over objections to the particulars of U.S. government policy. He was later appointed minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti, a post he held between 1889 and 1891.

In 1877, Douglass visited one of his former owners, Thomas Auld. Douglass had met with Auld's daughter, Amanda Auld Sears, years before. The visit held personal significance for Douglass, although some criticized him for the reconciliation.

Vice Presidential Candidate

Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States as Victoria Woodhull 's running mate on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1872.

Nominated without his knowledge or consent, Douglass never campaigned. Nonetheless, his nomination marked the first time that an African American appeared on a presidential ballot.

Douglass died on February 20, 1895, of a massive heart attack or stroke shortly after returning from a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. He was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Frederick Douglass
• Birth Year: 1818
• Birth State: Maryland
• Birth City: Tuckahoe
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Frederick Douglass was a leader in the abolitionist movement, an early champion of women’s rights and author of ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.’
• Interesting Facts
• Frederick Douglass first learned to read and write at the age of 12 from a Baltimore slaveholder's wife.
• To much controversy, Douglass married white abolitionist feminist Helen Pitts.
• Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States.
• Death Year: 1895
• Death date: February 20, 1895
• Death City: Washington, D.C.
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Frederick Douglass Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/activists/frederick-douglass
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 15, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• If there is no struggle there is no progress. . . . Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
• Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
• I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
• No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
• People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
• I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
• Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
• The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
• [I]n all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line. We cannot ignore it if we would, and ought not if we could.
• If I ever had any patriotism, or any capacity for the feeling, it was whipt out of me long since by the lash of the American soul-drivers.
• The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.
• The lesson of all the ages on this point is, that a wrong done to one man is a wrong done to all men. It may not be felt at the moment, and the evil day may be long delayed, but so sure as there is a moral government of the universe, so sure will the harvest of evil come.
• Believing, as I do firmly believe, that human nature, as a whole, contains more good than evil, I am willing to trust the whole, rather than a part, in the conduct of human affairs.
• To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.
• To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature. It is easy to deny them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of happiness and to defeat the very end of their being.
• There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution.
• Let us have no country but a free country, liberty for all and chains for none. Let us have one law, one gospel, equal rights for all, and I am sure God's blessing will be upon us and we shall be a prosperous and glorious nation.

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Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (c. 1817–1895) is a central figure in United States and African American history. [ 1 ] He was born a slave, circa 1817; [ 2 ] his mother was a Negro slave and his father was reputed to be his white master. Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 and rose to become a principal leader and spokesperson for the U.S. Abolition movement. He would eventually develop into a towering figure for the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and his legacy would be claimed by a diverse span of groups, from liberals and integrationists to conservatives to nationalists, within and without black America.

He wrote three autobiographies, each one expanding on the details of his life. The first was Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself (in 1845); [ 3 ] the second was My Bondage and My Freedom (in 1852a; FDAB: 103–452); [ 4 ] and the third was Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (in 1881; FDAB: 453–1045). They are now foremost examples of the American slave narrative. In addition to being autobiographical, they are also, as is standard, explicitly works of political and social criticism and moral suasion; they were aimed at the hearts and minds of the readers, and their greater purpose was to attack and to contribute to the abolition of slavery in the United States, and to argue for the full inclusion of black Americans into the nation.

Shortly after escaping from slavery, Douglass began operating as a spokesperson, giving numerous speeches about his life and experiences, for William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. To spread his story and assist the abolitionist cause, as well as to counter early charges that someone so eloquent as he could not have been a slave, Douglass wrote and published his first autobiography, the Narrative . The Narrative brought Douglass fame in the United States and the United Kingdom, and it provided the funds to purchase his freedom.

After breaking with Garrison, Douglass founded and edited his first paper, the North Star , and authored a considerable body of letters, editorials, and speeches. These writings have been collected in Philip Foner’s multivolume, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (1950–1975, hereafter FDLW), [ 5 ] and in John W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan’s multivolume, The Frederick Douglass Papers (1979–, hereafter FDP).

Douglass’s life, from slavery to statesman, his writings and speeches, and his national and international work have inspired many lines of discussion in debate within the fields of American and African American history, political science and theory, sociology, and in philosophy. His legacy is claimed, despite his links to ideas of cultural and racial assimilationism, by black Nationalists as well as by black liberals and black conservatives.

Douglass can be linked to the history of American philosophy, through his participation in national discussions about the nature of and future of the American Republic and its institutions. In that light he is linked to his contemporaries who had academic philosophic connections, in particular Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), and by the uptake of his political and social legacy and writings by later African American philosophers, such as W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) and Alain Locke (1884–1954; see Harris 1989). Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader , edited by Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland (1999), is a valuable guide to lines of inquiry about Douglass, and the debates he inspired, within philosophy in the United States. In contemporary philosophy in the United States, Douglass’s work is usually taken up within American philosophy, African American philosophy, and moral, social, and political philosophy; in particular, the debates in those areas focus on his views concerning slavery and (later in his career at the dawn of Jim Crow segregation) racial exploitation and segregation, natural law, the U.S. constitution, violence and self-respect in the resistance against slavery, racial integration versus emigration or separation, cultural assimilation, racial amalgamation, and women’s suffrage.

2. Natural Law

3. the u.s. constitution, 4. violence and self-respect, 5. assimilation and amalgamation, 6. integration versus emigration, 7. leadership, 8. women’s suffrage, 9. at the dawn of jim crow, primary sources, secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries.

In his three narratives, and his numerous articles, speeches, and letters, Douglass vigorously argued against slavery. He sought to demonstrate that it was cruel, unnatural, ungodly, immoral, and unjust. He laid out his arguments first in his speeches while he was with Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society, and then in his first autobiography, the Narrative . As the U.S. Civil War drew closer, he expanded his arguments in many speeches, editorials, and in his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom.

In his own words he worked to pour out a “scorching irony” to expose the evil of slavery (1852b, FDLW v.2: 192). His rebellion against slavery began, as he recounted, while he was a slave. In his narratives, this depiction of early recognition, and general recognition among blacks and some whites, of the injustice, unnaturalness, and cruelty of slavery is a major element of his argument.

It marks his first argument against slavery. Some of the apologists for slavery claimed that blacks were beasts, subhuman, or at least a degenerated form of the human species. These arguments go back to at least Sepulveda’s arguments in the fifteenth century, which Bartolomé de las Casas famously countered (1552; see also, Frederickson’s review of the early history of racism [2002]), and were common in the American British Colonies and then the United States; for example, Thomas Jefferson famously intimates this point in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785: Query 14). Douglass argued that blacks were fully rational humans, and mocked slavery’s apologists for its hypocrisies and contradictions when it claimed otherwise. In his Fourth of July Address, he derides the very idea that he would even need to argue this point (1852b).

Against the claim that blacks were beasts, he argued that rather slavery had brutalized them. He pointed to the obviousness of the humanity of blacks, and to the hypocrisy of the apologists for slavery in America on this question: why should there be special laws prohibiting the free actions of blacks, such as rebelling against the master or any other white person, if slaves were bestial and incapable of independent, responsible behavior? Why, indeed, had slave masters encouraged their slaves' Christianization, and then forbade their religious gatherings? Along with this hypocrisy, American slaveholders feared and banned the education of blacks, while demanding and profiting from their learning and development in the skilled trades. Thus, Douglass argued the accusation that blacks were beasts was predicated on the guilty knowledge that they were humans. Additionally, it subverted not only the natural goodness of blacks by brutalizing them, but it also did so to white slaveholders and those otherwise innocent whites affected by this wicked institution. Slavery, Douglass pointed out, making reference to Jefferson’s anxieties in Query 18 of the Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), that slavery was a poison in the body of the republic.

Second, since blacks were humans, Douglass argued they were entitled to the natural rights that natural law mandated and that the United States recognized in its Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Slavery subverted the natural rights of blacks by subjugating and brutalizing them: taking men and turning them, against God’s will and nature, into beasts. Third, as an affront to natural law, slavery contradicted God’s law. Douglass cited biblical passages and interpretations popular with abolitionists. As a witness and participant of the second Great Awakening, he took seriously the politicized rhetoric of Christian liberation from sin, and, as with other abolitionists, saw it intrinsically wrapped up with liberation from slavery, and indeed national liberation. Fourth, he argued that slavery was inconsistent with the idea of America, with its national narrative and highest ideals, and not just with its founding documents. Fifth, drawing on the ideas of manifest destiny, as well as the idea of natural law realized in historical progress, he argued that slavery was inconsistent with development: moral, political, economic, social, and ultimately historical. America was on the wrong side of history on the question of slavery.

To defend slavery, some of its apologists drew on the idea of historical progress to offer the defense that slavery was a benevolent and paternal system for the mutual benefit of whites and blacks. Douglass countered by drawing on his experiences, and the experiences of other slaves, that American slavery was in no way benevolent. It brutalized blacks, subjecting them to debilitating, murderous violence; to rape; to the splitting up of families (another crime against nature); to denying them education and self-improvement; and to the exploitation of their labor and denying them access to their natural right to property. Black slaves were not happy Sambos benefiting from the largesse of kind, gentile white masters—they were brutalized against all justice and reason. Neither were they lacking in agency or self-respect, nor were they, for all intents and purposes socially and morally dead, subjected to natal alienation. [ 6 ] They were moral beings, fully aware of the rights and capabilities they were unjustly deprived of, and most of all they wanted freedom, independence, the recognition of their full personhood, and their rights as U.S. citizens (McGary and Lawson 1992).

Howard McGary and Bill E. Lawson’s Between Slavery and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery (1992), is an indispensable source for philosophical analyses of these arguments, and the engagement of normative philosophy with historical and sociological theories of U.S. slavery, and Nicholas Buccola’s The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty (2012), provides an excellent analysis of how Douglass’s critical examination of slavery fits into his liberalism and dominant conceptions of liberty of his time. An early, key contributor to the philosophical literature on Douglass, and to American philosophical literature on Douglass was Angela Davis, who of course is a key figure in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and the emergence of both the black power movement and black feminism since the 1960s. Her groundbreaking essay on Douglass, “Unfinished Lecture on Liberation-II”, argued for an active rather than static conception of liberty, drew on and criticized Rousseau’s conception of slavery, and applied her analysis to the Civil Rights struggles she was involved in during the late 1960s and early 1970s ([1971] 1983). [ 7 ]

As was mentioned in the above section, Douglass drew on the idea of natural rights and the natural law tradition in his argument against slavery. Douglass was an Enlightenment thinker and a nineteenth century modernist (Moses 1978; Martin 1984; Myers 2008). As such, he had a firm faith in the progress of man, civilization, and Western Christendom; hence, he saw American slavery as a brutal backwardness that ran counter to the progress of history. God and the forward march of history, Douglass believed, would bring the realization of truth, justice, and the brotherhood of man.

His sources for his belief were many. The obvious sources include sources such as the American founding documents, popular intellectuals, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his colleagues and acquaintances in the American Abolition movement, and the allies he encountered abroad; a particular source of his conception of natural law theory was George Combe’s The Constitution of Man , from 1834 (in Van Wyhe 2004). However, given the numerous religious references in his speeches and writings, and his drawing on the language of the King James Bible, and the rhetoric of manifest destiny, a primary source for his employment of the idea of natural law seems to be his adoption of the American Protestantism of the Second Great Awakening, with its democratic, republican, and generally independent spirit.

He believed that there were forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery:

“The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. (1852b, FDLW v.2: 203)

Relying on the deus ex machina , however, was not enough for Douglass. His vision of human rights involved action (Myers 2008). Here he echoes the civic republican tradition by stressing the need for active participation to claim, or earn one’s rights and status as a citoyen (Pettit 1997; Gooding-Williams 2009; Rousseau [SC]). Humans resist providential justice; this could be seen in the resistance of the slave-holding states of America to the abolition of slavery and the apathy of many other Americans about slavery; thus, the end of slavery requires action: agitation, protest, and if needed military intervention. Douglass longed for God to cast his thunderbolts at the United States, but he knew that to achieve the abolition of slavery in America, action was needed. His view of providence is on full display at the end of his famous Fourth of July oration of 1852. Douglass uses Psalm 68:31 and pairs the idea of God’s fiat with the image of Africa and Asia rising:

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God”. (1852b, FDLW v.2: 203) [ 8 ]

There are many concerns about Douglass’s view of natural law, manifest destiny and providence—these concerns are on display in the last quotation, and it is not merely the supernaturalism, the belief in a historical teleology, driven by cosmological ontological-theological determination; it is also the costs of the assumptions of such a conception of historical development (McCarthy 2009); namely, his adoption of nineteenth century conceptions of the backwardness (or in kinder terms, underdevelopment) of non-Western European groups; thus his relative silence about the United States’s destructive actions against and policies toward Native American groups. Douglass’s views have lead Wilson Jeremiah Moses to characterize him, along with other early black political figures, as a Moses figure: he is an exodus leader, recipient of the natural law for chosen peoples—African Americans in their travail for freedom as well as the American Republic as a whole—and he (paired eternally with Abraham Lincoln) is a law giver (Moses 1978).

His monumental, world-historical vita aside, Douglass’s faith, much abused as it was, resulted in his inability to understand the extent to which the United States was a racial republic (Frederickson 2002). He did not prognosticate, before or after the U.S. Civil War, that the progress he believed in would move at a glacial pace, and that for many of his black country men there would be no justice all. Nevertheless, Douglass had no time for this shortsightedness; which comes only with the luxury of the liberty he fought for, and, of course, time. Douglass was not looking behind him; he was fully engaged at every moment since his emancipation working to bring and end to slavery. Moreover, his view of natural law led to his critique of American slavery, and undergirded his arguments for active resistance to slavery and his interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. It is also worth noting, that natural law theorists have not ceded the field; thus Douglass is an important American historical figure in the intellectual history of natural law.

In 1851 Douglass broke from Garrison’s position that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document, and that the free states should peacefully secede from the union. In a letter to Smith he reported that he was “sick and tired of arguing on the slaveholder’s side…” (Douglass 1851). Douglass sided with Gerrit Smith and the Liberty party’s position that the United States’ founding documents were anti-slavery.

In his most famous speech, “What To the Slave Is The Fourth of July?”, he detailed what would come to be regarded as his signature positions, such as the view that slavery was unconstitutional and contrary to natural law, that blacks were self-evidently human and entitled to natural rights, and that slavery was contrary to the U.S. Constitution, American Republicanism, and Christian doctrine. He also began to defend violent resistance to slavery. Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, reflected these changes, and his expanding intellectual independence (FDAB; for a stand-alone edition, see the 1987 version edited by Andrews).

Although he initially acknowledges that the intentions of the framers was to allow slavery to continue in the states where it was established, he reported that he was convinced by Smith’s argument that the meaning of the document was not set by the intention of the framers but by rules of legal interpretation that focused on natural law. By the following year he even altered his position on the framers’s intentions: they meant the U.S. Constitution to be an anti-slavery document.

Douglass depended heavily on the U.S. Declaration of Independence, as well as the documented disagreements and cross-purposes, of the founders. He was guided by his view of natural law, and argued that the general ideas of America’s founding documents, as part of the history of Western democracy and republicanism, pointed toward an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as an evolving document that could potentially be in tune with civilizational development.

Douglass’s position on original intent, as it evolved through his life, is part of the critical discussion about the assimilationist tradition, and whether that tradition, and Douglass, squarely recognized the racialized character of the nation, how deeply embedded race and racism were in its institutions, and that it was in many respects a racial state. [ 9 ] This key critique of Douglass was given by Charles W. Mills, in his “Whose Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass and ‘Original Intent’” (Mills 1999). In short, Mills argues that Douglass fails to apprehend America’s racial contract. The practical problems of Douglass’s view aside, which U.S. history revealed in the Great Compromise and the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War, Douglass’s interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is reasonable and not blind to the facts; that Americans did not live up to the ideals of their founding documents is another matter.

As already noted above, Douglass was active in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War, vigorously protesting the Dred Scott decision, agitating against laws that protected the property rights of slaveholders over their slaves in the Free States and the spread of slavery into new U.S. territory. He lobbied the newly formed Republican Party (the party of Abraham Lincoln) to support abolitionism, and met the militant abolitionist, John Brown. Although Douglass declined to join Brown’s militia—he sensed the deadly potential of Brown’s zealotry and the likelihood of its failure—he defended Brown’s ideals and denounced claims that Brown was merely mad. Douglass quickly appropriated Brown’s ideals, while distancing himself from the particular of Brown’s fatal actions, and used the raid at Harper’s Ferry to launch further criticisms against President Lincoln for his reluctance to support abolitionism.

Douglass’s rejection of pacifism and his support for Federal military intervention—Civil War—to end slavery was a major turning point in his thought, and part of his developing ideas about natural law, divine providence and manifest destiny, and constitutional interpretation. Douglass’s defense of jus ad bellum had a tremendous effect, not just on his contemporaries, but also on the resulting debate on slavery, struggle, and self-respect. The modern debate in African American philosophy, critical race theory, and black political theory begins with Douglass’s narratives, and in particular his famous fight with the “Negro breaker”, Edward Covey. This incident plays a major role in all of Douglass’s narratives: Covey represents the brutalizing institution of American slavery and Douglass’s fight and victory represents the assertion of manhood, [ 10 ] self-respect, dignity and freedom. Douglass’s time with Covey and the suffering he endured by Covey’s hand is given a lengthier description in My Bondage and My Freedom than in the Narrative ; moreover, Douglass adds his own political and theological interpretation to the later account. In My Bondage and My Freedom the fight stresses how Douglass’s struggles reflect the struggles of the slaves around him, and that it is an instance of a general phenomenon; lest someone think that Douglass narrative is too particular and peculiar to represent the attitudes of other black Americans. Additionally, his fight is given explicit national political connotations (Gooding-Williams 2009; Myers 2008). The scene as Douglass writes it in each version is powerful, and is indicative of the narrative (literary, rhetorical, and philosophical) brilliance of Douglass’s narratives, and so deserves to be quoted at length.

In the Narrative (1845), Douglass wrote:

The battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free. The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain as slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me. (FDAB: 65)

In My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), he gives the following expanded interpretation:

Well, my dear reader, 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 FREEMAN. A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise. (FDAB: 286, original emphases)

The first passage displays Douglass’s romantic and religious influences; it swells with the longing for the freedom of the soul. The second passage, written without demands of Garrison’s pacifist politics directing his pen, screams independence and force, it recommends violence—it advocates for the coming U.S. Civil War—to throw off tyranny and to claim, to defend, even fulfill, one’s honor and humanity. The fight with Covey has inspired a number of philosophical interpretations about Douglass’s intentions and the meaning of his struggle; some have seen it an exemplar of conceptions of the state of war within liberal political theory (Davis [1971] 1983; FDN-Davis 2010), as deontological (Boxill 1997, 1998; see also Boxill 1984 [1992]), as existentialist (Gordon 1999), or as fruitfully understand using a number of political and social theoretical positions (Buccola 2012: 14–40; McGary and Lawson 1992: 163–209; Willett 1998, 2001: 188–202). Across these approaches, Douglass’s narrative of his fight with Covey stands as a vibrant reference point in debates regarding violence, self-respect, and dignity.

Douglass’s conception of providence, with its American themes of individualism, anti-supernaturalism, and activism, and his view of natural law influenced his view of universal human brotherhood. [ 11 ] This doctrine, with its religious and philosophical roots, was dearly held by Douglass. He argued that the idea of universal human brotherhood was consistent with the high ideals of American Republicanism and Christianity, and it was offered as a response to the rise in the United States of the racial theory of polygenesis , supported by the American School of ethnology, and argued for originally by Samuel Morton (1799–1851) and popularized by Josiah Nott and George Glidden’s Types of Mankind (1854; Martin 1984; Myers 2008).

Douglass put considerable effort into countering arguments that blacks were subhuman, intellectually and morally inferior, and fit to be dominated as children, forever to be a race in nonage. Although he flirted with historical developmental arguments that black civilizations had developed, he saw such arguments as too loosely related to the conditions of black Americans in his time, so he increasingly turned to his natural law arguments. He argued that by the high standard of Christian theology, blacks, as humans and creation of the divine, were all equally the children of God, no matter their present condition. One of his slogans got to the point: “A man’s a man for a’ that”. He used rhetoric that appealed to the piety of the nation that the Christian Bible had to be correct on this score, and that—just as the soul of the nation depended on emancipation—the authority of the biblical text depended on the affirmation of the unity of the human family:

What, after all, if they are able to show very good reasons for believing the Negro to have been created precisely as we find him on the Gold Coast—along the Senegal and the Niger—I say, what of all this?—“ A man’s a man for a’ that ”. I sincerely believe, that the weight of the argument is in favor of the unity of origin of the human race, or species—that the arguments on the other side are partial, superficial, utterly subversive of the happiness of man, and insulting to the wisdom of God. Yet, what if we grant they are not so? What, if we grant that the case, on our part, is not made out? Does it follow, that the Negro should be held in contempt? Does it follow, that to enslave and imbrue him is either just or wise ? I think not. Human rights stand upon a common basis; and by all the reason that they are supported, maintained and defended, for one variety of the human family, they are supported, maintained and defended for all the human family; because all mankind have the same wants, arising out of a common nature. A diverse origin does not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a united destiny. (1854; FDP1 v.2: 523)

Douglass emphasized that not only was slavery against natural law and Christian morality, but that the very arguments concerning the subhuman status of blacks that slavery’s apologists used to justify attempted slavery, contradicted the Bible and was heretical. Douglass, in short, leveraged the Bible, and obviously America’s reverence for it, against the rising tide of polygenesis race theory. He stated:

The unity of the human race—the brotherhood of man—the reciprocal duties of all to each, and of each to all, are too plainly taught in the Bible to admit of cavil.—The credit of the Bible is at stake—and if it be too much to say, that it must stand or fall, by the decision of this question, it is proper to say, that the value of that sacred Book—as a record of the early history of mankind—must be materially affected, by the decision of the question. (1854, FDP1 v.2: 505)

The doctrine of universal human brotherhood for Douglass, and the abolitionists, was based on the Bible’s creation story and Acts 17:26: “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (King James Version).

These words were not mere words for Douglass and the abolitionists; they were not just-so stories. The Christian doctrine of the unity of the human family or human brotherhood (as the sexist language that marked the idea at least since the Enlightenment), contained the world historical insight of equal human dignity, which implied—unleashed, as was seen in several revolutions in the 18 th and 19 th -century—the uncompromising demand for equal rights.

Douglass’s belief in the evil of slavery, universal human brotherhood, and the inevitability of human development, as well as his observation of the mixing of the so-called races in the United States, led his to support racial amalgamation. It is important to note here that he thought that there were races to amalgamate, and he affirmed the basic idea that there were biologically distinct races (1854, FDP1 v.2: 497-525). As should be clear from his view of universal human brotherhood, he did not however think that much followed from that admission. The existence of biological race did not in his view negate the theological-philosophical insight of universal human brotherhood.

Douglass understood that the sexual boundaries between the races were thin, and that indeed, the conditions of slavery led to a great deal of mixing. Recall that he held that his unacknowledged father was his white master. Beyond recognizing this condition, he began to promote amalgamation, although, obviously, between free peoples. He believed that blacks and white ought to be free to intermarry and indeed they should intermarry. Why should they marry? Douglass, sensing the transformation of the black and Native American population in the United States, believed this process was natural, that it would continue, and that a new third race, an American race, would emerge in this land. During his time such views were highly inflammatory and served, and continued to serve, as one reason offered against the emancipation of black slaves, and later as a justification for segregation (Sundstrom 2008: 11–35 and 93–107). Nonetheless, in the 1860s he boldly advocated for amalgamation between the races. He remarked to a journalist, the day after his second marriage to Helen Pitts, who was white,

…there is no division of races. God Almighty made but one race. I adopt the theory that in time the varieties of races will be blended into one. Let us look back when the black and the white people were distinct in this country. In two hundred and fifty years there has grown up a million of intermediate. And this will continue. You may say that Frederick Douglass considers himself a member of the one race which exists. (1884, FDP1 v.5: 147)

Douglass’s amalgamation is sometimes conflated with his support for assimilation. Amalgamation is conceptually distinct from assimilation; one does not have to accept amalgamation to support assimilation. Assimilation concerns various degrees of social and cultural adoption, adaptation, and absorption. It can theoretically go in either direction, say from black to white or white to black, or it can involve a subtle blending. In the United States, the assumption has been that non-whites or white Ethnics would and should enter the “melting pot”, and assimilate to dominant white Protestant mores (Sundstrom 2003). [ 12 ]

Douglass was not exceptional in his support of assimilation. A number of Douglass’s contemporaries, and several black leaders that followed him all supported some degree of assimilation. Some of Douglass’s early critics, such as Edward Blyden (1832–1912), Martin Delany (1812–1885), and Alexander Crummell (1819–1898), who did not support amalgamation, and in fact were separatists and racial nationalists, supported the assimilation by black Americans of Christianity and many of the standards and values Western civilization (Moses 1978).

Douglas, as an advocate of assimilation and amalgamation, was by extension a supporter of what would be come known as integration. He is considered by some political theorists to be a primary example of the political ideal of integration as distinct from separatism. Douglass’s amalgamationist-assimilationist views of the 1860s and on are not the integrationist ideas adopted in America of 1950s and 1960s; those views were influenced by cultural nationalists, like Du Bois, who advocated for social and political integration while the group maintained its own ethnic-racial ideals and identity. Yet, Douglass is a fitting hero for the integrationist impulse in general.

Douglass criticized the creation of separate societies, with distinct “negro pews, negro berths in steamboats, negro cars, Sabbath or week-day schools,…churches”, and so on (Douglass 1848a,b). Separatism, for Douglass, was in the interest of the defenders of slavery, and after the U.S. Civil War, he regarded separatism as a counter-ideal of the abolition movement. Self-separation, according to Douglass, served the interests of whites who wanted to deny blacks their right to integrate into society, to improve and develop, and to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

For similar reasons he opposed plans for black American emigration to Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico, or Latin America. He criticized the emigrationist visions of the American Colonization Society, founded by whites, and the African Civilization Society, founded by blacks. He had four reasons to oppose emigration schemes: First, for slavery to end, Douglass argued that black Americans needed to struggle against it in America. Second, Americans had no other home but the United States; they were uniquely American, and products of American history. Third, black Americans had a right to the property their labor had produced. By abandoning the United States, they were abandoning the land they built. He wrote,

The native land of the American Negro is America. His bones, his muscles, his sinews, are all American. His ancestors for two hundred and seventy years have lived and laboured and died, on American soil, and millions of his posterity have inherited Caucasian blood. It is pertinent, therefore, to ask, in view of this admixture, as well as in view of other facts, where the people of this mixed race are to go, for their ancestors are white and black, and it will be difficult to find their native land anywhere outside of the United States. (Douglass 1894b, in Brotz 1992: 329–30)

Fourth and finally, the real solution, according to Douglass, was not emigration, and separation, for that was contrary to historical progress, providence, and the emergence of the new American race. All the same, Douglass was not opposed to efforts of blacks in collective self-help and self-defense. Nonetheless, his opposition to emigration displayed the downside of his commitment to his natural law and manifest destiny-inspired principles. He did not understand how immigration might be, in the eyes of the black Americans that wanted to flee anti-black oppression and especially life-crushing oppression and murderous anti-black violence, a more than reasonable act of self-preservation and self-determination (much like his escape from slavery). [ 13 ] His opposition to emigration was such that it extended to the internal migration of black Americans from the south to the north—the Great Migration or Black Exodus; he initially opposed the individual choice of black Americans to flee the American South after the rise of Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and the development of agricultural peonage, which for all practical purposes reduced the lives of black Americans to slavery and certainly devastated their life chances (Wilkerson 2010; Myers 2008). Douglass moderated his position on migration only at the end of his life when his disillusionment with the United States grew (Douglass 1879, 1888, 1894a).

The relation between Douglass and the topic of black political leadership is wrapped up with his life, activities, and writing. He was a leader among black Americans, and served as an unelected spokesperson for free and enslaved blacks during a monumental time for the nation. [ 14 ] He was presented as a victim of and witness to slavery by the Garrisonian abolitionists, but he freed himself from their restraints, just as he freed himself from slavery. He wanted to speak for himself, to be his own man and to be a leader among men. In his self-emancipation from slavery, his efforts to shape his own story, and to speak his mind, he stands as an exemplar of leadership and its virtues.

His example was quick to be seized and claimed by other prospective black leaders and spokespersons. The most significant example of this was the conflicting claim between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) over the meaning of Douglass’s legacy. Indeed both men competed for the opportunity to publish a biography of Douglass with the publishers George W. Jacobs & Company in their series The American Crisis Biographies (Sundstrom 2008: 11–35). Du Bois’s bid for this task was rejected in favor of Washington’s (Washington 1907). Du Bois was, instead, given the project of writing a biography of John Brown, which includes large sections on Douglass (Du Bois 1909).

After the death of Douglass, Du Bois published an elegiac poem, “The Passing of Douglass” (c. 1895), and incorporated his narrative in The Souls of Black Folk (1903, [1999: xxii), John Brown (1909), and Black Reconstruction in America (1935). Du Bois presented Douglass as a freedom fighter and a leader of an activist community that demanded full social and political liberty, equality, and inclusion. Du Bois’s Douglass was vigorous and fought for freedom through self-assertion. Douglass, according to Du Bois, was no accommodationist: he was not given to offering obeisance to white demands to maintain white political, social, and economic superiority over blacks. Du Bois made this pointed interpretation very clear in his The Souls of Black Folks . In the second chapter of that book Du Bois argues against Booker T. Washington’s accomodationism in favor of his and Douglass’s demand for, and assertion of, black political and social equality and rights. Economic liberty is not enough, and any gains in the economic sphere would be hampered and vulnerable without the protections and opportunities provided by social and political liberty and rights. And, of course, economic considerations aside, the fight for equal rights and liberty is not solely about economic opportunity—it is about equal dignity and one’s full humanity.

It is important to note, however, that Du Bois takes on Douglass’s mantle of leadership after he argued against Douglass’s view of assimilation and amalgamation. Du Bois, in the “The Conservation of Races”, rejects amalgamation, which Douglass supported, and argues for the conservation of a distinct black identity and community (Du Bois 1897). Here is his reduction of the amalgamationist position:

It may, however, be objected here that the situation of the our race in America renders this attitude impossible; that our sole hope of salvation lies in our being able to lose our race identity in the commingled blood of the nation; and that nay other course would merely increase the friction of races which we call race prejudice, and against which we have so long and so earnestly fought. (Du Bois 1897, in Brotz 1992: 488)

Du Bois argues that black Americans ought to embrace a “stalwart originality” that follows “Negro Ideals” and not dissolve into a general American identity (Du Bois 1897, in Brotz 1992: 488). His view is sometimes referred to as cultural pluralism, and his arguments in that early essay, are important landmarks in debates in African social and political thought over separation versus assimilation (Boxill 1992 [1997]; 1984 [1992]: 173–85; 1999; McGary 1999a; Pittman 1999; McGary 1999b: 43–61), and the conservation of race. [ 15 ] Because of his cultural pluralism, it is tempting to think that Du Bois rejects Douglass’s view of assimilation and integration; that would be a serious mistake. He rejects Douglass’s vision of total assimilation in favor of the retention of some black ideals, which he too easily assumes that all blacks qua blacks share, but his cultural pluralism has at its end the creation of a community that are “co-workers” in the “kingdom of culture” (Du Bois 1903 [1997: 39]).

In response to the amalgamationist objection quoted at length above, Du Bois offers an early version of his brilliant conception of black American double consciousness, and through his rhetorical questions at the end of the passage presages his arguments against Douglass’s hopes of amalgamation and for his view of black political, social, and cultural solidarity:

No Negro who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people in America has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these cross-roads; has failed to ask himself at some time: What, after all, am I? Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro, am I not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates Black and White America? Is not my only possible aim the subduction of all that is Negro in me to the American? Does my black blood place upon me any more obligation to assert my nationality than German, or Irish or Italian blood would? (Du Bois 1897, in Brotz 1992: 488)

Du Bois’s answers to these questions directly contradict Douglass’s view about amalgamation, though their views about assimilation share some similarities, such as the co-production and enjoyment of a common American higher culture. In the end, however, Du Bois’s image of Douglass is skewed toward his own political projects of elite leadership, racial solidarity, and uplift.

Booker T. Washington’s Douglass is equally a work of art that reflects the image of the artist. Washington’s The Life of Frederick Douglass presents an image of Douglass that is contrary to Du Bois’s, and, unfortunately, clearly contrary to many of Douglass’s views (Washington 1907). It is a work of self-promotion; although he does accurately and fruitfully point out the similarities between Douglass and himself (they both were born slaves, criticized the North’s complicity in slavery, and valued industrial education—however, Douglass did not denigrate higher education for black Americans, as Washington did), he fails to mention Douglass’s frequent and scorching demands for equal social and political rights, skews his relationship to John Brown and the Harper’s Ferry raid, and most of all he fails to mention Douglass’s view of amalgamation. Washington’s claim over Douglass’s legacy of leadership falls short of the facts. Douglass was a radical Republican, and demanded full inclusion of black Americans in the life of the nation, and the opening up of all opportunities for education and advancement for blacks, and Washington did not.

Du Bois’s claims over Douglass, however, also fall short. Despite Du Bois’s assumption that he has inherited the mantle of black political, social, and (he would add) cultural leadership from Douglass, Douglass’s leadership style and politics is markedly more democratic than Du Bois’s. Douglass did not envision himself as the embodiment of the spirit or culture of his people (Gooding-Williams 2009: 19–65). Although he probably saw himself as an instance of what Emerson called a “representative man”, (Emerson 1850: title) and certainly as a self-made man (Douglass 1860, 1893; Howe 1997: 137–56)—understood as moral rather than a commercial ideal—he did not envision himself as the embodiment of the spirit or culture of his people. He was a democratic thinker, and understood that particular individuals and especially leaders could fail to follow the guidance of the ideals natural law and civic republicanism.

Douglass’s political activities, however, do provide a model of sorts of democratic politics in action. He worked with a variety of groups, some underground while he was a slave, for example, eventually after becoming literate he, unbeknownst to his master, participated in at least one Sabbath School, and several other groups after his escape and emancipation (Douglass, 1852a, FDAB: 298). Some of these groups were all black, due to the condition of slavery, but as a free man he worked with integrated groups as well. These groups would have cross-cutting interests, such as in his work with the American Equal Rights Association, an organization devoted to universal suffrage. At no point did he think of himself as the singular spokesman for the movement or a group or his race. His politics were principled, in that his views were strongly directed by his acceptance of a liberal conception of natural law, and the related ideas of natural law, human liberty and equality, and the wrongness of slavery. He never shied away from pushing or arguing his views, but in terms of his practical politics, he supported active, participatory, and democratic action (Douglass 1848a).

His ideal of leadership was heavily influenced by his view of natural law, and his assumption that the role of heroes should be to stand up for what was mandated by that law. This did not lead him to a view of authoritarian, paternalistic liberalism. The principles of natural law and rights must be processed through a participatory democratic system. However, the role of the hero leadership, the political or social outsider, the heretic or eccentric, who stands against the tyranny of the majority or minority to defend human rights was absolutely valuable. In defense of the actions of John Brown, for example, Douglass wrote, putting him into heroic terms (with overtones of Carlyle and Emerson):

He believes the Declaration of Independence to be true, and the Bible to be a guide to human conduct, and acting upon the doctrines of both, he threw himself against the serried ranks of American oppression, and translated into heroic deeds the love of liberty and hatred of tyrants, with which he was inspired from both these forces acting upon his philanthropic and heroic soul. (Douglass 1859, FDLW v.2: 459) [ 16 ]

Thus, we see in his elegies to John Brown and Abraham Lincoln (Douglass 1876), in particular, the value he places on Emersonian representative men and the ideal of the statesman guided by the principles of American Civic Republicanism, and his belief in natural law, and the moral progress of the universe.

Throughout the duration of the Civil War, and in the years that followed, Douglass remained active in Republican Party politics. He was a staunch supporter of the full, uncompromising Reconstruction of the Union, and advocated for economic and education investment in free and newly-freed black Americans. He pressed for the expansion of and guarantee of civil rights for blacks, and in particular for the defense of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1883 (Douglass 1883a).

In keeping with his civil rights efforts, and his view of natural rights and the development of the United States into a just Republic, he was was an early advocate of women’s suffrage (FDWR). The abolition and women’s suffrage movement, along with the temperance movement, were deeply intertwined. Douglass became involved with the American Equal Rights Association (E. DuBois 1978), and supported its dual platform of racial and sexual equality. He joined other prominent leaders in the abolition movement, such as Sojourner Truth, and emerging leaders in the suffrage movement, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in these efforts.

There were simmering divisions in the American Equal Rights Association, due to cross-cutting and conflicting interests, and the latent racism within the organization, which was largely lead by middle-class and wealthy white women. The tensions with the American Equal Rights Association, and the suffrage movement generally, erupted over the passing of the fifteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 15 th amendment franchised all male citizens, although, as U.S. history so brutally revealed, it did so in word but not in deed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony demanded that black men and all women be enfranchised simultaneously, and opposed the fifteenth amendment on that principle. Some among the suffrage movement based their arguments for women suffrage, and against the enfranchisement of blacks, on racist grounds. Although the white women who lead the association were abolitionists, they also, and not inconsequentially, held that blacks, and in particular, black men, were inferior to white women and neither as ready for nor deserving of the vote as themselves. Occasionally even Stanton lowered herself to draw on these claims (Stanton 1997a: 194-99; 1997b: 236-38).

Douglass communicated his sympathy with the cause for the universal franchise; however, he condemned the arguments for women’s suffrage, such as those offered by the likes of Stanton, that were predicated on assumptions of black inferiority and degrading claims that black or “Oriental” men, and by extension black and Asian women—i.e., Stanton’s nasty references to “Sambo” and “Yung Tung”—were not as deserving as white women (Douglass 1869; Stanton 1997a: 194-99). Douglass did not want to delay black male suffrage to resolve this question over suffrage for all women. He believed it a practical matter to quickly get some protections for black Americans while the fight for suffrage for black and white women continued. Moreover, he argued it was imperative to obtain some measure of political, legal, and social rights for blacks to confront the rising level of horrific anti-black violence that was sweeping the United States. Douglass firmly made this claim in his speech at the American Equal Rights Association in 1869:

I must say that I do not see how any one can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to women as to the negro. With us, the matter is a question of life and death. It is a matter of existence, at least in fifteen states of the Union. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own. (Douglass 1869, FDP1 v.4: 216)

When asked if this did not apply to black women, Douglass replied that it did but because they were black and not women (Douglass 1869, FDP1 v.4: 216). He did not, however, have ready answers to concerns about how well black men, including elite black men, represented and protected the rights and interests of black women. Nor did he fully appreciate the need for women to represent themselves and to be fully autonomous and independent moral agents and citizens. His shortsightedness was repeated by generations of black male leaders. It was Anna Julia Cooper (c. 1859–1964), along with other black women leaders, who best articulated that argument (see Lemert and Bhan 1998; for a general history of early black feminism, see Hine 1994).

The controversies around the passage of the fifteenth amendment, and the divisions and the eventual splitting of the American Equal Rights Association, lead to the famous criticisms of “first wave feminism” by black women leaders such as Mary Church Terrell and Anna Julia Cooper, and has continued relevance today in debates about race in feminist and black feminist philosophy (Guy-Sheftall 1995; Hine 1994).

During and after the Reconstruction, Douglass remained deeply concerned about the prospect that the U.S. would compromise on the civil and human rights of black Americans. He became increasingly concerned about the denial of black civil rights and the rising waves of anti-black violence. He, thus, criticized the growing practice of black peonage in agriculture, and over time he expressed sympathy with blacks who were fleeing the American South, although he did not support the black Exodus ( see Section 6 ). He did not support the Exodus as a policy because he judged it bad for black labor, and that it did not address the institutional problems that caused the Exodus: peonage and exploitation, unequal justice, unrestrained violence, lack of resources and opportunities, and in particular, education. He received a great deal of criticism for his position for failing to support the individual choices of black Americans who sought to flee the inhospitable, degrading, and deadly conditions in the American South. He also criticized inequitable and unfair treatment of blacks in state criminal justice systems, in particular criticizing the Convict-Lease system (Davis 1999). And he joined with Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) in raising alarm over the growing practice of anti-black lynching in the United States (Wells-Barnett 2002; see also Lott’s “Frederick Douglass on the Myth of the Black Rapist”, in Lott 1999) He saw America’s failure to support the civil rights, and the very lives, of black Americans as indicative of its moral and political failure, and as evidence as he provocatively claimed that the Emancipation was a stupendous fraud. Douglass’s later-day activities are an important and impressive part of his record and life, and indeed a part of the evolving debates in African American philosophy and critical theory about the carceral society (Davis 1999). Notably, Angela Davis, who was a pioneer of Douglass research in philosophy in the United States, has lead the inquiry in this area; her scholarship continues to be ground-breaking, not only in relation to Douglass’s early role in this debate, but also on the issue of criminal justice, punishment, and incarceration in philosophy.

Works by Douglass

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , 2 nd edition, David W. Blight (ed.), Boston, MA: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 2003.
• [FDN-Davis], Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself: A New Critical Edition , Angela Y. Davis (ed.), San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2010.
• 1848a, “Address to the Colored People of the United States”, in FDLW v.1: 331–36.
• 1848b, “The Folly of Racially Exclusive Organization”, in FDP1 v.2: 109–11.
• 1851, “To Gerrit Smith, Esq.”, January 21, in FDSW: 171–172.
• My Bondage and My Freedom , William L. Andrews (ed.), Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
• 1852b, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”, in FDLW v.2: 181–204.
• 1854, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered: An Address Before the Literary Societies, Western Reserve College”, July 12, Rochester, NY: Lee, Mann & co. Reprinted in FDP1 v.2: 497–525.
• 1859, “Capt. John Brown Not Insane”, in FDLW v.2: 458–60.
• 1860, “The Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men”, in FDP1 v.3: 289–300.
• 1869, “We Welcome the Fifteenth Amendment: Addresses Delivered in New York, on 12–13 May 1869”, in FDP1 v.4: 213–19.
• 1876, “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln”, in FDLW v.4: 309–20.
• 1879, “The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States”, in FDP1 v.4: 510–33.
• 1881 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , in FDAB 453–1045.
• 1883a, “The Civil Rights Case”, in FDLW v.4: 392–403.
• 1883b, “Address to the People of the United States”, delivered at a Convention of Colored Men, Louisville, Kentucky, September 25, in FDSW: 669–85.
• 1884, “God Almighty Made but One Race”, in FDP1 v.5: 145–47.
• 1888, “In Law Free; in Fact, Slave”, in FDP1 v.5: 357–73.
• 1893, “Self-Made Men”, in FDP1 v.5: 545–75.
• 1894a, “Lessons of the Hour”, in FDP1 v.5: 575–607.
• 1894b, “The Folly of Colonization”, in Brotz 1992: 328–31.

Collections

• [FDAB] Douglass: Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | My Bondage and My Freedom | Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , 1994, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.), New York, NY: Library of America.
• [FDLW] The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass , 1950–1975, 5 volumes (annotated v.1 – v.5 above), Philip Sheldon Foner (ed.), New York, NY: International Publishers.
• [FDP1] Series One, Speeches, Debates, and Interviews , 5 volumes (annotated v.1 – v.5 above), John W. Blassingame (ed.), 1979.
• [FDP2] Series Two, Autobiographical Writings , John W. Blassingame (ed.), 1979–1999.
• [FDP3] Series Three, Correspondence , John R. McKivigan (ed.), 2009.
• [FDSW] Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings , 1999, 1 st edition, The Library of Black America, Philip Sheldon Foner and Yuval Taylor (eds.), Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books.
• [FDWR] Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights , 1976, Philip Sheldon Foner (ed.), Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press.
• Appiah, Anthony, 1985, “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race”, Critical Inquiry , 12(1): 21–37. Reprinted in 1986 “Race”, Writing and Difference , Henry Louis Gates. Jr. (ed.), Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 21–37. doi:10.1086/448319
• Boxill, Bernard R., 1984 [1992], Blacks and Social Justice , original edition, Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984; revised edition, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992. (Pages numbers from the revised edition.)
• –––, 1992 [1997], “Two Traditions in African American Political Philosophy”, Philosophical Forum , 24 (1992): 119–35; issue reprinted as a book, African-American Perspectives and Philosophical Traditions , John P. Pittman (ed.), New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, 119–35; also reprinted as African Philosophy: An Anthology , Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 1998.
• –––, 1997, “The Fight with Covey”, in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy , Lewis R. Gordon (ed.), New York, NY: Routledge, 273–90.
• –––, 1998, “Radical Implications of Locke’s Moral Theory: The Views of Frederick Douglass”, in Lott 1998: 29–48.
• –––, 1999, “Douglass against the Emigrationists”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 21–49.
• Brotz, Howard, 1992, African-American Social and Political Thought, 1850–1920 , New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
• Buccola, Nicholas, 2012, The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty , New York: New York University Press.
• Casas, Bartolomé de las, 1552 [1992], The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account , Herma Briffault (trans.), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Cruse, Harold, 1967, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership , New York: Morrow. Reprinted 2005 New York Review Books Classics. New York: New York Review Books.
• Davis, Angela Y., 1971, Lectures on Liberation , New York: New York Committee to Free Angela Davis.
• –––, [1971] 1983, “Unfinished Lecture on Liberation-II”, in Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917 , Leonard Harris (ed.), Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 130–36.
• –––, 1999, “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Lease System”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 339–62.
• –––, 2005, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture , first edition, New York: Seven Stories Press.
• Delany, Martin Robison, 1852, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States , reprinted in 1968 (The American Negro: His History and Literature series), New York: Arno Press and the New York Times.
• Du Bois, W.E.B., 1897, “The Conservation of Races”, in Brotz 1992: 483–92. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
• 1997, David W. Blight, and Robert Gooding-Williams (eds), Boston: Bedford Books.
• 1999, Henry Louis Gates, and Terri Hume Oliver (eds), 1 st edition, A Norton Critical Edition, New York: W.W. Norton.
• –––, 1909, John Brown , (American Crisis Biographies), Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer (ed.), Philadelphia: G.W. Jacobs & company.
• –––, 1935, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 , New York: Harcourt, Brace. Reprinted 2007 as part of the The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois series, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press.
• DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1978, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1850 [2004], Representative Men: Seven Lectures , Brenda Wineapple (ed.), Modern Library pbk. ed. New York, NY: Modern Library.
• Foner, Philip Sheldon, 1964, Frederick Douglass: A Biography , New York: Citadel Press.
• Frederickson, George M., 2002, Racism: A Short History , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Gooding-Williams, Robert, 2009, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Gordon, Lewis R., 1999, “Douglass as an Existentialist”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 207–26.
• Gordon, Milton Myron, 1964, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Guy-Sheftall, Beverly (ed.), 1995, Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought , New York: New Press.
• Haney-López, Ian, 2006, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race , revised and updated, 10 th anniversary edition, (Critical America), New York, NY: New York University Press.
• Harris, Leonard (ed.), 1989, The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond , Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Hine, Darlene Clark, 1994, Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History , Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Pub..
• Howe, Daniel Walker, 1997, Making the American Self , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• James, Joy, 1997, Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals , New York: Routledge.
• ––– (ed.), 1998, The Angela Y. Davis Reader (Blackwell Readers), Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
• Jefferson, Thomas, 1785, Notes on the State of Virginia , reprinted 1999, Frank Shuffelton (ed.), New York, NY: Penguin Books.
• Lawson, Bill E. and Frank M. Kirkland (eds), 1999, Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader , Blackwell Critical Readers, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
• Lee, Maurice S. (ed.), 2009, The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass (Cambridge Companions to American Studies), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lemert, Charles C. and Esme Bhan (eds), 1998, The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including a Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters , Legacies of Social Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield.
• Lott, Tommy Lee (ed.), 1998, Subjugation and Bondage: Critical Essays on Slavery and Social Philosophy , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• –––, 1999, The Invention of Race: Black Culture and the Politics of Representation , Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Martin, Waldo E., 1985, The Mind of Frederick Douglass , Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
• McCarthy, Thomas, 2009, Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development , Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
• McFeely, William S., 1991, Frederick Douglass , New York: Norton & Company.
• McGary, Howard, 1999a, “Douglass on Racial Assimilation and Racial Institutions”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 50–63.
• –––, 1999b, Race and Social Justice , Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• McGary, Howard, and Bill E. Lawson, 1992, Between Slavery and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery , Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Mills, Charles W., 1997, The Racial Contract , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1999, “Whose Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass and ‘Original Intent’”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 100–42.
• Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, 1978, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925 , Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books.
• Myers, Peter C., 2008, Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism , American Political Thought. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
• Nott, Josiah Clark, and George R. Gliddon, 1854, Types of Mankind: Or, Ethnological Researches, Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon Their Natural, Geographical, Philological and Biblical History; Illustrated by Selections from the Inedited Papers of Samuel George Morton … And by Additional Contributions from Prof. L. Agassiz, Ll. D., W. Usher, M.D., and Prof. H.S. Patterson, M.D. , Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & co. [ Nott and Gliddon 1854 available online ]
• Outlaw, Lucius, 1996, “Against the Grain of Modernity: The Politics of Difference and the Conservation of ‘Race’”, in On Race and Philosophy , Lucius Outlaw (ed.), New York, NY: Routledge, 135–57.
• Patterson, Orlando, 1982, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Pettit, Philip, 1997, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government , Oxford Political Theory, New York, NY: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198296428.001.0001
• Pittman, John, 1999, “Douglass’s Assimilationism and Antislavery”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 64–81.
• Preston, Dickson J., 1980, Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, [D], “The Discourses” and Other Early Political Writings , Victor Gourevitch (ed./trans.), Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge, U.K.; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• –––, [SC], “The Social Contract” and Other Later Political Writings , Victor Gourevitch (ed./trans.), Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge, U.K.; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
• Schrader, David E., 1999, “Natural Law in the Constitutional Thought of Frederick Douglass”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 85–99.
• Shelby, Tommie, 2005, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity , Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1997a, “Manhood Suffrage”, in The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1866 to 1873 , volume 2, Ann D. Gordon (ed.), New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 194–99.
• –––, 1997b, “The Sixteenth Amendment”, in The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1866 to 1873 , volume 2, Ann D. Gordon (ed.), New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 236–38.
• Sundstrom, Ronald R., 2003, “Douglass & Du Bois’s Der Schwarze Volksgeist”, in Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy , Robert Bernasconi (ed.), Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 32–52.
• –––, 2008, The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Van Wyhe, John, 2004, Combe’s Constitution of Man, and Nineteenth-Century Responses , 3 volumes, Bristol, England: Thoemmes Continuum.
• Wallace, Maurice O., 2009, “Violence, Manhood, and War in Douglass”, in Lee 2009: 73–88.
• Washington, Booker T., 1907, Frederick Douglass , American Crisis Biographies. Philadelphia, PA; London: G.W. Jacobs & Co.
• Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 2002, On Lynchings , Classics in Black Studies. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. Reprint of “Southern Horrors” (1892), “A Red Record” (1895), and “Mob Rule in New Orleans” (1900).
• Wilkerson, Isabel, 2010, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration , 1 st edition, New York: Random House.
• Willett, Cynthia, 1998, “The Master-Slave Dialectic: Hegel vs. Douglass”, in Lott 1998: 151–70.
• –––, 2001, The Soul of Justice: Social Bonds and Racial Hubris , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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• Frederick Douglass Papers Edition

Africana Philosophy | Crummell, Alexander | Du Bois, W.E.B. | Emerson, Ralph Waldo | Locke, Alain LeRoy | nature of law: natural law theories | race

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself: Electronic Edition.

Frederick douglass, 1818-1895.

Call number E 449 D746 1845 (Murrey Atkins Library, UNC-Charlotte)

Written by himself..

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

LYNN, Mass., April 28, 1845.

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The Annotated

Frederick douglass, introduction and annotations by david w. blight, in 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping america in the pages of the atlantic ..

In his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , while reflecting on the end of the Civil War, Douglass admitted that “a strange and, perhaps, perverse feeling came over me.” Great joy over the ending of slavery, he wrote, was at times “tinged with a feeling of sadness. I felt I had reached the end of the noblest and best part of my life; my school was broken up, my church disbanded, and the beloved congregation dispersed, never to come together again.” In recalling the postwar years, Douglass drew from a scene in a Shakespearean tragedy to express his memory of that moment: “ ‘Othello’s occupation was gone.’ ” In Othello, Douglass perceived a character, the former high-ranking general and “moor of Venice,” who had lost authority and professional purpose. Doug­lass harbored a special affinity for this most famous Black character in Western literature, whose mental collapse and horrible end lingered as a warning in a famous speech: “O, now, for ever / Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!”

In 1866, Douglass took up his pen to try to capture this moment of transformation, both for himself and for the United States. For the December issue of this magazine that year, in an essay simply titled “ Reconstruction ,” Douglass observed that “questions of vast moment” lay before Congress and the nation. Nothing less than the essential results of the “tremendous war,” he writes, were at stake. Would the war become “a miserable failure … a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,” or a “victory over treason,” resulting in a newly reimagined nation “delivered from all contradictions and … based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality”? In this inquiry, Douglass’s new role as a conscience of the country became clarified. His leadership had always been through words and persuasion, written and oratorical. How, now that the war was over, would he employ his incomparable voice?

From the beginning, Reconstruction had faced three paramount questions: Who would rule in the South (defeated ex-Confederates or the victorious North?); who would rule in Washington, D.C. (Congress or the president?); and what were the meanings and dimensions of Black freedom? As of his writing in December, Douglass declared that nothing could yet be “considered final.” After ferocious debates, Congress had enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and passed the Fourteenth Amendment, the latter still subject to ratification by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Violent anti-Black riots had occurred in Memphis and New Orleans that spring and summer, killing at least 48 people in the first city and at least 38 in the second. Much had been done to secure emancipation, but all remained in abeyance, awaiting legislation, human persuasion, and acts of political will.

As Douglass was writing, two visions of Reconstruction vied for national dominance in the fall elections. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee, favored a policy of a lenient restoration, a plan that allowed for no Black civil and political rights and admitted the southern states back into the Union as quickly as possible. The Republican leadership of the House and the Senate, however, demanded a slower, harsher, and more transformative Reconstruction, a process that would establish state governments in the South that were more democratic. Black civil and political rights and enforcement mechanisms in federal law formed the backbone of these “Radical Republican” regimes.

Douglass was at this juncture a Radical Republican in the spirit of Thaddeus Stevens , the congressman from Pennsylvania who led the effort to impeach Johnson. Like Stevens, Douglass argued vehemently that Johnson had to be countered and thwarted by any legal means necessary or the promise of emancipation would fail. Douglass believed at the end of 1866 that, though only at its vulnerable beginning, the United States had been reinvented by war and by new egalitarian impulses rooted in emancipation. His essay is, therefore, full of radical brimstone, cautious hope, and a thoroughly new vision of constitutional authority. In careful but clear terms, he described Reconstruction as a revolution that would “cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic.” In short, he sought an overturning of history, the expansion of human rights forged from the fact of African American freedom—and from an idealism that soon would be sorely tested. Revolutions may or may not go backwards, but they surely give no rest to those who lead them.

David W. Blight is the Sterling Professor of American History at Yale and the author, most recently, of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom .

RECONSTRUCTION by FREDERICK DOUGLASS

The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn topic of reconstruction.

Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best of reasons for this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled with by this. No political skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands statesmanship. 1

Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results,—a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,—a strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to liberty or civilization,—an attempt to re-establish a Union by force, which must be the merest mockery of a Union,—an effort to bring under Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, 2 have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress.

The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,—an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political idea,—no general assertion of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature. 3

The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States. They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national statute-book.

Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is im­possible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection. 4

One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the highly instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and despotic governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the war.

There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive teacher, though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come to us, and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative, and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the result is the same,—society is instructed, or may be. 5

Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed, were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity? 6

It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion, Will slavery never come to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years ago, and it has been answered by fifty years of un­precedented prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists,—poured out against slavery during thirty years,—even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.

It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire purification Congress must now address itself, with full purpose that the work shall this time be thoroughly done. 7 The deadly upas, root and branch, leaf and fibre, body and sap, must be utterly destroyed. The country is evidently not in a condition to listen patiently to pleas for postponement, however plausible, nor will it permit the responsibility to be shifted to other shoulders. Authority and power are here commensurate with the duty imposed. There are no cloud-flung shadows to obscure the way. Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief from its distress and agony.

If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the requisite materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now before it. Whether its members look at the origin, the progress, the termination of the war, or at the mockery of a peace now existing, they will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President stood in the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an apostasy which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. 8 It was natural that they should seek to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to the side of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows now that it must go on without his aid, and even against his machinations. The advantage of the present session over the last is immense. Where that investigated, this has the facts. Where that walked by faith, this may walk by sight. Where that halted, this must go forward, and where that failed, this must succeed, giving the country whole measures where that gave us half-measures, merely as a means of saving the elections in a few doubtful districts. That Congress saw what was right, but distrusted the enlightenment of the loyal masses; but what was forborne in distrust of the people must now be done with a full knowledge that the people expect and require it. The members go to Washington fresh from the inspiring presence of the people. In every considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house, school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is now the popular passport to power. The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or else left at home. The strange controversy between the President and Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people. The high reconstructive powers which he so confidently, ostentatiously, and haughtily claimed, have been disallowed, denounced, and utterly repudiated; while those claimed by Congress have been confirmed.

Of the spirit and magnitude of the canvass nothing need be said. The appeal was to the people, and the verdict was worthy of the tribunal. Upon an occasion of his own selection, with the advice and approval of his astute Secretary, soon after the members of Congress had returned to their constituents, the President quitted the executive mansion, sandwiched himself between two recognized heroes,—men whom the whole country delighted to honor,—and, with all the advantage which such company could give him, stumped the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, 9 advocating everywhere his policy as against that of Congress. It was a strange sight, and perhaps the most disgraceful exhibition ever made by any President; but, as no evil is entirely unmixed, good has come of this, as from many others. Ambitious, unscrupulous, energetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,—a political gladiator, ready for a “set-to” in any crowd,—he is beaten in his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and persistent attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers solemnly secured to Congress by the Constitution. No vindication could be more complete, no condemnation could be more absolute and humiliating. Unless reopened by the sword, as recklessly threatened in some circles, this question is now closed for all time.

Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat theological question (about which so much has already been said and written), whether once in the Union means always in the Union,—agreeably to the formula, Once in grace always in grace,—it is obvious to common sense that the rebellious States stand to-day, in point of law, precisely where they stood when, exhausted, beaten, conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal authority. 10 Their State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property of the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there be no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order, should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.

It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the precise steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people are less concerned about these than the grand end to be attained. They demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States,—where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall cease. 11 They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work.

The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the beginning, is simply to establish in the South one law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done.

Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the negro is the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events, which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color or features of men, has determined the interests of the country as identical with and inseparable from those of the negro.

The policy that emancipated and armed the negro—now seen to have been wise and proper by the dullest—was not certainly more sternly demanded than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was success in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the nation must fall or flourish with the negro. 12

Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal voter in all the States.

This article appears in the December 2023 print edition with the headline “The Annotated Frederick Douglass.”

About the Authors

3.4 Annotated Sample Reading: from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Read in several genres to understand how conventions are shaped by purpose, language, culture, and expectation.
• Use reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in varying rhetorical and cultural contexts.
• Read a diverse range of texts, attending to relationships among ideas, patterns of organization, and interplay between verbal and nonverbal elements.

Introduction

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was born into slavery in Maryland. He never knew his father, barely knew his mother, and was separated from his grandmother at a young age. As a boy, Douglass understood there to be a connection between literacy and freedom. In the excerpt from his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , that follows, you will learn about how Douglass learned to read. By age 12, he was reading texts about the natural rights of human beings. At age 15, he began educating other enslaved people. When Douglass was 20, he met Anna Murray, whom he would later marry. Murray helped Douglass plot his escape from slavery. Dressed as a sailor, Douglass bought a train ticket northward. Within 24 hours, he arrived in New York City and declared himself free. Douglass went on to work as an activist in the abolitionist movement as well as the women’s suffrage movement.

In the portion of the text included here, Douglass chooses to represent the dialogue of Mr. Auld, an enslaver who by the laws of the time owns Douglass. Douglass describes this moment with detail and accuracy, including Mr. Auld’s use of a racial slur. In an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Harvard professor Randall Kennedy (b. 1954), who has traced the historical evolution of the word, notes that one of its first uses, recorded in 1619, appears to have been descriptive rather than derogatory. However, by the mid-1800s, White people had appropriated the term and begun using it with its current negative connotation. In response, over time, Black people have reclaimed the word (or variations of it) for different purposes, including mirroring racism, creating irony, and reclaiming community and personal power—using the word for a contrasting purpose to the way others use it. Despite this evolution, Professor Kennedy explains that the use of the word should be accompanied by a deep understanding of one’s audience and by being clear about the intention. However, even when intention is very clear and malice is not intended, harm can, and likely will, occur. Thus, Professor Kennedy cautions that all people should understand the history of the word, be aware of its potential negative effect on an audience, and therefore use it sparingly, or preferably not at all.

In the case of Mr. Auld and Douglass, Douglass gives an account of Auld’s exact language in order to hold a mirror to the racism of Mr. Auld—and the reading audience of his memoir—and to emphasize the theme that literacy (or education) is one way to combat racism.

Living by Their Own Words

Literacy from unexpected sources.

annotated text From the title and from Douglass’s use of pronoun I, you know this work is autobiographical and therefore written from the first-person point of view. end annotated text

public domain text [excerpt begins with first full paragraph on page 33 and ends on page 34 where the paragraph ends] end public domain text

public domain text Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. end public domain text

annotated text Douglass describes the background situation and the culture of the time, which he will defy in his quest for literacy. The word choice in his narration of events indicates that he is writing for an educated audience. end annotated text

public domain text To use his own words, further, he said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.” end public domain text

annotated text In sharing this part of the narrative, Douglass underscores the importance of literacy. He provides a description of Mr. Auld, a slaveholder, who seeks to impose illiteracy as a means to oppress others. In this description of Mr. Auld’s reaction, Douglass shows that slaveholders feared the power that enslaved people would have if they could read and write. end annotated text

annotated text Douglass provides the details of Auld’s dialogue not only because it is a convention of narrative genre but also because it demonstrates the purpose and motivation for his forthcoming pursuit of literacy. We have chosen to maintain the authenticity of the original text by using the language that Douglass offers to quote Mr. Auld’s dialogue because it both provides context for the rhetorical situation and underscores the value of the attainment of literacy for Douglass. However, contemporary audiences must understand that this language should be uttered only under very narrow circumstances in any current rhetorical situation. In general, it is best to avoid its use. end annotated text

public domain text These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. end public domain text

annotated text In this reflection, Douglass has a definitive and transformative moment with reading and writing. The moment that sparked a desire for literacy is a common feature in literacy narratives, particularly those of enslaved people. In that moment, he understood the value of literacy and its life-changing possibilities; that transformative moment is a central part of the arc of this literacy narrative. end annotated text

public domain text Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both. end public domain text

annotated text Douglass articulates that this moment changed his relationship to literacy and ignited a purposeful engagement with language and learning that would last throughout his long life. The rhythm, sentence structure, and poetic phrasing in this reflection provide further evidence that Douglass, over the course of his life, actively pursued and mastered language after having this experience with Mr. Auld. end annotated text

public domain text [excerpt continues with the beginning of Chapter 7 on page 36 and ends with the end of the paragraph at the top of page 39] end public domain text

public domain text [In Chapter 7, the narrative continues] I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years. During this time, I succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as though I were a brute. end public domain text

public domain text My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. The first step in her downward course was in her ceasing to instruct me. She now commenced to practise her husband’s precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself. end public domain text

annotated text Douglass describes in detail a person in his life and his relationship to her. He uses specific diction to describe her kindness and to help readers get to know her—a “tear” for the “suffering”; “bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner.” end annotated text

public domain text She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do better. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me with a face made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that fully revealed her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other. end public domain text

annotated text The fact that Douglass can understand the harm caused by the institution of slavery to slaveholders as well as to enslaved people shows a level of sophistication in thought, identifies the complexity and detriment of this historical period, and demonstrates an acute awareness of the rhetorical situation, especially for his audience for this text. The way that he articulates compassion for the slaveholders, despite their ill treatment of him, would create empathy in his readers and possibly provide a revelation for his audience. end annotated text

public domain text From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this, however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch , and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell . end public domain text

annotated text Once again, Douglass underscores the value that literacy has for transforming the lived experiences of enslaved people. The reference to the inch and the ell circles back to Mr. Auld’s warnings and recalls the impact of that moment on his life. end annotated text

public domain text The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers. With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house, and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids;—not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country. end public domain text

annotated text Douglass comments on the culture of the time, which still permitted slavery; he is sensitive to the fact that these boys might be embarrassed by their participation in unacceptable, though humanitarian, behavior. His audience will also recognize the irony in his tone when he writes that it is “an unpardonable offense to teach slaves . . . in this Christian country.” Such behavior is surely “unchristian.” end annotated text

public domain text It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard. I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got to be men. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life ! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?” These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free. end public domain text

annotated text Douglass pursues and attains literacy not only for his own benefit; his knowledge also allows him to begin to instruct, as well as advocate for, those around him. Douglass’s use of language and his understanding of the rhetorical situation give the audience evidence of the power of literacy for all people, round out the arc of his narrative, and provide a resolution. end annotated text

Discussion Questions

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Frederick Douglass: An Example for the Twenty-First Century

By noelle n. trent.

Noelle N. Trent is the Director of Interpretation, Collections, and Education at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. She wrote her doctoral dissertation at Howard University on “Frederick Douglass and the Making of American Exceptionalism.” She has presented papers and lectures at the American Historical Association, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and the European Solidarity Center in Poland. In 2018, she curated the exhibition MLK50: A Legacy Remembered , commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination.

A slave 1837. Free man 1838. Took refuge in England from slave hunters in 1845. Ransomed 1846. Editor. 1847. In England 1859. on account John Brown raid. Raised colored troops during Rebellion. Sent by General Grant with Commission to Santo-Domingo 1871. Elector at large, New York 1872. Appointed U.S. Marshal. D.C. 1877. by Prest. Hayes. Appointed Recorder of Deeds for the D.C. by President Garfield 1881. Appointed Minister and Consul General to Hayti, by President Harrison 1889–

Frederick Douglass was by 1893 a firmly established self-made man and civil rights activist who would continue to fight for equality until his dying day.

Douglass’s celebration of the self-made man may seem very different from his other writings. However, in this speech he presented his life and the lives of his contemporaries as evidence of equality. As an enslaved child, Douglass was prohibited by law from learning to read and write. He received a few lessons from his mistress, Sophia Auld, but had to struggle to continue his education. Douglass traced the work in the notebooks of his owner’s son, Thomas, and bribed local boys to teach him. He later read the Columbian Orator , which helped him develop his public-speaking skills. Through his own ingenuity, Douglass became an educated man and a sought-after spokesman for the abolition movement. [2]

If Douglass and other black people could achieve success in the midst of slavery and entrenched racism, what more could they achieve in freedom? Douglass famously stated in his speech, “The nearest approach to justice to the Negro for the past is to do him justice in the present. Throw open to him the doors of the schools, the factories, the workshops, and of all mechanical industries. If he fails then, let him fail! I can, however, assure you that he will not fail. Already has he proven it. . . . Give him all the facilities for honest and successful livelihood, and in all honorable avocations receive him as a man among men.”  [3]

Frederick Douglass loved the United States and believed in its principles. If the country was to remain true to its ideals, it would need to provide an opportunity for all men and women to succeed. But today, the types of discrimination Douglass fought still exist, from police brutality to the gender pay gap, to inequitable access to quality food, education, employment, and housing. In some ways, it’s difficult to take Douglass, a nineteenth-century man, and place him in the vastly different twenty-first century. However, inspired by Douglass, we can demand that resources and access be provided to all. Today people continue to succeed without such resources, but, as Douglass did, we must imagine what more we can accomplish. Like him, we also must remain activists throughout our lives.

For Douglass, the fight for equality did not end when slavery ended, and he did not fight only for African American men. Women’s rights was a lifelong passion. He had participated in the landmark women’s rights conference in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 and signed the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments. On February 20, 1895, Frederick Douglass delivered his final speech to a women’s rights group in Washington DC. He returned to his Anacostia home for dinner with the intention of speaking at another engagement that evening. However, he collapsed in the foyer of Cedar Hill, and passed away a few hours later. Until his last breath, Douglass was concerned with improving the world around him. President Kennedy best described Douglass’s impact in 1961:

[Douglass] can give inspiration to people all around the world who are still struggling to secure their full human rights. . . . By advancing that cause through law, democratic methods and peaceful action, we in America can give an example of the freedom which Frederick Douglass symbolizes. [4]

As the twenty-first century successors to Douglass’s legacy, we should aspire to his standard.

This essay was originally published in the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Frederick Douglass: A Life in Documents (2018).

[1]  Douglass’s final home, Cedar Hill, at 1411 W Street SE, Washington DC, now the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site run by the National Park Service, is open to visitors.

[2]  Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , 16–18, 86–88.

[3]  Frederick Douglas, “Self-Made Men: An Address delivered in Carlisle Pennsylvania in March 1893,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews . ed. John W. Blassingame and John McKivigan, vol. 5: 1881–1893 (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1992), 556.

[4]  John F. Kennedy to Rosa Gragg, March 2, 1961.

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Frederick Douglass summary

Frederick Douglass , orig. Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey , (born February 1818?, Tuckahoe, Md., U.S.—died Feb. 20, 1895, Washington, D.C.), U.S. abolitionist. The son of a slave mother and a white father, he was sent to work as a house servant in Baltimore, where he learned to read. At age 16 he was returned to the plantation; later he was hired out as a ship caulker. In 1838 he fled to New York City and then to New Bedford, Mass., changing his name to elude slave hunters. His eloquence at an 1841 antislavery convention propelled him into a new career as an agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, in which capacity he endured frequent insults and violent personal attacks. In 1845 he wrote his autobiography, now regarded as a classic. To avoid recapture by his owner, whose name he had given in the narrative, he embarked on a speaking tour of England and Ireland (1845–47), returning with enough money to buy his freedom and to start an antislavery newspaper North Star , which he published until 1860 in Rochester, N.Y. In 1851 he split with the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and allied himself with moderates led by James Birney. In the American Civil War he was a consultant to Pres. Abraham Lincoln . During Reconstruction he fought for full civil rights for freedmen and supported women’s rights. He served in government posts in Washington, D.C. (1877–86), and as U.S. minister to Haiti (1889–91).

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Collection Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress

Featured content, about this collection.

The papers of nineteenth-century African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher, consist of approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), most of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm.  The collection spans the years 1841-1964, with the bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1895.  Many of Douglass’s earlier writings were destroyed when his house in Rochester, New York, burned in 1872.

For a fuller overview of the collection, please consult the Scope and Content Note in the collection finding aid to the Frederick Douglass Papers, which is available online ( PDF and HTML ) with links to the digital content on this site. Also see the essay on this site titled Provenance, Publication History, and Scope and Contents .

The collection is organized in the following series:

• Diary, 1886-1894 (Reel 1): A single diary that Douglass kept during his tour of Europe and Africa, 1886-1887, with notes made in later years.
• Family Papers, 1859-1903 (Reel 1): Diary, speeches, writings, and miscellaneous papers of Frederick Douglass's second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, but also includes a biographical sketch of Douglass’s wife of forty-four years, Anna Murray Douglass, written by their daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague.
• General Correspondence, 1841-1912 (Reels 1-9): General and family letters received and drafts and copies of letters sent with miscellaneous attachments. Includes letters Douglass received from prominent reformers and politicians, including Susan B. Anthony, Grover Cleveland, William Lloyd Garrison, Benjamin Harrison, Russell Lant, Gerrit Smith, and Ida B. Wells. Arranged chronologically. An index to the names in this series (PDF), created in 1974 before the original finding aid was published by the Library of Congress in 1976, is available online in PDF form.
• Subject File, 1845-1939 (Reels 9-13): Newspaper clippings, notes, prayers, plats, architectural drawings, printed and near-print material, and reports, which reveals Douglass’s interests in diverse subjects such as politics, racial prejudice, and prison reform. Arranged alphabetically by subject.
• Speeches and Articles by Douglass, 1846-1894 (Reels 13-19): Manuscripts, typescripts, and near-print and printed copies of Douglass's speeches, articles, and related material. Arranged chronologically. Undated items organized by titled and untitled and arranged alphabetically thereunder by title or supplied title.
• Speeches, Articles, and Other Writings Attributed to Frederick or Helen Pitts Douglass, 1881-1887 (Reels 20-21): Manuscripts, typescripts, notes, photocopies, and fragments. Arranged alphabetically by topic or title when possible.
• Book File, undated (Reel 21): Fragments of various drafts of Douglass's autobiography. Arranged by page number according to Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Rev. ed. Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske. 1893.)
• Speeches and Articles by Others (Reels 21-27): Primarily printed copies. Arranged alphabetically by name of author with miscellaneous material at the end of the file.
• Financial Papers, 1847-1928 (Reels 27-30): Bank books, bills, receipts, canceled checks, contracts, insurance policies, ledger books, promissory notes, lists, stocks and bonds, and tax bills. Arranged alphabetically by type of material.
• Legal File, 1843-1900 (Reel 30): Abstracts of titles, agreements, copyrights, deeds, depositions, mortgages, suits, articles of incorporation, wills, and miscellaneous legal documents. Arranged alphabetically by type of material.
• Miscellany, 1870-1924 (Reel 31): Invitation file (includes calling cards, programs, menus, announcements, and other related material), newspaper clippings, memorabilia, maps, photographs, printed matter, and miscellany. Arranged alphabetically by type of material and chronologically therein.
• Addition I, 1851-1964 (Reels 32-34): Correspondence, speeches, account books, printed matter, and miscellaneous material. Includes scrapbooks that document Douglass’s role as minister to Haiti and the controversy surrounding his interracial second marriage. Arranged by type of material and chronologically therein.
• Addition II, 1846-1967 (Box 53; not filmed; not yet digitized): Clippings, correspondence, deeds, memorabilia, photographs, newspapers, printed matter, and speeches. Arranged alphabetically by type of material.
• Addition III, 1880-1934 (Box 53; not filmed; not yet digitized): Correspondence and programs. Arranged alphabetically by type of material.

Brief History of the Papers

The Frederick Douglass Papers were originally in the library at Cedar Hill, Douglass’s home in Anacostia, Washington, D.C., from 1878 until his death in 1895. In 1900 Helen Pitts Douglass, Douglass’s second wife, established the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association so that the home and its contents might be maintained after her death.  The association held the property from 1903 until 1916, when it joined forces with the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.  In 1962 Congress declared Cedar Hill a national historical site, and ownership of the home and its contents was transferred to the National Park Service.

The National Park Service transferred the Frederick Douglass Papers to the Library of Congress between 1972 and 1974 to ensure their proper custodial care and to make them more readily accessible to researchers. In 1975 additional Douglass materials were acquired by the Library of Congress and added to the Frederick Douglass Papers as the Addition I Series.  The papers were microfilmed and made available to the public.  The online Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress has been digitally scanned from a thirty-four-reel microfilm set.  Since the microfilming was performed, additional materials have been received; they are currently contained in the Addition II and Addition III series.  These new materials have not been microfilmed and are not included yet in this online collection. For more history of the collection, see the essay on this site titled Provenance, Publication History, and Scope and Contents .

Frederick Douglass documented many instances of racial prejudice and violence in his papers.  Therefore, some of the materials in this online historical collection contain language or negative stereotypes that may be offensive to some readers.

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Marriage certificate for Frederick Douglass, Jr. and Virginia Hewlett

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library > Walter O. Evans collection of Frederick Douglass and Douglass Family papers (JWJ MSS 240) > Series II: Douglass family papers > Writings, family papers, clippings, and ephemera > Marriage certificate for Frederick Douglass, Jr. and Virginia Hewlett

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• THIS ITEM Marriage certificate for Frederick Douglass, Jr. and Virginia Hewlett

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