Frederick Douglass
Early Life
Douglass was one of the best-known African Americans involved in the
emancipation movement before the Civil War. He published the abolitionist
newspaper The North Star and gained international attention when, in 1845, he
published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave.
Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Maryland, possibly in February, 1817. He
had little contact with his mother, Harriet Bailey, and never knew the identity of his
father. At the age of twenty-one, he fled north to New Bedford, Massachusetts,
where he was protected by white abolitionists. To the surprise of his protectors,
Douglass showed extraordinary skill with words. He had learned to read during his
youth, which might have exposed him to the cause of abolitionism. Drawing themes
from the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, Douglass gave speeches under the
auspices of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. There, he met abolitionist
leader William Henry Garrison, founder of The Liberator and a major figure in the
abolitionist movement. Douglass was one of a significant number of fugitive slaves
who joined Garrison's abolitionist cause.
During this period, Douglass published the autobiography that soon achieved
widespread recognition: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave (1845). Shortly after its publication, he left the United States for England,
possibly out of fear that bounty hunters might seek him out and return him to
slavery. While he was in England, Douglass received contributions from abolitionist
supporters on both sides of the Atlantic, enabling him to purchase his freedom and
return to America in 1847.
Life's Work
In 1847, Douglass and Garrison parted company after disagreements over the use
of violence to end slavery and modes of raising funds. Douglass moved to
Rochester, New York, and founded his own abolitionist paper, The North Star (later
published under his own name as Frederick Douglass' Newsletter and Douglass'
Monthly)--a move that widened the breach with Garrison. At the same time,
Douglass's "alternative" articles on the subject of slavery and emancipation
continued to attract supporters, raising his profile well beyond the Northeastern
states. It might have been this growing fame that prompted the government to
consider recruiting Douglass as a semiofficial propagandist in the antislavery debate
that would grow more intense with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
During the Civil War, Douglass publicly supported Lincoln's antislavery position. In
addition, he became involved in the challenge of applying a bill signed by Lincoln on
July 17, 1862. The bill called for the recruitment of African Americans to serve in
segregated regiments in the Union Army. In 1863, Douglass launched a recruitment
campaign in Douglass' Monthly, listing eight factors that should motivate blacks to
enlist. He argued that enlistment was an obligation of the citizenship that African
Americans had acquired through the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862. He also
maintained that military service was a visible means of gaining self-respect and the
respect of others. His own two sons, Charles and Lewis, both joined the first black
regiment in the Union Army. Although Douglass apparently hoped that his service
as a recruiter, which merited a government salary, would lead to an official military
commission, this hope was not realized. For the duration of the war, he traveled
throughout the North delivering speeches in support of the war effort.
Along with wartime activities came a longer-term goal in Douglass's public life:
gaining for emancipated black men the same voting rights as white men. This aim
was not achieved until many years later. As Douglass began to call for African
American voting rights, he sought (not always successfully) to ally his cause with
that of the Equal Rights Association (until 1866 the Women's Rights Convention)
headed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
In the years after the Civil War, Douglass began dedicating his efforts to political
causes, particularly support of the Republican Party. He was relieved when Ulysses
S. Grant won the presidential election of 1866 over Andrew Johnson, the
Democratic candidate against whom Douglass had campaigned. The prominence
Douglass gained as a supporter of the Union government allowed him to play
official roles in government affairs. A first task assigned to him by Grant came in
1870, when the United States was considering challenging Spanish rule in the
colony of Santo Domingo. Douglass served as one of several secretaries to an 1871
exploratory commission sent to the island.
More indicative of Republican Party support for Douglass as a spokesman for
African American political participation was his role in 1872 as one the electors at
large (i.e., serving without any association with a particular electoral district) of
New York's electoral college. Another chance to play a political role came in the
mid-1870's when President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Douglass federal
marshal of the District of Columbia. Although this post was involved mainly
ceremonial duties (as did his next appointment, as recorder of deeds for the District
of Columbia in 1880), Douglass continued to try to publicize his views on key
issues. One was his support for pressuring Spain to end the lingering slave system
in Cuba; another was his involvement in the growing debate over migration to
Northern states by black agriculturalists unable to earn a living in the South.
The capstone of Douglass's government service came after he backed Benjamin
Harrison's presidential candidacy in 1888. Harrison appointed him minister-resident
and consul general to Haiti. Apparently, however, political and commercial pressure
to seek compromises with the Haitian government caused Douglass to lose faith in
his diplomatic mission. He resigned this post in 1891. Four years later, Douglass
died in Washington, D.C.
Douglass's Autobiographies
Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(1845), his first autobiography, was supplemented by two later works, My Bondage
and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by
Himself (1881). These three works shed light on the evolution of Douglass's selfimage and public persona.
Douglass's first autobiography was intended to provide proof of his slave origins
and his escape from bondage by fleeing to the North. Years later, in Life and Times
of Frederick Douglass, he wrote that he had lived "several lives," including as a
slave, a fugitive, and a (somewhat) free man. It is possible that Douglass sought in
both My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass to
clarify or correct certain impressions he had conveyed in the 1845 book, including
the contention that his father had been white. Perhaps because some skeptics
claimed that Douglass's literary abilities could only be explained by his having white
ancestry, Douglass backtracked from the statement. In My Bondage and My
Freedom, he referred to his father as "a white man or nearly white." By the time
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was published, he claimed to have no idea of
his father's identity.
Another issue that changed with the passage of time was the degree to which
Douglass claimed to have resisted the power of masters over slaves. Each of the
three autobiographical works treats this issue differently, particularly with regard to
Douglass's relations with his master Edward Covey, whom Douglass challenged
openly and even physically.
Some commentators note similar subjective "image making" with respect to
Douglass's depiction of his mother and grandmother and female slaves in general.
Feminist scholars such as Angela Davis note that Douglass had a tendency to
equate the African American struggle for freedom with his and other black men's
struggle for manhood. Selected quotations most often emphasize female slaves'
helplessness as slave owners abused them physically and sexually. This emphasis
presents female slaves' goal as escaping suffering, while male slaves seek to
establish and assert independence and agency.
Significance
Douglass was one of the best-known figures of pre-Civil War abolitionist activism.
He raised the awareness of many Americans through his widely read
autobiography. Perhaps equally important, he gained broad recognition during his
many years as a public servant, filling several midlevel posts within the federal
government.
Further Reading
Douglass, Frederick, and Angela Y. Davis. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave: A New Critical Edition. San Francisco, Calif.: City Lights Books, 2010.
This edition of Douglass's autobiography includes Davis's lectures from her days as a
militant activist the late 1960's. It attempts to reinterpret positions reflected in earlier
editions of Douglass's autobiography, adding a feminist approach to issues raised by
Douglass.
Lampe, Gregory P. Frederick Douglass: Freedom's Voice, 1818-1845. East Lansing:
Michigan State University Press, 1998. This carefully documented biography of Douglass
covers many aspects of his career that were either unknown, overlooked, or given
minor attention in the Benjamin Quarles' 1948 biography.
Mieder, Wolfgang. "No Struggle, No Progress": Frederick Douglass and His Proverbial
Rhetoric for Civil Rights. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Analyzes intended meaning
implied by Douglass's choice of particular phrases, some very famous (e.g., Lincoln's
"Government of the people, by the people, and for the people"), as the basis for moral
and rhetorical lessons on race and equality.
Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. 2d ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. An
update of Quarles's 1948 biography of Douglass, this source concentrates more on
Douglass's personal experiences and contacts, most of which are closely documented
by a variety of contemporary primary sources, including letters and newspaper
accounts.
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By Byron Cannon
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