Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

  Silence and masquerade are also key ingredients in Douglass’s reversal of fortune. It is a commonplace of Douglass criticism to underscore the writer’s refusal to let his reader know exactly how he got away, lest future runaways lose an effective avenue of escape. In this same spirit, Douglass refrains from thanking the poor white boys on the streets of Baltimore who, when he was a young boy, traded Douglass’s bread for reading lessons, “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.” He reveals only the street name on which they lived and indicates that they not only taught a slave to read but also were troubled when they learned his legal status. “They would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free” (p. 44).

  These particular instances of purposive silence in fact lend credibility to the entire Narrative, and there are several other important scenes in which silence speaks more clearly than words. At times, for instance, Douglass does not describe a scene that he finds too com plexly moving to convey in words. Such is the case when Aunt Hester is beaten as he looks on in horror. This entrance to slavery’s bloody gate “was a most terrible spectacle,” he says. “I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it” (p. 20).

  Elsewhere, silence is a strategy for the slave’s survival in the tricksters’ world. Colonel Lloyd owned so many slaves

  that he did not know them when he saw them; nor did all the slaves of the out-farms know him. It is reported of him, that, while riding along the road one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in the usual manner of speaking to colored people on the public highways of the south: “Well, boy, whom do you belong to?” “To Colonel Lloyd,” replied the slave. “Well, does the colonel treat you well?” “No, sir,” was the ready reply. “What, does he work you too hard?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, don’t he give you enough to eat?” “Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such as it is.” (p. 30).

  A few weeks later the poor man, who never realized he had been speaking to Colonel Lloyd himself, is sold to a Georgia trader as punishment for finding fault with his master. “This is the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.” Sometimes spies were sent among the slaves to report their views to their master. This constant danger, says Douglass, explains why slaves routinely assured whites that they were contented, and established among the slaves the saying, “a still tongue makes a wise head” (p. 30). Perhaps it is with these words in mind that Douglass passes the word among his fellow escapees, once they are betrayed: “Own nothing,” he says, (meaning “admit nothing”) “and ‘Own nothing!‘ said we all” (p. 81).

  These strategies of silence and masquerade come into play in the final days of Douglass’s career as a slave. Here, too, the maxim that geography is fate proved true. Each move—from the remote farm to the Great House Farm, and from the Great House Farm to Baltimore, and even the trip back to eastern Maryland where he faced Covey—proved to be progressive steps. Clearly, the more complex and variegated the setting, the easier it would be to get away. In a large port town like Baltimore, so many people from so many backgrounds came and went that the trickster-trained slave could turn many situations to his or her advantage or, given a piece of luck, could simply vanish.

  Working as a caulker in Baltimore, Douglass earned from six to nine dollars a week, and he turned it all over to Master Hugh. To encourage him to keep up the good work, Hugh would sometimes give Douglass six cents. This gift had the opposite effect, admits Douglass. “I regarded it as a sort of admission of my right to the whole” (p. 89). Eventually, at his own suggestion, Douglass begins to hire out his time; but only with the understanding that he must cover all his own expenses and bring the master his money come rain or come shine. Because it afforded greater independence, Douglass agrees to this arrangement; but his analysis of it shows that he was not being fooled: The deal “was decidedly in my master’s favor,” writes Douglass. “It relieved him of all need of looking after me. His money was sure.” Fascinatingly, Douglass frames part of his analysis in terms close to those of a chiasmus. Of the master, Douglass says: “He received all the benefits of slaveholding without its evils; while I endured all the evils of a slave, and suffered all the care and anxiety of a freeman” (p. 90).

  But it is Douglass who will force the final reversal of terms. Resolving to run away, he acts as if he has taken to heart Hugh’s advice, which was “to content myself, and be obedient, ... lay out no plans to the future” (p. 90). To put Hugh’s mind at rest, Douglass brings him more money than originally contracted. “He seemed very well pleased.... He little knew what my plans were. My object in working steadily was to remove any suspicion he might entertain of my intent to run away; and in this I succeeded admirably. I suppose he thought I was never better satisfied with my condition than at the very time during which I was planning my escape.” Master Hugh is so pleased by Douglass’s faithfulness that he rewards him with twenty-five cents, “quite a large sum for a slaveholder to give a slave,” observes Douglass, “and bade me to make a good use of it. I told him I would” (p. 92).

  On September 3, 1838, Douglass escaped to New York. “How I did so,—what means I adopted,—what direction I travelled, and by what mode of conveyance,—I must leave unexplained, for the reasons before mentioned” (pp. 92-93). He is off toward taking his place in the abolition movement. Here, indeed, is another key instance of chiasmus, as the man who has learned to keep silent and “own nothing” prepares to take his place as a speaker and writer whose words will not go away.

  Finding himself in a thick briar patch with tricksters owning power that is nearly absolute, Douglass quickly learns to become something of a trickster himself. Finding himself ruled by a system of what he terms Lynch Law—the arbitrary prerogatives of those who have all the official power—Douglass learns to read and write; in so doing he develops a rhetorical strategy that trains his mind for revolutionary action, for literally turning the tables on the powerful. He learns to write sentences that outlast theirs; and then, through speeches and through his speechlike narrative, he helps generation after generation of those seeking freedom to find their way from learning how a man or woman becomes a slave to knowing how a slave becomes a man or woman.

  This vital knowledge, and the images of freedom through conscientious struggle, ultimately served me well as equipment for living, helping me to survive both the Boston and the Harvard of those difficult years. Perhaps eventually it helped my Boston student as well. I hope that as she made her own leap toward the sense of possibility embodied in the high school diploma and college degree, she made another leap as well: toward recognizing Douglass not as her adversary but as her own great-great-grandfather—for in art there are no degrees of separation—and an inspiration to her own daughters and sons and granddaughters- and grandsons-to-be. I truly hope she came to know that Douglass was working those roots for reversals of ill fortune not just for himself or for me and my people, but for us all.

  Robert G. O‘Meally is Zora Neale Hurston Professor of Literature at Columbia University, where he has served on the faculty for thirteen years; since 1999 he has been the Director of Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies. He is the author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison (1980) and Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (1991), and the principal writer of Seeing,jazz (1997), the catalog for the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibit on jazz painting and literature. He edited the collection of essays Living with Music: Ralph Ellison’s, jazz Writings (2001) and The,jazz Cadence of American Culture (1998), which was awarded a 1999 ASCAP—Deems Taylor award, and coedited History and Memory in African-American Culture (1994) and The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (
1996). O‘Meally wrote the script for the documentary film Lady Day and for the documentary accompanying the Smithsonian exhibit Duke Ellington: Beyond Category (1995); he was nominated for a Grammy for his work as coproducer of the five-CD boxed set The Jazz Singers (1998). He lives in New York with his wife, Jacqui Malone, and their sons, Douglass and Gabriel.

  PREFACEk

  IN THE MONTH OF August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with FREDERICK DOUGLASS, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a stranger to nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made his escape from the southern prison-house of bondage,1 and feeling his curiosity excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the abolitionists,—of whom he had heard a somewhat vague description while he was a slave,—he was induced to give his attendance, on the occasion alluded to, though at that time a resident in New Bedford.

  Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!—fortunate for the millions of his manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful thraldom!—fortunate for the cause of negro emanicpation, and of universal liberty!—fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has already done so much to save and bless!—fortunate for a large circle of friends and acquaintances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits of character, by his ever abiding remembrance of those who are in bonds, as being bound with them!—fortunate for the multitudes, in various parts of our republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the subject of slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or roused to virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against the enslavers of men!—fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into the field of public usefulness, “gave the world assurance of a MAN,”2 quickened the slumbering energies of his soul, and consecrated him to the great work of breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free!

  I shall never forget his first speech at the convention3—the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind—the powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory,l completely taken by surprise—the applause which followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous remarks. I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment; certainly, my perception of the enormous outrage which is inflicted by it, on the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered far more clear than ever. There stood one, in physical proportion and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a prodigy—in soul manifestly “created but a little lower than the angels”m—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the love of God and humanity! Capable of high attainments as an intellectual and moral being—needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing to his race—by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms of the slave code,4 he was only a piece of property, a beast of burden, a chattel personal,n nevertheless!

  A beloved friend from New Bedford5 prevailed on Mr. DOUGLASS to address the convention. He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a novel position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and thrilling reflections. As soon as he had taken his seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared that PATRICK HENRY, of revolutionary fame,6 never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive. So I believed at that time—such is my belief now. I reminded the audience of the peril which surrounded this self-emancipated young man at the North,—even in Massachusetts, on the soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow him to be carried back into slavery,—law or no law, constitution or no constitution. The response was unanimous and in thunder-tones—“NO!” “Will you succor and protect him as a brother-man—a resident of the old Bay State?”o “YES!” shouted the whole mass, with an energy so startling, that the ruthless tyrants south of Mason and Dixon’s linep might almost have heard the mighty burst of feeling, and recognized it as the pledge of an invincible determination, on the part of those who gave it, never to betray him that wanders, but to hide the outcast, and firmly to abide the consequences.

  It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr. DOUGLASS could be persuaded to consecrate his time and talents to the promotion of the anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be given to it, and a stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern prejudice against a colored complexion. I therefore en deavored to instill hope and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in a vocation so anomalous and responsible for a person in his situation; and I was seconded in this effort by warm-hearted friends, especially by the late General Agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. JOHN A. COLLINS,7 whose judgment in this instance entirely coincided with my own. At first, he could give no encouragement; with unfeigned diffidence,q he expressed his conviction that he was not adequate to the performance of so great a task; the path marked out was wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely apprehensive that he should do more harm than good. After much deliberation, however, he consented to make a trial; and ever since that period, he has acted as a lecturing agent, under the auspices either of the American or the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In labors he has been most abundant; and his success in combating prejudice, in gaining proselytes,r in agitating the public mind, has far surpassed the most sanguine expectations that were raised at the commencement of his brilliant career. He has borne himself with gentleness and meekness, yet with true manliness of character. As a public speaker, he excels in pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency of language. There is in him that union of head and heart, which is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of the hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May he continue to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God,”s that he may be increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity, whether at home or abroad!

  It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most efficient advocates of the slave population, now before the public, is a fugitive slave, in the person of FREDERICK DOUGLASS; and that the free colored population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their own number, in the person of CHARLES LENOX REMOND,8 whose eloquent appeals have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic. Let the calumniatorst of the colored race despise themselves for their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and henceforth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point of human excellence.

  It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage, under which they have been groaning for centuries! To illustrate the effect of slavery on the white man,—to show that he has no powers of endurance, in such a condition, superior to those of his black brother,—DANIEL O‘CONNELL,9 the distinguished advocate of universal emancipation, and the might iest champion of prostrate but not conquered Ireland, relates the following anecdote in a speech delivered by him in the Conciliation Hall, Dubli
n, before the Loyal National Repeal Association, March 31, 1845. “No matter,” said Mr. O‘CONNELL, “under what specious term it may disguise itself, slavery is still hideous. It bas a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize every noble faculty of man. An American sailor, who was cast away on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three years, was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and stultifiedu—he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his native language, could only utter some savage gibberish between Arabic and English, which nobody could understand, and which even he himself found difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the humanizing influence of THE DOMESTIC INSTITUTION!”v Admitting this to have been an extraordinary case of mental deterioration, it proves at least that the white slave can sink as low in the scale of humanity as the black one.

  Mr. DOUGLASS has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in his own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to employ some one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production; and, considering how long and dark was the career he had to run as a slave,—how few have been his opportunities to improve his mind since he broke his iron fetters,—it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit,—without being filled with an unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors,w and animated with a determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrablex system,—without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm is not shortened that it cannot save,—must have a flinty heart, and be qualified to act the part of a trafficker “in slaves and the souls of men.”y I am confident that it is essentially true in all its statements; that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather than overstates a single fact in regard to SLAVERY AS IT IS.10 The experience of FREDERICK DOUGLASS, as a slave, was not a peculiar one; his lot was not especially a hard one; his case may be regarded as a very fair specimen of the treatment of slaves in Maryland, in which State it is conceded that they are better fed and less cruelly treated than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana. Many have suffered incomparably more, while very few on the plantations have suffered less, than himself. Yet how deplorable was his situation! what terrible chastisements were inflicted upon his person! what still more shocking outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even by those professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest extremities! how heavy was the midnight of woe which shrouded in blackness the last ray of hope, and filled the future with terror and gloom! what longings after freedom took possession of his breast, and how his misery augmented, in proportion as he grew reflective and intelligent,—thus demonstrating that a happy slave is an extinct man! how he thought, reasoned, felt, under the lash of the driver, with the chains upon his limbs! what perils he encountered in his endeavors to escape from his horrible doom! and how signal have been his deliverance and preservation in the midst of a nation of pitiless enemies!