Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions): And Selected Essays and Speeches
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Frederick Bailey doesn’t know the year of his birth. Separated from his mother in infancy, he sees her only a few times, always at night, before she dies when he is about seven years old. His fellow slaves agree that his father is a white man, perhaps Captain Anthony, his master. While still only a small boy, Frederick witnesses the brutal whipping of his aunt, the first of many such beatings he will see or suffer.
At the age of seven or eight, Frederick is sent from the Maryland plantation of his birth to Baltimore, where for the first time, he is fully clothed and has enough to eat. His kindly new mistress starts teaching him to read, until her furious husband forbids it. Frederick realizes then that reading is his path to freedom, but his journey is long and horrible. He watches his smiling mistress transform into an angry, cruel slave owner; people he trusts betray him; and a merciless “slave breaker” works and beats him into brutish submission. Still, he dreams of freedom.
Early nineteenth-century Northerners had difficulty imagining the lives of Southern slaves. In writing this Narrative, Frederick Douglass, a fugitive slave, revealed his slave name, the names of his masters and overseers, and the locations of his servitude. This starkly honest and verifiable account appalled readers and gave new momentum to the abolitionist movement. It is as shocking today as when it was originally published.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was an African American abolitionist, writer, statesman, and social reformer. Born in Maryland, he escaped slavery at the age of twenty with the help of his future wife Anna Murray Douglass, a free Black woman from Baltimore. He made his way through Delaware, Philadelphia, and New York City—where he married Murray—before settling in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In New England, he connected with the influential abolitionist community and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a historically black denomination which counted Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman among its members. In 1839, Douglass became a preacher and began his career as a captivating orator on religious, social, and political matters. He met William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, in 1841, and was deeply moved by his passionate abolitionism. As Douglass’ reputation and influence grew, he traveled across the country and eventually to Ireland and Great Britain to advocate on behalf of the American abolitionist movement, winning countless people over to the leading moral cause of the nineteenth century. He was often accosted during his speeches and was badly beaten at least once by a violent mob. His autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) was an immediate bestseller that detailed Douglass’ life in and escape from slavery, providing readers a firsthand description of the cruelties of the southern plantation system. Towards the end of his life, he became a fierce advocate for women’s rights and was the first Black man to be nominated for Vice President on the Equal Rights Party ticket, alongside Presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull. Arguably one of the most influential Americans of all time, Douglass led a life dedicated to democracy and racial equality.
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