frederick douglass book report

• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave

Frederick Douglass

• Literature Notes
• Book Summary
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Garrison's Preface
• Letter From Wendell Phillips, Esq.
• Chapter III
• Chapter VII
• Chapter VIII
• Frederick Douglass Biography
• Critical Essays
• The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro
• The Autobiography as Genre, as Authentic Text
• Slavery as a Mythologized Institution
• Slavery in the United States
• The Fugitive Slave Act
• Slavery in Maryland
• Douglass' Canonical Status and the Heroic Tale
• Douglass' Other Autobiographies
• Full Glossary for The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave
• Essay Questions
• Cite this Literature Note

Douglass' Narrative begins with the few facts he knows about his birth and parentage; his father is a slave owner and his mother is a slave named Harriet Bailey. Here and throughout the autobiography, Douglass highlights the common practice of white slave owners raping slave women, both to satisfy their sexual hungers and to expand their slave populations. In the first chapter, Douglass also makes mention of the hypocrisy of Christian slave owners who used religious teachings to justify their abhorrent treatment of slaves; the religious practice of slave owners is a recurrent theme in the text.

Throughout the next several chapters, Douglass describes the conditions in which he and other slaves live. As a slave of Captain Anthony and Colonel Lloyd, Douglass survives on meager rations and is often cold. He witnesses brutal beatings and the murder of a slave, which goes unnoticed by the law or the community at large. Douglass argues against the notion that slaves who sing are content; instead, he likens singing to crying — a way to relieve sorrow. Douglass also draws attention to the false system of values created by slavery, in which allegiance to the slave master is far stronger than an allegiance to other slaves.

When he is seven or eight years old, Douglass is sent to Baltimore to live with the Auld family and care for their son, Thomas. Mrs. Auld gives Douglass reading lessons until her husband intervenes; Douglass continues his lessons by trading bread for lessons with poor neighborhood white boys and by using Thomas' books. Soon, Douglass discovers abolitionist movements in the North, including those by Irish Catholics.

Several years later, as a result of his original owner's death, Douglass finds himself being lent to a poor farmer with a reputation for "breaking" slaves. Douglass spends a year with Covey, who cruelly and brutally whips the slave until Douglass finally fights him. From that day on, Covey leaves Douglass alone.

Douglass lives for a time with William Freeland, a kind master, and Douglass finds a family among the other slaves there. Douglass becomes a Sunday school teacher to other slaves, a position he enjoys. Although this situation is better than any he has experienced, it is still a far cry from freedom, so Douglass attempts to escape by canoeing up the Chesapeake Bay. He is caught and eventually finds himself working again for Hugh Auld in Baltimore. First, he runs errands for shipyard workers, but he after some of the workers heckle and strike Douglass, he fights back and is nearly beaten to death. Working at a different shipyard after the fight, Douglass becomes proficient at ship caulking, but he is forced to turn his wages over to Auld. Douglass soon makes an arrangement with Auld to hire himself out and give Auld a set amount of wages each week. Douglass is allowed to pocket the rest, thus saving enough for his escape to New York.

After his escape, Douglass is advised to move to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and he settles there with his new wife, Anna Murray. Douglass makes a living doing odd jobs; he is unable to find work as a caulker, however, because the white caulkers refuse to work with blacks, fearing the former slaves will take over their jobs. Although he still fears being caught and returned to the South, Douglass attends an anti-slavery convention, where he is encouraged to speak. This forms the beginning of his life in the public eye, speaking and writing in favor of the abolition of slavery.

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Frederick Douglass in Full

David W. Blight’s “Frederick Douglass” places him at the center of American history.

Frederick Douglass Credit... New-York Historical Society

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By Brent Staples

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FREDERICK DOUGLASS Prophet of Freedom By David W. Blight Illustrated. 888 pp. Simon & Schuster. $37.50.

The alchemy that transformed an unknown fugitive slave named Frederick Douglass into one of the most celebrated orators and political theorists in the world finished its work with astonishing speed. Douglass was just 20 years old when, on Sept. 3, 1838, he dressed up as a sailor and stole out of Baltimore carrying borrowed freedom documents. He and his wife — a free black Marylander who had aided the escape — fled to New Bedford, Mass., where Douglass was recruited to the abolitionist movement while honing his oratory at a local church.

As the historian David W. Blight shows in his cinematic and deeply engaging “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” white abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison were smitten with Douglass, instantly recognizing the value of a recruit just out of chains whose eloquence refuted the claim that Negroes were inferior and who could condemn slavery as immoral by drawing on America’s founding documents as well as his own bitter experience under the lash. It could not have been lost on the dapper, self-regarding Douglass that men and women swooned over him, describing him in terms that bordered on erotic. Garrison himself went starry-eyed, declaring that God had authored the young man’s soul “but a little lower than the angels.” Enraptured by the young orator in 1841, a white New England newspaper editor wrote: “As this Douglass stood there in manly attitude, with erect form, and glistening eye and deep-toned voice, telling us that he had been secretly devising means to effect his release, we could not help thinking of Spartacus, the Gladiator.” The activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton saw him a year later at Boston’s Faneuil Hall and spoke for many white women when she wrote: “He stood there like an African prince, conscious of his dignity and power, grand in his physical proportions, majestic in his wrath, as with keen wit, satire and indignation he portrayed the bitterness of slavery.”

Douglass became a marathon traveler for the abolitionist cause at a time when moving about the country by train was punishing in itself. Racist conductors worsened the ordeal by exiling him to “mean, dirty and uncomfortable” Negro cars or ejected him from the train altogether. Adoring crowds at some stops alternated with mobs like the one in Indiana that cried “kill the nigger” while beating Douglass unconscious and breaking his right hand. The itinerant orator was just seven years out of chains — and already the equivalent of a modern-day rock star — when the first of his three memoirs, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,” made him the most well-known Negro on the globe.

[ What America owes Frederick Douglass: Read David W. Blight’s Op-Ed essay. ]

Dependent upon abolitionist charity for his family’s daily bread, Douglass nonetheless chafed under a stifling Garrisonian orthodoxy that required adherents to embrace pacifism and abstain from politics. He charted a course away from all that by starting his own newspaper and openly embracing as household saints blood-drenched figures like the slave-rebellion leader Nat Turner and the white revolutionary John Brown, both of whom he classed with the founders. His fledgling newspaper, The North Star, served as the school where he sharpened his grasp of politics and developed a penetrating style as an editorialist. By the time Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, Douglass understood full well that slavery could be purged from the United States only with blood — as his friend John Brown had put it on the way to the gallows — and launched blistering attacks on those who sought to compromise with the institution rather than obliterate it.

Douglass thought comparatively little of Lincoln at first — describing him as “honest” but without claim to “any literary culture beyond the circle of his practical duties” — and breathed fire when Lincoln used the first-ever presidential meeting with African-Americans to promote a racist plan for colonizing Negroes outside of the country. As the Civil War raged toward conclusion, Douglass attacked Lincoln for vacillating on black rights in the South. Wounded, the president summoned him to the White House and sought his help with the war effort. By this point, the man who had slipped out of Baltimore with borrowed freedom papers was poised to play a central role in America’s postwar transformation.

The novelist William Burroughs once complained about autobiographers who conceal their lives in print, quipping that the Paul Bowles memoir “Without Stopping” would have been better titled “Without Telling.” Blight makes a similar case against Douglass, who shrouded his domestic life in secrecy even as he wrote and rewrote his personal story in three widely read autobiographies that totaled more than 1,200 pages. “Douglass invited us into his life over and over,” Blight writes, “and it is a rich literary and historical feast to read the music of Douglass’s words. But as he sits majestically at the head of the table, it is as if he slips out of the room right when we so wish to know more — anything — about his more private thoughts, motivations and memories of the many conflicts in his personal life.”

Douglass cultivated the fiction that he was “self-made” and had sprung fully formed from his own forehead. Blight dismantles this pretense in a tour de force of storytelling and analysis, showing that the young orator-to-be had benefited from a great deal of mentorship and good fortune. Viewed through this lens, the fabled escape from slavery takes on different contours. The slave master’s decision not to sell the rebellious young Fred into a living death in the Deep South — and instead to consign him to the custody of a brother in Baltimore — can be credibly seen as an act of familial grace by a slave owner toward a half-white member of his extended family. Among those in the free black community of Baltimore who embraced Fred and propelled him toward freedom was his wife-to-be, the housekeeper Anna Murray.

Blight draws on new archival material and insights gleaned from a lifetime in the company of his subject to shed light on the orator’s complex relationship with his wife, Anna, and the two white women who came between the couple within the walls of the Douglass family home in Rochester.

The great man’s vocation as a wandering oracle was possible because Anna, who bore five children (only four lived to adulthood), ran the household with a sure hand, hosting fugitive slaves, far-flung relatives and others who turned up at the front door in need. Anna, whom Blight describes as “largely illiterate,” could be of little help with her husband’s journalism. For that, the charismatic orator called up the British abolitionist Julia Griffiths , who put aside her life and moved in 1849 to be with him in Rochester and to get The North Star off the ground. She enabled Douglass to survive personally and professionally, managing and raising money for the newspaper and for the food that came across the Douglass family table. She helped “to polish a raw genius into a gem and, for a time, managed his emotional health as well as his bank accounts.” Together with her sister, Eliza, Griffiths relieved the Douglasses of an enormous financial burden by purchasing the mortgage of the family home. White Rochester was scandalized when Griffiths moved into the Douglass home, an arrangement that spawned rumors of a romantic link between patron and orator. It is alleged that she moved out when Anna “ordered it.”

That Griffiths loved Douglass is clear on the face of things, but any claim that the two carried on a sexual relationship right under Anna’s nose seems far-fetched. The eccentric German intellectual Ottilie Assing was another matter. She wandered into the Douglasses’ lives in 1856, seeking permission to translate his second autobiography, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” into German. She remained in the family orbit for nearly three decades, serving as confidante and interlocutor — and lover. Douglass frequented her rooms in Hoboken, N.J., where the participants of her salon lionized him, validating his rise from slavery into the thinking classes. Assing shielded him when he was on the run from conspiracy charges in connection with John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, when he came within a hairbreadth of being captured and marched to the gallows with his revolutionary friend.

That Assing was obsessed with the famous orator would have been readily apparent to Anna during the interloper’s frequent intrusion on the family home, where she lived for months at a time. We know nothing of Anna’s feelings on the matter — but the triangle of Frederick, Anna and the love-struck Ottilie comes through like the plot of an Edith Wharton novel. At different points, Assing referred to Anna as a “veritable beast” who kept her from her beloved Frederick, and as the “border state” that prevented her from advancing toward her heart’s true goal. As Blight writes, “Although Assing sipped tea occasionally with Mrs. Douglass, she held Anna in utter contempt, disrespecting her lack of education and even at times privately denigrating her role as homemaker.” The amorous German lingered in Douglass’s circle year after year, waiting in vain for the divorce that would allow her to “walk tall as the rightful ‘Mrs. Douglass.’”

By the time Anna died in 1882, Assing was bitterly aware that the aging orator intended to marry Helen Pitts, a well-educated white woman in her 40s, who worked for Douglass in the recorder of deeds office in Washington. The nearly 66-year-old Douglass held the plan secret even from his children, with whom he also worked daily, and who seem to have learned of the marriage from press inquiries. He failed to notify his faithful British friend Julia, who received the news secondhand from friends in Rochester. Gracious as usual, she wished the newlyweds well and hoped that the union would give him “true happiness” in the evening of his days. Later that year, Assing killed herself in a Paris park — drinking potassium cyanide — leaving her beloved a tidy sum in her will.

Brent Staples writes editorials on politics and culture for The Times and is the author of the memoir “Parallel Time.”

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The Narrative of Frederick Douglass

Frederick douglass, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

In approximately 1817, Frederick Douglass is born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland. His mother is a slave named Harriet Bailey , and his father is an unknown white man who may be his master. Douglass encounters slavery’s brutality at an early age when he witnesses his first master, Captain Anthony , give a brutal whipping to Douglass’s Aunt Hester . Captain Anthony is employed by Colonel Edward Lloyd , and Anthony lives in a house on Lloyd’s sprawling property with his sons, Andrew and Richard ; his daughter, Lucretia ; and Lucretia’s husband, Captain Thomas Auld . Lloyd himself lives in the middle of his plantation on a property called the Great House Farm, which is so majestic that some slaves feel honored to work there.

Lloyd is an unkind master, and, like other slaveholders, he will discipline the slaves if they speak honestly about the discomfort of their circumstances. One of Lloyd’s overseers, Mr. Austin Gore , is a particularly cruel disciplinarian. His killing of a slave named Demby , which goes unpunished, illustrates that killing or harming a black person is not treated as a crime.

To Douglass’s delight, he is moved to Baltimore at age seven or eight to work for Mr. Hugh Auld , brother of Captain Thomas Auld. Hugh’s wife, Sophia Auld , is at first a kind and loving mistress who begins teaching Douglass to read. However, Hugh emphatically puts a stop to Douglass’s education. Hugh’s intervention only makes Douglass more determined to learn how to read, viewing education as a path to freedom. Sophia is warped by the power that owning slaves gives her. She becomes mean-spirited and works to thwart Douglass’s attempts to become literate. Douglass lives with the Aulds for seven years, and in this time he teaches himself to read. Douglass reads books that present arguments against slavery, and he begins to lose hope as he realizes the extent of his powerlessness. He resolves to attempt an escape.

Captain Anthony dies, and Douglass is sent back to Lloyd’s plantation to be humiliatingly evaluated alongside Anthony’s livestock. Douglass is inherited by Lucretia Auld and sent back to Baltimore, and Douglass is sent to live with Thomas and his new wife in the town of St. Michael’s, Maryland in 1832. Thomas is a cruel master and a religious hypocrite. He and Douglass do not get along, and Douglass is sent to work for Edward Covey , a farmer who has a reputation for breaking the spirits of difficult slaves.

Douglass spends six hellish months working for the malevolent Mr. Covey. Douglass’s spirits are broken by the work, and he goes to Thomas Auld to protest his treatment, but is sent back to Covey’s farm. Another slave, Sandy Jenkins , gives Douglass a mystical root to protect himself. Douglass stands up to Covey and stops receiving whippings. After a year with Covey, Douglass is sent to live with William Freeland. Douglass and four other slaves attempt to escape from Freeland’s, but their plan is betrayed and Douglass ends up in jail. After some time in prison, Douglass is sent back to Baltimore to work again for Hugh Auld.

In Baltimore, Douglass works for a shipbuilder, and is assaulted on his jobsite. Hugh apprentices him to another shipbuilder, and Douglass learns how to caulk. Douglass’s caulking skills allow him to earn good money for Hugh. Hugh temporarily allows Douglass to work for his own pay, but later revokes this permission. Douglass then decides to plan an escape.

Douglass escapes successfully. To protect those who helped him and enable future slaves’ escapes from slavery, Douglass does not describe his escape in detail. Once free, Douglass ends up in New York, and is helped by Mr. David Ruggles . In New York, Douglass weds a free woman named Anna . The newlyweds then make their way to New Bedford, where Douglass is aided by a man named Nathan Johnson . Douglass is amazed by the prosperity the north has achieved without slaves. After some time in New Bedford, Douglass begins reading The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper. This inspires Douglass to speak at an anti-slavery convention in 1841, which launches his career as an anti-slavery advocate.

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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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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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Summary and Study Guide

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an autobiography by Frederick Douglass that was first published in 1845. Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 and became a prominent abolitionist, orator, and writer. His autobiography describes his experiences under slavery and his eventual freedom. The book was widely read and influenced public opinion in favor of the abolition of slavery. It remains one of the most read memoirs from the antebellum period. The autobiography includes a Preface by William Lloyd Garrison and a letter from Wendell Phillips addressed to Douglass.

Content Warning : This guide discusses slavery, racist abuse and violence, and sexual abuse. The source material uses outdated language and racial slurs. This guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

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Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Tuckahoe, Maryland, in approximately 1817. His mother was an enslaved woman named Harriet Bailey, and his father was unknown but believed to be his first enslaver, Captain Aaron Anthony. Douglass’s childhood was shaped by slavery, and he witnessed the brutality of the plantation. His first enslaver, Captain Anthony, was employed by Colonel Edward Lloyd, who had a large property. Anthony’s family included his sons, Andrew and Richard, and his daughter, Lucretia, who was married to Captain Thomas Auld. Lloyd was a cruel and harsh disciplinarian. When Douglass was seven or eight, he was sent to Baltimore to work for Mr. Hugh Auld, Thomas Auld’s brother. Hugh was married to a woman named Sophia, who was kind and taught Douglass to read until Hugh intervened, stopping Douglass’s education. However, Douglass continued learning to read and write on his own, believing education to be the path to freedom. Douglass worked for the Aulds for seven years, and he committed to running away when he was older. When Anthony died, Douglass returned to Lloyd’s plantation to be evaluated as “chattel.” Lucretia “inherited” Douglass, and he was sent back to Baltimore.

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After Lucretia died in 1832, Douglass was sent to live with Thomas Auld and his new wife in St. Michael’s, Maryland. Thomas was cruel and believed that Douglass was impudent, so he sent Douglass to work for Edward Covey , a sadistic farmer well known for breaking the spirits of enslaved people. Douglass’s spirit was broken by the work and by Covey’s cruelty, until Douglass fought back against Covey, which stopped his whippings. After a year with Covey, Douglass was hired out to William Freeland , who Douglass portrays as more humane. Douglass planned an escape with four other enslaved people, but their plan was betrayed, and Douglass was sent to jail.

Thomas Auld sent Douglass back to Hugh Auld in Baltimore, where Douglass worked in the shipyards and learned how to caulk, for which he earned a good salary. For a few months, Hugh allowed Douglass to hire his labor out, but he later revoked this permission. Douglass planned another escape, and in September 1838, Douglass successfully escaped to the North. He traveled to New York, where he wed a free woman named Anna. They moved to New Bedford, where Douglass was shocked by the prosperity in the North. Douglass began reading The Liberator , an abolitionist newspaper that brought him to an anti-slavery convention in 1841. Douglass’s well-received speech there launched his career as an orator and writer for the abolitionist cause.

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Book Review: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

by David T. Dixon

Posted on October 12, 2021

Frederick Douglass hardly needs an introduction to students of the American Civil War. David Blight’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of one of the most famous nineteenth century persons of color stands alone as the definitive treatment of his life. But in 1845, Douglass was not yet a world-renowned orator and civil rights champion. His autobiography was his first appearance to a broad public audience on a national stage and featured a man of superior intelligence, incisive analytical skills, and a remarkable facility for language. Many contemporary white readers only familiar with racist tropes and stereotypes were taken aback by Douglass’s intellect and eloquence and shocked by his candor.

“I often found myself regretting my own existence and wishing myself dead,” recalled Douglass in 1845, less than seven years after he escaped from bondage. “I have no doubt that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.” The depths of anguish and despair in this first of Douglass’s three autobiographies offered readers a stark, intimate glimpse of the insidious evils of chattel slavery. First-hand accounts of formerly enslaved people exposed the hypocrisy of slaveholders’ assertions that this savage institution was divinely ordained. “Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ,” Douglass contended, “I recognize the widest possible difference.”

Douglass’s compelling narrative remains relevant today as Americans grapple with realizing the elusive ideal of equality promised in the Declaration of Independence, envisioned by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, and fought for by civil rights activists like Martin Luther King and John L. Lewis. In the 21 st century, the battle over Civil War memory continues in earnest amid renewed racial tensions. Reading Douglass’s autobiography alongside state secession ordinances does much to dispel the final, futile whimpers of present-day Confederate apologists and the Lost Cause lies of happy, contented enslaved people.

Douglass himself anticipated and exposed the sham of future Lost Cause mythology when he recalled traditional Christmas holiday celebrations wherein ostensibly benevolent masters granted enslaved workers a weeklong furlough from their labors. This custom, according to Douglass, was a “gross fraud” designed to “disgust their slaves with freedom” by plying them with liquor, thereby “plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation.” Feeling as if they might as well be “slaves to men as to rum,” this cunning deceit was designed to manipulate enslaved people into contemplating a scant difference between prospective liberty and their present condition. Why run away if freedom consists of depravity and debauchery?

Douglass finally found hope, redemption, and the courage to escape his fate not in faith, but through literacy. His arduous and secretive efforts to teach himself and others to read and write exposed him to the writings of abolitionists and future white allies like William Lloyd Garrison while arming himself with the rhetorical weapons and confidence he would need to survive as a free man in a North dominated by white supremacists. Douglass dared not reveal intimate details of his escape, lest he endanger those who helped him along his path to freedom. Once the book had been published, Douglass himself was forced to flee to England for his own personal safety.

Mercer University Press’s reprint of Douglass’s classic bestseller (it went through nine editions and had sold more than 30,000 copies by 1860) features an unusual forty-eight-page introduction by Scott C. Williamson, Professor of Theological Ethics at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Mercer published Williamson’s biography of Douglass in 2002, focusing on his moral and religious thought.

Williamson begins his lengthy introduction by comparing Douglass’s escape to freedom with Henry David Thoreau’s escape to Walden Pond in a quest to live a simpler life. It is a novel and jarring comparison that may strike a discordant note with some readers accustomed to more traditional approaches to the editing of slave narratives. Is Williamson trying too hard to impose the interdisciplinary approach of Mercer’s “Voices of the American Diaspora Series” by inventing this unusual juxtaposition? Thoreau’s longings for solitude certainly appears as a rich white man’s problem when contrasted with an enslaved person’s dire dilemma and burning desire for freedom; yet Williamson argues that by comparing these two seekers, one may discern similarities in their experiences as each yearned for different kinds of freedom. The contrast between their relative stations in life holds more promise for understanding the immense gap between the black and white experiences in the mid-nineteenth century; a yawning chasm of racial intolerance and injustice that vexes us to this day.

No understanding of the Civil War period is complete without some knowledge of Frederick Douglass. To read him tell of his experiences as an enslaved person and share his hardship, hopes, and setbacks is a moving exercise in fathoming what the publisher calls “the waking nightmare of American slavery.”

David T. Dixon is the author of Radical Warrior: August Willich’s Journey from German Revolutionary to Union General (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2020).

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Accurate review of Douglass’ first hand account of his life in our great American experiment. This is a must read autobiography especially for all of us who are dug in on what we believe. An eye opening account of human nature, human thought and human life in and out of bondage within the US caste system. Appreciate your scholarship sir

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass — Book Report: Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Book Report: Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

• Categories: Book Review Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass Slave Trade

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Words: 1054 |

Published: Oct 2, 2020

Words: 1054 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

The harsh realities of slavery, the dehumanization of slave owners, the quest for freedom, personal reflection, references:.

• Douglass, F. (1845). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Dover Publications.
• Garrison, W. L. (1831). Thoughts on African Colonization. Garrison, W. L. (1831).
• Douglass, F. (1855). My Bondage and My Freedom. Miller, Orton & Mulligan.
• Foner, E. (1982). The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass: Volume 1 – Early Years. Oxford University Press.
• McFeely, W. S. (1995). Frederick Douglass. W. W. Norton & Company.

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Book Review

Introduction to narrative of the life of frederick douglass, narrative of the life of frederick douglass is the autobiography of the self-freed slave frederick douglass ., this was not an easy book to read, and it will not be an easy book for anyone who believes in the rights and freedoms of all., this book is about douglass’ life in slavery, his experiences and the experiences of other slaves – what he saw for himself..

Douglass endured brutal whippings. Slave owners took great joy in marginalizing others. They believed that one life is worth more than another. Many overseers of the slaves on the plantations showed no mercy, because to them it would be a sign of weakness.

This is a book worth reading. It's not for finger-pointing, but to understand what life was like for blacks before the abolition of slavery. It also shows how people sometimes use religion as a scapegoat to dehumanize and control others.

I read this book because it is among the books that Gene Waddell, architectural historian and College Archivist, included on his list, Using Rare Books to Inspire Learning . Along with the classics, I have been reading books from this list.

After you have finished reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, you will get the feeling that his story is incomplete. That there are many gaps. And there are. Douglass deliberately left out a lot of information to protect the identity of other slaves.

Also, he freed himself from slavery by running away. So he didn’t want slave owners to discover weaknesses in their systems that allowed slaves to escape. Fortunately for me, I had seen a documentary about Blacks who did extraordinary things. Douglass was among those profiled. So I was able to fill in some of the gaps for myself.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Daily Life of an American Slave

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Talbot County, Maryland in either 1817 or 1818. When he was still a lad, he was sent to work as a house servant.

Black slaves on plantations were not considered to be human beings and were treated that way. The author talks about the food being thrown into a trough for them to eat like pigs with no eating implements. The kids who were fastest got the most food.

Douglass was moved around a fair bit because slaves were sometimes loaned to other plantation owners. Throughout his story you see the personalities of the slave owners and overseers of the plantations. Sometimes while you are reading you’ll think that it couldn’t get any worse than this. And you discover that you were wrong.

Douglass never lost his faith as he suffered the many ordeals as a slave.  His faith and a spirit of hope got him through. There were a few instances where his spirit was broken and he didn’t want to go on. But something happened to snap him out of it.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Defining Moment in Frederick Douglass' Life

A defining moment in his life was when he was sent from his master’s plantation, Colonel Lloyd, on loan to Mr and Mrs Hugh Auld to take care of their little son Thomas. This moment shaped Douglass’ life because it was a start to freedom. Many years later when he was eventually able to sit at his own desk, in a happy home, writing his autobiography, he realized this.

Mrs Auld was unlike other whites. She spent time teaching young Douglass the alphabet and how to spell simple words. And like a sponge, he soaked up the knowledge. When Mr. Auld found out, he forbade his wife to continue, saying,

“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…If you teach a nigger 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…”

The harsh comments of Mr Auld gave Douglass an understanding he didn’t have before, because he was still a young boy. But he now understood the enslavement of Blacks. It’s worth mentioning that Mrs Auld had never had a slave before, so she treated all people with dignity.

The comments by Mr Auld changed both Mrs Auld and Douglass. Mrs Auld eventually slid into the role of slave owner which stripped her of her goodness. Douglass decided to teach himself to read, though he knew it would be tough going without a teacher. Douglass understood that the ability to read was a pathway to freedom.  Mrs Auld became even worst than her husband and would watch Douglass like a hawk so that he wouldn’t learn to read.

B ut Douglass was extremely smart. Unlike on the plantation, Douglass had more than enough to eat. So he made friends with many white boys. Many of whom came from poor white families, who didn’t have enough food.

Young douglass exchanged food for knowledge when he was sent out on errands. he converted them without their knowledge, into his teachers. he made sure that he always had a book with him. douglass was about 12 years old at the time..

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Education: The Road to Freedom

This book had a profound impact on Douglass’ life. And it’s a book he would read over and over. The more Douglass read The Columbian Orator , the more he understood the content of the book and the more he grew to detest his enslavers.

Mr Auld was correct. The ability to read opened up Douglass’s eyes to the realities of slavery. And at times he wondered if it was a blessing or curse to be able to read. He not only learned to read. But now his ability to think deeply was awakened and he spent a lot of time contemplating his lot in life. He hungered for freedom.

Narrative of the life of frederick douglass: learning what abolitionist means.

Douglass kept on hearing the word abolitionist and wanted to know what it meant. But couldn’t very well ask his owners. One day he got hold of a newspaper and read about the petitions in the north to abolish slavery. And now knew what the word meant.

Shortly after that, he was down on the docks one day and saw two Irishmen unloading a “scow of stone.” Douglass assisted them without being asked. And when they were finished, one asked if he was a slave for life and he responded yes.

They thought it was a waste to be a slave for life. And they suggested to him that he should run away to the north because he would find friends there. Douglass pretended he wasn’t interested because of self-preservation.

Many slave owners had been known to use spies to find out what their slaves thought of them. And if it wasn’t flattering, they would punish the slaves mercilessly. The two Irishmen planted a seed in his mind. Douglass knew that one day, he would run away. But the time wasn’t right because he wasn’t old enough. So he instead opted to learn to write first.

Frederick Douglass Learning to Write: The Power of the Written Word

Douglass tricked a boy into teaching him how to write, by egging him on, telling the boy that he could not write as well as he. Douglass used the pavement and fence as his copy-book. And a lump of chalk in lieu of pen and ink.

By the time little Thomas (the youngster that Douglass was supposed to be caring for) had gone to school, Mrs Auld would go out to a meeting every Monday afternoon. She left Douglass to take care of the house. He would use Thomas’ old copy-book and practice his writing. He continued this practice for years until he mastered the art of writing.

The story is an autobiography. So you see in very graphic details some of the things he suffered at the hands of slave owners who abused power. In 1838, he escaped from slavery. He went to New York where he married his girlfriend, Anna Murray, a freed black woman he had met in Baltimore. It wasn’t safe for a runaway slave to be in New York, but he got help there.

There were many whites who believed that all men should be freed. They worked to abolish slavery. Douglass found such people in New York. And he changed his last name from Bailey to Douglass. The abolitionists helped him to disappear in New Bedford. After three days being there, he found employment. And never again had to hand over all his earnings to another.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a tale of a man’s yearning for freedom, and the desire for all to be treated fairly. Frederick became an abolitionist and fought hard for the freedom of other Blacks. In his later years, Douglass held such positions as Secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, Marshall and Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti.

I recommend Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass because it gives us a view of what life was like as a black slave.

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Frederick Douglass

Sidney Morrison Hawthorne Books ( Jun 18, 2024 ) Hardcover $32.00 ( 688pp ) 978-0-9988257-9-3

Sidney Morrison’s biographical novel Frederick Douglass follows the famed abolitionist from slavery to international stardom.

Frederick Douglass dreams of escaping enslavement for years. But after completing the long and dangerous journey to the North, he finds that freedom comes attached to the insidious strings of segregation and prejudice. He channels his frustration into activism, joining the abolitionist movement and sharing his own experiences with the horrors of slavery. His activism takes many forms, with his writing, especially his autobiographical work, playing a prominent role in his work and personal life.

Throughout Douglass’s story, he deals with white people who are patronizing at best and cruel at worst. Their goodwill is conditional on factors that are often outside of his control. His alliances shift over time, sprouting and flourishing only to snap under the weight of political differences and clashing personalities. Still, though he’s sometimes laid low, Douglass never recognizes total defeat.

Morrison’s understated prose conveys this alongside the major events of Douglass’s life, from the triumphs of his greatest speeches to the devastating deaths of his relatives and friends. Douglass is a complicated hero who devotes himself to his crusade at the expense of his growing family, leaving them for stretches of time to recruit supporters and raise funds. Strong-willed and accustomed to having to fight, he alienates friends and allies, picking arguments where there are none; he struggles as long as he can to resist his desire for violent revolution. And the transcendent final chapter, which is rife with symbolism, emphasizes the justness of his mission and his visionary spirit, which saw him through to the end of his long, productive life.

Frederick Douglass is a sprawling biographical novel about a complex man with a singular objective: to achieve full racial equality for all Americans.

Reviewed by Eileen Gonzalez May / June 2024

Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

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