Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass 1642656658, 9781642656657

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CRITICAL INSIGHTS Frederick Douglass

CRITICAL INSIGHTS Frederick Douglass Editor Jericho Williams Spartanburg Methodist College SALEM PRESS A Division of EBSCO Information Services, Inc. Ipswich, Massachusetts

GREY HOUSE PUBLISHING

Cover photo: Wikimedia. Copyright © 2020 by Grey House Publishing, Inc. Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass, published by Grey House Publishing, Inc., Amenia, NY, under exclusive license from EBSCO Information Services, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. For information, contact Grey House Publishing/Salem Press, 4919 Route 22, PO Box 56, Amenia, NY 12501. ∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48 1992 (R2009). Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.) Names: Williams, Jericho, editor. Title: Frederick Douglass / editor, Jericho Williams, Spartanburg Methodist College. Other Titles: Critical insights. Description: [First edition]. | Ipswich, Massachusetts : Salem Press, a division of EBSCO Information Services, Inc. ; Amenia, NY : Grey House Publishing, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: ISBN 9781642656657 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895--Criticism and interpretation. | Speeches, addresses, etc., American--African American authors-- History and criticism. | Abolitionists--United States--Biography. Classification: LCC E449.D75 F743 2020 | DDC 973.7/092--dc23

First Printing PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents About This Volume, Jericho Williams

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Renaissance Man: On Frederick Douglass and American Literature, Jericho Williams xiii The Long Reaching Impact: Biography of Frederick Douglass, Litasha Dennis xxix

Critical Contexts Autobiography as Rhetoric: Reading Douglass with Franklin, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 3 Frederick Douglass’s Rhetorical Autobiographies, Kimberly Drake

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Frederick Douglass and the (Im)Possibility of Being: An Afro-Pessimist Reading, Jade M. Becker

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Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution: A Gendered Reading of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Tammie Jenkins 46

Critical Readings Canonization and Its Discontents: Narrative of the Life in the Context of Douglass’s Intellectual Development, David Lawrimore

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The Many Roles of Listening in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life and The Heroic Slave, Mike Kolakoski 77 “The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon”: Self-Reliance and Selfishness in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Regina Yoong 92 The Anticipatory Print Life of Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852), Lori Leavell 105 Racial Geopolitics in Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave, Srimayee Basu 120 “Self-Made Men”: Frederick Douglass’s Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood, Rachel Boccio 136 v

Making the American Self and the Self-Made Man in The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, Amina Gautier 151 Black Voices for Freedom: Frederick Douglass and José María Samper’s Florencio Conde, Nydia R. Jeffers

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Frederick Douglass: Legacy and Influences, Dike Okoro

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Frederick Douglass in James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, Robert C. Evans 199 Black Writers Matter: Frederick Douglass in the Literary Present, Laura Dubek 219

Resources Chronology of Frederick Douglass’s Life Works by Frederick Douglass Bibliography About the Editor Contributors Index

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237 241 243 249 251 257

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About This Volume Jericho Williams

The genesis of Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass began with the need for a volume of essays that would explore Frederick Douglass’s contributions to American literary history and culture and that would also invite students to participate in ongoing conversations about Douglass’s writings. For the past fifty years, since the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, interest in Frederick Douglass has increased across a wide swath of academic disciplines. A quick database search yields scholarship about Douglass in the disciplines of history, political science, African American studies, public speaking, and ethics. Because of Douglass’s broad influence throughout American history, he unsurprisingly merits the greatest amount of attention in history and African American studies. Yet as many American and African American literature professors, teachers, and instructors can attest, Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) has also become a pivotal autobiographical text that clarifies our understanding of the Antebellum Era. By offering first-person insight into the lives of American slaves with powerful effect, Narrative is a rhetorical masterpiece, a text so effective and succinct that it routinely precludes greater investigation of Douglass’s other works. A basic premise for this volume of essays, however, is that never venturing beyond Narrative when teaching Douglass undermines a broader consideration of his literary successes, in much the same way that studying only the magisterial Their Eyes Were Watching God or Beloved discounts Zora Neale Hurston’s and Toni Morrison’s other achievements. While the following collection does feature some responses to Narrative, it seeks to prompt discussions of the fuller scope of Frederick Douglass’s literary career, and to foster a greater appreciation of the quality and depth of the author’s writing across multiple literary genres and throughout the nearly five decades of writing that followed the publication of Narrative. vii

Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass begins with an introductory section that considers Douglass within the broader span of his time and the now canonical literature from his era. The opening essay by Jericho Williams asserts that Douglass’s writings have been undervalued, though they are key contributions to the American Renaissance and to the larger scope of nineteenthcentury American literature. Peering back at the formation of the American literature canon during the early to mid-twentieth century, the opening essay highlights the origin of Douglass’s neglect and situates his writings in conjunction with heralded authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and Henry David Thoreau. The next essay by Litasha Dennis provides a biography of Douglass that reminds readers of his unforgettable presence, both past and present. Focusing on key aspects of Douglass’s life, Dennis imparts how he overcame far more difficult obstacles than his literary peers, and she conveys and insists upon his continuing relevance in the present day. The second section, “Critical Contexts,” provides four key contextual perspectives for approaching Douglass. In “Autobiography as Rhetoric: Reading Douglass with Franklin,” the first of two essays in the volume that consider Douglass in relation to Benjamin Franklin, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock argues that a key consideration for the autobiographical writings of both of these authors is knowing how their differing historical eras impacted their self-presentations through the orchestrated intermingling of fact and persuasion. Weinstock also introduces a larger concern that reverberates throughout the volume: Douglass’s careful attention to rhetoric. Kimberly Drake expands this focus on rhetoric in her critical reception essay, “Frederick Douglass’s Rhetorical Autobiographies,” which examines the scholarly shift from viewing Douglass as a historical figure and orator to a preeminent literary artist. Presenting Douglass as an expert rhetorician and savvy curator, Drake explains how Douglass used readers’ reception of his work to strengthen his rhetoric, and why literary critics overlooked Douglass’s work for over a century; she offers a greater basis for understanding Douglass’s relationship to the evolving American viii

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literature canon. Applying a twenty-first-century critical perspective to Douglass’s work, Jade Becker’s “Frederick Douglass and the (Im)Possibility of Being: An Afro-Pessimist Reading,” argues that Douglass’s depiction of slavery is vital to the development of Afropessimism, a theory that examines the long-lasting and ongoing effects of violence against African Americans throughout American history. In “Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution: A Gendered Reading of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” Tammie Jenkins offers a close reading of the function of gender within perhaps the two most well-known American slave narratives. Jenkins pinpoints key differences in the creation and published forms of Narrative of the Life and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to reveal how gender shaped the form and narratives of both Douglass’s and Jacobs’s famous works. The “Critical Readings” section offers eleven new readings in response to Douglass’s works. As the first of three essays that responds to Narrative, David Lawrimore’s “Canonization and Its Discontents: Narrative of the Life in the Context of Douglass’s Intellectual Development” suggests that Narrative contains competing theories that never fully resolve; consequently, he argues that the text functions as a springboard for deeper investigations into Douglass’s later work. In “The Many Roles of Listening in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life and The Heroic Slave,” Mike Kolakoski examines the appeal to be heard and the trope of listening. He uncovers Douglass’s emphasis on this appeal and trope, in particular, to construct the self, engender desire, and to deconstruct the institution of slavery, all as part of a larger urgent fight for abolition. Regina Yoong emphasizes Douglass’s pursuit of truth in her essay, “‘The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon’: Self-Reliance and Selfishness in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’ and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” which contrasts the writer’s vision of selfreliance with fellow orator Emerson’s to show that Douglass placed a greater emphasis on self-education through action and physical confrontation. About This Volume

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The next pair of essayists examines Douglass’s works following the publication of Narrative. In “The Anticipatory Print Life of Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852),” Lori Leavell draws attention to the print life of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” one of Douglass’s more famous speeches. She argues that the development of the speech as a printed object suggests that Douglass thought carefully and at length about the circulation of his speeches before and after his performances; that by extension, considering print history in relation to Douglass’s writings is vital to future studies of Douglass. With a continued emphasis on foresight, Srimayee Basu posits that Douglass’s one fictional work imagines black citizenship in a hemispheric rather than national capacity in her essay “Racial Geopolitics in Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave.” Three writers reconsider Douglass in light of the possibility of becoming “self-made.” In “‘Self-Made Men’: Frederick Douglass’s Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood,” Rachel Boccio argues that another of Douglass’s long-cherished speeches identifies democratic social justice as a crucial component of selfreliance within a nation that dehumanized African Americans. Amina Gautier’s “Making the American Self and the Self-Made Man in The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography” analyzes Douglass’s third and final autobiography, revised near the end of his life, alongside Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, which remained unpublished prior to Franklin’s passing. Contrasting the presentations of self-made men in each work, Gautier details that while Franklin presents success as something to be earned by any man of industry, Douglass complicates this notion by describing how slavery, racial prejudice, and paternalism present obstacles unique to African American success. In another comparative essay, “Black Voices for Freedom: Frederick Douglass and José María Samper’s Florencio Conde,” Nydia R. Jeffers describes the similarities between a lifetime’s worth of challenges that Douglass experienced with those of Segundo Conde, a central character in José María Samper’s Colombian novel condemning slavery. x

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The concluding trio of essays explore how writers beyond Frederick Douglass’s lifetime have responded to his works. Dike Okoro’s “Frederick Douglass: Legacy and Influences” uncovers and analyzes representations of Douglass in twentieth and twentyfirst-century poetry. Specifically, Okoro considers the ways that poets respond to Douglass’s timeless emphases on the individual and collective destiny. Robert C. Evans’s “Frederick Douglass in James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird” analyzes the controversial depiction of Douglass in McBride’s novel, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2013. Suggesting that McBride strove to present Douglass’s complexity as a human rather than simply as a distant figure to be revered, Evans shows McBride grappling with the image of Frederick Douglass in the present day, both prior to and following The Good Lord Bird’s publication. Lastly, Laura Dubek also investigates the presentation of Douglass in modern terms in her “Black Writers Matter: Frederick Douglass in the Literary Present,” which discusses Douglass’s appearances in YA literature as well as a graphic novel presentation of Douglass in David F. Walker’s The Life of Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Narrative of a Slave’s Journey from Bondage to Freedom (2019). Lastly, there is a collection of resources that includes a chronology of Frederick Douglass’s life, a list of his works, a bibliography of additional resources, and information about each of the volume’s contributors. Supplementing the critical essays, these documents serve to encourage further inquiry into the life of one of the most influential figures in nineteenth-century America: Frederick Douglass.

About This Volume

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Renaissance Man: On Frederick Douglass and American Literature Jericho Williams

Born a slave in 1818, Frederick Douglass spent the majority of his life working to transform America until his passing in 1895. He now represents a formidable figure in American history, arguably as much a historical and literary renaissance man by necessity as many other Americans were by choice or inclination from his era. As Celeste Bernier notes, following his escape from slavery in 1838, Douglass became a “self-made man . . . labourer . . . family man . . . writer . . . orator . . . editor . . . philosopher . . . critic . . . politician . . . and spokesman of his race” (596). During an era when the public sphere afforded limited or no options for women, Douglass often spoke at women’s rights meetings (Becker 5), and to such a great extent that, as one of his biographers notes, he may have been “the foremost male advocate of women’s rights” of his time (Stauffer 224). He also lectured widely, travelled overseas, and consulted with President Abraham Lincoln. Seemingly ubiquitous throughout the nineteenth century, Douglass constantly evolved his purpose and mission as part of a larger effort to condemn slavery and its multitude of consequences, to improve the lives of African Americans, and to ignite social progress. However, Douglass’s wide range of efforts and successes unfortunately problematize his importance within literary studies, the central focus of this essay and edited collection. His major contributions to other fields, particularly through antislavery activities such as advocacy and oration, make him a recurrent figure in history, political science, speech, and public speaking classrooms. Yet, Douglass still sometimes recedes from the forefront of nineteenthcentury literary studies. To be sure, his heralded Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845) remains present. Often coupled with Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) to represent the lives of African Americans during the Antebellum Era, it is a cornerstone text in present day American Renaissance Man

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literature classrooms. Too often, little else of Douglass’s writings receives much attention. While Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is perhaps still the best introduction to Douglass, it should not hinder readers from delving deeper into the work of one of the nineteenth-century American literature’s unrecognized renaissance figures. Many of Douglass’s writing works emerged during the time of the American Renaissance, an artistic movement from the 1830s through the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865. F.O. Matthiessen’s foundational study American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941) surveyed and championed five authors whom he felt distinguished American literature during this time: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. Matthiessen’s study shaped high school English textbooks and, to this day, continues to inform countless upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level literature courses. One of the shortcomings of Matthiessen’s study is that he neglected to consider Douglass, as well as Jacobs, and other prominent women writers from the period part of the literary elite that comprised the American Renaissance. From a modern vantage point, his study expresses what many other older studies of nineteenth-century American literature convey as well, i.e. a canon represented by white men. Subsequent studies of the American Renaissance included more about women’s contributions, especially Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), as well as Douglass’s Narrative until recently, when scholars such as biographer David W. Blight began to argue that Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), was a more valuable contribution alongside the movement’s hallmark texts. If the American Renaissance remains the most influential literary movement from nineteenth-century American literature, then it is no longer acceptable for Douglass to remain either beyond its scope or at its periphery. Unlike the work of some of the authors included as part of the American Renaissance, Douglass’s writing was both artful and highly impactful during its time. Notoriously, few people read or championed Herman Melville’s later and now classic works xiv

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during his lifetime, and decades would pass before some of the other American Renaissance writers rose in stature. They struggled to find an Antebellum audience, lived in “persistently precarious positions,” and occasionally felt “uncertain about the [literary] forms they chose” (Jones 37). By contrast, though more widely known as a speaker, Douglass’s popular writings towered above many of his peers and then experienced a decline following the Civil War. Although very popular upon its release in 1855, selling roughly 15,000 copies within a few months, My Bondage and My Freedom subsequently went out of print for more than a century from 1865 through 1968 (Blight, “Introduction,” xxviii). This significant absence partially accounts for critical neglect of Douglass, but it is also indicative of a nation that remained racist and deeply divided long after the Civil War. As early and mid-twentieth century literary critics offered reappraisals of Hawthorne, Melville, and other Renaissance figures, Douglass’s writing fell from the wayside to an abyss, while his public persona and antislavery efforts retained some interest from historians. As this volume of critical essays insists, Douglass deserves to be a principal figure in American history and the American Renaissance, but also within the larger expanse of American literary studies. He transcended his time period in his pursuit of progress, using whatever means necessary to advance the rights of African Americans both productively and creatively in his writing. As a result, Douglass belongs in the company of American literature’s most highly varied women and men of letters, as part of a selective group of distinctly American writers united by their successful efforts within multiple literary genres, a group that includes towering literary figures such as Mark Twain, Henry James, John Updike, and Toni Morrison. As in the cases of these authors, to isolate appreciations of Douglass to one work or genre dispels the possibility of appreciating a larger literary output and considering a wider impact which, as the contributors of this collection reveal, extends throughout the literary history of American literature into the present day. In preparation for the essays that follow, this introduction situates three forms of Douglass’s work—speeches, fiction, and autobiographical nonfiction—squarely within the realm of American Renaissance and Renaissance Man

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details why Douglass merits recognition as one of its key writers along the likes of Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. Speaking the Future of America into Existence: Douglass’s Speeches Beyond the realm of literary studies, Frederick Douglass is celebrated for his speeches, antislavery efforts, and public intellectualism, all stemming from a remarkable oratory career. Thanks to extraordinary recovery work, scholars affiliated with the Frederick Douglass Papers have documented more than 2,500 public performances, and between 1979 and 1992, selected, edited, and published 273 speeches as part of a five-volume scholarly edition (McKivigan, et al. xv). The sheer volume, while daunting, invites more comparative scholarship between Douglass and other prominent speakers throughout the nineteenth century since Douglass’s speeches reflect the art of public speaking during this time. Within literary studies, one useful point of comparison is the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose speeches and essays remain at the forefront of nineteenthcentury studies. In her essay in this volume, Regina Yoong details how while the development of Emerson’s and Douglass’s visions differ, there is also much to be gleaned from how these two discuss what it means to be American in Emerson’s “The American Scholar” (1837) and Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852). While Emerson emphasizes the necessity of the formation of a distinct American intellectual, Douglass, highlighting the differing subjectivities among the American free and enslaved, problematizes the notion that a nation built upon and operating because of slave labor can produce any tradition separate from slavery and suggests ongoing and unavoidable links with other nations. “The American Scholar” is commonly taught as Emerson’s rallying call that sought to distinguish American colleges and universities from their European counterparts. Though Emerson places strong emphasis on the necessity of learning from the past, he more fully stresses the importance of establishing a uniquely American intellectual tradition. Describing the chief purpose of colleges, he writes that they “can only highly serve us when they xvi

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aim not to drill, but to create with the hope of molding students who balance and extend their learning through action” (49). Merely sixty-one years old at the time of his speech, the United States was a young country, and Emerson looked outside schoolhouse walls for actions, behaviors, and signs of progress that could define the new nation and separate it from European traditions. He found and proclaimed the partial answer to be American interaction with the raw materiality and unspoiled natural environment. To further his point, he attempts to redefine wealth and abundance in differing terms than European precedents, advancing a vision of education that eschews “vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism” by also celebrating American efforts related to art and scholarship (53). Read today, this programmatic plan suggests the importance of remaining aware of the dangers of materialism and of preserving stories and poems that advance the heart and soul of a nation. It is a vision that Emerson suspected would require deliberateness and self-styled study and that would necessitate the sacrifice of material goods. Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852) counterbalances Emerson’s vision in “The American Scholar” and demonstrates broader insight into nineteenth-century America. Speaking almost fifteen years after Emerson, Douglass forcefully reminds readers that the American environment, imagined as a playground of knowledge acquisition and expression for Emerson, was in reality far from a safe, free, or exploratory place for all people residing within the United States. His speech functions not as a direct rebuke of “The American Scholar” so much as a reminder of lost opportunities for millions of African Americans enslaved in the United States. Given during a Fourth of July celebration in 1852, Douglass’s speech first establishes that the United States remains a divided nation. With a powerful use of repetition, Douglass excoriates the current state of the country, scolding white Americans that the holiday “is the birthday of your National Independence, of your political freedom,” while more than seventy-five years after the founding of the United States, he notes, the country still does not recognize that a huge portion of its people Renaissance Man

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who work the American landscape in captivity to enrich their owners and economically strengthen the nation (109–10). The country that he addresses remains unfit and unworthy of celebration, a notion Douglass conveys with a constant emphasis on the word “your” as a means to highlight the differences between freedom and slavery, of one America and another separate and unequal nation of people living within its confines. He continues, “Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them” (116). Douglass condemns the holiday, arguing that for a slave, the Fourth of July “reveals . . . more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim” (119). Portraying a severely divided nation, focusing on the differences among the free and the enslaved, and implicating all white Americans directly or indirectly involved in upholding slavery, Douglass invalidates the holiday from serious consideration until the abolition of slavery. His position as a critic and as a defender of the enslaved also leads Douglass to a warning about the development of the United States. Whereas Emerson asserts that diligence and effort will allow Americans to create a country of individuals that will collectively distinguish itself from its predecessors, Douglass foresees problems with this assumption as he imagines a modernizing world. Near the conclusion of his speech, he notes, “Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other as they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up, from the surrounding world . . . Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. Space is comparatively annihilated” (128–29). Drawing directly from observations along his lengthy pathway from slave to prominent speaker and abolitionist, Douglass imagines a world webbed together by commerce and knowledge. Although not put in twenty-first century terms, he imagines the coming changes of a highly globalized world. In this capacity, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” can be read a critique of “The American Scholar” as a speech that cautions against the cultivation of the individual in any country that still sanctions and enforces the violent exclusion of others. Douglass’s speech clarifies xviii

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that the United States remains wed to other nations, and that until the abolition of slavery and better working conditions, would remain imperiled by its denial of African Americans’ rights. A Place in the American Renaissance: Douglass’s Fiction Douglass asserts the importance of their revered leaders in The Heroic Slave (1852), his one work of fiction that still remains understudied in comparison to his speeches and autobiographical nonfiction and that belongs as key work of short fiction within the American Renaissance. For high school and undergraduate students, The Heroic Slave offers a compelling alternative to other nineteenthcentury American works of fiction that often overshadow it. To offer two examples, during the past few decades, American literature teachers have often assigned Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), a historical novel about persecution and oppression from the distant Puritan era. And given its great historical impact, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), if not usually taught in full given its hefty length, still remains excerpted for classroom usage because of its great antislavery impact. Much less known is Douglass’s The Heroic Slave, a powerful fictional work about one man’s rebellion against slavery, or the fact that Stowe consulted Douglass while gathering research for her famous novel. Equally unknown is that The Heroic Slave preceded the publication of Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno (1855), a novella also praised for its depiction of a slave rebellion, by three years (McFeely 166). The Heroic Slave and Benito Cereno have differing emphases, motives, and complexities, but Douglass’s work offers a stronger portrait of a hero and arguably a better example of nineteenthcentury-styled historical fiction. By the time Melville wrote Benito Cereno, he suffered from a major collapse in popularity following the disappointing sales of Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852). Like “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853), composed prior to Benito Cereno but also included in the same collection of stories, The Piazza Tales (1856), Benito Cereno offers a complex psychological character study, here with an emphasis on slavery rather than urban alienation. As some critics have noted, it emerges from a uniquely Renaissance Man

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experimental period for the author and, in terms of style, serves as a precursor to literary modernism associated with twentieth-century fiction. Conversely, The Heroic Slave draws more from a broad range of nineteenth-century fiction styles or modes to portray a hero of its era in a complex, but also compact and highly readable manner. Bill E. Lawson praises the novella for powerfully popular elements of Romanticism with abolitionism (122), while Robert S. Levine notes that it also derives from a “historical novel tradition” embraced by early nineteenth-century writers such as Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Sedgwick, and Nathaniel Hawthorne (xii). The Heroic Slave tells the story of Madison Washington, a slave aboard a ship named Creole who inspired what became the most successful slave revolt in American history in November 1841. Following the revolt the ship changed course and landed in Nassau, Bahamas, where 128 slaves escaped to freedom. To a degree greater than Stowe’s sentimental Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which stoked abolitionist fervor and became one of American literature’s most impactful books, or Melville’s Benito Cereno, which—gnarled, obtuse, and ambiguous—is in some ways similar to Moby-Dick in terms of complexity, albeit in a much shorter form, The Heroic Slave extols and recreates a pivotal moment in American history. Throughout the 1840s, Douglass celebrated Madison Washington in various speeches, but it was following the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 that he came to “treat Washington as the epitome of the ‘heroic slave’” (Andrews 131). The new law, which commanded that officials in free states place suspected runaway slaves under arrest or else be fined, represented a stunning regression for Douglass and his fellow abolitionists. It also demanded a greater sense of urgency from those like Douglass, who asserted that figures like Washington who rebelled ought to be celebrated and revered. He opens The Heroic Slave with a general, scorching rebuke of the recording of the history of Virginia, and specifically what counts within a white author and determined American history. After describing the state of Virginia as “famous [for its] multitudinous array of statesmen and heroes,” Douglass notes that “not all of the great ones . . . [have] xx

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escaped undeserved obscurity” (132). A little more than a decade after Washington’s revolt, the author asserts the idea of Washington as a national hero in his push towards abolitionism. As Douglass asserts at its opening, The Heroic Slave recounts an important American historical figure and event at risk of being forgotten, so long as the United States maintains its proslavery interests. He establishes Washington’s blackness as central to his heroism, going a step further than Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in honoring the real Madison Washington, Douglass creatively valorizes rather than invents a fictional hero. He writes that the real Washington is similar to “a guiding star on a stormy night . . . seen through parted clouds and the howling tempests; or, like the grey peak of a menacing rock on a perilous coast, he is seen by the quivering flash of angry lightning, and he again disappears covered with mystery” (132). This sets the stage not just for a tale of courage in the face of appalling conditions, but for a reimagining of a creative and cunning African American hero. As John Ernest notes, fictionalizing Washington allows Douglass to “get at truths that might otherwise never enter the historical record” (474). It is a novel experiment because Douglass deliberately shapes Washington’s story for readers rather than listeners, and also because he steps out of the picture, serving neither as the speaker nor as a narrator of his own experiences. Due to its compelling, fact-based story and the novel way that it recasts American heroism in abolitionist garb, The Heroic Slave should be considered a classic example of American historical fiction from the Antebellum Era. Like another immensely popular historical fiction figure from the era, Natty Bumppo from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Leatherstocking Tales (1823–1841), Madison Washington is a compelling hero. However, he emerges from one particular historical event, rather than many, and represents a hero of color rather than a white man. If Cooper, like Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, drew from prior centuries of American history and succeeded in offering “deep insight into the symbols of American consciousness,” he, too, like Hawthorne, wrote at a greater social and personal distance from his protagonist than Douglass, who Renaissance Man

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recognized Madison Washington as a hero in an ongoing fight (Slotkin xxviii). Celebrating Washington’s resilience and strength, Douglass draws closely from a historical event not just to probe American consciousness, but to also encourage readers to honor African American heroes in the United States, and to point to a future where they would be recognized. The Problems of Progress: Douglass’s Nonfiction When students first encounter Douglass, chances are that the information derives directly from the author’s first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), either excerpted or in full, or else a presentation, recording, or video about Douglass based on the same source. Douglass composed his first and still most famous autobiographical story in his late 20s, seven years after his escape from slavery and after many years of sharing his experiences orally with public audiences. Narrative immediately attracted great interest in the United States and England, and soon made Douglass “the most famous black person in the world” (Blight, Frederick 138). Yet, by the dawn of the twentieth century, it had virtually disappeared from the study of American literature and only resurfaced when Douglass attracted more attention during the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s. During the next decade in the 1970s, Narrative finally received canonical status and became a standard text in American literature classrooms (Giles 779). There is still no question about the power of Douglass’s story and the Narrative’s controlled art. It is stark and direct, a rhetorical masterpiece that still resonates not only as a direct attack against slavery during its time, but also now as a distinctly American work that calls attention to and “champion[s] the cause of the oppressed” (Brewton 714). Yet as powerful and as important as Narrative remains, it is the shortest and the first of three autobiographies from Douglass. Since it first appeared in print nearly fifty years prior to his death, Narrative consequently places a far greater emphasis on Douglass’s experiences as a child born into slavery until the time of his escape rather than his subsequent development into an American Renaissance man. Altogether, Narrative captures a time xxii

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when he, like another figure of the American Renaissance, Henry David Thoreau, sought to examine the life he inherited as a means to protest the current state of America. Published only nine years apart, Douglass’s Narrative and Thoreau’s autobiographical work Walden (1854) both offer direct and clear visions that continue to resonate with modern day readers. Like Narrative, Walden experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1970s, particularly for the way it spoke to those worried about increasing environmental concerns and for its critique from a host of ills, ranging from American enterprise to materialism and consumerism. Thoreau and Douglass are not commonly associated, except for the fact that Thoreau’s mentor was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the preeminent nineteenth-century orator with whom many compare with Douglass. It’s true that Emerson and Douglass more easily relate when one considers the entirety of their careers as speakers, and especially, too, in regard to their differing engagements with the concept of self-reliance through various speeches and writings. Thoreau, a sometimes recluse now considered as an American naturalist ahead of his time, may not seem much like Douglass, but both decry abuses that relate to economic-sanctioned abuses of the American landscape and its people. In short, Walden presents Thoreau’s brief experiment of attempting to live off of the land and his thoughts, in the form of short essays, throughout the process. In the second chapter, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” he writes that he began his venture on July 4, 1845, signaling a new attempt at understanding American independence. Proclaiming the value “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity” and the need for “elevation of purpose” among individuals, Thoreau anticipated the negative effects of industrialization on people, questioning, “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life”? (84–85). Like Douglass, who begins Narrative by writing about what it means to come into the world as an enslaved child as a way to better capture the warped world he was born into, Thoreau also privileges the vision of a child, writing that they, instead of adults, often “discern its [the world’s] true law and relations more clearly than men” (88). Renaissance Man

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At first glance, Thoreau’s chastisement of the lives of those in New England in Walden may appear as aloof and as distant from the people within Douglass’s Narrative as one could imagine, yet both works feature interrogations of America from outsiders. However, they also differ significantly because what Thoreau could write stemmed directly from the freedom denied to Douglass. As Litasha Dennis points out in this volume, the story of Douglass’s life at the time that he composed Narrative was both “liberating and downright dangerous to tell.” Thoreau, privileged to be able to wonder, think, and look closely at the natural world surrounding him, felt empowered to convey his disdain for an American way of life that pressed upon him in an abstract way, while Douglass brimmed with knowledge of the smallest through the largest acts on the part of white Americans that denied human rights, freedom, basic needs, and choice to African Americans. In other words, just as Thoreau could rail against the expansion of an actual railroad, Douglass had to conceal the means of his escape and support a heralded Underground Railroad that enabled his fellow slaves a means of escape. Seemingly, the texts cannot find common ground when one reads, for example, of the way that children born into slavery were separated from their parents. Douglass notes, Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off . . . For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection towards its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This was the inevitable result. (252)

Thoreau’s vision of the child, free from adult worry and a beaming light of truth, dissipates in the harsh world that Douglass presents in Narrative. And yet, American commerce, greed, and the desire for wealth underpin some of the actions or implied actions in backgrounds of both Narrative and Walden, and they help identify the greater problems of antebellum America. Thoreau follows in Douglass’s footsteps, writing passionately, specifically, and concisely, articulating a vision of an unjust nation bowing to the xxiv

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leadership of the blind or those willfully unhearing who remain in power, and then supported by their political and religious leaders to bow to material progress at what would eventually come at a great cost of more than 150 years of racial injustice. The distant discord that Thoreau sensed as he ambled through rural New England Douglass felt more directly through contact and altercations with the upholders of slavery. Read together, what emerges from Narrative of the Life and Walden is that the sickness of slavery that afflicts the South reverberates throughout the entirety of the nation, echoing, even if quite distant, to the forests in New England. Thoreau ventured into a self-chosen, temporary solitude, one forced indefinitely upon countless slaves along with the accompanying threat of violence (and therefore incomparable), yet he nonetheless came away with a kernel of a greater truth that Douglass had already unearthed and spelled out: the American way of progress was causing great human and environmental harm. While Walden insists that readers consider their roles in a modern economy and encourages them to question the environmental costs of progress, it is Narrative—with direct insight into exploited landscapes and people—that better portrays the abuse and coercion necessary to fuel the American enterprise and enact the damage that Thoreau condemns. While Walden engages with Transcendentalist thought and offers an alternative vision of life; it is a potentially transformative text for free people, those granted permission to learn to read and unburdened from having to imagine escapes that could lead to extreme punishment or death. To this extent, reading Narrative not only ensures a greater understanding of the national context that indirectly pushed Thoreau to its edges, but it also situates Walden as an environmental manifesto perhaps always worth reading but inescapably dependent upon the societal mound from which it grows. Fully comprehending Walden becomes easier with Douglass’s Narrative in tow as co-requisite reading. Insisting on culture as well as nature, Douglass’s Narrative looks ahead to the resuscitation of both works in the 1960s and 1970s, asserting that links between civil rights and environmental care and stewardship are often impossible to untangle. Renaissance Man

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Conclusion For the reasons above and more, Frederick Douglass is a cornerstone figure of the American Renaissance. His speeches, fiction, and autobiographies, including the latter two, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892), yield great insight into one of the nineteenth century’s most influential thinkers and writers, and a true Renaissance Man who used his gifts with language and rhetoric to reshape the nation. Douglass’s larger contributions to American literature are both impossible to ignore and still yet to be fully appreciated. He leaves behind an archive of speeches, letters, editorial work, and other writings that beckon the attention of American literature scholars and students. The following collection, Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass, represents both a beginning point for literary studies of Frederick Douglass and an invitation to continue the work and expand twentyfirst-century understandings of a foundational American writer. Works Cited Andrews, William L. “Introduction to The Heroic Slave.” in The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, edited by William L. Andrews. Oxford UP, 1996, p. 131. Becker, Peter. “Genealogies of Sympathy: Reclaiming the Maternal in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” Arizona Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 4, 2019, pp. 1–28. Bernier, Celeste-Marie. “‘His Complete History’? Revisioning, Recreating, and Reimagining Multiple Lives in Frederick Douglass’s Life and Times (1881, 1892).” Slavery & Abolition, vol. 33, no. 4, Dec. 2012, pp. 595–610. Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster, 2018. __________. Introduction and Notes. My Bondage and My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass, edited by David W. Blight. Yale UP, 2014, pp. ix–xxx.

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Brewton, Vince. “‘Bold Defiance Took Its Place’—‘Respect’ and SelfMaking in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 4, 2005, pp. 703–17. Douglas, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself, 1845.” Slave Narratives, edited by William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Library of America, 2000, pp. 267–368. __________. “The Heroic Slave. 1852.” The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, edited by William L. Andrews. Oxford UP, 1996, pp. 132–63. __________. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July.” 1852. The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, edited by William L. Andrews. Oxford UP, 1996, pp. 108–30. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” 1837. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Brooks Atkinson. Modern Library, 2000, pp. 43–59. Ernest, John, et al. “Review of The Heroic Slave/Frederick Douglass: A Cultural and Critical Edition.” Early American Literature, vol. 52, no. 2, 2017, pp. 473–77. Giles, Paul. “Narrative Reversals and Power Exchanges: Frederick Douglass and British Culture.” American Literature, vol. 73, no. 4, 2001, pp. 779–810. Jones, Gavin. Failure and the American Writer. Cambridge UP, 2014. Lawson, Bill E. “Douglass Among the Romantics.” The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, edited by Maurice S. Lee. Cambridge UP, 2008, pp. 118–31. Levine, Robert S. Introduction. The Heroic Slave. by Frederick Douglass. 1852, edited by Robert S. Levine, John Stauffer, and John R. McKivigan. Yale UP, 2015, pp. xi–xxxvi. McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. W. W. Norton & Co., 1991. McKivigan, John R., Julie Husband, and Heather L. Kaufman. Preface. The Speeches of Frederick Douglass: A Critical Edition, edited by John R. McKivigan, Julie Husband, and Heather L. Kaufman. Yale UP, 2018, pp. xv–xviii. Slotkin, Richard. Introduction. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826. Penguin, 1986, pp. ix–xxviii.

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Stauffer, John. The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race. Harvard UP, 2001. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. 1854. Oxford UP, 1999.

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The Long Reaching Impact: Biography of Frederick Douglass Litasha Dennis

It is a curious circumstance to tell a biographical story about a subject whose story has already been carefully and critically examined and also who has endeavored to tell his own story. The former necessitates homage to what has already been written. When traveling a path that has been shaped and seemingly defined, it is daunting to create detours that are not just new, but meaningful and consequential. The latter requires sensitivity to the author’s own subjectivity and interpretation of his own experiences that were, at once, liberating and downright dangerous to tell. Biographical work on Frederick Douglass sits in this nebulous critical space. In reflection, Frederick Douglass has always been a consistent, striking, and imposing figure in the African American community in particular, but in the broader American community as a whole. In the past, no Black History Month celebration in elementary schools was complete without mention of Douglass. Every February, these programs appeared to have a primary goal—awareness. Children needed to be exposed to this information not just because someone had decided that it was important; these programs were safeguards for them, making sure they knew the stories of struggle, triumph, and achievements of their own culture and of their own people. It was far too risky and far too arbitrary to leave to chance that “someone else” would. No. Thus, in historical times when African American accomplishments went unheralded, it has always been hailed as a sign of great pride that Douglass founded his own newspaper. If you knew nothing else of Douglass or what the title of the newspaper meant or represented, you memorized that he started the newspaper called The North Star. That was a consistent detail of Douglass’s life worth mentioning because ownership and control of any enterprise by an African American was an act of rebellion on its own, not to mention one that relied on reading and writing as its stock in trade. Biography of Frederick Douglass

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Given that literacy was illegal for African Americans, a newspaper flew directly in the face of such a law; it was an indisputable nod to conquering socially and legally willed ignorance by creating and disseminating information to people who were not meant to have it. The power of that nod was, and is, worthy of consistent repetition. Douglass has always been a striking figure to behold; his image is the type that lingers. Knowing Douglass’s actual height has never seemed relevant; whether seated or standing in pictures, undoubtedly, he seems tall, as if towering. Be it on purpose or coincidentally, Douglass’s likeness has always been captured in such a way that communicates authority and respect. In photographs of Douglass there is not a frown; however, there is not a visible smile, either. Rather, his visage seems decidedly neutral, yet there is a focused look on his face, a look that suggests strength. Frederick Douglass, without necessarily saying a word, has always been portrayed as a leader, the kind of man that you would willingly follow in any circumstance. Perhaps no aspect of Douglass is more noticeable or unforgettable, though, than his hair. It has a prominence, almost like a lion’s mane, that complements the unspoken sense of status that breaks through. These very factors help to underscore just how imposing a figure, both visually and in terms of success, Douglass has always been. One look at his piercing gaze, and it is clear that he has suffered experiences the depth of which may never be fully articulated or appreciated. In his eyes, there is a story. Behind those eyes, there is pain; yet, Douglass does not present as a tragic figure. Quite the contrary, Douglass emerges as the very essence of what the slavery regime tried to deny him the privilege of calling himself—a man. A man who was at times valiantly heroic, yet fundamentally flawed; capable of leading, yet doomed to follow; as bold and certain as the day of his next move; and as insecure and uncertain as the night of the consequences. In short, Douglass was a human being. In a perfect world, that label would not be a revelation; however, in a world where the institution of slavery treated millions of people as property with little discernible differences between them and their horses and cows, this label must be stated emphatically. Frederick Douglass xxx

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was human, with all the complexities, joys, pains, struggles, and disappointments appertaining. Through everything, he lived. The early life of Frederick Douglass rests on circumstances that were all too familiar to those born in his time period and to a station in life similar to his. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Douglass was born to a mother who was a slave around 1817, and the identity of his father has not been historically determined. The consistent rumor has been that his master, who more than likely would have been his mother’s master, was his biological father. This scenario of Douglass’s birth is not new, and it reflects both the unfortunate situation of how he came into this world and the degree to which contemporary students of Douglass might take having the knowledge of basic details of their own lives for granted. Even a cursory examination shows how Douglass is, oddly, known and unknown. The year of his birth is an estimation, at best, one that probably took coordination of the work of several historians to pin down. Also of note, Douglass’s mother was also in bondage, and Douglass would later write of her with detachment, intimating that he did not really know her. The white slave master as father is a trope that is as widely known and pervasive as the institution itself. Thus, Frederick Douglass was, biologically, biracial; however, such racially progressive terms that allow a person of this lineage to claim and celebrate both aspects of his heritage did not exist. In the early 1800s and before, children born to slave mothers by white fathers were legally and socially considered black, since the bloodline of the offspring was determined by the mother, and, therefore, counted as slaves. This is the instance of Douglass’s birth; sadly, it is also the instance of countless other slaves. Again, it cannot be overstated that while Douglass’s entry into this world was not exactly the result of a beautiful love story, it is not a situation that doomed him to an inescapable tragedy. Certainly, he suffered brutality because American slavery was a brutal regime, but it would be an oversimplification and a disservice to suggest that slavery defined him. As Robert S. Levine points out, “. . .most people know Douglass from a work that has nothing to say about his life as a free person” (24–25). Slavery was only one part of his existence; Biography of Frederick Douglass

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he had a life after it. It must also be stated clearly that Douglass’s ability to claw his way beyond the horrors he experienced does not mean that all slaves should have been able to do the same; such an implication would be categorically untrue and would demean the memories of the millions whose lives were lived only in the space of slavery. The only implication is that Douglass was fortunate in that he was able to take advantage of the opportunities, people, and resources that appeared in his path, regardless if they were put there through luck, divine intervention, or sheer doggedness of will to overcome. Much of the information about Douglass’s early life has been filtered through his own telling. Douglass broke barriers by publishing his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself in 1845. That Douglass broke barriers with this publication is the definition of an understatement. First, its publication date squares it a full two decades before the end of the Civil War; slavery was still in practice even though there was growing sentiment against it. A book detailing the harsh realities was a bold move, yet it made him vulnerable, putting something approaching a bounty on his life. As can be imagined, there were people who had vested interests in stories like Douglass’s not being told, particularly in a first-hand account. Careful attention must be given to the subversive nature of this title. Narrative of the Life is a definite affirmation; slaves were considered property and treated as such. Not acknowledging their humanity served to justify this treatment; in this portion of the title, Douglass emphasizes that life, though lived in and through a wretched period, beat in his heart and pulsed through his body. He was not chattel, and he wanted readers to understand that. The second portion, An American Slave, seemed to be a direct indictment of the very country that he called home. Douglass did not need the advantage of hindsight to see the irony of his situation. He was a slave in a country that was founded and based on the principles of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” principles codified in The Declaration of Independence as a guiding document of this country’s establishment. Readers needed to confront and be confronted with this glaring hypocrisy, xxxii

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hypocrisy that created a fault line on which America sat and with which it still struggles to reconcile. The last portion presents itself as the most confrontational. In specifying that the narrative was written by “Himself,” Douglass leaves no questions in readers’ minds about the authenticity of the work. In writing his own narrative, Douglass stepped forward into history by defying the stereotype of the ignorant-because-illiterate slave. According to The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, critical examination of Douglass’s life was lacking because of his autobiographical work (Lee 5). What existed tended to focus on the oratorical skill and style of Douglass’s work rather than the content (Lee 6). Douglass would go on to write two more autobiographies after Narrative of the Life. In 1855, he published My Bondage and My Freedom; then, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass appeared in 1881 with a revision in 1892. The Portable Frederick Douglass explains that “[E]ach autobiography narrates the life from a distinct political vantage point” (Stauffer and Gates Jr. xxvii). The implication is that each version of his autobiography was aimed at communicating a particular message based on the perceived audience. Levine pushes this conclusion a step further. He contends that because there are revisions, that means that there are tellings and re-tellings of major life events (3). How, then, as readers and biographers, do we read and interpret a life that has, essentially, re-imagined its own experiences? (4) Levine suggests that his strategy in examining the different autobiographical versions was to see them as Douglass did— “. . . as unfinished lives that from the moment they were completed were subject to revision” (4). Thus Douglass, in capitalizing on the flexibility and power of the storyteller, fit squarely into the ideological leanings of nineteenth-century thinking. As Stauffer and Gates Jr. note, “[S] uch genealogical self-fashionings articulate a radically evolving persona. . .” (xxix). In other words, Douglass never saw that who he was at any given moment was who he was meant to be for all time; people grow, change, develop—why should he be any different? Why wouldn’t the books about his life reflect that? Biography of Frederick Douglass

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Once Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838, he cultivated, not just a career, but a life, that showcased his natural gifts (Stauffer and Gates Jr. xix). Clearly, Douglass was an artist; he was a writer and orator who understood that language equaled power. He harnessed it, gaining recognition that touched the political sphere, even moving beyond the borders of this country. Frederick Douglass, a slave who once railed in despair against the mighty Chesapeake Bay because it had more freedom than he, became one of the most influential figures of his time. Without question, Douglass began his race in shackles, both seen and unseen. His life illustrates that where you start and where you finish are two very different places. As a community and a country, we are better equipped to run our races because of Douglass’s example. Works Cited “Frederick Douglass.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Ronald Sundstrom. Stanford University, 2017, plato.stanford.edu/ entries/frederick-douglass/. Lee, Maurice S. Introduction. The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, edited by Maurice S. Lee. Cambridge UP, 2009, pp. 1–12. Levine, Robert S. The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Harvard UP, 2016. Stauffer, John, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Introduction. The Portable Frederick Douglass, edited by John Stauffer and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Penguin, 2016, pp. xix–xxxiv.

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CRITICAL CONTEXTS

Autobiography as Rhetoric: Reading Douglass with Franklin Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass’s autobiographies offer ideal opportunities to demonstrate the ways in which “fact” and “persuasion” are in no way mutually exclusive and to hone critical thinking skills by inviting students to attend to how both content and form can participate in privileging particular textual interpretations. The fact that Franklin and Douglass’s autobiographies share so many emphases and characteristics is especially useful in highlighting not only antebellum American cultural context, but how the same rhetorical emphases and strategies can be put to very different purposes. My approach to Franklin’s and Douglass’s autobiographies begins with two questions concerning autobiography in general: “What would merit inclusion in your autobiography?” and “How would you want a reader of your biography to feel about you when they are done?” This pair of questions highlights two essential facts about autobiographies: first, that authors pick and choose what they include and what they exclude; one could not possibly include everything that has ever happened in one’s life in their autobiography, and no one would want to read it if they did! Second, they foreground that authors of autobiographies construct a particular impression of themselves for the reader; they inevitably have an idea of how they wish the reader to perceive them at the end. Autobiographies are thus inevitably rhetorical, shaping a picture of their subject through both content (what is included) and form (the way in which the material is organized). Anyone Can Be Ben Franklin and So Can You! Thinking about what one would include and exclude from one’s own autobiography and how one might organize that information is a particularly useful exercise prior to considering Franklin’s Reading Douglass with Franklin

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Autobiography because it highlights just how unusual one of the most famous autobiographies in world literature actually is. Attending first to organization, it is important to note that Franklin’s autobiography is not divided up into chapters built around particular turning points—the conventional structure of Western autobiographies; the divisions in Franklin’s text merely mark when Franklin started and stopped writing each section. Why Franklin eschews chapter divisions is a topic to which I will return below. In terms of content, it is then interesting to consider what is missing from Franklin’s autobiography (always a lot harder to think about than what is present!). Details of childhood and family life are typically included in autobiographies, so it may be surprising to realize that we learn next to nothing about Franklin’s mother, except that she had “an excellent constitution,” having suckled all ten of her children (9). This is similarly the case with the rest of Franklin’s family. He tells us that his father had a total of seventeen children by two wives. Franklin was the youngest son and third youngest overall, and could remember sitting together with 13 of his siblings (5). Apart from his brother James, however, to whom Franklin was indentured, we learn nothing about any of them. The realization that Franklin tells us almost nothing about his family life as a child then precipitates two more questions: why does he omit this information, and what does he in fact include? The answer to the first question—he omits consideration of his early family life because it isn’t important to his overall purpose— is telling: it prompts the recognition that his autobiography has a purpose—that is, it seeks to persuade the reader to think and feel in particular ways, and he has included or excluded material in relation to that overall purpose. A focus on what he does include from his childhood then helps to direct consideration of that purpose: he mentions an early example of his “public spirit” (7) in which he and some other boys pilfered stones from a building site to build a wharf and from which he learned the lesson that honesty is essential in dealing with the world. Mostly, however, he emphasizes his disciplined approach to self-education, and he starts to share the wisdom he acquired concerning how to influence people. The 4

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information Franklin provides on his childhood in the early pages of the Autobiography thus emphasizes three important themes to the Autobiography overall: the importance of honesty in one’s dealings with others, the centrality of education to success, and ways to win friends and influence people. This may be a work of fact, but it absolutely has a purpose. Having observed that Franklin has almost nothing to say about his family leads to a related question: what kinds of relationships does Franklin include in his Autobiography? Many might consider romantic relationships, including courtship and marriage, as reasonable inclusions for their autobiographies—but not Franklin. We get glimpses—his future wife Deborah Read observing the ridiculous sight of young Franklin entering Philadelphia with his three puffy rolls of bread, Franklin’s ill-advised flirtations in London with Mrs. T., his return to Philadelphia and marriage to Deborah— which saved him “intrigues with low women” (62). But Franklin is never romantic or sentimental and gives us very little insight into his personal life, courtship of Miss Read, or marital life before and between his trips to London. Why not? Because the focus of his Autobiography is not on passion, but rather the exact opposite: the dangers of ungoverned emotion and undisciplined behavior. Franklin does, of course, tell us about some of his friends and the partnerships into which he entered—and all of them teach Franklin (and the reader) a lesson through a flaw or fault or, less often, a virtue. His employer, Samuel Keimer, in Philadelphia, for example, goes into debt and runs off to Barbados; his friend John Collins has problems with drinking and gambling; Franklin makes a business partnership with Hugh Meredith, but Meredith fails to keep up his end of the bargain; Governor Keith fails to provide the letters of credit he has promised Franklin; his friend James Ralph who travels to London with Franklin abandons his wife and child in Philadelphia, and so on. Against these negative examples, Franklin also introduces the reader to the merchant Mr. Denham who we learn had accumulated debt but, as soon as he could, paid off his creditors with interest. Franklin’s anecdotes always have a pedagogical motivation—when he mentions his interactions with other people, Reading Douglass with Franklin

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it is to provide examples of behavioral traits that will either assist or retard the attainment of material success. He is picking and choosing events from his past to include in the Autobiography that offer illustrations of the lessons he wishes the reader to appreciate. There is, of course, a lot more that could be addressed here about Franklin; suffice to say, Franklin ends up as our paradigmatic “self-made man” and exemplar of the notion of the American dream that would be codified in the later nineteenth century by the rags-toriches narratives of Horatio Alger. Franklin’s autobiography is, of course, a “factual” accounting of his experience, but one told from his perspective and with the increasing awareness that his success story will be seen as a model for others. With this in mind, he carefully constructs his account to emphasize particular lessons—among them, the importance of education, the virtue of self-reliance, the necessity of keeping one’s emotions in check, the utility of visible industry, and, as Franklin himself puts it, the “utmost importance” of “truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings between man and man . . . to the felicity of life” (52). Eschewing dramatic turning points, Franklin instead organizes his experience in the Autobiography as the gradual step-by-step accumulation of wisdom on the path to success. Crucially, although obviously a genius, Franklin takes pains to downplay his exceptional abilities. “The reader,” asserts Ormond Seavey, “is invited to think that Franklin was a representative figure of his times, gifted only with a greater capacity for hard word than most” (103). The text, explains Seavey, “leads its readers to believe that it is perfectly natural to be Benjamin Franklin; anyone else, at any later date, can do it too” (9). Franklin’s Autobiography, in the end, becomes one of the most successful “self-help” books in American history—call it The American Dream for Dummies. Form and content conspire to lead the reader to appreciate the lessons Franklin wishes to convey through his life experience. The Autobiography is an exercise in rhetorical strategy from start to finish.

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“No Compromise with Slavery!” Douglass’s Narrative Frederick Douglass’s The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, like Franklin’s Autobiography, is similarly a tour de force of rhetorical persuasion— and the place to start with Douglass’s Narrative is with the title. Why is the “written by himself” part important? Because, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. observes in The Signifying Monkey, debates about literacy and literature were central to the debate over slavery. Gates writes that “At least since 1600, Europeans had wondered aloud whether or not the African ‘species of men,’ as they most commonly put it, could ever create formal literature, could ever master the arts and sciences.” “If they could,” continues Gates, “then . . . the African variety of humanity and the European variety were fundamentally related. If not, then it seemed clear that the African was destined by nature to be a slave” (129). The “written by himself” part of Douglass’s title is, therefore, part of the argument against slavery— it is an assertion, right from the title page, that this man of African descent possesses the intellectual capacity to express himself clearly and eloquently in writing, which then calls into question racial hierarchies that construe Africans and their descendants as subhuman due to a lack of intellectual sophistication. The attitude that prevailed in the American South concerning slaves and literacy, it is worth noting, was curiously incoherent. On the one hand, the basic assumption was that slaves lacked the intellectual wherewithal to master literacy; indeed, “paternalistic” argument for slavery presented slaves as simple and childlike. At the same time, slaveholding states were never entirely persuaded by this argument and many adopted anti-literacy laws leading up to the Civil War. Since one doesn’t need to outlaw something that can’t happen, it seems clear that many Southern whites weren’t entirely convinced by paternalistic arguments and did indeed acknowledge the intellectual capacity and potential of persons of African descent—and a literate slave population was a threat for eminently practical reasons: literate slaves could engage in various forms of subterfuge (forging free papers, for example) and organizing across Reading Douglass with Franklin

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a distance (not to mention the “broadening” effect of reading about which Douglass is so eloquent in his Narrative). Despite this obvious awareness that slaves could learn to read and write, the standard attack on any published slave narrative was that it was—to use the contemporary parlance—“fake news.” Slave narratives would be dismissed as ghostwritten, assailed as untrue, and banned in the South. In Douglass’s case, he first presented his story to and then on behalf of William Lloyd Garrison’s American AntiSlavery Society—and was assaulted several times on subsequent speaking tours by those opposed to abolition. To counter charges that someone so eloquent could never have been a slave, he wrote and published his first autobiography (of the three he would ultimately write), which only added fuel to the fire of his pro-slavery detractors who argued that Garrison or some other white man had written it for him. No one would doubt that Benjamin Franklin wrote his own autobiography; for Douglass, however, his authorship was contested from the start, and thus the title is a first sally in the Narrative’s argument against slavery. Garrison, for his part, provides the standard testimonial from a white man in the preface to Douglass’s Narrative authenticating the text as Douglass’s creation, asserting that “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 someone else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production” (1757). Garrison does something else though in his preface crucial to the rhetorical success of Douglass’s account: he establishes Douglass’s experience as representative of life under slavery rather than atypical: “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” (1758). In the same way that Franklin must downplay his genius in his Autobiography for it to function as a self-help book (you can’t do what Franklin 8

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did if he was exceptional), Douglass in his Narrative must present his experience as the common lot for slaves rather than unusually harsh. If he is successful and the reader is repelled by the cruelties of bondage depicted, then what the reader is rejecting is the system of slavery itself rather than the specific players and details of Douglass’s account. Douglass as synecdoche for slavery as a whole is then precisely how Douglass’s account picks up with the very first sentences of the first chapter: “I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twenty miles from Eastin, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant” (1762). This opening is a rhetorical tour de force. It establishes that Douglass, like most slaves, has been deprived of information we consider fundamental to our identities—our age; and not only is Douglass like other slaves in this, but this withholding of information is presented as intentional on the part of slave owners, and it reduces slaves to the status of livestock (horses). That Douglass resented this—“I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege” extended to white children to know their age, he writes—showcases the unfairness of slavery with the pathos of a child’s perspective right from the start. Close textual analysis reveals that, through detailing his own experience as a slave, Douglass ends up offering a sophisticated refutation of the system of slavery as a whole making use of strategies targeting both head (logos) and heart (pathos). Into the “speaking to the head” category, we can put illustrations of the negative effects of slavery on not just slaves but also slaveholders, responses to arguments in defense of slavery, and misperceptions corrected. The most powerful example of the “power corrupts” theme is certainly the transformation of Sophia Auld. Here Douglass doesn’t mince words. Once he was brought to live with the Aulds in Baltimore, “The fatal poison of irresponsible power . . . soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence Reading Douglass with Franklin

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of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon” (1776). Readers are intended to appreciate the negative transformation precipitated by “irresponsible power” as Sophia’s heart hardens. The “demon” reference here also has religious overtones; Sophia Auld, in owning another person, has entered into a kind of satanic pact with slavery and suffered a fall from grace as a consequence. The appeal to the religious sensibilities of his readers is interwoven across Douglass’s Narrative as he attempts to convince his readers—as does Garrison in the preface—that slavery and “true” Christianity are mutually exclusive. It is important to note that in nineteenth-century debates over the morality of slavery, the Bible was adduced on both sides of the divide. Douglass’s position, clearly stated in his Appendix, is that “between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. . . . I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land” (1813–14)—and Douglass gives examples throughout his account of how ostensibly religious slave owners are invariably the cruelest, and their hearts are generally filled with anything but the love of Christ. Defenders of slavery, however, also turned to the Bible to support their position. They cited examples of slavery in the Bible— Abraham in the Old Testament had slaves; the book of Exodus outlines rules for treating slaves; in the New Testament, Paul returns a runaway slave, Philemon, to his master, and so on—and also referenced the story in Genesis of Canaan, a son of Ham cursed by Noah to perpetual servitude. As David T. Curp notes, “Christians and even some Muslims eventually identified Ham’s descendants as black Africans,” which became a justification for slavery. Douglass, as part of a strategy of undercutting arguments in support of slavery, has an answer ready for the Curse of Ham argument—intercourse between slave owners and female slaves has produced a significant number of mixed-race children and, “If the lineal descendants of 10

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Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural” (1763). Miscegenation, asserts Douglass, with a kind of gallows humor—facilitated by Southern law stipulating that the condition of the child follows that of the mother, and thus “mak[ing] a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable” (1763)—over time undercuts Biblical justification for African slavery on the grounds that a significant percentage of the slave population is just as much Anglo as African. Closely connected to the refutation of arguments supporting slavery are Douglass’s attempts to redress misperceptions—and here Douglass is very much bearing in mind his presumed audience of white readers in the North (primarily women). He notes, for example, that the singing of slaves in the fields is sometimes taken as evidence of their contentment. “It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake,” he clarifies. “Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy” (1768). As for slaves who, when interviewed, express their contentment with their masters and situations, slaveholders, responds Douglass, “have been known to send in spies among the slaves, to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition” (1770) and, if the slaves say something critical, they may be punished or sold. Douglass is particularly eager to call out the role of the holiday period between Christmas and New Years in the “gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery” (1794). While this time off from labor is viewed by some as an act of benevolence, the dissipation not just encouraged, but literally forced down the slaves throats, writes Douglass, is a form of psychological manipulation practiced by slave owners to convince the slaves that “there was little to choose between liberty and slavery” (1795). Across the Narrative, Douglass draws upon his experience and supplements this with anecdotes about other slaves and his general observations to assemble for the reader a set of arguments against slavery, most of which ultimately cluster around issues of morality and what we might call today “family values.” He argues, essentially, that slavery is an iniquitous system that cannot be reconciled with Christianity. It caters to the lusts of slave owners, debases those in Reading Douglass with Franklin

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positions of power, turns brother against brother, breaks up families, and unjustly deprives human beings of what should be inalienable rights. These are all logical arguments that readers can grasp and weigh. At the same time, however, Douglass’s Narrative also seeks to move the hearts of readers through representations of violence and cruelty intended to evoke outrage and disgust. Two exemplary moments that function in this way are the whipping of Douglass’s Aunt Hester at the end of the first chapter and the pitiful account of his grandmother in chapter eight. At the end of the first chapter, Douglass provides what is arguably the most vivid and heart-wrenching scene of violence in the entire Narrative as he recalls, as a child, seeing his Aunt Hester stripped to the waste and whipped while enduring a steady stream of invective. Her crime was in disobeying her master and being caught in the company of another man’s slave, Ned Roberts; Douglass implies that her owner, Colonel Lloyd, coveted her himself: “Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women of the neighborhood” (1764). The whole scene, complete with sickening details, is calculated to evoke a sense of outrage and repulsion—particularly from white Christian women who would see a man stripping a woman, beating her out of lustful jealousy, and using profanity, all in view of a child, as revolting. And while Douglass does not develop the theme nearly as fully as does Harriet Jacobs in her 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the scene with Aunt Hester similarly makes clear the ways in which the system of slavery converts what are generally perceived to be feminine virtues into liabilities as the more attractive a female slave is, the more of a target she becomes for predatory— and unrestrained—white male slave owners. The scene with Douglass’s grandmother is different in kind, but similarly highlights slavery as a system without compassion or decency, and does so with sentimental language many of Douglass’s female readers would have been familiar with from novels such as William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy (1791) or Hannah 12

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Webster Foster’s The Coquette (1797). Having outlived her usefulness, his grandmother is essentially “turn[ed] out to die” (1783). Douglass’s language is more ornate here than at any other point in the Narrative and this extraordinary passage is worth quoting at length: The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age combine together—at this time, this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that tenderness and affection which children only can exercise towards a declining parent—my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim embers. She stands—she sits—she staggers— she falls—she groans—she dies—and there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for these things? (1783)

This is a textbook example of pathos as rhetorical strategy. In language designed to evoke both sadness and outrage, Douglass depicts his grandmother as enfeebled and abandoned in her time of greatest need, and he ends by reestablishing the religious framework for his argument against slavery: this mistreatment of a long-serving and long-suffering slave is an outrage to both man and God. As is the case with Franklin’s Autobiography, Douglass’s Narrative is a factual reporting of Douglass’s experience, but one also engaged in a systematic program of persuasion, attempting to move the reader both intellectually and emotionally to reject slavery as a pernicious, immoral system. Douglass makes use of a variety of rhetorical strategies along the way as he shows the abuse to which slaves are put and the degrading effects slavery has on slave owners. Even more clearly than Franklin’s text, Douglass crafts his Reading Douglass with Franklin

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autobiography with a clear purpose: he is offering testimony against slavery and arguing for its abolition. Reading Douglass with Franklin In several significant respects, Franklin’s Autobiography and Douglass’s Narrative mirror each other. Both, for example, emphasize the acquisition of literacy as the key to social advancement; both paint pictures of their central figure as “selfmade men”—independent actors who get ahead through masculine assertiveness and downplay assistance from others; both omit details of their intimate lives (students are always surprised when we are first introduced to Anna, Douglass’s fiancé, after his successful escape); both men even worked as printers, producing their own newspapers. Since there is no evidence that Douglass actually read Franklin’s Autobiography, the overlapping emphases reflect shared cultural understandings, as well as a bit of coincidence. What is telling though is how context and background inflect each author’s elaboration of the same themes. Franklin certainly was in no way barred from learning how to read and write as a child. He devoted extra time to it, which paints a picture of him as industrious, hungry to learn, and forward-looking, and it paid off for him down the line as it helped him become eloquent and a sophisticated thinker. For Douglass, the acquisition of literacy was both forbidden and worldchanging. In forbidding Sophia Auld from teaching Douglass, Hugh Auld tells her clearly, “Learning would spoil the best n****** in the world” (1776), and that, of course, is the outcome. Douglass commits himself to learning to read, comprehending literacy as “the pathway from slavery to freedom” (1776). For Franklin, literacy is the key to worldly success; for Douglass, it is an important step toward liberation of both mind and body. Similarly, Franklin emphasizes his active role in creating his own destiny. As depicted in his Autobiography, rising from humble origins, he achieved a position of prominence in the world through being industrious, keeping a cool head, educating himself, not going to excesses, and so on. It is, however, easier to become a self-made man when the world at large already considers you as a man to 14

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begin with. In Douglass’s case, becoming a self-made man required making the case that he is, in fact, a man—and his birth scene is bloody: the fight with Mr. Covey, which he prefaces by telling us, “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” (1790). Douglass’s fight with Mr. Covey becomes a fight to be recognized as a man—something Douglass presents as incompatible with slavery. Both Franklin and Douglass present themselves as self-made men; however, Douglass’s journey to manhood had to overcome obstacles related to race with which Franklin never had to contend. Perhaps most telling is the withholding of the details of their personal lives. Franklin doesn’t consider intimate details relevant to his overall purpose of showing readers how to be Franklin—and Franklin generally downplays or omits circumstances in which assistance from others helped him achieve something he couldn’t do on his own. To be a self-made man, after all, requires that the man do the making. Douglass also arguably construes intimate details of his personal life as irrelevant and possibly counterproductive to his larger purpose: convincing his reader that slavery must be abolished. On the one hand, he wants his presentation of the horrors of slavery to be wholly consistent and thus excludes anything that might soften that impression. On the other, he has a vested interest in representing himself as an independent actor in the world—a man who can negotiate and overcome the hurdles placed in his path. So when he tells us in the final chapter that, having arrived in New Bedford, he wrote to his “intended wife” Anna of his successful escape and his desire that she join him (1810), he doesn’t mention that Anna Murray was a free woman of color in Baltimore who assisted Douglass’s escape by providing him with clothes for his disguise as a sailor and part of her savings, which Douglass used for a train ticket (Yee). While Douglass does acknowledge some assistance he receives—notably, once he arrives in the North—the picture that he presents of himself overall is of rugged masculine independence. This is all in keeping with the overarching rhetorical goal of the Narrative: to convince readers that persons of African descent are people with the same abilities, emotional lives, and Reading Douglass with Franklin

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intellectual capacity as Anglos. Black men are men, and Douglass wants us to see what he can do and to see in him the capacities and potentials of all persons of African descent unjustly deprived of their liberty by the immoral system of slavery. The goal of reading Douglass with Franklin is not to call into question the veracity of their accounts; rather, the point is to recognize that fact and persuasion are inevitably interwoven with each other. Indeed, the assertion of fact itself is a powerful rhetorical strategy (logos). Autobiographies are inevitably told from a particular perspective and have objectives to them, in the service of which authors deploy various rhetorical strategies. While this may, in fact, involve reading both Franklin and Douglass somewhat against the grain, it is also arguably in keeping with the general spirit of each. Works Cited Curp, David T. “A Necessary Bondage? When the Church Endorsed Slavery,” CatholiCity, 7 Feb. 2009, www.catholicity.com/ commentary/curp/05378.html. Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. 1845.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature, edited by Paul Lauter, et al., vol. 1, 3rd ed. Houghton Mifflin, 1998, pp. 1754–1818. Franklin, Benjamin. “The Autobiography of Ben Franklin 1791.” Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin, edited by Russel B. Nye. Houghton Mifflin, 1958. Gates, Jr. Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of AfricanAmerican Literary Criticism. Oxford UP, 1988. Seavey, Ormond. Becoming Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and the Life. The Pennsylvania State UP, 1988. Yee, Shirley. “Anna Murray Douglass (C. 1813–1882),” BlackPast.org, 11 Feb. 2007, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/douglassanna-murray-c-1813-1882/.

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Critical Insights

Frederick Douglass’s Rhetorical Autobiographies Kimberly Drake

A man is sometimes made great, by the greatness of the abuse a portion of mankind may think proper to heap upon him. (Douglass, My Bondage 381)

Given Frederick Douglass’s post-slavery meteoric rise to fame, his illustrious post-war career in government jobs, and his seemingly unshakeable position in the current canon of U.S. literature, I find it both startling and poignant to read Philip S. Foner’s introduction to the 1969 Dover edition of My Bondage and My Freedom, in which he laments that Douglass’s work has been assigned to “oblivion” by our “historiography” (v). Foner calls out several prominent contemporary U.S. history texts that do not mention Douglass or include his writing (vi). He also quotes Frederic May Holland, who observes in his 1891 biography, Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator, that My Bondage and My Freedom had become “rather a rare book, and its disappearance would be a great loss.” Foner concludes, “it is good, therefore, to see Douglass’s second autobiography back again in print, and at a reasonable price” (xii–xiii). Foner’s five-volume The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (1950–1955) and his Frederick Douglass: A Biography (1964) undoubtedly contributed to the renewed interest in Douglass, among historians, at least. The fact that Douglass’s autobiographies had become scarce at the end of his life suggests that in his time and for decades afterward, their value was primarily located in their illumination of the slavery era. This view generated the initial scholarship on Douglass and his work, the sort accorded to historically circumscribed “great men”: biographical and historical. The biographies began near the end of his life and in the decade after his death1; they were followed by a “fifty-year hiatus” in Douglass scholarship (Baxter 2–3) that ended with the publication of Benjamin Quarles’s scholarly biography in Rhetorical Autobiographies

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1948 and volume one of Foner’s five-volume series a few years later.2 Books on the slave narrative featured Douglass’s work, beginning with Marion Starling’s comprehensive study The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History (1945 dissertation, 1988 book). All of these works are historical and/or biographical examinations of Douglass as “an agent of revolutionary social change” (Baxter 4–5), and it wasn’t until the 1960s that scholars approached Douglass’s life and work from other disciplinary perspectives.3 Douglass’s work and accomplishments were not neglected during his life or deliberately erased from scholarship, as has happened to some public figures; he was considered a skilled orator, a successful activist, and a fairly powerful public figure who did significant work for the antislavery cause. He was a prominent figure during his lifetime and a revered figure for decades after his death. However, he was simply not considered an artist whose writing and rhetoric merited ongoing scholarly study. Douglass could not be seen as a literary figure until the twentieth century, as the canon of American literature was created only in the 1920s, and it was almost entirely dominated by white male authors until the 1960s. Renewed interest in Douglass around this time is contiguous with the social movements calling for social justice and inclusion not only in society at large but also in scholarly canons.4 Vernon Loggins was the first scholar to categorize Douglass’s work as African American literature and critically analyze it in a scholarly fashion (Baxter 6). His book The Negro Author: His Development in America to 1900 (1964), as Brian Yothers argues, “built Douglass into the center of the study of African American literature early in its development” (117). Notably, Loggins reframed the relationship between Douglass’s first two autobiographies, which historians had often viewed primarily in terms of accuracy about slavery, the Narrative being more accurate because it was written earlier. Loggins instead considers the Narrative Douglass’s “period of apprenticeship,” followed by “Douglass at his best” in terms of his literary skill in My Bondage (qtd. in Yothers 117–18). Loggins’s book pushed Douglass inside the discipline of literary studies. Douglass’s position there was further solidified when scholarship 18

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on the slave narrative in the 1970s reinterpreted slave narratives as a form of autobiography and thus as a literary genre.5 Critics such as Houston Baker, John Sekora, Darwin Turner, Charles Davis, and Henry Louis Gates devoted significant space to Douglass’s work in their scholarship, thus helping to increase his visibility to literary scholars, who began teaching the Narrative in their courses. Paul Giles concludes that by the millennium, “Frederick Douglass’s first two autobiographies—Narrative of the Life (1845) and My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)—[had] become canonical texts” (Giles 779 qtd. in Blumenthal 183). The existence of two Norton Critical editions (1996 and a 2016 revision) of Douglass’s Narrative would also appear to certify it as fixed in the literary canon (Yothers 116). Douglass thus managed not only to create a name for himself in the violent white supremacist culture into which he was born, but also to produce work that was eventually categorized as literary art. This success is due to the fact that from his early adulthood, he was a savvy manager of his own image and an expert rhetorician who used the reception of his work to advance his political cause. He wrote and then revised three times the story of his life in and after slavery, a story that he had already told and retold endlessly on the lecture circuit in the early and mid-1840s. He suited each version of his story to the context of the telling, adjusting the rhetorical and literary tactics used to convey his points. Each generated a particular kind of feedback that Douglass then built into his next autobiography or his next speech or newspaper article. And each version prompted at least a few of Douglass’s enemies to publicly challenge his account, giving him even more ammunition with which to attack slavery. To understand how Douglass accomplished so much, we must start with his speeches. By all accounts, Douglass was a courageous and brilliant orator, unbeatable in a verbal battle. Yet he only began speaking to white audiences because of what Lloyd Bitzer calls the “rhetorical situation” he found himself in a few years after escaping slavery. As Bitzer explains, rhetoric “comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself; it functions ultimately to produce action or change in the world” (3–4). The rhetorical situation is shaped by “exigence,” a problem of some “urgency,” and by “constraints,” Rhetorical Autobiographies

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or forces that influence the rhetor’s discourse and the audience’s reception of it, such as beliefs, rules, traditions, time limits, and evidence (6). This theory is useful in understanding Douglass’s success, for his situations of enslavement and of the vulnerability faced by an escaped slave quite clearly “called his discourse into existence” (2). The system of slavery and the white supremacy that supported it were exigencies driving Douglass’s activism; his constraints included the white supremacist beliefs and institutional practices that he had experienced continuously in the United States and that most members of his audience (and antislavery colleagues) believed in profoundly. Another set of constraints for Douglass (or rather, for his audience) was his country’s apparent acceptance of the concept of human rights and the idea of reasoned debate. In his autobiographies, Douglass mentions a particular book as having denaturalized slavery for him, a book called The Columbian Orator: Containing a Variety of Original and Selected Pieces; together with Rules, Calculated to Improve Youth and Others in the Ornamental and Useful Art of Eloquence, by Caleb Bingham. Douglass specifically mentions a chapter called a “Dialogue between a Master and a Slave” in which a slave convinces his master to set him free using a variety of rhetorical tools, primarily logic. The “Master” begins with anger at the “Slave” for his repeated escape attempts, but the Slave eventually convinces him that he is a fully human man, and that he can only be kept in slavery by the Master’s “constraint and severity.” He immediately grants the Slave his freedom, after which the Slave informs him that “superior force alone” will give the Master security from all of his slaves and others in the region (240–42). Logically, the Slave has trapped the Master using his own responses: the Master now must free all his own slaves or go back on his principles. This dialogue is a model of a rhetorical situation propelling a rhetor to engage in an argument and then to use the reception of his words and behaviors to change the mind of the audience, a kind of rhetorical feedback circuit. Douglass had a less critical audience when he became the first fugitive slave to speak at an abolitionist meeting (“Frederick 20

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Douglass”), but that audience still needed convincing of his humanity. As David Blight recounts in Frederick Douglas: Prophet of Freedom, Douglass was invited to speak at a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket on August 12, 1841. According to a witness, “after ‘much hesitation and embarrassment,’” Douglass “gave evidence of such intellectual power—wisdom as well as wit—that all present were astonished” (Blight 99). Another witness wrote, “Flinty hearts were pierced, and cold ones melted by his eloquence. Our best pleaders for the slave held their breath for fear of interrupting him” (99). Douglass’s speech was immediately followed by one from William Lloyd Garrison, noted abolitionist, who surpassed himself in eloquence because he was able to take Douglass “as his text”; Douglass recalls that “it was an effort of unequaled power, sweeping down, like a very tornado, every opposing barrier” and “converting his hearers into the express image of his own soul” (My Bondage 358). Douglass spent the next several months delivering lectures with Garrison in eastern and central Massachusetts that continued to astonish his audiences. As one “veteran abolitionist” observed in a letter to Garrison, “it has been my fortune to hear a great many anti-slavery lectures and many distinguished speakers on other subjects: but it has rarely been my lot to listen to one whose power over me was greater than Douglass, and not over me only, but over all who heard him. . . .” (McKivigan 54–5). This individual’s response to Douglass’s oratorical efforts was atypical only in using more moderate language than most audience members. In his discussion of the rhetorical situation, Bitzer uses the antislavery movement to illustrate a concept; oddly, he names not Douglass but “William Lloyd Garrison preaching abolition from town to town” (12). “Garrison,” Bitzer notes, “is actually looking for an audience and for constraints; even when he finds an audience, he does not know that it is a genuinely rhetorical audience, one able to be mediator of change” (12). Douglass is a better example of this particular rhetorical situation, not least because he saw every audience as genuinely rhetorical, whether it had the power to mediate change or not. Along with Garrison (and eventually, without him), Rhetorical Autobiographies

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Douglass moved “from town to town” looking for an audience, driven by an exigence that was exponentially more urgent than how it was experienced by Garrison, a free white man. Douglass could create rhetorical situations simply by showing up in a town or at a conference or on a train car. Audiences reacted strongly to him with fervent admiration or fervent hatred. Southern newspapers referred to him as “this black rascal,” among other threatening epithets, and mob violence and/or a very unwelcoming clergy often met him in the Northern towns he and Garrison visited (Blight 113, 107, 127). Douglass used this violence as part of his rhetorical strategy; even if the vanquished racists doubled down on their white supremacist hatred, they would look bad in the narrative he would subsequently relay in a speech or newspaper article. Douglass claimed to have been “more indebted to my enemies than to my own skill or to the assistance of my friends,” as the “very contempt and scorn, the systematic and extravagant disparagement of which I was the object, served, perhaps, to magnify my few merits, and to render me of some account. . .” (My Bondage 381). Douglass’s goal, like the goal of “Slave” in the Columbian Orator chapter, was to draw “Master” into an argument that he could not escape with logic and dignity intact. Garrison and Douglass worked to get his “body and mind” into the imaginations of as many people as possible, whether or not those people were “rhetorical audiences.” As Blight notes, for example, by the end of 1844, “almost any town that merited a name” in “New England, the Northeast, and parts of the Midwest, had seen the face or heard the voice of Frederick Douglass” (Blight 137). His vocal charisma and physical magnificence did their own rhetorical work on audiences. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who first saw Douglass speak in Boston in 1842, describes him standing in Faneuil Hall “like an African prince . . . conscious of his dignity and power, grand in physical proportions, majestic in his wrath,” and rendering his audience “completely magnetized with his eloquence, laughing and crying by turns” (Blight 114). Editor Nathaniel Rogers was breathless after seeing Douglass speak in 1844; when an audience member challenged Douglass on one of his statements, a typical 22

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occurrence, Rogers writes that “it was fearful but magnificent, to see how magnanimously and lion-like the royal fellow tore him to pieces. . . ..” (Blight 103). Douglass impressed his audiences as supremely regal, even at the early moments in his career when he was allowing Garrison, et al. to control his representation and comment on his story. After Douglass had parted ways with Garrison and started his own newspaper, he not only took control of his story but learned to profit from it by incorporating the audience’s responses into subsequent work. One of Douglass’s best-known speeches on July 5, 1852, by invitation from the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society demonstrates the full development of Douglass’s rhetorical savvy. He promoted this speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” in his paper, and he “clearly aimed the speech not only at his local audience but beyond the hall to the nation at large.” Using humility for rhetorical effect, he first apologizes for his lack of “elaborate preparation” and “learning,” but by the end he asks, “do you mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak today?” (Blight 231, 233). At the end of the speech, “six hundred white Northerners stood and roared with a ‘universal burst of applause’” (Blight 236). When the speech had been delivered, Douglass had the thirty-page document printed so that he could sell it through his newspaper “as well as out on the lecture circuit” (Blight 230). The speech was “a political sermon, steeped in the Jeremiah tradition”6 and widely agreed to be “nothing less that the rhetorical masterpiece of American abolitionism” (Blight 231, 230). This particular lecture was delivered when Douglass had been lecturing for over a decade; he had honed his skills and was now able to take more rhetorical risks and use more shocking imagery than he was in the early days on the circuit. However, as Eric Sundquist suggests, “in making himself an orator capable of combating slavery in the South and racism in the North,” Douglass faced a “considerable paradox: the less like a slave he acted or sounded, the less likely audiences were to believe his spoken story” (To Wake 98). It is well known that this paradox troubled Douglass from his earliest days as a lecturer. Friends of his told him “Better Rhetorical Autobiographies

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have a little of the plantation manner of speech than not; ‘tis not best that you seem too learned,’” and Douglass admits that this advice was “not altogether wrong” (My Bondage 362). Garrison et al. encouraged him to show his scars from being whipped as proof of his enslavement. Douglass used this action “rarely,” but the scars did occasionally serve “as a physical and rhetorical device to shock the complacent audience” (Blight 61). In short, “white southerners” and some northerners “called him a liar, claiming that he knew nothing about slavery because he had never been a slave” (Miller and Kocher 81). Because he felt that these attacks diminished the impact of his rhetoric and thus “injure[d] the anti-slavery cause,” he was “induced to set the matter at rest” by telling his story in written form and giving all of the identifying details he had withheld from audiences for years (81). Some of Douglass’s decisions in the book, such as using his real name and the names of his masters and their neighbors and staff; placing his signature and a “daguerreotype of himself on the book’s frontispiece” (Blassingame 2.1 xxx); and asking two well-known and credible white anti-slavery activists, Garrison and Wendell Phillips, to write prefaces for the book, were strategies designed to establish his identity as a literate slave and his integrity as a narrator. These strategies seem to have been mostly successful, since the book achieved “swift acclaim” (Blassingame 2.1 xxxii). An international best seller, the Narrative sold some 30,000 copies in five years, and by January 1848, it had gone through nine editions in England (Douglass Narrative vii). Its contemporary readership far outstripped that of other slave narratives and even Thoreau’s Walden nine years later (Blassingame 2.1 xxxii; Andrews 8). Of all African American autobiographies before the war, the Narrative was the most “widely reviewed,” and those reviews generally accepted the story it told as “true, interesting, and instructive” (Blassingame 2:1 xxxiii). Northern publications generally accepted it as true, and one pronounced it “the most thrilling work which the American press has ever issued, and the most important” (Loggins 140); the writing was singled out as “excellent” by an anonymous writer in the New York Tribune, who saw in Douglass’s style what he felt was the African 24

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rhythm and spontaneity responsible for the literary success of Alexandre Dumas and Frédéric Soulié. In 1931, Loggins explained such praise as worthy of Douglass’s artistry; he “possessed a unique ‘gracefulness’ in mingling ‘argument with incident’ and could ‘bring out his sermon without destroying his story’” (161). Another explanation for the book’s brisk sales was its multipronged marketing strategy. The publisher, the American Antislavery Society, pushed the book in Maryland, and early reactions “boosted sales” because readers “testified to its credibility,” even white readers (Blassingame 2:1 xl). One white resident of Baltimore wrote, “I . . . have reason to believe his statements are true. Col. Edward Lloyd’s relatives are my relatives! Let this suffice for the present” (xl). Douglass’s relentless self-promotion was another factor; he referred to the book constantly in his speeches, and his speeches had the effect of helping skeptical audiences find proof that he was trustworthy (xxxvii). In the second Irish edition, Douglass included an appendix containing “several ‘critical notices’ about the Narrative,” including one calling Douglass a “literary wonder,” an “intellectual phenomenon as only appears at times in the republic of letters” (qtd. in Blight 155). He also took the “bold and unprecedented step” of mailing a copy to his former master, Thomas Auld, and challenging “him to publicly refute it” (Blassingame 2.1 xxxi). Indeed, a neighbor of Colonel Lloyd’s, A. C. C. Thompson, wrote to the Delaware Republican claiming the Narrative was a “budget of falsehoods” and that the Fred Bailey he had known was incapable of writing such a narrative. Thompson played right into Douglass’s hands; Douglass thanked Thompson for confirming his identity in a letter to the Liberator and praising him for doing “a piece of anti-slavery work, which no anti-slavery man could do” (qtd. in Blight 161). Thompson responded (with letters by Auld and others), as did Douglass, and this public battle helped draw attention to the Narrative for years. Douglass spoke of it in his speeches and editorials, and Harriet Beecher Stowe even stepped up to defend the man who provided her with a model for her character George Harris (Blassingame 2.1 xlii, xlvi). Douglass “relished the role of villain to proslavery forces,” and he regularly published replies to Rhetorical Autobiographies

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his critics in the Liberator (Blight 161). The result of these relentless efforts was that Douglass almost “singlehandedly restored vigor to the slave narratives as key weapons in the antislavery crusade,” as Blassingame contends (2.1 xlviii). In the decade after the Narrative was published, Douglass received frequent requests to discuss his life in slavery in further detail. When Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1952 and A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1853, interest in slave narrative exploded, and Douglass was approached by publishers wanting him to “write a second account of his life” (Blassingame 2.2 xxv). Douglass was already writing about his life in his newspapers and discussing it in speeches; as Blight argues, he had “emerged by the mid-1850s as a versatile and accomplished writer, one deserving a place eventually in that era’s literary American renaissance,” and by “late 1854,” he began “to revise his original Narrative, to remake himself once again in print” (251). The result was My Bondage and My Freedom. The book sold extremely well when it appeared in August 1955, with a similar level of commercial success as the Narrative. In the first two days, the books sold five thousand copies. Second and third editions came out in 1856 and 1857, and the book was widely reviewed in the United States and Europe; by the time a “German edition appeared in 1860, some twenty thousand copies had been sold” (Blassingame 2.2 xxx–xxxi). The critical reception of the book was different from that of the Narrative; reviewers “viewed it more as a conventional account of the life of an unusual man than as an antislavery document,” so more non-abolitionists reviewed it, finding it more “enthralling” than “any fictional account of slavery” but better because it was true (xxxi–xxxii). These reviewers praised Douglass’s “literary powers” and style, which were apparently so effective that Southern readers found the book dangerous, calling it “an incendiary document not to be circulated in slaveholding areas,” and they reacted strongly and occasionally with violence if anyone owned the book or tried to sell one (Blassingame 2.2 xxxix). Aaron Anthony’s great-granddaughter annotated the book, and while she refuted some of it as exaggerated or untrue, she mostly confirmed Douglass’s account (Blassingame 26

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2.2 xl). And the Garrisonians did not relish Douglass’s portrayal of his split with them; Garrison’s review claimed that that section of the book was “reeking with the virus of personal malignity . . . and full of ingratitude and baseness” towards himself (Blassingame 2.2 xli). This was one fight that Douglass didn’t take up publicly, yet the marketing suffered from Garrison’s attack. Antislavery journals often “refused to review” the book or to “reprint notices from general interest journals as they had with the Narrative. Consequently, scholars were denied ready access to reviews” (xli). This may explain why they did not establish a body of work on My Bondage that examined the “complex structure, metaphors, and richness of details” visible to nineteenth-century book reviewers (xlii). In any case, scholars who took up the book in the mid-twentieth century believe, as does Foner, that its “portrait of slavery” from the “slave’s point of view” is “without equal in literature” (ix). David Blight considers My Bondage “arguably the greatest of all slave narratives” and his personal “declaration of independence,” the “masterpiece of his writing life” (Blight 251, 253). This sentiment is shared by most readers of the genre.7 Douglass’s final autobiography, published in 1881 and revised and expanded in 1892 as The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, did not enjoy the success of the two previous versions. It “garnered considerable publicity and fanfare,” as Douglass was still rather a celebrity, but “its sales were disappointing” (Blight 619). Critics did not find the new sections to be compelling, and the self-satisfaction of a man with some amount of power creates a style at odds with the much-praised “plain style” of the Narrative. The account of the postbellum years lacks the urgency of antislavery rhetoric, reading more like a traditional autobiography. This account of Douglass’s life is not noted for its literary artistry. Douglass’s representation of his political choices after the war have perplexed readers, in part because they do not form a coherent political picture the way his antebellum choices did (Yothers 116). Shortly after Douglass’s death, political opponents Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois each claimed Douglass as their political forefather. Washington suggested that like himself, Rhetorical Autobiographies

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Douglass promoted accommodation to white supremacy in the post-war period as a stage in a slow process of African American economic development. Du Bois felt that this was a terrible misrepresentation of Douglass’s beliefs and argued that Douglass only supported “assimilation through self-assertion” (qtd. in Sundquist “Introduction” 2; emphasis in original). Over the next six decades, various African American cultural elites and activists would claim Douglass as a forefather or reject him as not revolutionary enough. More recent scholarly work is similarly divided, emphasizing “the ambiguities and complexities of Douglass’s work, including those that undermine his status as an unequivocally heroic figure” (Yothers 115).8 While not endorsing Douglass as unequivocally heroic, I suggest that he continues to influence literary and historical scholarship in large part because of his extraordinary rhetorical and literary skills. Notes 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 28

Holland’s biography was first, followed by James Gregory’s Frederick Douglass: The Orator (1893), Helen Pitts Douglass’s In Memoriam: Frederick Douglass (1897), Charles Chesnutt’s Frederick Douglass (1897), and Booker T. Washington’s Frederick Douglass (1906). The most comprehensive work on Douglass is John Blassingame et al.’s three-part series, The Frederick Douglass Papers (1979–2018). Each series contains multiple volumes; Series One contains five volumes, for example. Of Series Three’s projected four volumes, only volumes one and two have been published, containing correspondence up to the end of the Civil War. Examples of this kind of historical work are Dickson J. Preston’s Young Frederick Douglass: The Early Years (1980); Waldo E. Martin’s The Mind of Frederick Douglass (1984); David W. Blight’s Frederick Douglass’s Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1989); JinPing Wu’s Frederick Douglass and the Black Liberation Movement (2000). More information can be found in Paul Lauter’s Canons and Contexts (1991). Authors of this work include Jean Yellin, Stephen Butterfield, William L. Andrews, and Robert Stepto. However, Stepto and others took issue Critical Insights

6.

7.

8.

with the idea that a slave narrative was an autobiography (Blumenthal 186), because unlike the slave narrative, the autobiography is free from “white abolitionist” mediation (John Sekora qtd. in Blumenthal 186–67). A Jeremiad is typically a sermon or speech chastising the congregation or audience for falling so far from its moral ideals. Puritan scholar Sacvan Bercovitch defined the American Jeremiad as adding hope for society’s recovery to the European version. Debate among critics about which autobiography is best gives an edge to My Bondage. According to Blassingame, the Narrative’s “plainness of style suggested an absence of guilt and thus advanced its credibility for the critics” at the time (xxxviii). Indeed, the Narrative is still the “classic text” of the “slave narrative genre”: it is “taught most frequently in undergraduate classrooms” and “garners the most critical attention in scholarly books and journals” (Blumenthal 180). However, the Narrative’s “main virtue now, as in Douglass’s own day, is pedagogical,” Eric Sundquist argues; it is not his “masterpiece” (To Wake 100). And William S. McFeely famously observed that readers of My Bondage “will find a Frederick Douglass of a far more critical and analytical mind than the one in the Narrative” (McFeely qtd. in McKivigan 20). For example, critics today focus on Douglass’s treatment of women in his work and on the way that the Narrative’s critical reception created an archetype of the ex-slave narrator as a “heroic” man who “discovers the links among freedom, literacy, and struggle,” thus making it harder for women narrators to be seen as representative (Braxton 18–19).

Works Cited Andrews, William L. Introduction. The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, edited by William L. Andrews. Oxford UP, 1996, pp. 3–19. Baker, Houston. Long Black Song: Essays in Black American Literature and Culture. U of Virginia P, 1972. Baxter, Geneva Hampton. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Its Context, Rhetoric, and Reception. Unpublished PhD Dissertation in the College of Arts and Sciences. Georgia State University, 2001. UMI number 3036382. Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. U of Wisconsin P, 1978. Rhetorical Autobiographies

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Bingham, Caleb. Columbian Orator, 18th ed. New York: E. Duyckinck, 1816. HathiTrust Digital Library, hdl.handle.net/2027/ hvd.32044097056675. Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 1, no. 1, 1968, pp. 1–14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40236733. Blassingame, John W., John R. McKivigan, and Peter P. Hinks, editors. The Frederick Douglass Papers Series Two: Autobiographical Writings. vol. 1: Narrative. Yale UP, 1999. __________. The Frederick Douglass Papers Series Two: Autobiographical Writings. vol. 2: My Bondage and My Freedom. Yale UP, 2003. Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon and Schuster, 2018. Blumenthal, Rachel A. “Canonicity, Genre, and the Politics of Editing: How We Read Frederick Douglass.” Callaloo, vol. 36, no .1, 2013, pp. 178–90. Braxton, Joanne M. Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition. Temple UP, 1989. Davis, Charles, and Henry Louis Gates, editors. Black Is the Color of the Cosmos: Essays on Afro-American Literature and Culture, 1942– 1981. Garland Publishers, 1982. __________. The Slave’s Narrative. Oxford UP, 1985. Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. 1881, revised 1892. Collier Books, 1962. __________. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written By Himself. 1845. Bedford St. Martins, 2003. __________. My Bondage and My Freedom. 1855, edited by Philip Foner. Dover, 1969. Foner, Philip S. Introduction. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. 1855. Dover, 1969. “Frederick Douglass.” Digital History. University of Houston. www. digitalhistory.uh.edu/. Lauter, Paul. Canons and Contexts. Oxford UP, 1991. Loggins, Vernon. The Negro Author, his development in America. Columbia UP, 1931. Archive.org. archive.org/details/negroauthorhisde00logg. McKivigan, John R., ed. Frederick Douglass. Thomson and Gale, 2004. 30

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Miller, Keith D., and Ruth Ellen Kocher. “Shattering Kidnappers’ Heavenly Union: Interargumentation in Douglass’s Oratory and Narrative.” Approaches to Teaching The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, edited by James C. Hall. MLA P, 2000, pp. 81–87. Sekora, John. The Art of the Slave Narrative: Original Essays in Criticism and Theory. Western Illinois UP, 1982. Sundquist, Eric J., editor. Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays. Cambridge UP, 1990. Sundquist, Eric J. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. The Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1993. Yothers, Brian. Reading Abolition: The Critical Reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass. Boydell and Brewer, C. Hurst & Company, 2016.

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Frederick Douglass and the (Im)Possibility of Being: An Afro-Pessimist Reading Jade M. Becker

When the slaveholder Captain Anthony dies, Frederick Douglass’s beloved grandmother becomes the property of Master Andrew, whom Douglass describes as “a most cruel wretch” (Narrative 56). Because of his grandmother’s old age, Douglass hopes that she will be treated kindly by her new enslavers. However, when Andrew dies shortly after the exchange, his grandmother is placed “in the hands of strangers” who exile her to a hut in the woods, “virtually turning her out to die” (Narrative 58). In a nightmarish vision he imagines her last days: The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. . . . She stands—she sits—she staggers—she falls—she groans—she dies—and there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place beneath the sod her fallen remains. (Narrative 59)

It is this fact which, within the world of horrors he is forced to inhabit, horrifies Douglass most acutely. As a portrait of slavery, it is worth our attention because of the way it frames the fundamental violence of slavery. His grandmother’s approaching physical death becomes the vessel through which we might understand the experience of the socially dead: those who are denied the status of the human. The grave may be at the door, but, in another sense, his grandmother died long before this moment. Contrary to the way slavery is typically defined, in which one’s labor-power is commodified against one’s 32

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will, Douglass’s description here directs us to consider the way that slavery instead robs the enslaved of her very sense of being. By redefining the violence of slavery as metaphysical, Douglass’s Narrative also necessitates a shift in thinking about the nature and possibility of emancipation, a project which is undertaken today by those who belong to the growing school of thought known as Afropessimism, which emerged from the intellectual labor of Hortense Spillers, Frantz Fanon, and Orlando Patterson. For these critics, the fact of the slave’s forced labor is incidental to a more fundamental set of beliefs and practices held by members of slaveholding societies that refuse the humanity of the slave. The status of the slave, in other words, is not characterized by the work she is compelled to do for her master, but rather by the social relation between the slave and the slaveholding class. As exemplified by Douglass’s portrait of his grandmother’s exile, this relation is one of social death, whereby the slave is refused entry into the realm of the human (Patterson 38). According to Patterson’s groundbreaking study Slavery and Social Death, the social death of the enslaved person is defined by a few key characteristics: natal alienation, whereby the slave’s family ties are dissolved or not recognized; vulnerability to gratuitous violence; and, finally, as Frank Wilderson reiterates in his own work, a sense of “general dishonor” that precedes any action that could be deemed dishonorable (18). These mechanisms comprise what Wilderson terms “antiblackness,” the singular form of racism experienced by Black people in the United States. Rather than serve to simply sustain the power of the slaveholder over the slave, for the Afro-pessimist the enforcement of social death is vital to establishing the Western definition of the human. If the slave—whose existence is defined by alienation, vulnerability to violence, and dishonor—is considered nonhuman, then the human must be defined as its opposite: a being who is in ownership of himself, who retains his familial bonds, and who is honorable and trustworthy. As slaveholders worked to enforce the nonhumanity of the slave, then, they were also working to cultivate their own humanity by defining it against the Black. Following from this understanding of slavery as social death, proponents of Afro-pessimism maintain that the emancipation of An Afro-Pessimist Reading

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U.S. slaves, which legislated the end of forced labor but not of the metaphysical violence that made that labor possible, was entirely inadequate in dismantling the antiblack racism that comprised the framework for life in the United States. As a result, after 1863 slavery merely evolved—and continues to evolve—through widespread legal and extra-legal violence against Black people. Saidiya Hartman calls this the “afterlife” of slavery: “skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment” (Lose 6). As such, the rather suspicious-looking “pessimism” of Afro-pessimism does not refer to an unwillingness to continue to advocate for the dignity and value of Black life, but instead to the recognition that antiblack racism is at the foundation of U.S. democracy, and that legislative reform will never be able to address this fact. Afro-pessimism thus becomes a kind of revolutionary politics, aimed at challenging the ideological construct of freedom, the human, and the polity in order to think something entirely new. Given the foundational place Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical work occupies in the development of African American philosophy and literature, and Douglass’s fraught attempts to advocate for Black Americans following Emancipation, this essay traces the resonances and tensions between Douglass’s depictions of slavery and the philosophy of Afro-pessimism. In addition to demonstrating Douglass’s awareness of the hegemonic and metaphysical nature of antiblackness as he describes it in his autobiographical work and speeches, this essay also examines Douglass’s well-recorded liberalist assumptions through the lens of Afro-pessimist thought in order to clarify Douglass’s relevance for current discussions about racial ideology and liberation. Rather than chastise Douglass for holding political views in accordance with the historical moment in which he lived—a critical attitude that Nicholas Buccola rightly suggests would benefit from “a heavy dose of humility”—I suggest here that attending to the occasionally tumultuous legacy of Douglass’s thought will allow us to better understand the complexity and genius of his work, even as some of it draws criticism today (13). 34

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Surviving Social Death Douglass’s own experience of slavery is marked clearly and repeatedly by the same forms of metaphysical violence he records in his grandmother’s exile. In an early chapter in My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass describes accompanying his grandmother to meet his siblings, and as his grandmother identifies them from a group of playing slave-children, Douglass remarks, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters we were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. (My Bondage 49)

After these reflections, young Douglass turns to find that his grandmother has disappeared. This scene of familial alienation and disorientation—and others like it—repeats in various forms across each of Douglass’s autobiographies, testifying to the depth of its trauma and the importance it holds in creating the status of the slave. He traces the enforcement of natal alienation through a variety of aspects of his young life. He longs for “the domestic hearth, with its holy lessons and precious endearments,” which is deprived of him (My Bondage 50). He is grieved by the fact that while the white children knew their ages, he and the other slaves were allowed no knowledge of their birthdays (Narrative 17). He mourns the lack of affection he holds for his mother as a result of her separation from him at birth (Narrative 19). These tactics of the slaveholder serve as Douglass’s “first introduction to the realities of slavery,” and Douglass is intent on explaining that his own natal alienation as a result of enslavement is integral to the continued stability of the institution as a whole (My Bondage 50). The abolition of the family structure is vital for perpetuating the social death of the enslaved. He writes,

An Afro-Pessimist Reading

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Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families, and its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation. When they do exist, they are not the outgrowths of slavery, but are antagonistic to that system. The order of civilization is reversed here. (My Bondage 51)

For Douglass, the social arrangement of the family is antagonistic toward the institution of slavery precisely because it is a social arrangement suggestive of the human. One cannot maintain the relation of the master to the slave if the slave is allowed the human feature of family—it would threaten the very stability of the system. As such, in order to ensure that the slave retains its status as “a piece of property,” it must be stripped of any semblance of familial relation (“American Slavery” 273). These strategies work to coerce the slave into the world of property, while cultivating a definition of the human as familially connected. The refusal of the slave’s humanity through the absolute dissolution of the family is bolstered by a similarly absolute vulnerability to gratuitous violence. In Douglass’s writing, this component of the slave’s social death is recorded most vividly in his recollections of the beating of his aunt Hester (or, as she is called in My Bondage and My Freedom, Esther) by Captain Anthony. In this infamous scene, young Frederick Douglass is awakened at dawn to hear the “heart-rending shrieks” of his aunt, whom Anthony had tied and whipped until “she was literally covered with blood” (Narrative 21). The impetus behind the violence is never disclosed, but it appears to satisfy some perverse desire for the slaveholder, who “would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush” (21). We are told repeatedly, for instance, that slaveholders seemed to “take great pleasure in whipping a slave” (Narrative 20). This violence can only be understood as a gross display of sovereignty. Indeed, Frank Wilderson asserts that this form of violence against the black body is unique in that it “sustains a kind of psychic stability for all others who are not slaves” (19). Such a claim seems to hold true in Douglass’s accounts of slave violence. The most 36

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intriguing example of this kind of instrumentalized violence emerges in Douglass’s descriptions of Thomas Auld, an insecure slaveholder who uses violence in order to establish himself as an authoritative, and thus more socially acceptable, man (Narrative 63). Douglass’s portrait of Auld suggests that Auld’s psychological stability— his ability to properly maintain his status as a human among his nonhuman slaves—depends upon exploiting the vulnerability of Black bodies. For Douglass, Auld’s particular cruelty is a result of his having become a slaveholder by marriage, leaving him to become an imitator of the “airs, words, and actions” of the born slaveholder (63). Because Auld had no “resources within himself” to perform his socially-determined identity, “he was compelled to be the copyist of many” (63). And by replicating the acts of his fellow slaveholders, Auld hopes to secure the title—and ontological status—of “master.” His cruelty toward his slaves, then, is a result of this insecurity, and demonstrates the extent to which the stability of the humanity to which Auld aspires is antiblack. In this way, the gratuitous violence to which the slave is subjected serves an important metaphysical function for the slaveholder. The law plays a significant role in the absolute vulnerability of the slave, further establishing his status as socially dead. After describing the murder of a slave by her master’s wife, Douglass remarks that while the behavior may generally be considered abhorrent, none would “attempt to interfere with Mrs. Hamilton’s right to cut and slash her slaves to pieces” (My Bondage 120). “There must be no force between the slave and the slaveholder,” Douglass continues, “to restrain the power of the one, and protect the weakness of the other” (My Bondage 120). It is this logic that sanctions a variety of slave-killings and -beatings, and which solidifies the “metaphysical holocaust” enacted by slavery, to use Calvin L. Warren’s term (13). The law also provides the justification for the generalized sense of dishonor that comprises the final element of the slave’s social death. Douglass writes chillingly that he commonly heard the saying that “it was ‘worth but half a cent to kill a n******, and half a cent to bury him” (My Bondage 105). In the eyes of the law and An Afro-Pessimist Reading

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of the slaveholder, it is apparent, the slave is not only not human, but presumed guilty. As Douglass reports, slaveholders frequently fabricated reasons to whip their slaves. “To be accused was to be convicted,” he asserts; “to be convicted was to be punished” (Narrative 35). Finding Douglass to be “unsuitable to his purpose,” Thomas Auld sends him to work for Mr. Covey, a particularly brutal slaveholder with a reputation as a breaker of disobedient slaves (65). After a series of senseless beatings by Mr. Covey, Douglass returns to his master to report the cruelty of the slave-breaker, only to be confronted by his master’s insistence that “[Douglass] deserved it” (Narrative 75). In the same way that the slave’s natal alienation and vulnerability to violence constitute a violence against the being of the slave, so, too, does the presumption of dishonor. It is to deny that right of the democratic individual to a fair trial before the law. It is also to shore up a definition of the human as white and slaveholding by defining it against the existence of the slave. At the moment of Douglass’s triumph over Covey, whom he casts as “a type of all slaveholders,” the dependence of the slaveholder’s being on the nonbeing of the slave is brought into sharp relief (Goldman 281). When Douglass resolves to fight Covey, and thus unsettle not only Douglass’s place as the slave but also Covey’s place as the slaveholder, Covey quickly surrenders, and, to Douglass’s surprise, refrains from punishing him for fear of losing his reputation “for being a first-rate overseer” (My Bondage 185). This moment confirms Wilderson’s claim that the ontological stability of the human depends on the destruction of being for the Black person, as Covey’s seemingly stable position as the human is thrown into question at the moment that Douglass refuses to remain vulnerable. Hegemonic Antiblackness For the Afro-pessimist, antiblackness is fundamental to the character of the United States, enforced not only at the levels of the individual, but, more importantly, at the structural and symbolic level. Douglass’s work is sharply aware of this fact, as the precision with which he describes the metaphysical violence of slavery is matched by his indictment of the religious and judicial systems that support (and are 38

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supported by) black enslavement. For Douglass, these institutions serve as the regulators of a certain order of being, an argument that Calvin L. Warren would later advance in his book Ontological Terror with the claim that the function of law is “to protect and enforce the unfolding of Being” (Warren 66). Douglass diagnoses what he calls “American religion” to be especially entangled in the ideology of slavery, and suggests that the manifestation of Christianity he witnessed in the South is not a panacea to the evils of enslavement, but rather the very foundation of its prosperity. Religious language provided the basis for the social death of the slave, as Douglass recalls being taught that “‘God, up in the sky,’ made every body; and that he made white people to be masters and mistresses, and black people to be slaves” (My Bondage 78). Or, likewise, that black people are the descendants of Ham, whom God cursed in the Old Testament, and so deserve their enslavement. Given this hierarchy of being established by the American religious institution, it is no surprise, then, that the most devout white people in Douglass’s autobiographies are shown to be the most reprehensible in their treatment of Black people. The antiblack foundation of American religion is demonstrated most clearly through the conversion of one of Douglass’s masters, Thomas Auld. Despite Douglass’s hopes that Auld’s conversion would compel him to repent of his cruelty, his master’s religious devotion instead provides greater sanction for the abuse of Black bodies (Narrative 63). Douglass recalls a particularly horrifying moment in which Auld bound and whipped a young woman while quoting “this passage of Scripture—‘He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes’” (Narrative 64). Similarly, the reputably cruel slave-breaker Covey is praised by others for his religiosity, and Douglass notes that he “saw, in his very religious devotions, this controlling element of his character” (Narrative 66). As a system of governing what it means to be human, then, American religion exposes the normative status of antiblackness. Indeed, for Douglass, it was evident that American religion not only supported but was upheld by the institution of slavery: An Afro-Pessimist Reading

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The church-going bell and the auctioneer’s bell chime in with each other; the pulpit and the auctioneer’s block stand in the same neighborhood; while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit, the pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support missionaries, and babies sold to buy Bibles and communion services for the churches. (“American Slavery” 283)

It must be acknowledged that Douglass does, in the appendix to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, differentiate between the slaveholding religion of the Southern United States and the “pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ” (113). However, this distinction merely highlights the crucial role antiblackness plays in the stability of everyday life in the United States, as the metaphysical system is manipulated to perpetuate the deprivation of Black life. Reform, Revolution, and the Liberal Individual What offended Douglass so deeply about this system of metaphysical violence was the way it forced one under the ownership of another— what he describes as being “born for another’s benefit” (My Bondage 48). In response to this state of utter dispossession, Douglass adopted a philosophy of self-ownership, believing that the assertion of one’s self-possession would allow the Black person to graduate from the realm of things—of property—into the realm of the human. The command of one’s own body and spirit is, for Douglass, the basis of emancipation. This idea of the self aligns Douglass most clearly with classical liberalism, a philosophy that champions the rights and responsibility of the individual. As John Pittman writes, Douglass saw the rights of the human being as transcendent and selfevident—existing before and beyond the political system in which they are enacted (65). However, recognizing liberalism’s consistent failure to fulfill its promise of equal humanity to all humans— made particularly clear through the example of the American slave system—Douglass became a proponent for a more inclusive kind of liberalism that would afford the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to people of all races, genders, and classes. This basis for his activism became all the more apparent after his ideological split 40

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with William Lloyd Garrison, at which point he began advocating for a reading of the U.S. Constitution divorced from the political context of its production (that is, a slave economy) in order to better support the argument that U.S. democracy had the potential to support the equal rights of all people (Crane 115). In a speech about the Constitution and the possibility for racial equality, Douglass claimed, “My position now is one of reform, not of revolution. I would act for the abolition of slavery through the Government—not over its ruins” (389). And it is here, at the understanding of self and state, that Douglass’s thought diverges sharply from that expressed by Afro-pessimist philosophers. Douglass’s insistence that correcting the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution would itself lead to a shift in the metaphysical hierarchy put in place by the slave system reflects his presumptions about the fundamental character of the United States—that is, that the nation truly strives to become a beacon of liberty and justice for all people. Afro-pessimism sharply contests this. According to Wilderson, the persistence of antiblackness in the United States is not, as Douglass saw it, a sign of the system malfunctioning but rather a sign that it is working as intended. Douglass’s own autobiographical work testifies to this: that, at the very least, the economic and political stability of the United States depends upon the commodification of Black bodies. Given this essay’s already-established concern for how the idea of the human can be manipulated to enforce oppressive ideologies, the pitfalls of Douglass’s appeal to a universal and pre-political humanity should also be evident. As Arthur Riss writes in Race, Slavery, and Liberalism, “the conceptual category of the ‘person’ has been invoked to legitimate acts of heinous violence as well as to justify crucial emancipatory movements, to authorize segregation as well [as] to compel integration, to sanction as well as to proscribe hierarchies” (164). And while Riss makes the compelling point that Douglass depicts his own humanity as a result of his resistance to the slave-breaker’s whip rather than a pre-existent quality that he was forced to defend, this does not resolve the problem that Douglass’s definition of humanity—grounded as it is in abstract liberalism—is An Afro-Pessimist Reading

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identical to that definition enforced by the slaveholder in nearly all ways except race. As Saidiya Hartman argues in Scenes of Subjection, a cornerstone work of Afro-pessimist thought, the ideal of the selfpossessed individual that Douglass champions is inextricably tied to the very same logic of property that made the metaphysical violence of the slave system possible (115). Therefore, to advocate for the inclusion of more people into this problematic system of metaphysics, where personhood is tied to property ownership—whether that property is one’s own intentions, thoughts, and behavior, or (as was the case in the United States) actual human beings—is not to solve the fundamental problem. It is, rather, as Alexander Weheliye writes, to zero in “on only one form of subjugation at the expense of others, thus allowing for the continued existence of hierarchical differences between full humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans” (81). In other words, despite appearing to extend new liberties to a larger population, liberalism does nothing to address the social death made possible by proprietorial notions of the human. According to Hartman, liberalism is also particularly illequipped for addressing a systemic problem like the metaphysical violence of slavery because it enforces a reductive and simplistic view of social relations, which leads to “the inability to address collective interests and needs, and the sanctioning of subordination and the free reign of prejudice in the construction of the social or the private” (Scenes of Subjection 122). This limitation is born out in Douglass’s civil rights activism after Emancipation, as his understanding of the individual as largely self-possessed and of U.S. democracy as generally bent toward justice made it difficult for him to properly respond to the rates of incarceration among Black Americans after Reconstruction (Davis 352). This is not to say that Douglass was wholly unable or unwilling to understand the centrality of antiblack racism in the functioning of U.S. democracy, however. In one of his best-known speeches, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” Douglass suggests that the very freedom celebrated on the Fourth of July is not merely an insult to those who are deprived it, but is dependent on that deprivation. He remarks that the American slave trade is “sustained by American 42

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politics and American religion” and that in many states it remains “a chief source of wealth” (“The Meaning” 197). He also, remarkably, demonstrates a certain pessimism about the effectiveness of arguing for the humanity of the slave, noting that such an argument has already been made, and has made little difference. Slavery—and all that accompanies it, Douglass claims—“brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie” (“The Meaning” 203). And while throughout his speech Douglass retains his hope for the “downfall of slavery,” his words here carry a different tone—one that recognizes the extent to which American life is contiguous with the social death of Black people (“The Meaning” 204). In “A Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Frederick Douglass and the Architectonic of African American Radicalism,” Omedi Ochieng presents a similar view of Douglass’s later activism, remarking that Douglass ultimately came to understand that the very ideals of U.S. democracy, “even as they enabled the flowering of freedom among Whites, were often instruments wielded against Blacks” (176). Tracing these resonances and divergences between Frederick Douglass and Afro-pessimism is not motivated by a desire to criticize the work of a brilliant civil rights leader. Rather, it is to demonstrate just how powerfully Douglass was able to capture the experience and violation of slavery at its most fundamental level, and to consider how his political views might offer some insight into properly addressing the legacies of slavery as they manifest moment-to-moment in the lives of Black Americans today. It is also to demonstrate the complexity of the man’s thought, and the tension he felt as he attempted to usher in an era of freedom for formerly-enslaved people. As Afro-Pessimism continues to shape contemporary discourse about Blackness and humanity, Douglass’s work remains a profound source of insight. Works Cited Buccola, Nicholas. The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass. New York UP, 2012. An Afro-Pessimist Reading

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Crane, Gregg D. Race, Citizenship, and Law in American Literature. Cambridge, 2002. Davis, Angela Y. “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Lease System.” Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, edited by Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland. Blackwell, 1999, pp. 339–62. Douglass, Frederick. “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland: An Address Delivered in London, England on 22 May 1846.” The Frederick Douglass Papers: vol 1, edited by John R. McKivigan. Yale UP, 1979, pp. 269–99. __________. “The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?” Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, edited by Philip S. Foner. Lawrence Hill, 2000, pp. 1999, pp. 379–90. __________. “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, edited by Philip S. Foner. Lawrence Hill, 2000, pp. 1999, 188–206. __________. My Bondage and My Freedom. 1855. Barnes & Noble, 2005. __________. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845. Random House, 2004. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Grove, 2008. Goldman, Eric A. “Spilling Ink and Spilling Blood: Abolitionism, Violence, and Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, 2002, pp. 276–95. Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford UP, 1999. __________. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Ochieng, Omedi. “A Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Frederick Douglass and the Architectonic of African American Radicalism.” Western Journal of Communication, vol. 75, no. 2, 2011, pp. 168֪–84. Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death. Harvard, 1982. Pittman, John P. “Douglass’s Assimilationism and Antislavery.” Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, edited by Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland. Blackwell, 1999, pp. 64–81. Riss, Arthur. Race, Slavery, and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Cambridge UP, 2009. 44

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Spillers, Hortense J. Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture. U of Chicago P, 2003. Warren, Calvin L. Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism and Emancipation. Duke UP, 2018. Weheliye, Alexander. Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Duke UP, 2014. Wilderson III, Frank. “Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation.” In AfroPessimism Reader. Racked and Dispatched, 2017, pp. 15-30.

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Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution: A Gendered Reading of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Tammie Jenkins

The slave narrative tradition began with publications by former slaves sharing their lived experience with the world to shed light on the brutal nature and dehumanizing factors embedded in the peculiar institution of slavery (Davis 84). These autobiographical texts were written and published in the years preceding and briefly overlapping the American Civil War (1861–1865). The authors of these texts provide readers with insight into United States history as well as its literary offerings during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their desire and white American society’s interest led to a literary tradition and style of writing that allowed Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs to employ tropes and empathetic narrations to convey gendered narratives of their lived experiences (Bell xiv). At a time when black people were legally considered “sub-human,” some overcame their adversity by learning to read and write (Cutter 211). Commonly, slave owners enforced illiteracy among slaves, as a mean to maintain their dominance over their perceived property. Consequently, few slaves acquired the ability to read and to write. However, fugitive and manumitted slaves began sharing their stories on the lecture circuit (in the United States and abroad) or in newspapers where they garnered support from abolitionists, who desired to place these atrocities in printed forms (e.g., articles, pamphlets, books) (McBride 1). This sociopolitical movement contributed to a widespread documentation of stories about slavery from those who experienced it firsthand.

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Early writings demonstrated the hostilities and physical assaults hurled against persons of African descent in the antebellum United States. Such autobiographical accounts were accompanied by the words “written by himself” or “written by herself” with verification provided by prominent white men or women in their communities. For the purpose of slave narratives, the use of the phrase “written by himself or herself” is used to signify the gender of the author without relying or including the words “man,” “woman,” “boy,” or “girl.” This replaced an author’s reliance on their identification as African as opposed to Black American, as in the case of Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’s A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert “Ukawsaw Gronniosaw,” an African Prince (1770) and Solomon Bayley’s Narrative of Some Remarkable Incidents in the Life of Solomon Bayley, Formerly a Slave in the State of Delaware, North America (1825). These early slave narratives laid a foundation for the inclusion of other identifying attributes such as gender, which was perceived as less racial and more unifying by the larger society. This opened the field for white abolitionists to propagandize the stories that they acquired from former or fugitive slaves to further their cause and shed a light on the plight of this group in the nineteenth century. Unlike their predecessors whose accounts involved stories of religious redemption, such as John Lea’s The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Lea, the African Preacher (1811), abolitionist-supported narratives written by former slaves such as William Wells Brown’s Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (1847) rarely glamorize the experience; instead, their texts offer an unprecedented access to the lived experiences of former slaves (McBride 1). Fugitive and former slaves like Mary Prince, Solomon Northrup, and Sojourner Truth used their voices to bear witness by giving readers a glimpse into the harsh realities under which they lived. Their stories provided fuel for the abolitionist movement by making the larger society aware of the atrocities that existed in the peculiar institution of the antebellum South. Although formerly enslaved persons shared their stories with willing listeners, their articulations (written and oral) were largely Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution

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based on their gender classification. Persons such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs presented their narratives in ways that demonstrated the inequality that existed in slavery. Employing a formulaic autobiographical style, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs used their experience and social positions as fugitive slaves to bring attention to the plight of enslaved people. They also accomplished this feat by textually exploiting their gendered perspectives to sway public perceptions about the peculiarities of slavery. This essay conducts a close gendered reading of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl using narrative analysis to compare and to contrast how Douglass and Jacobs present their lived experiences as slaves. Utilizing relevant excerpts from Narrative and Incidents, I analyze Douglass’s and Jacobs’s language use, word choices, and their attached meanings stemming from their gender assignment. Additionally, I use public pedagogy and intertextuality theory to conceptually interpret and discuss how Douglass and Jacobs blend their lived experiences and those of other enslaved people into their narratives. For the purposes of this essay, the following guiding questions are addressed: How do Douglass and Jacobs bear witness to slavery as a peculiar institution? In what ways are Douglass’s and Jacob’s accounts gendered? First, I offer a comparative discussion of the books; then, I describe how Douglass and Jacobs use their texts to depict slavery as a peculiar institution; finally, I explain how their accounts are gendered. Douglass Versus Jacobs Douglass’s and Jacobs’s narratives are cultural artifacts interwoven with gendered language use, word choices, and implied meanings that enable them to bear witness to their experiences as slaves. These differences not only exist as printed works on a page, but also in their publication and marketing. For instance, the first version of Narrative features an image of a young Frederick Douglass dressed in a business suit with a stern look on his face. Beneath his picture, Douglass’s signature appears in cursive. The title of his 48

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memoir appears in a large font with the words “written by himself” included at the end. On the inner pages, a preface by William Lloyd Garrison and a letter by Wendell Phillips, ESQ. precede Douglass’s first chapter. In the book’s heading, Douglass refers to himself as an “American Slave” rather than a gendered moniker such as man or boy. This memoir has an appendix penned by Douglass with each chapter represented with a Roman numeral to mark a different stage in Douglass’s journey from slavery to freedom. The use of non-customary numerical values (e.g., 1, 2, 3) demonstrates Douglass’s desire to challenge established social norms for black American males and his determination to assert his newly acquired independence. In his full title, Douglass includes his adopted surname while identifying himself as “an American Slave,” which acknowledges his black American identity and his life as a slave. Douglass’s name on the title page celebrates his new status as a freedman, which he sets off with commas between the words “Douglass” and “slave,” indicating his separation from his past life and his commitment to his present. Identifying himself first as a former slave in plain and eloquent words, Douglass challenges preconceived notions of black men (enslaved; free) while creating a safe space in his account where he can individualize his experiences; hence, separating his personal story from that of his slave communities (Foster xi). According to Cynthia R. Nielsen, Douglass’s use of subversive storytelling in Narrative challenges larger social beliefs about his lived experiences past and present (251). To contextualize his account across gendered expectations for him as a black, former slave, Douglass uses composite characters to represent his past acquaintances such as Sandy Jenkins, whose lived experiences he strategically situates in his account. This allows Douglass to act as the narrator and protagonist in his retelling, which enables him to revisit his early indoctrination into slavery while highlighting key events from his life that contributed to his desire for freedom. Although Douglass was reserved in his handling of his narratives, his text features brazenness that enables him to provide an accurate account, while allowing his audience to draw their own conclusions. Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution

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Meanwhile, Jacobs’s book is a hardcover with a flower emblem at its center; trimmed in an exaggerated picture frame is the title, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. On the spine, the book features the name Linda Brent, the pseudonym used by Jacobs, in gold lettering with a symbol underneath. Jacobs’s image, unlike Douglass’s, does not appear in the text. Instead, the reader is greeted with the title of the novel embossed in varying letter stylization. For instance, the word “Incidents” is centered in isolation and appears in a larger font than the phrase “in the,” which is then followed by “Life of a Slave Girl” is a slightly larger print than “Incidents” with “written by herself” appearing smaller than the rest of the words. However, all these words are capitalized. Through her choice of letter sizes, Jacobs conveys to the reader the trials and tribulations she endured as a slave woman. The capitalization of her full title indicates Jacobs’s desire to stress the importance of her story by universalizing her narrative. Modeled after the sentimental novels popularized during the nineteenth century, Incidents was edited by L. Maria Child, whose acknowledgement follows a review by an unnamed “Woman from North Carolina” and a Bible quote from the Book of Isaiah. A court filing statement by Child precedes the book’s preface penned by Jacobs, who signs using her pseudonym. Incidents concludes with an appendix and support letters written by Amy Post, a white abolitionist, and George W. Lowther, a black abolitionist, each with a forward of introduction penned by Child. Douglass’s and Jacobs’s slave narratives are also gendered in their physical appearances and organization. Their word choices further illustrate their wish to bear witness as former slaves. Douglass’s declaration that he is “an American Slave” masculinizes his narrative, which he accentuates by the inclusion of “himself” to assert his masculinity. Conversely, Jacobs’s use of “Incidents” signifies that abuses against slave women were commonplace with “girl” serving as a marker of naiveté and innocence. Guided by their editors and their intended audiences, Douglass and Jacobs directed their narratives to bear witness in separate social spaces (e.g., the 50

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lecture circuit; the home) as depicted in the physical design of their books. Enduring Involuntary Servitude with Unconventional Practices The practice of bearing witness has been part of human civilizations since the dawn of humankind. Each society included specially trained people who were tasked with remembering and passing on cultural artifacts to future generations. Oral cultures such as Native Americans (shamans) and Africans (griots) used their words to share knowledge and to teach their customs to one another (Bell xi). The invention of the printing press enabled people to record and publish stories such as slave narratives; hence, enabling these stories to reach a wider and more diverse audience. One of the first known slave narratives was The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789). This text was a testimonial documenting Equiano’s (Vassa’s) life as a slave and a free man of color. Using “an evolving consciousness” Equiano’s narrative intertwines oral storytelling with structural signification to textually bear witness, a technique later employed to varying degrees by Douglass and Jacobs (Braxton xxii). Defined as stating that one saw or knows something, bearing witness in Douglass’s and Jacobs’s memoir functions to present counter-narratives that challenge larger societal beliefs about slavery in the United States. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, Douglass’s first memoir, provides readers with excerpts of his lived experiences as a plantation slave and a slave for hire (Matlack 15). One of the first memories Douglass shares is the physical punishment inflicted on his Aunt Hester by her master Colonel Lloyd that he observed as a boy. Aunt Hester was a beautiful woman who was in a relationship with a slave named Ned, much to Colonel Lloyd’s chagrin. As a result, Colonel Lloyd forbade her from seeing Ned and ordered her to stay home during the evening, the time he planned to visit her. Refusing to serve as Colonel Lloyd’s potential mistress, Aunt Hester left home for a rendezvous Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution

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with Ned. When she returned home, Colonel Lloyd confronted her and ordered her to strip naked from the neck to the waist. Colonel Lloyd tied her hands and led her to the joist where she was hoisted into the air until her toes barely touched the ground. For the sin of disobeying his directives, Colonel Lloyd beats Aunt Hester with a cow-skin whip. Douglass conjectures that Colonel Lloyd may have had an interest in or relationship with his Aunt Hester that caused his jealous nature to arise when she began showing interest in another man. Nevertheless, Douglass does not dwell on the reason for Aunt Hester’s punishment. Instead, he discusses his reaction to his aunt’s blood “dripping to the floor,” and specifically the fear that the event instilled in him (344). By conveying his reaction to his Aunt Hester’s punishment, Douglass bears witness to the suffering slave women experienced at the hands of a jealous master or overseer. However, Douglass maintains an emotional distance from the physical aspects of Aunt Hester’s whipping which is depicted in his detailed account of his reaction and internalized fear of this happening to him. The minimalization of Aunt Hester’s brutal beating by Douglass in later retellings suggest his desire to distance her experience from his current lifestyle as a free man. However, Douglass shares Aunt Hester’s narrative to illustrate the suffering that slave women endured in this peculiar institution. By bearing witness to this event, Douglass describes how physical punishment on various plantations was gendered with males receiving harsher penalties than females. Although Aunt Hester was whipped, there was a level of care used by Colonel Lloyd in his administration of her lashes versus Demby, a male slave who was shot and killed by Gore, a plantation overseer, after his failed escape attempt. Later, Douglass also provides an account from his presumptive teenage years as a slave for hire on the plantation of Mr. Covey (Davis 85). In his recollection, he describes the abuse he received from Mr. Covey in minimalistic terms. For instance, Douglass explains that he was exhausted and fainted only for Mr. Covey to “then give me a savage kick in the side” and command him “to get up” (390). On another occasion, Douglass recalls Mr. Covey using a “hickory slat” to give him “a heavy blow upon the head” that made 52

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a “large wound” (390). It is not until he runs away from Mr. Covey to the home of his master Mr. Auld that Douglass bears detailed witness to his psychological emancipation following his physical altercation with Mr. Covey. Douglass writes, “I resolved to fight; and, suiting my actions to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose” (393). After two hours, Douglass and Mr. Covey each give up and Douglass declared himself the victor. Douglass believes he won because after that event Mr. Covey never endeavored to physically assault him again. Douglass bears witness to his life as a boy (Aunt Hester), young adult (Mr. Covey), and freed man. Analyzing Douglass’s autobiography as a continuing account of his lived experiences, Jacob Crane notes that Douglass omitted information from his story to show his newfound ability to tell his truth from his point of view (12). In Narrative, Douglass presents his text as an outsider who offers examples in which he or his fellow slaves experience punishment and who bears witness to these events as a voyeur and not an active participant. The only time Douglass disappears into his storytelling is when he discusses his physical altercation with Mr. Covey. Following this event and his successful escape, Douglass returns to his narration to offer a more distant regurgitation of his life. Although Douglass sequences his memories in various ways to show his approximate age, there are overlaps in his articulation that leave the reader to infer the time span in which a particular event occurred, such as a hearsay conversation in which his master states that Douglass was about seventeen years old in 1835. Yet, in chapter one, Douglass, as a freedman, approximates his age as “between twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old” (Douglass 339). However, considering that Douglass recalls hearing he was seventeen in 1835, was it impossible from him to deduce a more accurate age to facilitate the reader in chronicle segmenting his life through his written words. In contrast to Douglass, Jacobs presents her lived experiences in Incidents as a physically present narrator. Jacobs begins bearing witness in the preface of her book when she speaks directly to her readers. Jacobs pens, Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution

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READER, be assured this narrative is no fiction. I am aware that some of my adventures may seem incredible; but they are, nevertheless, strictly true. I have not exaggerated the wrongs inflicted by Slavery; on the contrary, my descriptions fall short of the facts (439)

Singularly retelling her life history, Jacobs acts as an internal narrator who actively participates in her text by reliving the events from her life on the pages of her memoir. Jacobs acknowledges that her accuracy may have become impaired over time, and she openly explains that she has “concealed the names of places and given people fictitious names” because she is a fugitive slave (439). Yet, Jacobs felt a need to justify her account in the preface of her book and inadvertently apologizes to her readers for the content of her text to set her audience at ease (Stover 137; Wanzo 72). This speaks to gender expectations associated with being a woman, which entails displaying high emotions and revealing susceptibility to others. Through her declaration in the preface, Jacobs situated her lived experiences in her textual narrative. The publication of Jacobs’s slave narrative introduces white northerners to the harsh realities she withstood as a black, female, slave, and mother in the peculiar institution of the South. Incidents starts similarly to Narrative, with the phrase “I was born;” however, Jacobs breaks away from Douglass’s formula by describing her life in the present in paragraph three of her prologue (439). Jacobs uses her words to become more personable after her initial introduction to immediately gain her reader’s empathy. She concludes her foreword by imploring white women of the North to get involved in the abolitionist movement. Although Jacobs includes stories about other slaves in her immediate community, Incidents primarily recounts details about her experiences as a slave woman, which allows her to bear witness by chronicling her life from early childhood to adulthood. For example, for the first six years of her life, Jacobs explains that she was unaware of her status as a slave girl. She writes, “I was born a slave; but never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away” (Jacobs 445). Jacobs’s parents and grandparents felt it was best not to burden her with her plight until she was older, but soon the 54

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death of her mother changed her life as Jacobs’s “happy childhood . . . passed away” (Jacobs 445). The phrase “passed away” is used in Black vernacular speech to signify death or loss; in Jacobs’s case, it marks her introduction into the life of a slave girl. However, Jacobs’s transition into womanhood begins when she is fifteen years old in the home of Dr. Flint, who develops a sexual interest in her. Jacobs writes, “My master begins to whisper foul words in my ear” (471). The fact that Dr. Flint “whisper[ed]” in Jacobs’s ears shows that he wanted their exchange to remain private and reinforces that he intended his words only for her. Jacobs uses the term “foul” to describe the inappropriate nature of Dr. Flint’s language and its inferred meanings. Dr. Flint’s unrelenting persistence forces Jacobs to begin a sexual relationship with Mr. Sands, a white plantation owner and lawyer. Jacobs continues to sequentially narrate events from her time as Dr. Flint’s slave. Dissimilar to Douglass, Jacobs uses a novelistic approach in Incidents to situate and present her experiences in a linear fashion. Jacobs begins with her earliest memories and concludes with her emancipated freedom, whereas Douglass uses non-chronological storytelling in Narrative to convey significant moments from his life as male slave. Their separate approaches are also reflected in the stories that Douglass and Jacobs include in their texts and the words they use to convey their experiences to readers (Davis 85). In the slave narrative tradition, black male accounts were expected to include a heroic journey as a rite of passage into manhood; while black female versions were designed to solicit an emotional response from their readers. Unlike Douglass, who shared his enslavement stories as a lecturer touring the abolitionist circuit, Jacobs wrote a series of short stories about her life that were published in the local newspaper before deciding to draft her manuscript. The novelistic writing style she utilizes enables Jacobs to bear witness to her enslavement as a girl and as a slave woman. Jacobs does not embrace her freedom as Douglass did; instead, she writes from a space of subjugation, conveying a gendered interpretation (Carby 741). Meanwhile, Douglass delivers his written account as a series Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution

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of loosely related events, Jacobs presents her story as a cohesive continuation of her life as a former slave woman living in the North. The purposeful organization of their books enable Douglass and Jacobs to bear witness to the peculiar institution of slavery in differing ways. Narrative and Incidents demystify the fictions associated with antebellum slavery in the nineteenth century through their depiction of violence against slaves in the forms of mutilations, murder, sexual assaults, and brutal beatings. As a black man Douglass structures his account in a way that exudes confidence and maleness, while Jacobs shares her story in a novel-like form. This approach conveys Jacobs’s femininity to her readers and accentuates her vulnerability as a slave woman to the rigors of plantation life and expectations. Douglass and Jacobs use their texts to speak their truth not only from a space of bondage, describing the dehumanizing conditions in which vulnerable black people were physically abused and sexually exploited, but also from one of freedom (Foster ix). Conclusion The emergence and popularity of slave narratives written by fugitive or emancipated slaves became increasingly marred with questions of authenticity and unspoken requests from white audiences to verify their lived experiences. Those penned by women required a variation of the approach employed by their male counterparts. These distinct differences are reflected in the ways that Frederick Douglass’s and Harriet Jacobs’s narratives were organized, packaged, and marketed, as well as the events they chose to share with audiences. Their works were purposeful and intentional in their representations of slave life in the antebellum South. Written for the abolitionist movement, Douglass’s Narrative remains in style similar to his public speeches and is geared towards a captive audience, whereas Jacobs’s Incidents is scripted to convey her message of female suffering and longing to her readers. Works Cited Bell, Bernard W. The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. U of Massachusetts P, 1987. 56

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Braxton, Joanne M. Introduction. Wild Women in the Whirlwind: AfraAmerican Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance, edited by Joanne M. Braxton and Andree Nicola McLaughlin. Rutgers UP, 1990, pp. i–xxii. Carby, Hazel V. “Policing the Black Woman’s Body in an Urban Context.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 4, 1992, pp. 738–755. Crane, Jacob. “Beyond the Cape: Amitav Ghosh, Frederick Douglass, and the Limits of the Black Atlantic.” Postcolonial Text, vol. 6, no. 4, 2011, pp. 1–16. Cutter, Martha J. “Dismantling ‘The Master’s House:’ Critical Literacy in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Callaloo, vol. 19, no. 1, 1996, pp. 209–25. Davis, Angela Y. “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 13, no. 1/2, 1972, pp. 81–100. Deck, Alice A. “Whose Book Is This? Authorial Versus Editorial Control of Harriet Brent Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself.” Women’s Studies Int. Forum, vol. 10, no. 1, 1987, pp. 33–40. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. 1845. The Classic Slave Narratives, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Signet, 2012. Foster, Frances Smith. Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Antebellum Slave Narratives. 2nd ed. U of Wisconsin P, 1994. Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. 1861. The Classic Slave Narratives, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Signet, 2012. Matlack, James. “The Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass.” Phylon (1960–), vol. 40, no. 1, 1979, pp. 15–28. McBride, Dwight. Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony. New York U P, 2001. Nielsen, Cynthia. “Resistance Is Not Futile: Frederick Douglass on Panoptic Plantations and the Un-making Docile Bodies and Enslaved Souls.” Philosophy and Literature, vol. 35, no. 2, 2011, pp. 251–68. Stover, Johnnie M. “Nineteenth-Century African American Women’s Autobiography as Social Discourse: The Example of Harriet Ann Jacobs.” College English, vol. 66, no. 2, 2003, pp. 133–54. Bearing Witness to a Peculiar Institution

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Wanzo, Rebecca A. “Apocalyptic Empathy: A Parable of Postmodern Sentimentality.” Women, Gender, and Sexuality Research, vol. 6–7, no. 1–2, 2005, pp. 72–86. Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs’ Slave Narrative.” American Literature, vol. 53, no. 3, 1981, pp. 479–86.

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CRITICAL READINGS

Canonization and Its Discontents: Narrative of the Life in the Context of Douglass’s Intellectual Development David Lawrimore

In the winter of 1845, Frederick Douglass took a break from the antislavery lecture circuit and returned to Lynn, Massachusetts. Here, “in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness of home,” he wrote his first autobiography (Narrative 28). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written By Himself (1845) was an instant success, selling five thousand copies in its first four months, eleven thousand by the end of 1847, and thirty thousand by 1860 (Blight 139). And while it was overlooked for the better part of the twentieth century, Narrative of the Life is now—and has been for over four decades—an essential part of American literary study: there are approximately four hundred editions of Douglass’s Narrative in print (including books, e-books, and audiobooks); it appears in all of the major American literature anthologies; and it frequently serves as the prime example of African American writing in American literature courses (Levine 24). Given its success and sheer ubiquity, it comes as no surprise that Narrative of the Life has achieved canonical status: scholars view it as the best and most exemplary antebellum slave narrative and one of the most important works of African American literature. Of course, the canonization of Narrative of the Life was a necessary corrective to an American canon that was once almost exclusively white and male. However, the narrative’s position as the premier exemplar and prototype of African American literature is not without its problems. Deborah E. McDowell, for example, has argued that the emphasis on Narrative of the Life has led to the exclusion of many African American women’s narratives. Similarly, Mike Drexler and Ed White have argued that because Douglass’s narrative is embraced as the paradigmatic example, other texts are seen as a gradual move toward or away from the Canonization and Its Discontents

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Douglass paradigm. “Intermediate narratives,” they argue, are simply “fine-tunings on the way to Douglass” (Drexler and White 3). The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), for example, is often portrayed as an important but flawed first step on the way to Narrative of the Life. Similarly, Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball (1836) is frequently praised for its expansive description of plantation life, but critics frequently note that it lacks Narrative of the Life’s psychological depth. And Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave (1847) has the dubious honor of being heralded as an ironic metacommentary on Douglass’s narrative. Most criticisms of the narrative’s canonization, then, consider how the intense focus on this one text obscures and minimizes other works of African American literature. The goal of this essay is a bit narrower. Rather than discuss how the emphasis on Narrative of the Life also misrepresents African American literature writ large, I am interested in how this emphasis also misrepresents Frederick Douglass, the individual. Many readers believe that Narrative of the Life is a representative portrait; however, for more than fifty years after the publication of his most famous text, Douglass continued writing and speaking, and, in that half-century, he frequently shifted his allegiances and altered his beliefs. Moreover, as time passed, it became increasingly clear that Douglass was not especially proud of his first autobiography. Not only did he revise it twice after its initial publication—as My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855 and as Life and Times of Frederick Douglass in 1892—but he also diminished the narrative in those revisions, referring to it as a “pamphlet” in My Bondage and My Freedom and a “little book” in Life and Times (Bondage 370; Life 547). Put another way, the prominence of Narrative of the Life, which Douglass wrote when he was “all of twenty-seven years old and a member of an anti-slavery organization he would soon renounce,” has the potential not only to overshadow his other important works but to compress his dynamic career into a single moment (Levine 5). 62

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So, instead of viewing Narrative of the Life as representative of either African American literature or of Douglass the individual, this essay views the narrative as the starting point of Douglass’s long and dynamic career. Specifically, I reconsider Narrative of the Life’s most famous scene, “The Battle with Mr. Covey,” in the context of Douglass’s later writings. This juxtaposition reveals how the scene contains seeds of two competing ideals—self-reliance and black community—that crystallize, though never fully resolve, as Douglass matures. While this essay focuses primarily on “The Battle with Mr. Covey,” this method has the potential to yield similar results when applied to other scenes. Therefore, I conclude by offering a brief glimpse at how some of the narrative’s other scenes can be examined in light of his later writings. Before turning to “The Battle with Mr. Covey,” however, I work to demystify Narrative of the Life’s “hypercanonical” status by outlining the constraints of the slave narrative genre as well as Douglass’s limited role within the abolitionist circles that published his first narrative (Levine 10). Black Lives and White Institutions When Douglass began writing Narrative of the Life, he had a number of examples to draw from. Beginning in the mid-1700s, enslaved Africans and African Americans, many of whom had escaped bondage, had written or dictated accounts of their enslavement, and, by the 1840s, over thirty of these slave narratives were in circulation. As more of these works were published, moreover, a “master outline” of the genre began to take shape (Olney 50). And, in order to adhere to this outline, a slave narrative must contain a specific list of front and backmatter—engraved portrait, generic title, appendices of documentary material—as well as a number of episodes and conventions, including a story about the struggle to become literate, an account of the nature of whippings, discussions of “Christian” slaveholders, and more (Olney 50–51). On the one hand, this outline was, for Douglass and other slave narrative authors, an “invitation to form,” guidance in the difficult process of putting life to paper (Guillén 109). And Douglass adheres to these conventions so closely that Narrative of the Life has been called Canonization and Its Discontents

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“the fullest, most exact representative” of the slave narrative genre (Olney 51). On the other hand, the slave narratives genre, even more than other genres, limits authors in what they can say, and how they can say it. Because the purpose of the slave narrative is to give an objective portrait of “slavery as it is,” the structure of these texts is largely predetermined: the theme is to be the reality of slavery and the need to abolish it; the content is to be a series of events that depict the reality of slavery; and the form is to be a chronological, episodic narrative that begins with an assertion of the slave’s existence (Olney 53). As James Olney explains, “. . . the slave narrative, with a very few exceptions, tends to exhibit a highly conventional, rigidly fixed form that bears much the same relationship to autobiography in a full sense as painting by numbers bears to painting as a creative act” (48). By its very design, then, Narrative of the Life could never fully capture Douglass’s individual identity. The slave narrative’s “master outline” serves not just as an “invitation to form,” but as an obstacle to originality, keeping at its center a particular form of experience that pushes Douglass’s unique and distinctive identity to the periphery. Moreover, slave narratives tend to be so formulaic because they were initially created to perpetuate the worldview of the narratives’ white publishers and sponsors, not the black authors’. Specifically, early slave narratives were initially developed to validate such predominantly white institutions as the church and the prison system, even though many of these institutions were designed to disenfranchise black and enslaved people. “White American institutions are thus deeply inscribed in the early slave narratives,” John Sekora argues, “to the extent that they will be published only when they bear the imprimatur as well as the nihil obstat of these institutions” (491). The only way for an enslaved person to publish their life story, in other words, was to play by a specific set of rules. And while, by the 1830s, most slave narratives were written in the service of another white institution—abolitionist societies— the genre’s problematic relationship to white culture persisted. Of course, these societies, whose express goal was the immediate 64

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abolition of slavery in the United States, were more sympathetic to slave narratives’ black authors than previous institutions. However, abolitionist societies were still white institutions, and they would only record and circulate the stories of black authors that “were conformable to popular and familiar patterns of Anglo-American literary form” and that worked within the parameters of these societies’ ideology (Sekora 492). Antebellum slave narratives were created mainly to exemplify and narrativize the white abolitionists’ antislavery message. The author was simply a “witness,” Sekora explains, “no more, no less” (502). Black lives only mattered when they perpetuated the worldview of white institutions. Narrative of the Life is a prime example of these issues. Douglass’s main sponsor when writing the narrative was William Lloyd Garrison, the head of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society and eventual founder of the American Antislavery Society. As a leader, Garrison was particularly strict, requiring “black leaders to be strong enough to control their followers, yet sufficiently weak not to challenge him” (Sekora 508). This was especially true for Douglass. According to Douglass’s biographer, William McFeely, “Douglass. . . and other black antislavery speakers were always treated as visiting artists in a production of which the white Bostonians never dreamed of losing their direction” (108). Even Douglass, in My Bondage and My Freedom, discusses the limitations members of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society placed on him: “During the first three or four months, my speeches were almost exclusively made up of narrations of my own personal experience as a slave. ‘Let us have the facts,’ said the people. So also said Friend George Foster, who always wished to pin me down to a simple narrative. ‘Give us the facts’ said Collins, ‘we will take care of the philosophy’” (367). In no small part because of these restrictions, Douglass’s once “slavish adoration” to Garrison and the Boston Anti-Slavery Society began to change not long after the publication of Narrative of the Life (Bondage 390). Describing this shift, he writes, “To those with whom I had been in agreement and in sympathy, I was now in opposition. What they held to be a great and important truth, I Canonization and Its Discontents

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now looked upon in as a dangerous error. A very painful, and yet a very natural, thing now happened. . . . and the common punishment of apostates was mine” (392). By 1851, Douglass had fully broken with Garrison and his abolitionist society, which had, only six years prior, published Douglass’s autobiography. And yet, despite this break, and despite the constraints inherent in the slave narrative genre, Narrative of the Life remains the most easily accessible and widely read of all of Douglass’s writings. Self-Reliance and Community Because Narrative of the Life was written early in his life and was forced to adhere to a number of formal and ideological constraints, it is a poor representation of Douglass’s long—almost fifty year— intellectual career. A reasonable argument could be made, then, for abandoning Narrative of the Life and replacing it with one of Douglass’s later works, perhaps his nearly 1,000-page final autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. While this later narrative is no doubt a fuller portrait of Douglass, Narrative of the Life remains canonical while Life and Times remains obscure. So, rather than suppressing Narrative of the Life, how can we appreciate it for what it was: an incomplete and circumscribed account of Douglass’s long and dynamic life? The remainder of this essay offers one possible answer by juxtaposing the narrative’s most famous scene, often referred to as “The Battle with Mr. Covey,” against a selection of Douglass’s later writings. This scene recounts a four-day ordeal that begins with the slave-breaker Mr. Covey mercilessly beating Douglass and concludes with a protracted fight in which Douglass fights off Covey with such resolve that he never again “laid the weight of his finger” on Douglass (Narrative 50). The scene is a clear demonstration of Douglass’s self-reliance, a theme that ultimately develops into his theory of the “Self-Made Man.” However, “The Battle with Mr. Covey” also contains seeds of another, competing argument for the importance of black community and friendship that is equally evident in Douglass’s later speeches and writing. Rather than explaining it away, I instead develop this contradiction as a means of appreciating 66

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Douglass as a dynamic intellectual with competing and sometimes contradictory beliefs that developed well after the Narrative of the Life’s publication. Ten years after the initial publication of his first autobiography, Douglass first gave what would become one of his most famous speeches, “The Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men.” Delivered dozens of times between 1859 and the 1890s, the speech emerges, according to David Blight, as Douglass’s “ultimate commentary on human nature” and his clearest expression of the importance of selfreliance (565). Douglass begins the speech by asserting that while most men are strikingly similar, there exist among them a range of dissimilarities and contradictions. “While some were Miltons, Bacons, and Shakespeares, illuminating and filling a wondering world with the resplendent glories of their achievements,” Douglass explains, “other were as dull as lead, and rose no higher in life than a mere physical existence” (“Trials” 294). In this manner, Douglass divides people into two main camps. On the one hand are the “fallen arrows” who exist with “the certain misery which the life of inaction, vice, and ignorance entails” (“Trials” 295, 293). On the other hand are the self-made men, who Douglass defines as “those men who had without the ordinary help of favouring circumstances, raised themselves against great odds from the most humble and cheerless positions in life to usefulness, greatness, honour, influence, and fame.” These and others like them, Douglass explains, “built the ladder on which they climbed and built as they climbed.” In other words, the difference between “fallen arrows” and self-made men is the latter’s willingness to work, to change their circumstances through self-reliant “industry and application” (“Trials” 296). While “Trials and Triumphs” may be Douglass’s fullest expression of the doctrine of self-reliance, it is far from the first. Although he wrote it ten years prior, Douglass presents himself at the outset of “The Battle with Mr. Covey” much like the “fallen arrows” of his later speech. Douglass explains that while under Mr. Covey, he was “broken in body, soul, and spirit.” While the effects of this breaking were numerous—Douglas writes, “my natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to Canonization and Its Discontents

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read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eyes died, the dark night of slavery closed upon me”—perhaps most notable is his feeling of complete helplessness (Narrative 45). For instance, after Covey beats Douglass for collapsing while working, Douglass does not initially defend himself but rather returns to his master to “ask for his protection” (Narrative 47). Here, Douglass believes that he cannot change his circumstances and, therefore, must “humbly entreat” his master to “interpose his authority for [his] protection” (Narrative 48). This moment ultimately demonstrates the depths of Douglass’s helplessness: like the other “fallen arrows,” he feels he has no control over his destiny. This is not the only instance in Narrative of the Life in which Douglass is seemingly forced into the camp of “fallen arrows.” In the following chapter, when he is hired out to work in a Baltimore shipyard, Douglass explains that his master coaxes him to remain subservient: “He said, if I behaved myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed, he advised me to complete thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me to depend solely upon him for happiness” (Narrative 66–67). Once again, the narrative explores the seeming “misery of inaction,” for Auld attempts to convince Douglass to remain in a “broken” state, to rid himself of any sense of selfdetermination and rely solely on Auld for his own livelihood. And the concept of “fallen arrows” extends to Douglass’s other writings as well. In fact, in 1892 Douglass explores similar issues in “Introduction to The Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbia Exposition.” Notable here is the description of the ways African Americans have, much like Douglass in the beginning of the “Battle with Mr. Covey,” been broken. While under slavery, Douglass writes, enslaved African Americans were “classed as goods and chattels” and little has improved since the Civil War, as they face lynch mobs, disenfranchisement, and other forms of racial prejudice. Too often African Americans give up the fight. “A life devoid of purpose and earnest effort is a worthless life,” he concludes. “It is bad to be a slave, but worse to be a willing and contented slave” (“Introduction” 526). Even at the end of his career, then, Douglass not only bemoans “fallen arrows” but also 68

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the enslavement and white supremacy that force African Americans into subservience. But, of course, “The Battle with Mr. Covey” and the other examples do not end with Douglass or African Americans remaining broken. Douglass explains in Narrative of the Life that upon his return to Covey’s farm, Covey attempted to tie and whip him. “Mr. Covey seemed to think he had me,” Douglass writes, “and could do what he pleased; but at this moment—from whence came the spirit I don’t know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose” (Narrative 49–50). The sentence’s concluding phrase—“I rose”— can be taken on a number of levels. Literally, Douglass, who had been knocked down, stands to face Covey. But “I rose” also connotes self-reliance, of pulling himself up and taking control of his destiny. And this newfound self-reliance underscores the remainder of the scene so much that the “nearly two hour” brawl is both a physical battle in which Douglass resists Covey as well as a metaphorical one in which Douglass regains the manhood once stolen from him (Narrative 50). “The Battle with Mr. Covey” marks a turning point in Narrative of the Life, which is evident when Douglass describes being hired out in Baltimore. As he writes, “After learning how to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own contracts, and collected the money which I earned (Narrative 64). This freedom becomes more pronounced when he is briefly given permission to hire his time at the shipyard, that is, to pay his master a set wage and keep the rest for himself. “I bent myself to the work of making money,” he writes. “I was ready to work at night as well as day, and by the most untiring perseverance and industry, I made enough to meet my expense, and lay up a little money every week” (Narrative 67). Moreover, by doing this work and by saving money, Douglass is able to escape from bondage and become fully self-reliant. Just as Douglass emerges as a free and self-made man at the narrative’s end, he encourages a similar transition at the end of “Introduction to The Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbia Exposition.” He explains that African Americans Canonization and Its Discontents

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must cultivate a courageous and cheerful spirit as well as embrace every avenue for the “acquisition of wealth” (“Introduction” 525). “We are men,” he concludes, “and our aim is perfect manhood, to be men among men. Our situation demands faith in ourselves, faith in the power of truth, faith in work, faith in the influence of manly character” (“Introduction” 526). Thus, Douglass concludes one of his final texts in a manner similar to one of his first, by distinguishing between “fallen arrows” and “self-made men” in a manner that advocates for self-reliance. As we’ve seen, “The Battle with Mr. Covey” demonstrates a commitment to self-reliance that is evident throughout Douglass’s writing. However, the same scene also features another, largely contradictory, theory that is just as prominent during his long career: the importance of black friendship and community. Indeed, while Douglass “rose” as a self-reliant individual during his fight with Mr. Covey, he was bolstered by the care of Sandy Jenkins and his free black wife, who took Douglass in and nourished him physically and emotionally before he returned to Covey’s farm. Throughout his career, the desire for black community persists alongside his desire for self-reliance, demonstrating a complexity in Douglass’s intellectual life not fully evident when focusing solely on his most prominent narrative. In Narrative of the Life, Douglass is fairly clipped in his description of Sandy Jenkins, writing only that he “fell in with Sandy Jenkins,” that Jenkins “very kindly invited me to go home with him,” and that Douglass “found Sandy an old adviser” (Narrative 49). However, he rewrites the scene in My Bondage and My Freedom to more fully emphasize Jenkins’s friendship. For one, Douglass highlights the personal risk that Jenkins assumes in taking Douglass in. As he explains, “It was a bold thing for him to shelter me,” for had Jenkins been found out, “he would have suffered the penalty of thirty-nine lashes on his bare back.” Moreover, Douglass underscores the role of Sandy’s wife, a free black woman, in taking him in, writing “Sandy’s wife was not behind him in kindness” (Bondage 279). In including Jenkins’s wife, Douglass emphasizes the communal aspect of their friendship, that this solidarity extends 70

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beyond enslavement to encompass a range of African Americans, men and women, slave and free. Ultimately, this stay is far more than a “falling in” with Jenkins and his wife, as Douglass recalls in Narrative of the Life; rather, the night before his final showdown with Covey was a decisive moment. “Though I have feasted since, with honorable, lord mayors, and aldermen, over the sea,” Douglass concludes, “my supper on ash cake and cold water, with Sandy, was the meal, of all my life, most sweet to my taste, and now most vivid in my memory” (Bondage 280). The encounter with Sandy Jenkins is not the only place in Narrative of the Life that emphasizes the importance of black friendship and community. For example, after the “Battle with Mr. Covey,” Douglass describes a time he “devoted [his] Sundays to teaching these my loved fellow slaves how to read” (Narrative 54–55). Not unlike the connections established in his stay with Jenkins and his wife, this community was composed of a variety of African Americans. As Douglass describes, this “Sabbath School,” which was held at the house of a free black man, was composed of “over forty scholars,” which included a range of ages, both men and women. Equally as important to the education was the community that formed at the school. “I look back to those Sundays with an amount of pleasure not to be expressed,” he writes. “The work of instructing my dear fellow slaves was the sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed” (Narrative 55). The community described here seems to contradict the feelings of self-reliance expressed elsewhere in Narrative of the Life, in which he found “no severe trial” in being separated from his family when he first moves to Baltimore (26). In fact, Douglass explains that when he chose to escape, he was “not willing to cherish this determination alone,” but instead to escape with his fellow-slaves” (Narrative 56). In this manner, Narrative of the Life appears less as an unambiguous representation of Douglass but rather a muddled and contradictory work that grows more complex when considered in the context of his later writings. Canonization and Its Discontents

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And Douglass’s later writings do, indeed, argue for a cohesive African American community. In fact, while he does not discuss it in Narrative of the Life, while a teenager in Baltimore, Douglass joined the city’s large free black community. Although he participated in a few secular communities—most notably, the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society—his most formative experiences derived from within the black religious community. As Blight explains, many of Douglass’s ideas, “can be traced, in part, to the influences of a kind of black spiritual temperament and worldview that he soaked up from the African American religious community of Baltimore in his teenage years” (53). This community included Charles Johnson, a black lay preacher, and Charles Lawson, who Douglass describes in My Bondage and My Freedom as his “spiritual father” whom he “loved intensely” (232). With this experience, then, Douglass felt quite at home lecturing at black churches while on speaking tours. In an 1847 speech delivered at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, for example, he spoke directly to the black community. “I am one with you,” he told the congregation, “one in position—one in estimate of the whites—one in the effort to gain our rights and true social condition. I feel entitled from this oneness to be heard as to what you and I should do to secure the rights which have been robbed from us” (“Brethren” 91). In many ways, Douglass’s emphasis on African American community reached its apex in his first newspaper, the North Star, a project that solidified his break with Garrison and that he undertook with the help of many black abolitionists. In many ways, the North Star answered a call by the National Colored Convention to create a “national press” for African Americans and fulfilled his longtime desire to have a mouthpiece for his race (Blight 188–89). In the first issue, for instance, Douglass and his fellow editors promise that because African Americans “must be our own representatives and advocates, not exclusively, but peculiarly—not distinct from, but in connection with our white friends,” the paper was established “under the complete control and direction of the immediate victims of slavery and oppression” (“Our Paper” 2). However, they continue elsewhere, that the goal is not only the end of slavery but also various 72

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forms of black uplift. In the essay “To Our Oppressed Countrymen,” they explain that in the North Star, “Every effort to injure or degrade your cause—originating wheresoever, or with whomsoever—shall find in it a constant, unswerving and inflexible foe.” As such, while the paper will continue the antislavery cause, “its columns shall be freely opened to the candid and decorous discussion of all measures and topics of a moral and human character.” Ultimately, the goal of the paper then, is not just antislavery, but black community, which is made especially clear in the following paragraph: “Remember that we are one, that our cause is one, and that we must help each other, if we would succeed. . . We are one with you under the ban of prejudice and proscription—one with you under the slander of inferiority—one with you in social and political disfranchisement. What you suffer, we suffer; what you endure, we endure. We are indissolubly united, and must fall or flourish together” (“To Our Oppressed” 2). This kind of unity, which can be seen in the help provided by Sandy Jenkins and the “Sunday School,” exists here in the North Star, one of Douglass’s most important achievements. Indeed, while Douglass at first appears to be an individualist, his connection to a black community, first seen in his Narrative, runs deep throughout his career, and this view, ultimately, provides a fuller view of Douglass’s multifaceted and contradictory intellectual life. Contradictions, Continued As a slave narrative, Narrative of the Life is an inadequate representation, limited formally by the conventions of the “master outline” and limited ideologically by white antislavery institutions. Thus, the canonization of Narrative of the Life not only obscures and suppresses other works of African American literature, as scholars have demonstrated, but also obscures and suppresses Frederick Douglass’s long and dynamic career. Taking these issues into account, this essay attempts to demystify Narrative of the Life’s canonical status by presenting “The Battle with Mr. Covey” not as the most famous scene of Douglass’s most famous work, but rather as the first, contradictory steps in Douglass’s intellectual life. Assessing Canonization and Its Discontents

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the scene in the context of some of his later writings on self-reliance and black community ultimately demonstrates that Douglass is a dynamic intellectual with competing and contradictory theories that extend out beyond his most well-known narrative. And “The Battle with Mr. Covey” is not the only scene in Narrative of the Life that we can reexamine in the context of Douglass’s later writings. Consider, for example, the scene in which his master chastises his wife for teaching Douglass to read. Here, Douglass clearly learns the power of literacy, for he writes that after that moment, he “set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read” (Narrative 29). When we consider this scene alongside some of Douglass’s later writings on racial prejudice—“Prejudice against Color” (1850) and “The Color Line” (1881), for example—we find that his master also unknowingly instructs Douglass in the ways of navigating white supremacy. Douglass continues: “What [my master] 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” (Narrative 30). Similarly, as critics have shown, the violence in “The Battle with Mr. Covey,” was surprisingly subdued, demonstrating, in part, Douglass’s commitment to the Garrisonian tenet of non-violence. However, a later scene more clearly telegraphs the new stance on the need for violent resistance. In his discussion of the Underground Railroad, Douglass states the he will not give details because he does not want to hinder other slaves from escaping. He is also discreet because he wishes to leave the “merciless slaveholder profoundly ignorant.” “Let him be left to feel his way in the dark,” Douglass continues, “let darkness commensurate with his crime hover over him; and let him feel that at every step he takes, in pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running the frightful risk of having his hot brains dashed out by an invisible agency” (Narrative 66). The rage and need for violent retribution expressed here would later become more explicit in such pieces as “Capt. John Brown Is Not Insane” (1859) and “Men of Color, To Arms!” (1863). Lastly, Narrative of the Life is predominantly a male narrative: few women figure into 74

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the story and Douglass’s wife, Anna, only merits a brief mention on the final pages. Studies of Douglass’s life and some of his later writings, however, show that Douglass not only worked closely with both white and black women, but, in such essays as “The Women’s Suffrage Movement” (1870) actively advocated for women’s rights. These examples ultimately demonstrate that, while Narrative of the Life is incomplete and limited in scope, it is an excellent starting point for a more dynamic and complex portrait of one of the nineteenth century’s most important intellectuals. Works Cited Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon and Schuster, 2018. Drexler, Michael J., and Ed White. “Canon Loading.” Beyond Douglass: New Perspectives on Early African-American Literature, edited by Michael J. Drexler and Ed White. Bucknell UP, 2008, pp. 1–19. Douglass, Frederick. “Brethren, Rouse the Church.” Frederick Douglass Papers, edited by John W. Blassingame, ser. 1, vol. 2. Yale UP, 1979, pp. 90–93. __________. “Introduction to The Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbia Exposition.” The Portable Frederick Douglass, edited by John Stauffer and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Penguin, 2016, pp. 517–26. __________. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. 1881. Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Library of America, 1994, pp. 453–1045. __________. My Bondage and My Freedom. 1855. Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies. edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Library of America, 1994, pp. 103–452. __________. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. 1845. edited by William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely. W. W. Norton and Company, 1997. __________. “The Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men.” The Portable Frederick Douglass, edited by John Stauffer and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Penguin, 2016, pp. 292–302.

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Guillén, Claudio. Literature as System: Essays Toward the Theory of Literary History. Princeton UP, 1971. Levine, Robert S. The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Harvard UP, 2016. McDowell, Deborah E. “In the First Place: Making Frederick Douglass and the Afro-American Narrative Tradition.” Critical Essays on Frederick Douglass, edited by William L. Andrews. G. K. Hall, 1991, pp. 192–214. McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. W. W. Norton and Company, 1991. Olney, James. “‘I Was Born’: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature.” Callaloo, no. 20, 1984, pp. 46–73. “Our Paper and Its Prospects.” The North Star, 3 Dec. 1847, p. 2. Sekora, John. “Black Message/White Envelope: Genre, Authenticity, and Authority in the Antebellum Slave Narrative.” Callaloo, no. 32, 1987, pp. 482–515. “To Our Oppressed Countrymen.” The North Star, 3 December 1847, p. 2.

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The Many Roles of Listening in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life and The Heroic Slave Mike Kolakoski

America will not allow her children to love her. She seems bent on compelling those who would be her warmest friends, to be her worst enemies. May God give her repentance, before it is too late, is the ardent prayer of my heart. I will continue to pray, labor, and wait, believing that she cannot always be insensible to the dictates of justice, or deaf to the voice of humanity (Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom 369) What a happy country this will be, if the whites will listen. (David Walker, Appeal 79)

As Michael Purdy argued in 1997, when it comes to the study of communications, Western civilization has prioritized the speaker, i.e., the act of expression, at the expense of the listener: “In fact, speaking has been championed as the way to success throughout Western history. We give honors and awards to great speakers, but how [many] people do you know who have been recognized for their listening talents?” (1). At the dawn of a new millennium— thanks to the work of Purdy and countless other scholars who have contributed to the burgeoning field of listening studies in disciplines ranging from film, music, and law to psychology, economics, and political science—“we know differently” (2). I argue that more of us in the discipline of literary studies should do the same. Of course, there are a number of literary scholars who have focused on the representation of sound, but as has been the case throughout the history of Western Civilization, much of this scholarship focuses on expression at the expense of reception. While there are exceptions (see, for example Duncan or Stoever), far fewer scholars have studied the reception of sound represented in literary form. In a The Many Roles of Listening

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modest attempt to remedy the situation, this chapter will take for its subject the act of listening. To be clear, I am not using the term as a mere metaphor for reading literature, as many have employed it; rather I am pursuing a line of inquiry that explores the many roles that listening plays in the literature that we read. For, while those of us who study and teach literature may be relatively late to the game, the artists we cherish have been representing and theorizing the act of listening for ages. One such iconic author is Frederick Douglass. Writing not only within the context of abolitionist discourse but also within the realm of American fiction, Douglass employs the act of listening for wideranging narrative purposes: • as a means of displaying a representative quality of the author; • as a means by which the oppressor instills fear and intimidation in the mind of the oppressed; • as a means of constructing subjectivity (of the slave and slaveholder alike); • as a means of engendering desire and action; • as a means of deconstructing institutional state apparatuses (e.g., the institution of slavery and the law); • as a means of conforming to or rebelling against the social order • and perhaps most significantly in the fight for abolition, as a means ofrepresenting the reformation of slaves and white oppressors alike.

Nowhere is the trope of listening as prevalent in Douglass’s work as in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life. Moreover, Douglass turns to the novella format seven years later in order to construct the ideal white listening subject so important to the slave’s fight for freedom but all too absent from the abolitionist’s nonfiction. Therefore, my primary focus in this chapter will be on those two texts.

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Listening as a Representative Quality of the Author In Narrative of the Life, Douglass demonstrates an ability to listen to his surroundings that represents not only a qualitative characteristic of the author but also the subjectivity of listening. Describing a barn in which two slaves were charged with caring for the horses on the plantation, Douglass expresses an ability to empathize via the act of listening: “It was painful to stand near the stable door, and hear the various complaints against the keepers when a horse was taken out for use” (17). Such empathy is not particularly surprising; what intrigues me is the author’s use of listening to manifest such an ability to understand and share the feelings of his fellow slave. Recalling the abuses of his first master, Anthony, Douglass again employs the act of listening in the noteworthy Aunt Hester scene. As Jennifer Lynn Stoever points out, this “primal scene” is oftdiscussed by Douglass scholars, but “these critics do not overtly implicate listening in the process” (see footnote #37 in The Sonic Color Line 288–89). Douglass had “often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heartrending shrieks” of his aunt whom Anthony “used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood” (6). While this scene depicts the ways in which Douglass registers the brutality of slavery through the act of listening, it also represents the white man’s refusal to listen: “No words, no tears, no prayers, from this gory victim seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush” (6). By no means am I implying that Mr. Anthony does not hear the cries of Aunt Hester, for he wants to hear them in order to know that his whip is, indeed, torturing Douglass’s aunt, but listening is very much a subjective act. As Stoever argues, Master Anthony is listening in accordance with the sonic color line of the times, a term she uses to describe “the process of racializing sound—how and why certain bodies are expected to produce, desire, and live amongst particular sounds—and its product, the hierarchical division sounded between ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’” (7). As a slaveholder, Mr. Anthony interprets what he hears as proof The Many Roles of Listening

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of his power, while as a fellow slave and nephew of the woman being tortured, Douglass interprets what he hears as evidence of slavery’s brutality. Moreover, as Stoever puts it, Douglas uses the act of listening to allow his readers to interpret Aunt Hester’s cries beyond the sonic color line of the nineteenth century that shapes how Anthony hears them: “Only then may they hear black voices in sonic resistance to the system denying them personhood, ‘every tone a testimony against slavery’” (50). The author repeatedly registers the horrors of slave life via the act of listening all the while depicting the subjectivity of the listening ear. He writes about his “conviction of the infernal character of slavery” and his “unutterable loathing of slaveholders” that is deepened by “their base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother” (47). To represent his grandmother’s despair late in her life, Douglass turns again to the literary soundscape: “The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who once sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in the darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her children she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom” (49). The loneliness engendered by the slave system, which ruthlessly separated parents from their children, is registered in the passage first by what the grandmother does not hear then by what she does hear and how she listens to it. Her estrangement from her offspring renders the sound of a dove as a moan and the hoot of an owl as a hideous scream. In this section of his Narrative, we witness the ways in which Douglass uses the act of listening to construct the subjectivity of his grandmother, just as he used it to represent that of Master Anthony. Douglass’s ability to listen empowers him to learn of the underpinnings by which the system of slavery depends and deconstruct the institutional state apparatus. Shortly after he goes to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, the latter begins to teach him to read: “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” (33). Wu Jin-Ping notes the way in which listening to the Aulds functions in 80

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the maturation of the young slave: “This dialogue gave Douglass unexpected knowledge. Later he recalled that Master Hugh’s ‘discourse was the first decidedly anti-slavery lecture to which it had been my lot to listen’” (30). Listening is the means by which Douglass comes to understand the greater social structure of slavery, the impact of which he clearly emphasizes: “These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought” (33). In addition to functioning as a means of deconstructing the institution of slavery, listening functions as a means here of engendering desire or hope. In fact, just prior to this scene, listening has already engendered Douglass’s original motivation to flee the plantation for the city of Baltimore where he would eventually encounter the Aulds: “Cousin Tom, though not fluent in speech, had inspired me with that desire by his eloquent description of the place. I could never point out any thing at the Great House, no matter how beautiful or powerful, but that he had seen something at Baltimore far exceeding, both in beauty and strength, the object which I pointed out to him” (29). The ability to listen motivates many other events in Douglass’s text, but I am getting ahead of myself. Suffice it to say, for now, that Douglass possessed a keen ability to listen. The Appeal to Be Heard As William Lloyd Garrison argues in the inaugural issue of The Liberator, an effective abolitionist must possess the ability to capture the attention of others; i.e., they must “be heard” (4), and Douglass is able, in his Narrative as well as his public speeches, to convince both slaves and their oppressors, if only in part, to listen. While preparing to flee from a life of slavery, Douglass is able to capture the ear of his brethren: “I was not willing to cherish this determination [to escape] alone. My fellow-slaves were dear to me. I was anxious to have them participate with me in this, my life-giving determination. I therefore, though with great prudence, commenced early to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition, and to imbue their minds with thoughts of freedom” (83–84). Douglass’s ability to listen is complimented by his ability The Many Roles of Listening

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to have others listen to him: “I bent myself to devising ways and means for our escape, and meanwhile strove, on all fitting occasions, to impress them with the gross fraud and inhumanity of slavery” (84). Douglass discovers a willing audience: “I went first to Henry, next to John, then to the others. I found, in them all, warm hearts and noble spirits. They were ready to hear” (84). The phrase ready to hear suggests that others, or even Henry and John themselves at another point in time, were incapable of heeding Douglass’s words and indicates the way in which listening (to Douglass in this case) reforms the mind of the slave. In addition to appealing successfully to fellow slaves, Douglass, having escaped to Massachusetts, captivates the ear of abolitionists around the nation. Recalling his initial foray into the abolitionist movement, he refers to the listening subjects who encouraged him to advocate the cause: “[W]hile attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and at the same time much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored people’s meeting at New Bedford” (117). Displaying more than modesty, Douglass’s words highlight the importance, rhetorically, of possessing the ear of the listener. As Frank M. Kirkland notes, “[m]oral suasion has been widely recognized as a significant feature in the intellectual and political life of Frederick Douglass” (243). Moral suasion is an appeal to morality in the hopes of influencing or changing behavior. Douglass believed that moral suasion could “awaken through rhetoric moral sensibility” in the listening subject and inspire them to act on what they hear. His purpose was to motivate his audience to do what is good (Kirkland 244). Therefore, the success or failure of the abolitionist’s oratory very much depends on the listening subject. In the “Preface” to Narrative of the Life, William Lloyd Garrison testifies to Douglass’s ability to capture the ears of whites. While doing so, Garrison alludes to the way in which listening to Douglass can function as a means of inspiration: “As soon as [Douglass] had taken his seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared that Patrick Henry, of revolutionary fame, never 82

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made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one we had just heard” (v). Garrison’s recollection of Douglass’s first speech in Nantucket speaks to the ways in which listening may engender a sense of inspiration. Garrison continues to recount his reaction (and the crowd’s response) to Douglass’s speech: “I reminded the audience of the peril which surrounded this self-emancipated young man at the North [. . .] 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!’” (v). Moreover, Garrison speculates on the possibility of the abolitionist movement, infused with the oratory of Douglass, capturing even the ear of the slaveholders. When he asks if they would protect Douglass, the audience shouts “‘YES!’ [. . .] with an energy so startling, that the ruthless tyrants south of Mason and Dixon’s line 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” (v). Of course, in his Narrative Douglass remains skeptical of the slaveholder’s ability and willingness to listen in such a way. Falling on Deaf Ears The inability or unwillingness—of the master as well as the slave— to listen has grave consequences in Douglass’s autobiography. Describing the daily procedures of slave life, the author depicts the early hour at which the slaves were summoned from their slumber to the field by the driver’s horn: “At the sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the field. There must be no halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe betides them who hear not this morning summons to the field; for if they are not awakened by the sense of hearing, they are by the sense of feeling: no age nor sex finds any favor” (11). As he will in other parts of his autobiography, Douglass details the consequences of the slave not listening: “Mr. Sever, the overseer, used to stand by the door of the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who was so unfortunate as not to hear, or, from any other cause, was prevented The Many Roles of Listening

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from being ready to start for the field at the sound of the horn” (11). The inability to hear and hence heed can have dire consequences for the slave, as Douglass explains again later in his Narrative. The cousin of Douglass’s wife was deemed responsible for the care of the master’s baby: “[D]uring the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried. She, having lost her rest for several nights previous, did not hear the crying” (25). The result of this unfortunate failure to listen cannot be underestimated, for when the master’s wife—and mother of the child—found the girl “slow to move,” she proceeded to mangle Douglass’s kin “in the most horrible manner, breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor girl expired in a few hours afterward” (24–25). The failure to listen is met with some of the most heinous punishments in Douglass’s Narrative. In order to appreciate the extraordinary occasions in Douglass’s Narrative during which a white man listens, even partially, to the slave, which I will discuss below, we must first make note of the slave master’s habitual refusal or inability to listen. As previously noted, Master Anthony listens to Aunt Hester’s cries along the sonic color line, refusing to recognize in them her humanity and instead interpreting them as assurances of a job well executed. When describing another slave master, Douglass reiterates the white man’s characteristic refusal to listen: “[Mr. Austin Gore] was cruel enough to inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to descend to the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to be insensible to the voice of a reproving conscience” (22). In many ways, listening functions as a crux of slave culture, for the ideology underpinning it very much depends on those to whom one does or does not listen. The likes of Mr. Gore and Master Anthony must remain unmoved by the appeals of slaves and abolitionists lest their minds change and the ideological pillars upholding their way of life crumble. The Willingness to Listen Douglass’s emphasis on characters who refuse to hear the humanity of slaves functions to accentuate the rare white character who does listen. A formative moment in Douglass’s Narrative, in which an overseer goes from relegating him to a subhuman status to recognizing 84

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him as a fellow human being, depends, in large part, on the act of listening. When seeking refuge from a job due to sickness, Douglass is beaten by Mr. Covey, after which Douglass “resolved, for the first time, to go to [his] master, enter a complaint, and ask his protection” (67). In order to do so, Douglass must first flee the oppressive watch of Mr. Covey: “I succeeded in getting a considerable distance on my way to the woods, when Covey discovered me, and called after me to come back, threatening what he would do if I did not come. I disregarded both his calls and his threats” (67). In this passage, the refusal to listen represents a means of rebellion. Like the slave who consciously decides not to heed the slave driver’s morning summons to the field, Douglass’s refusal to listen represents the assertion of his agency, for better or worse. More importantly for my argument, the author concludes this episode by employing the act of listening as a potential catalyst for change. Having successfully escaped the grips of Mr. Covey and having arrived at his master Thomas’s store, Douglass makes an appeal to be heard despite the great odds of his words falling on deaf ears. He tells Master Thomas “all the circumstances as well as I could, and it seemed” as Douglass recalls, “at times to affect him” (68). Unfortunately, for Douglass, Master Thomas is, in the end, unwilling to listen to the slave’s appeal. Eventually, Master Thomas sends Douglas back to Baltimore to live again with the slave owner’s brother, Hugh. While in Baltimore, Douglass learns the trade of shipbuilding: “In entering the shipyard, my orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do whatever the carpenters commanded me to do. This was placing me at the beck and call of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these as master. Their word was to be my law. My situation was a most trying one” (94). Douglass’s recollection of his experience in the shipyard hints at the role of listening in the workplace. It also depicts the difficulties of listening within a cacophonous soundscape. He recounts how “[t]hree or four voices would strike [his] ear at the same moment [. . .] (Three voices at the same time.) ‘Come here!—Go there!—Hold on where you are! Damn, you, if you move, I’ll knock your brains out!’” (94–95). Such a confounding soundscape is not conducive to learning the trade, The Many Roles of Listening

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and after eight months, Douglass gets into a fight with four of the white apprentices. Afterward, Douglass talks to master Hugh, who unlike his brother, Thomas, “listened attentively to my narration of the circumstances leading to the savage outrage, and gave many proofs of his strong indignation of it” (97). The contrast between Master Hugh’s willingness to listen and his brother’s inability to do so is not lost on the slave: “I am happy to say of him, irreligious as he was, his conduct was heavenly, compared with that of his brother Thomas under similar circumstances” (97). Mr. Hugh was “very much enraged;” however, he could do little about the matter. As Douglass explains, Mr. Hugh “could issue no warrant on my word. If I had been killed in the presence of a thousand colored people, their testimony combined would have been insufficient to have arrested one of the murderers” (97). A thousand colored people would not be heard. Despite Mr. Hugh’s willingness to listen, the institutional discrimination exhibited by the criminal justice system will only change after enough individuals have reformed their way of thinking. We witness the seeds of such transformations in this isolated anecdote about Master Hugh, yet the revolution of the white man’s recognition of the slave and the former’s ability to listen to the latter is demonstrated more dramatically in Douglass’s sole work of fiction. Listening to the Heroic Slave Douglass chooses a fictional format in The Heroic Slave to address further the issue of black identity as perceived by whites in antebellum America and to speculate on the latter’s ability to reform. Furthermore, he depicts the process of such self-reformation via the act of listening as a catalyst for the amelioration of race relations. The novella format enables the author to create a more ideal listening subject in whom to enact the literary device of selfreformation and consequent action, the kind of dynamic character that rarely populates his Narrative. Douglass creates the character of Mr. Listwell, a white man from Ohio travelling in Virginia, to embody the self-reformation upon which David Walker speculates in the epigraph to this chapter. The story may very well have been 86

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inspired by a book that Douglass secured while living with the Aulds, for in The Columbian Orator, Douglass “read a dialogue between a runaway slave and his master in which the slave’s answer to his master’s question why he wanted to run away touched the master, who then emancipated the slave and wished him well” (JinPing 31–32). Moreover, The Columbian Orator, as Stoever argues, depicts the sonic color line along which an antebellum white man would most likely be persuaded (40). While not a slave owner per se, Mr. Listwell does undergo a reformation similar to that of the master in The Columbian Orator, which according to Jin-Ping, enhanced Douglass’s “burgeoning awareness of the power of spoken and written words to foment progressive change and ultimately influenced his decision to become an orator” (32). Therefore, it is not surprising that Douglass repeatedly employs the trope of listening in his sole work of fiction to represent the means by which such a progressive change may be fomented. Part I of The Heroic Slave consists entirely of a white man listening to a slave’s appeal. It is important to note that Douglass has the reader follow Mr. Listwell in this scene: “While his weary and thirsty steed drew in the grateful water, the rider caught the sound of a human voice, apparently engaged in earnest” (176). This is a case of acousmatic listening, as Mr. Listwell hears without seeing the source of the sound: “Following the direction of the sound, he descried, among the tall pines, the man whose voice had arrested his attention. ‘To whom can he be speaking?’ thought the traveler. ‘He seems to be alone’” (176). Of course, Madison Washington, the eponymous heroic slave on the run, thinks he is alone, but for the sake of Douglass’s plot, he is unwittingly speaking to the white man who “distinctly heard the following soliloquy” (176). This fictitious scene represents the kind of moral suasion discussed above in relation to the significant features of Douglass’s intellectual and political life, for the disembodied voice has a transcendent effect on the white man. Upon overhearing the runaway slave’s soliloquy in the woods while traveling through Virginia, Mr. Listwell experiences the type of change in character upon which Walker speculates in his Appeal and about which Douglass reads The Many Roles of Listening

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in The Columbian Orator. While comparing his situation with the lot of other animals in the world, Madison Washington pleads on behalf of his own humanity: “That accursed and crawling snake, that miserable reptile, that has just glided into its slimy home, is freer and better off than I. He escaped my blow, and is safe. But here am I, a man,—yes, a man!—with thoughts and wishes, with powers and faculties as far as angel’s flight above that hated reptile—yet he is my superior, and scorns to own me as his master” (177). Black identity in the eyes of many whites during antebellum America was inferior even to that of an animal. The repetition of and exclamation placed upon the notion that Madison is, in fact, a human indicates the importance, in Douglass’s mind, of stressing such a fact. The ideology of slavery denied the enslaved individual’s humanity. Thus, emancipation was wed to identity politics, and Mr. Listwell, who unbeknownst to Madison overhears the soliloquy, must recognize this relationship in order to help the slave. Most importantly for my argument, Douglass represents such recognition through the act of listening. After all, it was clearly “the sound of a human voice” and a “man whose voice had arrested his attention” (176). Eventually Mr. Listwell sees the source of the sound, still the significance of the scene continues to be registered via the act of listening: “His broad mouth and nose spoke only of good nature and kindness. But his voice, that unfailing index of the soul, though full and melodious, had that in it which could terrify as well as charm” (179). Ultimately, Madison’s declaration that he is a human being and not a brute will cause Mr. Listwell to change his view of a historically oppressed people. Moreover, eavesdropping upon Madison’s speech in the woods proves to be providential for Mr. Listwell. He “could not quit the place. He had long desired to sound the mysterious depths of the thoughts and feelings of a slave. He was not, therefore, disposed to allow so providential an opportunity to pass unimproved. He resolved to hear more; so he listened again for those mellow and mournful accents which, he says, made such an impression upon him as can never be erased” (179–80). Mr. Listwell’s act of listening produces the moral suasion that Douglass sought in his political oratory. As Part I of the novella 88

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closes, the free white man contemplates the revelation he has just overheard: “The speech of Madison rung through the chambers of his soul, and vibrated through his entire frame. ‘Here is indeed a man,’ thought he, ‘of rare endowments,—a child of God,—guilty of no crime but the color of his skin,—hiding away from the face of humanity, and pouring out his thoughts and feelings, his hopes and resolutions to the lonely woods’” (181). Considering the care with which Douglass crafts his writing, and more importantly, the significance that the author places on the recognition of black identity as no less than human, the break in Mr. Listwell’s speech isolating the phrase Here is indeed a man serves to emphasize once again the importance of such a revelation. Listening to the slave’s speech changes the way Mr. Listwell thinks of Madison, and such reformation ultimately leads to action or moral suasion: “From this hour I am an abolitionist. I have seen enough and heard enough, and I shall go to my home in Ohio resolved to atone for my past indifference to this ill-starred race, by making such exertions as I shall be able to do, for the speedy emancipation of every slave in the land” (182). Indifference too often perpetuates oppression, and Mr. Listwell, while not part of the solution, would have continued to be a part of the problem if not for the reformation of his attitude toward the oppressed Madison Washingtons of the world. Mr. Listwell’s newfound understanding of black identity causes him to aid in the eventual emancipation of his brethren, providing the runaway slave food and shelter for a night in Ohio. The action engendered by such self-reformation in The Heroic Slave ultimately improves race relations within Douglass’s novella. After successfully escaping to Canada, Madison writes a letter to Mr. Listwell in which he addresses the reformed character as “My dear Friend,—for such you truly are” (205). He writes the letter in order to thank Mr. Listwell for his assistance in the slave’s flight to freedom and expresses his gratitude for the white man’s actions. It depicts the potential compassionate relationships between whites and blacks resulting from the former’s willingness to listen to the latter: “As many thanks to you, sir, and to your kind lady, as there are pebbles on the shores of Lake Erie; and may the blessing The Many Roles of Listening

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of God rest upon you both. You will never be forgotten by your profoundly grateful friend” (205). In Douglass’s novella, a white man’s willingness to listen and his consequent reformation of the ways in which he understands black identity serves as a catalyst to the story. During a terribly tenuous period in U.S. history that will ultimately lead to civil war, Douglass speculates upon the ways in which his country could avoid such a cataclysmic fate, if as Walker proclaims, the whites will listen. He will go on to profess in his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), that the country “cannot always be insensible to the dictates of justice, or deaf to the voice of humanity” (369). But as I have argued in this chapter, he had already established in Narrative of the Life and The Heroic Slave the variety of roles that listening will play in his work and society writ large. For the trope of listening functions in his early writing not only as a means of representing the reformation of white oppressors and slaves alike, but also as a means of conforming to or rebelling against the social order, as a means of deconstructing institutional state apparatuses, as a means of engendering desire and action, as a means of constructing subjectivity, as a means by which the oppressor instills fear and intimidation in the mind of the oppressed, and as a means of displaying a representative quality of the author. Works Cited Duncan, Charles. “Learning to Listen to ‘Sonny’s Blues.’” Obsidian II, vol. 9, no. 2, 1994, pp. 1–10. Douglass, Frederick. “The Heroic Slave.” Autographs for Freedom, edited by Julia Griffiths. John P. Jewett & Company, 1853, pp. 174–239. U of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center, June 1998, utc.iath. virginia.edu/africam/affifda1t.html. __________. My Bondage and My Freedom. 1855. Miller, Orten and Mulligan. Documenting the American South, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/ douglass55/douglass55.html.

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__________.Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written By Himself. 1845. Boston Antislavery Office. Documenting the American South, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/ douglass.html. Garrison, William Lloyd. “To the Public.” The Liberator. vol. 1, no. 1, 1 Jan. 1831, pp. 2–4. Halliday, Sam. Sonic Modernity: Representing Sound in Literature, Culture and the Arts. Edinburgh UP, 2013. Jin-Ping, Wu. Frederick Douglass and the Black Liberation Movement: The North Star of American Blacks. Garland. 2000. Purdy, Michael. “What Is Listening?” Listening in Everyday Life: A Personal and Professional Approach, edited by Michael Purdy and Deborah Borisoff, 2nd ed., UP of America, 1997, pp. 1–20. Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. The Sonic Color Line: Race & the Cultural Politics of Listening. New York UP, 2016. Walker, David. Appeal, in Four Articles, Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World. 1829. Documenting the South, docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html.

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“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon”: Self-Reliance and Selfishness in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Regina Yoong

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” he incites readers “[t]o believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius” (132). Emerson’s idea of trueness resonates with Thomas Carlyle’s understanding of Inner Light,1 positing the importance of integrity and courage in shaping American individualism. However, contrary to a message that individualism incites division, Emerson avers that obedience to the “latent conviction” in each man’s heart, shall be the “universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost” (“SelfReliance” 132). He contends for the triumph of personal principles even at the cost of offending others: “I must be myself” (“SelfReliance” 145). He rejects conformity to and acceptance of anyone’s beliefs contrary to inner conscience and exhorts his readers to “live in truth” and to shun pretense (“Self-Reliance” 145). Using Emerson’s framework of conviction, I analyse Fredrick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845), a book celebrated as the quintessential American story of self-reliance and individualism. Both Douglass and Emerson were driven by “what is true” and were adamant in their fight against dominant and detrimental beliefs of their time (“Self-Reliance” 145). However, I argue that their processes of realization—the health of their eyes—emerged from different places. Emerson envisioned an individual’s step towards self-reliance through an intellectual space of words, while Douglass’s self-reliance was contingent upon self-education and physical confrontation. 92

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In his essay “Nature,” Emerson draws parallels between human nature and the environment. He posits that nature reflects the individual temperament, and it “always wears the colors of the spirit,” (7) adding, “To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend” (“Nature” 7). Emerson’s observation of nature as a mirror to the spirit of man also materializes in Douglass’s experience in Narrative. Douglass and his fellow slaves endured sadness and contempt as they toiled in nature. In fact, Douglass inverts the pleasure that Emerson derives from nature where the “fields and woods minister” through the perverted delight of Mr. Plummer, who also torments Douglass’s aunt via whipping (“Nature” 7). The scene that Douglass recounts foregrounds the danger of selfishness masquerading as self-reliance: [Mr. Plummer] was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. (Narrative 15)

In this instance, Mr. Plummer’s presumption delineates the fine line between self-reliance and selfishness. Instead of filling Mr. Plummer with shame and remorse, the destruction of nature—the body of Douglass’s aunt—gives him pleasure. Here, Douglass draws attention to a point of contention many critics of Emerson’s selfreliance make: self-reliance is merely another word of selfishness. Through the characterization of Mr. Plummer, Douglass suggests that Mr. Plummer is not self-reliant. He no longer listens to his own conscience and heart since he has been “hardened by a long life of slaveholding” (Narrative 15). Instead of broadening his horizon, Mr. Plummer’s understanding is reduced to a dangerous and narrow belief of white superiority in his support of slavery. Besides critiquing acts of cruelty, Douglass also critiques the slaves’ passive acceptance of the slave owners’ behaviors. For Douglass, self-reliance must emerge from discontentment, contrary Self-Reliance and Selfishness

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to the slaves’ unquestioned submission toward their slave owners. In Chapter 10 of Narrative, Douglass presents the slave owners’ encouragement of holiday festivities amongst the slaves as a subtle form of dehumanization masked as kindness. He refers to the festivities as “conductors,” but instead of fostering empowerment, they serve to deter the spirit of self-reliance amongst the slaves: “These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation” (Narrative 75). The facade of the slave owners allowing the slaves a moment of respite, happiness, and independence damages the manhood and womanhood of the unsuspecting slaves. Douglass sees through the horrendous smokescreen: The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon the down-trodden slave (Narrative 75)

It is interesting that Douglass calls the slave owners’ act of allowing the slaves to celebrate as the “grossest fraud” rather than cruel punishments such as whipping and torture. However, Douglass understood that cruelty could prompt a person’s growth towards self-reliance as we later see in his encounter with Mr. Covey. Here, though, Douglass detests the falsehood in the slave owners’ kindness in encouraging slaves to celebrate and feast during certain holidays, as he perceived their intentions to perpetuate slavery and further suppress the development of the slaves’ sense of self. He sheds more light on this in the following passage: They do not give the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it . . .Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation (Narrative 75). 94

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To prevent the degeneration of self-reliance amongst the slaves, Douglass rouses his fellow slaves to resist the tricks that the slave owners employed, even at the cost of immediate gratification and jollification. Douglass longs to help empower the slaves to a place of self-realization and self-reliance even if it is inconvenient and timeconstraining. In contrast to the slave owners’ superficial, fleeting offer of holiday leisure, Douglass reiterates Emerson’s notion of an ongoing peace that stems from within: “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles” (“Self-Reliance” 153). True American individualism, according to Emerson, ultimately unites the country and creates community that will last for all time, even until the “Last Judgement” (“Self-Reliance” 137). Emerson believed that American traditions and the pressure to conform with certain practices could hinder truth and unity. Although it was a contentious task, he sought to change the way people thought. He recognized that for “nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And, therefore, a man must know how to estimate a sour face” (“Self-Reliance” 137). If Douglass conveys a similar spirit as Emerson, his pursuit of truth cost him far more—his flesh and blood—something Emerson was not subjected to given his status as a white man in American society. For nonconformity, the world literally whipped Douglass with its displeasure and hatred. Douglass’s sense of self-reliance extends beyond Emerson’s because it not only encompasses the spiritual and the mental, but also the physical. In Chapter 10 of Narrative, Douglass recounts the physical fight between himself and Mr. Covey, which serves as an impetus for his realization of his manhood and self-worth as a human being. He states that the “battle with Mr. Covey was the turningpoint 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” (Narrative 72). Most critics highlight this occasion as the pivotal moment that Douglass changes from a slave to an anti-slave; as is the threshold moment that launches Douglass from disbelief to belief and despair to inspired action. Douglass’s Self-Reliance and Selfishness

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self-reliance had to be “recalled” and acted upon (Narrative 72). It was not something slave owners taught him, or nature ministered to him, but something that rose out inherently from within himself and from his own spirit. He reflects, “I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom” (Narrative 73). From his once helpless and vulnerable body, Douglass’s self-reliance materializes and in “glorious resurrection” he transforms, becoming a living embodiment of Emerson’s selfreliance, especially when Emerson states that, I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints (“Self-Reliance” 145).

The difference between Emerson’s and Douglass’s self-reliance is that while Emerson contemplates that which is “holy” and that which “rejoices,” Douglass remains concerned about his individual freedom, the basic right of being a human. He takes Emerson’s “I must be myself” statement and distills it down to its rawest form of humanity: the right to act as one chooses, which is most evident in the treatment of the body. Through his presentation of his fight with Mr. Covey, Douglass emphasizes the vividness of the physical aspects of self-reliance. In addition to presenting bodily freedom, Douglass also champions education as central to slaves’ freedom and self-reliance. For Douglass, the only way that slaves can achieve freedom is through education, something that Emerson perhaps took for granted and naturally assumed to be the right of every individual. Douglass’s first encounter with formal education occurs at the Aulds, and specifically through his interactions with Sophie Auld, who teaches Douglass how to read. Douglass describes her as “a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings,” unsullied by society’s view of slavery, and having been “a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery” (Narrative 32). She exemplifies 96

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independence and self-reliance since she is “dependent upon her own industry for a living” and is “by trade a weaver” (Narrative 32). Not only does Mrs. Auld teach Douglass how to read, she also treats him like a man and gentleman. Her self-reliance encourages Douglass’s own confidence in his manhood. He explains: The crouching servility, usually so acceptable a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward her. Her favor was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it. She did not deem it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in the face. The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music (Narrative 32).

In this instance, Mrs. Auld resembles the angelic character Evangeline in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a character who serves as the epitome of kindness and goodness in the midst of slavery. However, Mrs. Auld’s generosity is shortlived because instead of listening to her own heart about Douglass, she silences her convictions and conforms to the society’s treatment of slaves when she willingly listens to her husband’s indictment to stop educating Douglass: “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” (Narrative 33). Mrs. Auld’s personal stance and self-reliance falter and morph into dangerous compliance and unquestioned submission. At this moment, Mrs. Auld transforms from someone who listens to her own heart—a self-reliant woman—to someone who conforms at the cost of her own integrity, and she submits to Mr. Auld, who “forbade” her to “instruct” (Narrative 32). Mrs. Auld’s self-reliance quickly degenerates into selfishness as she adheres to the cruel expectations of society. Social conventions propagated the idea that self-reliance among slaves was dangerous and would threaten the positionality of the whites. Instead of encouraging the triumph of individualism and self-reliance, the Aulds accept this belief and view self-reliance among slaves as a Self-Reliance and Selfishness

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threat. Douglass calls their illusions the “fatal poison of irresponsible power,” which makes Mrs. Auld’s “cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery” become “red with rage” and a voice from one “made all of sweet accord” change into one of “harsh and horrid discord” (Narrative 32). Mr. Auld views Douglass’s potential self-reliance as “unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to [Douglass] himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy” (Narrative 32). The only form of reliance Mr. Auld accepts for slaves is one that depends upon slave owners and promotes helplessness and mistreatment. The Aulds felt justified and believed they were doing the right thing. In fact, they applauded themselves as they were convinced that, “If you give a n***** an inch, he will take an ell. A n***** should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do” and that “Learning would spoil the best n***** in the world” (Narrative 33). Despite the Aulds’ resistance, Douglass remained determined to be free, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Douglass describes the broadening of his horizon as occurring within the domestic sphere, when he first realizes the importance of education, an understated and assumed prerequisite to Emerson’s vision of resistance and selfreliance. For Douglass, self-reliance appears most evident in his resolution to educate himself: “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” (Narrative 34). Douglass’s self-discovery occurs even in the absence of circumstantial encouragement. Instead of dampening his spirits toward education and knowledge, the selfishness of Mr. and Mrs. Auld—who was convinced of the “evil consequences” of educating a slave—spurs Douglass’s determination to learn: “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” (Narrative 34). Unlike Emerson’s observation about the outer, natural environment reflecting the inner disposition of men, Douglass pushes against his detrimental and limiting environment in his yearning for education. 98

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He comes very close to actualizing Emerson’s statement of the “American Genius” who resembles “the poor negro soldier lying in the trenches by the Potomac, with his spelling book in one hand and his musket in the other” (Uncollected Lectures 41–42). In this sense, Douglass serves as an example of Emerson’s concept of genius, effectively fighting against the oppression of slavery and singlemindedness to teach himself how to read and write. Commenting on the relationship between Emerson’s selfreliance and slavery, Len Gougeon observes that “African Americans should not attempt to present a pale imitation of white civilization; they must be true to themselves” (628). Gougeon asserts that, “[d]espite his initial reservations, as Douglass gradually found his voice, his sense of his limitations gave way to a robust confidence in his rights, a shift in attitude that marked his movement from slave to anti-slave” (634). Douglass’s encounters with the Aulds and the physical fight with Mr. Covey represent significant points that cement Douglass’s transformation from slave to anti-slave. Though by no means indicative of a peaceful transition, they also parallel Emerson’s definition of liberty in his “Fugitive Slave Law” address. Emerson argues: “Liberty is aggressive, Liberty is the Crusade of all brave and conscientious men, the Epic Poetry the new religion, the chivalry of all gentlemen. This is the oppressed Lady whom true knights on their oath and honor must rescue and save” (“Fugitive Slave Law” 792). Douglass embodies the aggression and violence needed to obtain liberty. For Emerson, verbal aggression superseded physical action, but for Douglass, physical resistance is a necessary precursor to spiritual and mental liberty. Douglass not only realizes Emerson’s ideals, but he demonstrates the liberty of thought the slaves ought to pursue in physical and intellectual freedom. Freedom consumed Douglass, and it fueled his compassion for other slaves. His choice of naming certain benefactors and perpetrators while concealing the real names of the others in Narrative foregrounds his concern for protecting those who remained enslaved. He identified with their suffering and desperation, and he risked his life and freedom in composing Narrative. Self-Reliance and Selfishness

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Despite being free in the North, he remained threatened by the federal fugitive slave laws2 and the possibility of being kidnapped and returned to the South. Yet, Douglass risked his freedom because his conviction demanded freedom and a horizon for all and not just himself. Douglass advocated for self-made freedom for African Americans. Emerson reiterates the role of independence in selfgrowth in his journal: “I say to you, you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman; other help there is none” (329). Along similar lines, Douglass believed that the slaves must enable themselves. The health of the eye demands a horizon, and it is dependent on one’s own eye and seeing, not one that is imposed on from either well-meaning white abolitionists or slave owners. Huge Egan observes that, “[l]ike Emerson, Douglass undoubtedly came to realize that an enslaving coercion can take many forms. Using an apt trope, the bard had noted years earlier in “Self-Reliance” that “for nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure” (650). Though Emerson may have experienced occasional verbal reprimands, Douglass literally experienced the whipping of the world’s displeasure. He became the embodiment of the words that Emerson spoke; he became the word made flesh for Emersonian ideas and their far-reaching horizons. For Douglass, self-reliance depended on the will to educate himself and to defend himself against the slave owners. He did not care if he was “deemed superstitions, and even egotistical,” and he always strove to “be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence” (Narrative 31). Douglass echoes Emerson’s words on integrity and character, where his “deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace” (Narrative 31). However, it is also interesting to note that Douglass’s self-reliance led him to place his trust in God. In Chapter 5 of Narrative, Douglass contemplates: “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. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise”(Narrative 31). Douglass merges the 100

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qualities of self-trust and God-trust together; self-reliance and Godreliance. However, he was careful in his expression of the difference between trust in God and Christianity as practiced in the United States. Commenting upon work of the white churches during the nineteenth century, Douglass had this to say: “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other” (Narrative 71). One of the principal ways that slave owners justified slavery originates from the biblical account of the Curse of Ham. Noah cursed his youngest son, Ham, whose descendants were believed to be dark-skinned Africans, to be a servant of servants as a punishment for seeing the naked and drunken Noah.3 From Douglass’s perspective, slave owners perverted scriptures to justify their actions, but it did not destroy his belief in a Christian God. He asserts, “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity” (Narrative 71). One might argue that Sophia Auld does initially demonstrate this pure and peaceable sense of God, but that she inherently destroys it when she decides to conform to society’s dehumanization of slaves, ironically, by using the Bible. Douglass’s self-reliance also hearkens back to Emerson’s Harvard Divinity School address on non-conformity. Although Emerson celebrates virtue as a “reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws,” he opposes the lack of “soul” in the laws or church rituals, leading him to stop taking the communion because he views the act as a mere façade without true belief in the divine: “[t]he intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul” (“An Address” 64). Emerson’s contention with the Calvinist church of his time is its lack of insight into the soul, which he believes to be the essence of faith. His central dispute Self-Reliance and Selfishness

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with conforming to dead traditions and past ways of thinking is bold. Emerson’s identity as an American Christian and his concerns about his own convictions and the well-being of his community urge him to write and speak for human equality. This took the form of Transcendentalism, which celebrates the inner divinity in every person. He postulates that “greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views” (“SelfReliance” 147). In other words, self-reliance enables the eye to see a horizon and nurtures the health of the eye in every aspect of life. Emerson rallies his readers to action, not by offering solutions or methods to emulate, but by urging them to look for “what is true for you” which, he argues, impacts every facet of everyday life (“SelfReliance” 137). Similarly, the fine line between selfishness and self-reliance permeates throughout Douglass’s Narrative. He shows the dangers of social conformity through the depictions of his Mr. Covey and the Aulds; he foregrounds the dangers of cruelty masquerading under the guise of nobility in his portrayal of slave owners allowing the slaves to celebrate a festive event; he also delineates the dangers of justifying slavery with the use of Christian doctrines. For Douglass, self-reliance becomes the essential quality to discern between right and wrong and good and evil, especially when social conformity degenerates a person and plagues an entire nation. He suggests that all, including slave owners, their wives, and slaves, are debased by the lack of conviction for what is true and good. By distinguishing between selfishness and self-reliance, the health of both Douglass’s and Emerson’s eyes witness a growing and expanding horizon, and they envision freedom and slavery for what they are in nineteenthcentury America. The framework of self-reliance within Narrative amplifies Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” essay as Douglass embodies the spirit of self-reliance in his own way, informed as much by the physical as the mental or intellectual spheres, and he vehemently demonstrates it through his determination for education, courage to fight for liberty, and perseverance to help his fellow slaves 102

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through the act of telling his story and writing it in his now classic autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Notes 1.

2.

3.

From the Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle: The clearer my Inner Light may shine, through the less turbid media; the fewer Phantasms it may produce—the gladder surely shall I be, and not the sorrier! Hast thou reflected, O serious reader, Advanced-Liberal or other, that the one end, essence, use of all religion past, present and to come, was this only: To keep that same Moral Conscience or Inner Light of ours alive and shining (417). Daniel Webster advocated for the Fugitive Slave Bill and the preservation of the Union. His famous words in his speech on March 7, 1850: “Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States.. . . I speak for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause.” Read more about the debacle here: /www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Speech_Costs_ Senator_His_Seat.htm. Genesis IX, 18–27: “And the sons of Noah that went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole world overspread. And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.”

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Works Cited Douglass, Frederick. “Life of an American Slave.” 1845. utc.iath.virginia. edu/abolitn/abaufda14t.html. __________. Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. 1845, edited by William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely, 2nd ed., W. W. Norton & Co., 2017. Egan, Hugh. On Freedom”: Emerson, Douglass, and the Self-reliant Slave.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, vol. 60, no. 2, 2014, p. 183–208. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/esq.2014.0005. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “An Address.” 1838. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Brooks Atkinson. Modern Library, 2000, pp. 63–80. __________. Emerson in His Journals, edited by Joel Porte. Harvard UP, 1982. __________. Uncollected Lectures, edited by Clarence Gohdes, Jr. William Edwin Rudge, 1932. Gougeon, Len. “Militant Abolitionism: Douglass, Emerson, and the Rise of the Anti-Slave.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 4, 2012, pp. 622–57. JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/41714229. The Holy Bible. King James Version. 1611. Bible Gateway. www. biblegateway.com/versions/King-James-Version-KJV-Bible/.

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The Anticipatory Print Life of Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852) Lori Leavell

Anyone who encounters Frederick Douglass’s speech known as “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852) cannot help but wonder about audience. Political expediency surely must have outweighed social decorum. How else to describe Douglass’s decision to censure the audience for having invited him to the event as featured guest speaker? Though Douglass begins by identifying the listeners as “Friends and Fellow Citizens,” distance soon emerges between speaker and audience as the numbers of “you” and “your” accumulate, indicating that he does not count himself among the collective addressed (359). “Citizens,” he says, “your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary” (363). If the nation’s independence is “yours,” it is not ours. What began as distance goes a step further to become accusatory: “Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day?” and later, “Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?” (367, 368). The terms of affiliation (“Fellowcitizens” and “citizens”) notwithstanding—in fact, they only point up the lack of connection between speaker and listener—Douglass here reveals the speech’s gambit: as a former slave in a nation where slavery remains lawful, he makes an inappropriate spokesperson for commemorating national independence. Even more, the invitation for a former slave to speak at such a celebration must be a cruel joke, for the problem is so glaring that malevolence would seem a better explanation than thoughtlessness, even as he allows (indicated with the interrogative form) that a lack of consideration is to blame. Rather than overlook the thoughtlessness of his hosts out of a sense of decorum, Douglass leverages their regrettable behavior to turn the tables and make a larger antislavery argument. By this logic, Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852)

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the act of placing Douglass in this situation represents in miniature the hypocrisy of a nation that prides itself on freedom while legally sanctioning slavery.1 Or so it would seem. If a focus on the text as an oration delivered at a specific moment in time drives the interpretation, it is difficult to imagine that Douglass’s scathing criticism is not directed at the audience facing him. Douglass’s oration was the featured event at a July Fourth celebration at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, his adopted hometown. The event was hosted by the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society. Not only are both Douglass and the Ladies Antislavery Society based in Rochester, but also this is an organization with which Douglass is affiliated—in ways both professional and personal—as will be addressed shortly. With these facts in view, we must wonder at a situation in which Douglass would censure his audience at an event hosted by his own local supporters. Yet analyses of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” tend to emphasize the text’s status as oration without attending fully to this curious situation. This is not to say that scholars fail to consider that the speech’s contemporary audience exceeded the walls of Corinthian Hall. As David Blight puts it, Douglass “clearly aimed the speech not only at his local audience but beyond the hall at the nation at large” (229). Yet Blight’s analysis seems unsettled on the status of the audience. On the one hand, Blight reminds us that Douglass “knew he spoke in the house of his friends, whom he now used as stand-ins for the nation” (231). On the other hand, Douglass “pulled no punches,” Blight asserts, “making the good abolitionists and the Ladies’ Antislavery Society squirm as he dragged them through a litany of America’s contradictions” (233). Regardless of the discomfort the audience may have experienced, Blight concludes his analysis of the speech by quoting from the paragraph of commentary that accompanied Douglass’s publication of the speech in Frederick Douglass’ Paper: the audience “stood and roared with ‘a universal burst of applause’” (236). Blight, then, is well aware that the audience did not seem to register offense at being raked over the coals. Yet this description of the event does little to make sense of the dynamic between speaker and auditors. Nor does it have 106

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much to say about those who would encounter the text later, not as listeners but as readers. While Blight acknowledges that Douglass spearheaded the speech’s subsequent publication and dissemination (advertising in Frederick Douglass’ Paper and peddling copies at his speaking engagements), the historian’s emphasis here remains on the speech as event. Invoked as a data-point, as it so often is in analyses of this July Fourth oration, the speech’s subsequent publication has little impact on interpretation. What might the speech’s publication have to tell us about Douglass’s strategy for negotiating both his listening audience and later readers? Might the printed object (belatedly) have something to reveal about the earlier speaking engagement, particularly Douglass’s relationship to listeners? And what should the prior speaking engagement mean for subsequent antebellum readers of the speech? My essay proposes that we take seriously the published speech as a material object and that its materiality can illuminate Douglass’s handling of multiple audiences. It is a modest claim, especially when we consider what the methods of book history and print culture studies teach us: the realms of public speaking on the one hand and printing on the other significantly overlapped in antebellum culture, but perhaps nowhere as fully as in reform culture. As Lloyd Pratt reminds us, the “reform community” in antebellum America was “connected by a commerce in speech and print” (395). Neither the lecture circuit nor the print realm existed apart from the other, and they interacted in specific ways to yield the texts that we now consider important to the abolitionist movement. When it comes to Douglass’s July Fourth speech, however, we seem to have not fully appreciated this basic understanding. Part of the problem might be that studies of Douglass tend to rely on fairly discrete categories to partition his various roles in the public sphere: Douglass the orator, Douglass the newspaper editor, and Douglass the autobiographer/writer.2 But what are we to do with a speech whose publication and circulation Douglass himself oversaw—first in Frederick Douglass’ Paper and later as a pamphlet? As we might expect, Douglass’s participation in the oratorical realm, from the beginning, tended to disrupt the oratory/print divide, as Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852)

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his speeches frequently would be reported on and transcribed in newspapers. The July Fourth speech’s later existence in print, I would argue, proves instructive for understanding further the ways in which such facets of the public sphere interfaced in antebellum America. More importantly for our purposes, the material history of the speech showcases how Douglass’s various roles overlapped, and how he strategically coordinated those roles. What emerges is a picture of an orator planning for the print circulation of his speech. By primarily focusing on the material history of the speech in print, we stand to better understand “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” as well as Douglass as an agent in the print realm. “The Papers and Placards Say” Less than two years prior to the Corinthian Hall celebration, federal legislation was passed that seemed to confirm what antislavery advocates long had claimed: slavery was a national, rather than regional, problem. The Fugitive Slave Act (1850) made it compulsory for anyone with knowledge of a fugitive slave’s whereabouts to report the information to authorities. Antislavery work seemed more urgent than ever, and abolitionists, including Douglass, made the new law part of their focus as is the case in the July Fourth oration, which provides an overview of the US’s relationship to freedom over time; in brief, Douglass charts a nation in a state of decline, the Fugitive Slave Law a new marker of how far the United States had fallen, though with time yet for recovery. He praises those who sought independence from England, argues that the Constitution is not a pro-slavery document, warns that the continuation of slavery jeopardizes the nation, and concludes with indications that the demise of slavery is in reach. Summary of the speech, however, fails to approach its power, which resides in how Douglass negotiates the audience, a performance best understood in light of the printed material surrounding the speech. It goes without saying that public speaking events typically began in the print realm in the form of marketing. Douglass’s speech is no exception, and he alludes early in his address to how it had been advertised. With an understated sense of humor, Douglass 108

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remarks, “The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration,” as if only now realizing his focus (360). According to an announcement that ran in Frederick Douglass’ Paper on July 1, 1852, the day’s events would include several “speeches” by various men, a reading of the Declaration of Independence, and musical numbers, but it makes clear that Frederick Douglass will provide the only “oration.”3 Titled “Celebration of the National Anniversary,” the announcement does not mention antislavery. But it does make clear that the “Rochester L. A. S. Society,” an acronym that readers of Douglass’s newspaper would recognize as the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society, is hosting the event. Having been in existence just shy of a year, this organization immediately secured Douglass’s full support, or as Nancy Hewitt puts it, “Douglass quickly anointed the group” with an editorial praising its formation (167). Liam Kennedy underscores that Douglass directed at his audience an “excoriating address that was not a conventional celebration of America’s independence” (298). We might reply, though, that attendees surely were not expecting a traditional July Fourth commemoration, given that the programming was provided by the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society featuring Frederick Douglass as the primary speaker. Indeed, antislavery activists long had made the national holiday an occasion for politics with abolitionist speeches and programming becoming familiar components of July Fourth events. This approach to July Fourth developed as a counter to the doings of yet another group with ideas about the future of African descendants in the United States—the advocates of African colonization who had used the holiday for a “massive propaganda blitz” (Sweet 260). The American Colonization Society, founded in December of 1816, was a curious mix of slavery apologists, antislavery advocates, and others still who promoted relocation to the western coast of Africa as a laudable idea for free blacks to consider. The motives of the participants varied, ranging from a desire to strengthen the institution of slavery by reducing the size of the free black population at one extreme to a sincere belief in the moral uprightness of assisting consenting individuals in relocating somewhere removed from the Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852)

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injustices of American racism on the other. Despite these differences, most colonizationists seemed to agree that there was little hope for a black future in the United States. The colonizationists’ efforts to coopt the holiday were successful; by the 1820s and 1830s, July Fourth was a “virtual colonization holiday” (Sweet 260). Abolitionists were confronting, then, two established approaches to the holiday: the “solemn, almost religious occasions” celebrating the nation’s idealism common in the early nineteenth century as well as the more recent “monopolization” of the Fourth by the colonizationists (Colaiaco 8, Sweet 261). And the long history of what Patrick Rael calls “counter-July Fourth celebrations” by black northerners further confirms that the political edge of July Fourth events was well established by the time Douglass ascended the stage in 1852 (77). While analyses of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” tend to infer that the audience would have been caught unawares by the content and tenor of the oration, Douglass participated in an established tradition with which his Rochester audience would have been familiar. Before the advertisement ran on the first of the month, Douglass’s speech writing already was underway. In a letter to Gerrit Smith, dated July 7, 1852, Douglass explains, “I have been engaged in writing a Speech for the 4th July, which has taken up much of my extra time for the last two or three weeks. You will readily think that the Speech ought to be good that has required So much time. Well, Some here think [it] was a good Speech—foremost among those who think So, is my friend Julia. She tells me it was excellent!” (qtd. in Blassingame 359). A couple of things are worth attention here. First, Douglass indicates that this speech’s preparations took up more of his time than was common. It is reasonable to assume that these preparations included planning for the speech’s print life. Second, Douglass’s letter to Smith gives some indication of reception. The “Julia” referenced here is Julia Griffiths, the founder and secretary of the Ladies Antislavery Society that invited him. This is someone with whom Douglass had a close relationship, though not without controversy, as she had significant responsibilities at the offices of The North Star, regularly traveled with Douglass 110

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to speaking engagements, and for a time, lived in the Douglass household. Griffiths moved out in July of 1850 when rumors about the two were in full swing (Hewitt 163). Regardless of the nature of the relationship, Douglass’s close affiliation with Griffiths helps us consider the Corinthian Hall audience. Griffiths’ compliment indicates that a figure representing the organization who invited him to speak is pleased, affirming that the hosts of the event—the ones who seemingly get accused of “mock[ing]” Douglass—were impressed with the oration. This is not to suggest that the audience—some 500 to 700 estimated to have been in attendance—was uniform. Certainly, we can assume that the overwhelming majority of attendees would have been of the antislavery persuasion. But aside from this basic shared identity, the crowd likely was quite diverse, as Hewitt suggests: “Given the size of the crowd and the significance of the day, the audience surely included a wide range of antislavery activists, black and white, women and men, Garrisonians and Free Soilers” (175). That attendees holding competing antislavery positions assembled at one event is no small feat given the degree of dissension among local abolitionist groups at this point. To be sure, the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society was born amid splinters among New York antislavery organizations. To categorize Douglass’s audiences generally as either “antislavery” or “proslavery” is no doubt an oversimplification, even as we can recognize the value of making this basic distinction. What I’m suggesting, however, is that it is difficult to reconcile the idea that Douglass castigates his audience when we keep in mind that he works closely with the hosts of the event, the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society, in general and with one of its key members, Griffiths, in particular. In fact, Griffiths likely coordinated with Douglass for the speech’s later publication, given that her organization would pay for a portion of the pamphlets, as we will see. “Published by Request” The speech was printed in the July 9, 1852, issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, a print iteration that holds further clues to Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852)

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assist with apprehending Douglass’s relationship to the listening audience.4 Titled “The Celebration at Corinthian Hall,” the article immediately clarifies what is meant by “celebration”: “Five or six hundred persons (notwithstanding the many attractions in other directions, and the noise and confusion without) assembled in Corinthian Hall to celebrate the national anniversary in what we conceive to be the only appropriate manner in which the anniversary can be celebrated.” As already discussed, the Rochester event was in keeping with African American and antislavery approaches more broadly to the holiday, and the published commentary makes sure that readers who did not attend the event have this understanding. While the announcement from the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society that ran in Frederick Douglass’ Paper prior to the Fourth suggests that Douglass’s oration would be the main event, this article appearing after the fact makes it abundantly clear: references are made to Lindley Murrey Moore’s presiding over events, Rev. S. Ottman giving a benediction, and Reverend Robert R. Raymond’s reading of the Declaration of Independence, but these parts of the programming receive little commentary. Instead, they serve as a preface to the full text of Douglass’s speech. Following the printed speech, a final paragraph of commentary provides details regarding reception: “When the speaker sat down, there was a universal burst of applause, and William C. Bloss, Esq., rose and moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Douglass, for the learned and eloquent address to which they had just listened. It was unanimously carried. A request was also made, that the Address be published in pamphlet form, and seven hundred copies of it were subscribed for on the spot.” This commentary, likely penned by Douglass himself, showcases that the audience was receptive and pleased, even as we should be aware that the recorded gestures indicate that the audience followed protocol. In other words, these expressions of approval can be understood both as revealing the audience’s response and as complying with formal expectation. The “universal burst of applause” and the “vote of thanks” that was “unanimously carried” fulfilled expectation. Though we might be struck by what seems a spontaneous “request” that the speech be printed as a pamphlet, this 112

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feature was built into the standard ceremony at July Fourth events. However, the readiness of subscribers to commit to the purchase of 700 copies—a number that exceeds, according to the newspaper’s estimates, the number of audience members present—is perhaps more impressive. In brief, Douglass’s publication of the speech in his newspaper, which includes a closing paragraph of commentary, illuminates the earlier oratorical event by showcasing the audience’s compliance with expectation. The subsequent publication in the form of a pamphlet is yet more revealing of the oration—both as past event and as a printed object intended for readers. The pamphlet includes a number of components besides the main text of the speech for which the French theorist Gérard Genette provides a helpful term—“paratexts.” As Genette explains, “A literary work . . . . is rarely presented in an unadorned state, unreinforced and unaccompanied by a certain number of verbal or other productions, such as an author’s name, a title, a preface, illustrations” (1). These elements function to guide the reader to understand the book in a specific way, or, as Genette puts it, the paratexts should enable the text to be “interpreted correctly” (409). But in the case of a printed speech that was delivered publicly, there are two separate interactions with the speech signaled by the printed pamphlet—the occasion of its delivery and the reader’s subsequent interaction with the pamphlet. What I propose is that the paratexts guide the reader’s understanding of the earlier oratorical event, namely the earlier audience’s experience, which works to shape the reader’s own interaction with the words.5 The pamphlet’s cover, the first paratext to consider, carries the title “Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, By Frederick Douglass, July 5th, 1852,” presenting the text as having been an event by announcing the venue, city, and date, which was common for published orations. The next phrase to appear on the cover—“Published by Request”—is also common for certain types of published orations. It functions as a kind of paratextual humility topos, allowing the author to evade the accusation of thinking too highly of himself. Instead, someone else—presumably, someone who was present for the oration’s delivery—deems the work worthy of publication. Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852)

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Though a convention, this “Published by Request,” when considered alongside other components of the printed object, nonetheless helps us consider Douglass’s negotiation of audience. The next paratext—the inscription page—adds to the sense of a speech well-received. It functions as a letter to the orator: Frederick Douglass, ESQ: Dear Sir—The Ladies of the “Rochester Anti Slavery Sewing Society,” desire me to return you their most sincere thanks for the eloquent and able address delivered in Corinthian Hall, on the 5th of July. Anticipating its speedy publication in Pamphlet form, they request that you will furnish them with one hundred copies for distribution. In behalf of the Society, SUSAN F. PORTER, President

The inscription makes clear that Douglass was an invited guest of the organization that hosted the event, while the “most sincere thanks” eliminates the possibility of disgruntled hosts. It also contains another “request”: if “published by request” indicates that someone other than the author believes the speech worthy of publication, the request here reinforces the idea as the Rochester Ladies offer to be distributors of the pamphlet, committing to the purchase of 100 copies. To put it another way, in their willingness to purchase and circulate a number of the pamphlets, the group offers a vote of confidence in the value of the publication. The combination of the cover and the inscription emphasizes the speech’s positive reception by its audience, but even more importantly for our purposes, these paratexts—appearing at the beginning of the pamphlet—would be the first framing devices for a reader who had not been present for the oration. Having encountered these details, the antebellum reader who proceeded to read the pamphlet would be less inclined than many twenty-first century readers to assume (if my own experience of teaching this oration from an anthology is any indication) that Douglass had berated his listening audience. Antebellum pamphlet readers were primed to read the text as something other than a stinging blow to listeners. Even more, these readers would be 114

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prepared to recognize the “you” of the speech—not as an artifact of a past event—but as potentially including themselves. The paratexts document that the speech was an event, then, even as they usher Douglass’s contemporary readers into a relationship with the text that discourages them from thinking of themselves as handling a relic. The paratexts in this case have the ability to cast backward and forward, to decipher a previous event, while they guide pamphlet readers to interpret the speech correctly. For twenty-first-century readers interested in apprehending how the speech worked on its antebellum listeners and readers, the paratexts are thus invaluable, which raises questions about later reprintings: What happens when subsequent readers encounter reprints of the speech without these paratexts? It is to the “you” that we now turn. Frederick Douglass and “You” Those who encountered Douglass’s speech—whether as auditors at Corinthian Hall or as readers either of Frederick Douglass’ Paper or the pamphlet—would have met an array of printed matter shaping the experience. The speech registers Douglass’s awareness of this reality, and he prepares the oration to operate in coordination with those documents. Even more, when we consider that the Corinthian Hall attendees’ immediate response to the speech would be documented and would become part of the speech as printed object, we discover that Douglass involves his listening audience in the speech-to-print process. Douglass plays with formalities and protocols in this speech, both invoking their status as formulaic and claiming his own sincerity, a dynamic that sheds light on the previously discussed compliance of the audience with social expectation. As many scholars have shown, Douglass’s method of interacting with his listeners begins with invoking the humility topos only to give way to a position of authority. Early references in the speech to “quailing sensation” and “distrust of my ability” work to lower expectation, even as Douglass calls attention to these references as fulfilling the expected formula for speaking engagements: “I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that Frederick Douglass’s July Fourth Speech (1852)

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mine will not be so considered.” While participating in a “proper performance,” he also claims that these gestures convey authentic emotion (359). Douglass speaks to a group of people who likely have been to antislavery events before: how is he to participate in the formula while also indicating that both he and his auditors know the drill? John Ernest argues that to appreciate Douglass the orator, we should place individual speaking engagements within layers of broader contexts, such as the “occasions and forums for his public performances, the social environment in which they operated, the print culture in which they were recorded, celebrated, or dismissed, and the responses they generated” (1). Ernest’s insight is especially relevant in the case of Corinthian Hall in no small part because Douglass signals his own awareness of such matters. The speech’s conclusion, in particular, reveals that Douglass solicits the audience to think of themselves as participants in an occasion that will enable the spread of his ideas to a larger audience. Such an understanding requires that we acknowledge, again, that Douglass was planning for the speech’s publication at the time of composition. At the speech’s close, Douglass pinpoints an increasingly interconnected world, enabled by technological developments, as cause for “hope.” “Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic,” Douglass explains, “are distinctly heard on the other” (387). The development of print technologies (and attendant technological developments) enables words to move from one audience to another. He uses the verb to “hear,” but he perhaps means to “read,” if we think of the typical path from oration to publication. And though he invokes the “oceans” and “nations,” this annihilation of space also unfolds on a much smaller scale—the movement of ideas from the lecture hall to meet readers outside the building. Regardless of how far the “[t]houghts” travel, print technologies emerge as nothing less than awe-inspiring. Put plainly, “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” (387). Given that Douglass locates the source of this light in God, print figures as an instrument of the Divine that functions to 116

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expose wrongdoing. “Intelligence,” he writes, “is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe” (387). But he must have in mind, too, the spread of ideas that have a salutary effect, including his own, since his words being spoken in Corinthian Hall will circulate in print both in the pages of his newspaper and in pamphlet form. The listening audience, then, has a crucial role in this process. While we have thought of the superabundance of “you” as creating distance, the listening audience in truth has been solicited to share in the speaker’s emotion and will be given the opportunity to demonstrate it. Shortly after Douglass’s comments—at the end of the speech—on the spread of ideas, this audience will have the opportunity to signal where they stand on Douglass’s ideas by adhering to the protocols: they will give a round of applause, formally thank the speaker, request that the speech be published, and sign up as subscribers. Most importantly, Douglass will document these gestures in the speech’s newspaper publication and, more fully, in the pamphlet. By signaling that they share with Douglass the proper sentiments—indignation, dismay, and hope—the auditors’ recorded actions enable future antebellum readers to recognize that Douglass’s words are not aimed at a past audience, an audience that was gathered in Corinthian Hall: these words are for readers. If I’ve suggested that the paratexts in the pamphlet guide the reader to interpret the speech correctly and to recreate the “you” as a reader, rather than as a residue of a prior encounter, what happens when the speech is reprinted without the paratexts? My experience of teaching abridged versions of the speech from anthologies, which do not include the paratexts, may be instructive: despite their own positions as readers, students tend to think of the text solely as an oration that had a listening audience, and they find it remarkable that Douglass would admonish his auditors so severely. Only after examining the paratexts are they able to think of the speech as the work of someone who anticipated its future life in print and the readers to come.

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Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

My appreciation goes to Jim Green for his insights regarding July Fourth events as well as the conventions of oration-to-pamphlet production in the period. For scholarship that approaches Douglass with particular attention to his multifaceted approach to reform, see David Blight, Robert S. Levine, and Sarah Meer. The July 1, 1852, issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper is available on the Library of Congress website: https://www.loc.gov/resource/ sn84026366/1852-07-01/ed-1/?sp=1. The July 9, 1852, issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper is available on the Library of Congress website: https://www.loc.gov/resource/ sn84026366/1852-07-09/ed-1/?sp=2&r=0.129,0.705,0.823,0.355,0. The digitized pamphlet is available via Google Books: https://books. google.com/books?id=1glyAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&sou rce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Works Cited Blassingame, John W. Introduction. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, edited by John W. Blassingame, vol. 2, 1847–54. Yale UP, 1982, p. 359. Blight, David. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster, 2018. “The Celebration at Corinthian Hall,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 9 July 1852, p. 2. “Celebration of the National Anniversary.” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1 July 1852, p. 2. Colaiaco, James A. Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Douglass, Frederick. Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, printed by Lee, Mann & Co., 1852. Google Books, https://books. google.com/books?id=1glyAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&sou rce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

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__________. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. vol. 2, edited by John W. Blassingame. Yale UP, 1982, pp. 359-88. Ernest, John. “Echoing Greatness: Douglass’s Reputation as an Orator.” New North Star, vol. 1, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–8. Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, translated by Jane E. Lewin, foreword by Richard Macksey. Cambridge UP, 1997. Hewitt, Nancy A. Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds. U of North Carolina P, 2018. Kennedy, Liam. “Frederick Douglass, ‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’” A New Literary History of America, edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Belknap Press, 2009, pp. 297-302. Levine, Robert. The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Harvard UP, 2016. Meer, Sarah. “Douglass as Orator and Editor.” The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, edited by Maurice S. Lee. Cambridge UP, 2009, pp. 46-59. Pratt, Lloyd. “Speech, Print, and Reform on Nantucket.” In A History of the Book in America: The Industrial Book, 1840–1880, vol. 3, edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship. U of North Carolina P, 2007: 392–400. Rael, Patrick. Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North. U of North Carolina P, 2002. Sweet, Leonard I. “The Fourth of July and Black Americans in the Nineteenth Century: Northern Leadership Opinion Within the Context of the Black Experience.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 61, no. 3, 1976, pp. 256–75.

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Racial Geopolitics in Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave Srimayee Basu

Frederick Douglass’s memorialization in literary studies centers around his three autobiographies and his prolific journalistic writings.1 However, this rich body of nonfiction oftentimes overshadows his novella, The Heroic Slave, in which there has been comparatively less scholarly interest. Published in 1853, the novella is based on the 1841 maritime slave revolt aboard the slave ship Creole, spearheaded by an enslaved man named Madison Washington. The Heroic Slave reveals a lesser-known dimension of Douglass’s oeuvre as a writer and a public intellectual, where in addition to asserting black social, civic, and political equality in the United States, Douglass grapples with the philosophical complexities of territorializing racial blackness and thinks about black political freedom beyond the scope of American citizenship. This article situates Douglass’s novella within the matrix of what historian Paul Gilroy memorably termed the “Black Atlantic,” that is, a conceptualization of black identity across the Atlantic World in diasporic rather than national terms (4). Owing to its endorsement of insurrectionary protest, The Heroic Slave is also an outlier in relation to Douglass’s early political and literary persona. Unlike African American abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet, who famously advocated militancy in abolitionist efforts, Douglass did not overtly espouse armed uprisings against slavery in his capacity as an abolitionist.2 During the time of the Creole rebellion, Douglass depended upon the American Anti-Slavery Society, which expressly opposed militant forms of abolitionism. Its leader William Lloyd Garrison condemned Garnet’s public speeches in support of Madison Washington’s mutiny and armed anti-slavery resistance more generally. Douglass’s conspicuous silence as a writer and a public intellectual on the Creole shortly after the mutiny may 120

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be attributed to his desire to avoid an ideological rift with pacifist abolitionists.3 Throughout The Heroic Slave, Douglass underscores the importance of geography in nineteenth-century discourses on slavery and abolition. The Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1850 that allowed slave owners to reclaim fugitive slaves from free and slaveholding states alike made black freedom precarious regardless of geographical location. Another important geographic episteme of this period was the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), which played a catalyzing role in shaping black insurrectionary thought in the Americas in the nineteenth century. Rupturing the homogeneity of the Age of Revolution from within, Haiti became both a key geographical site and a symbol of decolonial revolution, and consequently, informed the inception of transnational abolitionism.4 It was also prominently featured in African American literature and print culture of this era with Freedom’s Journal, the first African American newspaper (1827–1829), running a “detailed six-part series of articles about the history and present condition of Haiti” that suggested that the Haitians’ “bravery, altruism, and commitment to freedom and democracy—had both African and American roots” (83). The turn to the hemispheric Americas in Douglass’s work was informed by the unmistakable overlaps between empire and slavery in the long nineteenth century. The Haitian Revolution and the Louisiana Purchase propelled a “geographical and economic configuration of the nation” and the emergence of the expansionist U.S. empire (Dillon and Drexler 7).5 Relatedly, with end of the international slave trade in 1808, the intensity and scale of the internal slave trade grew exponentially, and “between 1790 and 1860 roughly one million slaves were torn from their homes and families within the United States and forced to move southward and westward (Dillon and Drexler 11). Douglass himself played a crucial role in the geopolitical debates surrounding slavery. He published extensively on the importance of Haiti to black political consciousness during the antebellum period and vehemently opposed American imperialist interventions in the region. In the postbellum Racial Geopolitics

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era, however, his position became more checkered. He was appointed an ambassador to Haiti by President Benjamin Harrison in 1889 and while he did not support military interventions, his position on the U.S.’ economic annexation of Haiti became ambivalent and he “. . . saw annexation as a way of spreading the progressive values of post-Civil War U.S. society and of helping to bringing prosperity to the Caribbean” (Du Bois 103). The most prominent maritime slave revolt of this period was the 1839 case of the Amistad, a Cuban slave ship that was to sail to Havana from Sierra Leone. The enslaved captives rose in revolt during the journey and took control of the ship and planned to sail it back to the African coast. However, the remaining Spanish members of the crew succeeded in eventually redirecting the ship to the Americas, landing in Long Island in 1840. The legal trajectory that followed was counterintuitive. While the mutineers were incarcerated for their revolt initially, the United States refused to return them to slavery, on the grounds that the triangular slave trade had legally ended through the Slave Trade Act of 1807 (which did not impact domestic slave trade). The relative obscurity of the Creole revolt can be seen in the fact that it was called “Another Amistad Case” by December 25, 1841, issue of the Colored American, the period’s foremost black newspaper (Levine et al., 59). The question then remains as to why Douglass chose to fictionalize the lesser-known slave revolt of the nineteenth century rather than the Amistad. The most plausible reason for this may be that the Creole was an American brig and its mutineers sought freedom outside of the geographical boundaries of the United States, which made it a far better illustration for an abolitionist literary work. The freedom earned by the Amistad mutineers, while symbolically significant, remained tenuous owing to the domestic slave trade and Fugitive Slave Laws, which laid the foundation for the contemporary practice of antiblack policing, for free and enslaved black people alike. The Creole was to sail from Virginia to Louisiana, but the enslaved mutineers forced it to reroute to Nassau in the British Bahamas, where after a trial they were deemed free men. Britain had passed the Emancipation Act in 1833, and this coupled with its 122

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support for the revolt, heightened tensions between the antebellum United States and Britain over the historically contentious subject of slavery. The Creole incident had several precedents in the previous decades; The Comet (1830) and Encomium (1833) were American slave ships that had to dock in British Caribbean ports due to inclement weather, resulting in the local authorities freeing the enslaved people onboard in keeping with Britain’s statutes on slavery. In 1840, the slave ship Hermosa (1840) was wrecked in the Abaco Islands and later docked in the British Bahamas where the enslaved were freed. What separates the Creole from these cases, however, is that its rerouting was not the product of fortuitous circumstances, but a successful slave revolt, led by an enslaved man named Madison Washington. The historic Madison Washington along with his fellow mutineers settled in Nassau, in the British Bahamas, where after a trial they were deemed free men. The space of “freedom” mandated by British law changed the legal status of the Creole’s hitherto enslaved mutineers to that of postcolonial subjects. The fictional Madison Washington, however, remains a fugitive throughout the narrative, and despite underscoring the success of his rebellion, Douglass chooses not to engage in speculations regarding his life as a British subject. Washington’s fugitivity is not just a physical state but also a political statement whereby he refuses to pledge absolute allegiance to any imperial power. Douglass does not make Nassau the principal locale of his work, and the slave revolt, while being the central plot, is only described through the conversation of white American characters rather than through an actual description of the event. This approach allows the work to foreground the impact of the revolt on legal, political, and philosophical debates surrounding race and citizenship in the United States. Relocating to or forging political alliances with another nation is thus not presented as an escapist panacea but as a way for seeking physical freedom from bondage, shaping a model of citizenship that is not exclusively bound to the American state, and above all, questioning the contradictions of American democracy. Racial Geopolitics

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The Heroic Slave’s publishing history is mired in nineteenthcentury transatlantic political and cultural transit. It was first published in a collection of antislavery writings titled Autographs for Freedom in 1852, and subsequently serialized in the broadsheet Frederick Douglass’s Paper in 1853. In 1895, the work was published in yet another edition by prominent British abolitionist Julia Griffiths, who worked with Douglass on numerous publishing and advocacy projects. In 1852, Douglass planned to travel to Nassau for the purpose of gathering materials for the novella and with the hope of meeting Madison Washington, noting in his newspaper, Frederick Douglass’s Paper “Nassau is the home of the heroes of the Creole. Madison Washington himself is there” (Douglass qtd. in Levine et al. xxiv). While he eventually did not execute this plan, his estimation of the island as an important locus for antislavery insurgency marks a hemispheric turn in Douglass’s conception of black nationalism. Furthermore, the work’s publication year coincided with the legal settlement between the United States and Britain, with an Anglo-American Claims Commission deciding that American slaveholders who owned the enslaved aboard the ship were entitled to compensation (Levine et al. xxiv). This anticlimactic conclusion to the episode not only diminished its political impact against Atlantic World slavery, but also served as a symptom of the intersections of colonial interests between the United States and Britain despite numerous moments of geopolitical rivalry. It is thus unsurprising that Douglass fictionalized the mutiny to (re) imagine its utopian possibilities rather than exclusively adhering to the facts of its vexed trajectory. The Heroic Slave Douglass opens all three of his autobiographies6 by stating the place of his birth: Talbot County, Maryland. This rhetorical move establishes not only his physical birth but also his civic birth as he claims his selfhood on print. The Heroic Slave departs from this and opens with the following lines:

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The state of Virginia is famous in American annals for the multitudinous array of her statesmen and heroes. . . . Yet not all the great ones of the Old Dominion have, by the fact of their birth-place, escaped undeserved obscurity (Douglass 3–4).

These lines not only differ from his autobiographies in that they are invested not in self-making but rather in unearthing buried regional and national histories. While the novella segues shortly after these lines to a description of its protagonist, Madison Washington, it emphasizes the prevalence of multiple acts of heroism by enslaved people that were erased or misrepresented in Virginian, and by extension, American history. While Douglass’s allusions ostensibly seem to be to figures such as Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, the multiplicity of his definition of heroism allows him to gesture toward Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion, which was brutally repressed by Virginia slaveholders, and the historic Madison Washington, who, too, was a native of Virginia. The capaciousness of fiction thus unsettles not only singular, hagiographic accounts of political protest, but also challenges the implicitly antiblack idea that black abolitionism used Eurocentric revolutionary discourse as its sole template. This is important because antislavery reformist political rhetoric often upheld the idea that slavery’s ostensible incompatibility with American law and national character necessitated its abolition. For instance, William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper The Liberator carried an anonymous article on the Creole mutiny that described Madison Washington as a heroic figure comparable to the founding political figures of the nation. Robert Levine observes that “such journalistic portrayals encouraged slaves to strike for their freedom and suggested that rebel slaves were as worthy of citizenship as whites” (Levine xviii). Douglass’s novel rejects this aspirational model of civic belonging for enslaved black subjects, pointing to the limits of seeking equality within the auspices of the American state. The work thus carries the political discourse of abolition to its logical conclusion, envisioning both the abolition of the institution of slavery and a radical restructuring of the state.

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Washington’s physical location in the wilderness in the introductory passages is replete with subtexts. The introduction encompasses an extended soliloquy by Washington as he contemplates his escape from slavery, which is overheard, unbeknownst to him, by Mr. Listwell, a white abolitionist passing by the forest. Washington declares I am a slave,—born a slave, an abject slave,—even before I made part of this breathing world, the scourge was platted for my back; the fetters were forged for my limbs. . . . My resolution is fixed. I shall be free (5–6).

By stressing that his enslavement was preordained even before his birth, he theorizes enslavement to not merely be an embodied, social condition but epistemically bound to racial blackness. Furthermore, in placing him in a space that is geopolitically uncharted, the text literalizes Washington’s outsideness in the American polity and reminds the reader that his desire for freedom invokes not political rights, but natural rights. In the same vein, Douglass depicts forces of nature to preternaturally favor Washington’s quest for freedom. The sea and the wind during the revolt and the elemental force of the wildfire during Washington’s stay in the Virginia forest as integral to the developments in the narrative, and these portrayals are aesthetically powerful, and symptomize the work’s political commentary. Carrie Hyde observes in her reading of the novel that the “plot of The Heroic Slave does not develop as a consequence of Madison’s individual agency, but through the sporadic shifts of weather, which structure and contain the virtual world of the novella” (241). This emphasis on nature as a source of law is key to understanding Douglass’s conceptualization of nationhood and citizenship in the novella. Prioritizing natural law over civic law not only allows the work to critique and subvert the antiblack racism inherent to American legal structures, but also debunks policing of black bodies engendered by the Fugitive Slave Laws. In his first flight to freedom, Washington escapes to Canada. He explains the choice of this destination to Mr. Listwell, who 126

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offers him shelter during his travels, by stating, “I am on my way to Canada, where I learn that persons of my color are protected in all the rights of men” (12). Douglass’s decision to include this detail is important not only for its factual accuracy, as the historic Madison Washington, too, had briefly taken refuge in Canada, but also for its political subtext. It reminds the reader that after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, seeking freedom in the free states of the north was futile. Western Ontario became home to a large population of fugitive slaves in the mid-nineteenth century, and the noted black abolitionists Henry Bibb and Josiah Henson founded the Refugee Home Society in 1851 to provide socioeconomic support for this community. However, while slavery was legally outlawed in Canada in 1834, the country was not devoid of widespread racial prejudice and most institutions and public places remained racially segregated in the 1850s (McLaren 67). This then begs the question as to why Douglass presents an exaggerated image of Canadian egalitarianism. A likely rationale for this can be detected by viewing the novella’s portrayal of Canada on the same continuum as its recurrent celebration of black freedom within spaces outside of the continental United States. Rather than being uncritical, these portrayals are strategic and arguably aimed at demythologizing if not denouncing American democracy. The novella continues its vituperative critique of American democracy by describing the transition from the United States to Canada in the following words in a letter that Washington sends Listwell upon his safe arrival in Canada: I nestle in the mane of the British lion, protected by his mighty paw from the talons and the beak of the American eagle. I am FREE (sic), and breathe an atmosphere too pure for slaves, slave-hunters, or slaveholders. (26)

The bald eagle was selected as the U.S. National Symbol by the Second Continental Congress in 1782 to symbolize both the nation’s flight of freedom from British colonialism and its strength as a newfound nation. In transforming this symbol of democracy to Racial Geopolitics

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one of predation, the work fundamentally reimagines British and American geopolitical dynamics apropos social equality and justice. The novel later shows Washington returning to Virginia to rescue his enslaved wife only to be recaptured into slavery. The last chapter depicts his fateful journey on the Creole, which was supposed to transport him to the New Orleans slave market. An important instance that encapsulates the relationship between space and power in the conclusion is a conversation between Tom Grant, a white sailor on board the Creole during the uprising, and Jack Williams, a virulently pro-slavery sailor, who meet at a coffee house in Richmond, Virginia. When the latter implies that it was poor leadership on the part of the ship’s white sailors that resulted in the revolt, Grant retaliates by pointing to the fact that the racially determined binaries of power are bound to territoriality where the state and civil society coalesce to subjugate the socially powerless, but the maritime world disrupts this status quo. He says: It is one thing to manage a company of slaves on a Virginia plantation, and quite another thing to quell an insurrection on the lonely billows of the Atlantic, where every breeze speaks of courage and liberty (Douglass 43–44).

This idea that maritime spaces offer possibilities for political rebellion that terrestrial spaces foreclose can be interpreted in two ways. Saidiya Hartman in Scenes of Subjection asks “. . . whether it is possible to unleash freedom from the history of property that secured it, for the security of property that undergirded the abstract equality of rights bearers was achieved, in large measure, through black bondage,” a postulation that is immensely valid for the slave ship as a site of a slave revolt (119).While on the one hand, the seeming statelessness of the sea provides a plethora of possibilities for negotiating racial power structures, whereby during the period of the revolt, the ship becomes a symbol for the abolitionist state;7 on the other hand, the eventual culmination of the revolt’s political aims on land points to the embeddedness of Atlantic World maritime spaces and the histories of race, empire, and capital. 128

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Douglass’s fictionalized denouement of the maritime mutiny depicts the rebels leaving the ship in Nassau as free men as they “formed themselves into a procession on the wharf,—bid farewell to all on board, and, uttering the wildest shouts of exultation, they marched, amidst the deafening cheers of a multitude of sympathizing spectators, under the triumphant leadership of their heroic chief and deliverer, Madison Washington” (51). Upon landing in Nassau, Grant seeks the aid of the American emissaries stationed there to recapture the mutineers through the application of the Fugitive Slave Law, only to learn of its inapplicability in the region. The text’s sleight of hand in this portrayal is significant. In the original revolt, the mutineers were held in custody by British Bahamian law enforcement as their legal status was debated. While their use of deadly force against their captors was eventually deemed lawful, the British Admiralty Court in Nassau considered charging them with piracy. It was only in April 1842, that the seventeen surviving mutineers were cleared of all charges. Guarding against the scholarly tendency to read Atlantic World transit in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries in purely celebratory terms, David Kazanjian urges us to be cognizant of the “colonizing trick” that facilitated transnational solidarity between imperial forces against black and indigenous expressions of autonomy (27). As illustrations of this insidious political alliance, one may consider the fact that Britain compensated the United States for the enslaved people who were freed in the five key maritime episodes mentioned in this chapter— the Comet (1830), the Encomium (1833), the Enterprise (1835), the Hermosa (1840) and the Creole (1841). These economic exchanges render British support for abolition superficial as the nation is seen to uphold the antiblack tenets of racial capitalism while advocating the legal end of chattel slavery. Despite praising the British Emancipation Act, Douglass’s work displays awareness of this political collusion between Western imperial powers. By omitting the complicated legal processes that the historic Creole’s mutineers had to undergo before they were officially declared free men in Nassau, the work interprets their freedom in utopian rather than definitive terms. We do not know Racial Geopolitics

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if the fictitious mutineers stay on in Nassau as British citizens or participate in marronage, the practice of forming colonies in remote areas followed by fugitive slaves. This open-endedness yet again emphasizes Madison Washington’s fugitivity whereby his freedom remains in a state of praxis instead of being fully circumscribed within the legal structures of the nation-state. Grant also informs the reader that the men authorized to tell him of the illegality of slavery in Nassau were “a company of black soldiers,” adding that “when I called on them to assist me in keeping the slaves on board, sheltered themselves adroitly under their instructions only to protect property,—and said they did not recognize persons as property” (Douglass 51). Unlike in the case of the historic Creole revolt, British imperial authority is rendered a mere spectral presence here and the mutineers’ freedom is facilitated through black diasporic camaraderie instead. The conclusion also pivots us to the question posed in the introduction to this chapter regarding the sociolegal transition of the Creole mutineers from being enslaved subjects to postcolonial subjects. The intersections between post-coloniality and Atlantic slavery were diverse in the debates surrounding abolitionism. This was most apparent in the work of the American Colonization Society, which believed that erstwhile enslaved people from the Americas must be relocated to other nations owing to a fundamental social and cultural incompatibility between the races. The conception of an Atlantic World black diaspora in the novella is an antithesis to the spatial sequestering of colonization. Political support for the forced removal of African Americans to a remote American colony had its roots in the early republic. Following the Haitian Revolution (1791– 1804) and Gabriel Prosser’s revolt in Richmond, Virginia (1800), Virginia Governor James Monroe discussed with President Thomas Jefferson “whither persons obnoxious to the laws or dangerous to the peace of society may be removed” (Monroe qtd. in Burin 11). Furthermore, while the American Colonization Society may have viewed colonization as the means for ending slavery, numerous American lawmakers supported the forced removal of enslaved individuals they perceived as dissident (Burin 11). Colonization at 130

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its roots was thus not merely an antiblack political philosophy but also a carceral practice, aiming to incapacitate and spatially isolate “other” black bodies. In The Intimacies of Four Continents, Lisa Lowe, observes that as early as 1787 Thomas Jefferson endorsed the forced relocation of African Americans to Africa as the only viable way of facilitating the abolition of slavery in his work Notes on the State of Virginia. She adds that Jefferson’s views were in keeping with the traction that this political model had across the transatlantic world. Lowe refers ,in particular, to the British colony of Sierra Leone where people from across the Western black diaspora were expatriated and argues that this “. . . was not an experiment in freedom, but an exercise in social engineering, where the British sought to ‘civilize’ Blacks through the establishment of schools, Christian religion, and inculcating an ethic of rewards and penalties—far from the initial vision of a state of free Black self-government. In addition, the British project of sending Blacks in England to Africa, many of whom had never before lived there, should be seen in context of expatriation projects as “final solutions” for maintaining white “racial purity” by deporting Blacks “back” to Africa in lieu of granting equality with whites” (68). While the novella cautiously celebrates the civil liberties that the mutineers gained in the British Bahamas, it does not conceptualize expatriation as a panacea for enslaved black people. It is important that unlike the original mutineers who considered Liberia as their initial destination, the mutineers in Douglass’s novella do not consider this possibility at all. Douglass was a staunch opponent of the ACS’s proposal on expatriation, and the exclusion of this historical detail was reflective of this opposition. Ivy Wilson reads the novella’s conclusion as being representative of “. . . the postcolonial condition of being without a home, of being an exile” (237). He argues that the articulation of black political subjectivity in the novella is ultimately not with a vision of a “transnational America” but “. . . but with a displaced cadre of transnational blacks whose affiliations and affinities are determined less by their reference to the United States than by their relationship to other blacks in the diaspora” (237). Wilson’s arguments regarding the revolt’s conceptualization of a Racial Geopolitics

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hemispheric black diasporic is generative for it enables us to see the ways in which the work decenters citizenship as a form of political membership. However, it is also important to draw a distinction between the postcolonial state of exile and the state of fugitivity that the mutineers on the Creole embody. Vera Alexander defines “exile” in Wiley-Blackwell’s The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies is as “. . . the condition of living in geographical dislocation from home; it also refers to a person to whom this condition applies. Exile is often associated with loss, separation, nostalgia, and trauma. . . . In postcolonial texts and contexts, exile serves to illustrate ongoing interrogations of the shifting politics of identity, space, and home” (Alexander). This definition is not quite applicable to the black political position in the Americas since the very idea of a geographical or cultural “home” for the enslaved subject was fundamentally disrupted by the Middle Passage and chattel slavery. The exiled individual while being disempowered and culturally and geographically alienated is not socially dead.8 The effacement of the fugitive slaves after the revolt is thus a narrative inevitability, for there is no concrete conceptual framework for representing their political and social belongingness to a nation. This does not indicate a nihilistic reading of resistance itself since it is during the moments of fugitivity and rebellion that Madison Washington’s character is most conspicuous in the text, but rather points to the unavailability of a stable resolution to this state of fugitivity and resistance for the black subject. Conclusion The Heroic Slave symptomizes Douglass’s contested political personae and buried political militancy. It presents a literary history of the radical Black Atlantic even as it depicts interwovenness of race, citizenship, and empire in the Atlantic World. Above all, it nearly prophetically conceptualizes the criminalization of black protest and mobility. While Douglass’s autobiographies condemn the Enlightenment’s moral hypocrisies and failed promises, and seek to democratize civic republicanism, his novella sees the racially 132

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inflected nature of democracy’s promise and articulates instead a fugitive move away from the American nation-state’s geographical boundaries and political tenets. Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). Henry Highland Garnet’s 1843 speech “An Address to the Slaves of the United States” is a foundational text of militant black abolitionism in the nineteenth century. Delivered at The National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, the speech invokes Madison Washington and other figures of insurrectionary abolitionism in the Americas such as Toussaint Louverture, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and Joseph Cinque as templates for black political protest. In 1841, Douglass was employed as an abolitionist public speaker by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that was controlled by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Historian Eric Hobsbawm describes the period spanning across 1789 to 1848 as the “Age of Revolution,” which encompasses the French, American, and Haitian Revolutions and the expansion of the Industrial Revolution. In 1803, the French colonial territory of Louisiana was sold to the United States after France suffered economic and military setbacks during the Haitian Revolution and was facing impending war with Britain. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). Here I am invoking Robert Fanuzzi’s definition of abolitionism as “. . . not a fixed historical milestone but an open-ended category for imagining political formations that lay within the domains of literature and culture, outside the legal definition of U.S. citizenship.” The first major work to argue that racial slavery was not merely an economic institution but also one that fundamentally altered the definition of the human subject is Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death. Patterson argues that slavery is “the permanent, violent

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domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons” (Patterson 113).

Works Cited Alexander, Vera. “Exile.” The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Sangetta Ray, et al., eds. Blackwell Reference Online. 7 Jan. 2018, www.literatureencyclopedia.com/public/book.html?id =g9781444334982_9781444334982. Burin, Eric. Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. UP of Florida, 2005. Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock, and Michael J. Drexler. “Haiti and the Early United States, Entwined.” The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States: Histories, Textualities, Geographies, edited by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Michael Drexler. U of Pennsylvania P, 2016, pp. 1–16. Douglass, Frederick. The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition, edited by Robert S. Levine, John R. McKivigan, and John Stauffer. Yale UP, 2015. Du Bois, Laurent. “Frederick Douglass, Antenor Firmin, and the Making of U.S.-Haitian Relations.” The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States: Histories, Textualities, Geographies, edited by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Michael Drexler U of Pennsylvania P, 2016, pp. 95–110. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Verso, 1993. Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford UP, 1997. Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848. Vintage Books, 1996. Hyde, Carrie. “The Climates of Liberty.” The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition, edited by Robert S. Levine, John R. McKivigan, and John Stauffer. Yale UP, 2015, pp. 238–50. Levine, Robert S. “Frederick Douglass, War, Haiti.” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 5, 2009, pp. 1864–1868. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/25614417. Levine, Robert S., John R. McKivigan, and John Stauffer. Introduction. The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition. Yale UP, 2015. Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Duke UP, 2015. 134

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McLaren, Kristin. “‘We Had No Desire to Be Set Apart’”: Forced Segregation of Black Students in Canada West Public Schools and Myths of British Egalitarianism. The History of Immigration and Racism in Canada: Essential Readings, edited by Barrington Walker. Canadian Scholars’ P Inc., 2008, pp. 69–82. Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Harvard UP, 1982. Stepto, Robert B. “Storytelling in Early Afro-American Fiction: Frederick Douglass’s ‘The Heroic Slave.’” The Georgia Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 1982, pp. 355–68. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/41399725. Wilson, Ivy G. “On Native Ground: Transnationalism, Frederick Douglass, and ‘The Heroic Slave.’” PMLA, vol. 121, no. 2, 2006, pp. 453–68. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/25486325.

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“Self-Made Men”: Frederick Douglass’s Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood Rachel Boccio

There is but one destiny, it seems to me, left for us, and that is to make ourselves and be made by others a part of the American people in every sense of the word. (Frederick Douglass, “Our Destiny” 80)

Over fifty times, between 1859 and 1893, Frederick Douglass delivered what became his most famous and oft-repeated speech, “Self-Made Men.” It is difficult to overstate the pomp and circumstance that accompanied Douglass as he gave this lecture to white and black audiences across America and in Canada and England. According to biographer David Blight, the brass band and large delegation that met Douglass in 1879—when he arrived in Staunton, Virginia, to address the congregation of Augusta Street Methodist Church—was not atypical. “Self-Made Men” remained largely unchanged in theme and structure over the course of decades, and yet careful attention to its subtle revisions, and to his similar speeches about American manhood, reveals Douglass’s unique and evolving stance toward one of the key discourses of personhood in the nineteenth century—that of self-making. In our own time, Douglass is remembered, at least by some, as a spokesperson for black self-reliance—a kind of “bootstraps” philosophy that emphasizes personal responsibility and ignores systemic cultural and structural obstacles to success. One purpose of this essay is to rescue Douglass from this type of misinterpretation through a critical reading of the speech that, more than any other, accounts for this reputation. Douglass’s “Self-Made Men,” indeed, promotes a host of moral virtues (hard-work, perseverance, sobriety, frugality) and a theory of independent manhood that was foundational to the new American nation and that privileged self-help over institutional 136

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forms of welfare. And yet, embedded in Douglass’s theory of self-making are challenges to absolute individual autonomy—a racialized notion that largely excluded him. As this essay will show, Douglass’s signature speech captures the orator’s truly radical efforts to forge a free and actualized self in a nation that dehumanized black people. In the process, Douglass names democratic social justice as the foundation of self-reliance in a way that stretches the fantasy of self-making almost to its breaking point. Self-Making and the New American Man In the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the United States was transforming from a colonial outpost to a powerful nation-state, writers commonly addressed the question “What is an American?” According to Martha J. Cutter and Caroline F. Levander, one answer that emerged from the period’s literature, from fiction and nonfiction alike, was that “the American man is ‘self-made’” (41). Without “social position, family heritage, or inherited wealth,” the American man could, in theory, be likened to the nation itself—a tabula rasa (or blank slate) of a sort, with rich and abiding interior resources (Cutter and Levander 41). In other words, the American man—unlike his predecessors in the Old World (in the monarchal and class-based cultures of Europe)—was imagined able to “create himself anew” (Cutter and Levander 41). Stories of courageous young boys, who through ingenuity, honesty, and determination ascend from rags to riches abound in the era’s literature: they are the subjects, so Cutter and Levander remind us, of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick, as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and more. Embodying an affinity between moral goodness and economic attainment, the American self-made man was also presented as evidence of the country’s exceptionalism. Douglass acknowledges this in an early version of “Self-Made Men,” delivered in Halifax, England, in March of 1860:

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I recognize one feature at least of special and peculiar excellence, and that is the relation of America to self-made men. America is, most unquestionably and pre-eminently, the home and special patron of self-made men. In no country in the world are the conditions more favorable to the production and sustentation of such men than in America. (297)

Douglass strongly believed in the bourgeois values (notably hard work and respectability) that the self-made man exemplified. And while he never wavered from calling out the hypocrisies of U.S. political life, Douglass remained committed to America’s best promises and ideals, to its “favorable conditions,” even when the conditions of freedom, citizenship, equal rights, and economic mobility were foreclosed to black people. At Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens Convention in 1854, Douglass assured delegates, “There is no country in the world where the black man could more successfully elevate himself and his race than in the United States (“Work and Self-Elevation” 476). As late as 1893, with the hopes of Reconstruction nearly crushed, Douglass continued to praise America as “the home and patron of self-made men. Here, all doors fly open to them. They may aspire to any position” (569). Optimistic as this may seem, however, at no time was Douglass naïve about the ideological grounding of the self-made man or of the ethics he represented. As Jennifer Rae Greeson has shown, the nationalism that heralded northern, republican values (the kind associated with selfmaking) arose, to a certain extent, as a strategy for quarantining the moral sin of slavery in the south, for making slavery a regional problem contained within an otherwise righteous nation. Proof of America’s virtue lay in every plucky self-made man who, in Douglass’s words, “without ordinary help. . . raised [himself] against great odds from the most humble and cheerless position in life to usefulness, greatness, honor, influence, and fame” (293). In this way, the self-made man (acknowledged, generally, as northern and white) was defined not only against the southern planter class (relics of an older, European feudal society) but also against the country’s marginalized and oppressed people—mostly enslaved or free blacks, 138

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but also Native Americans, women, Catholics, Jews, and other racialized immigrant groups. Human interiority emerged as a key ideological site of this cultural work. Chris Castiglia, among others, has described efforts to locate “within the body” natures or “traits” that could formally characterize social hierarchy, including pseudoscientific theories of race difference (135). Equating whiteness with a sacrosanct interior, these theories bolstered white supremacy in the nineteenth century and helped to maintain slavery and other forms of extreme discrimination without seeming to undermine the country’s Enlightenment principals of self-governance and rational liberty. Put another way, self-making demanded a type of inner personality—gifted, free, and inviolable—that was not imagined as fully or equally available to the “inferior races.” Such tortured logic produced a troubling irony for Douglass: when the orator espoused classic, new England values (as he did throughout his career in numerous addresses), he stepped into a tradition of morality and self-fashioning that was ideologically constructed in part to establish whiteness and to maintain slavery as well as Jim Crow policies after the Civil War. Not surprisingly, when Douglass elevates America as an especial crucible for righteous energy and masculine independence—as he does in his 1860 speech—he is careful to acknowledge the racist limits of this enterprise: Let me give you one or two of the causes of the growth of selfmade men. One cause, undoubtedly, is to be found in the general respectability of labor, especially in the northern states of the American Union. Work has not yet come to be looked upon as a degradation or disgrace. A man may labor there with his hands, or with his head, or with both hands and head, and yet move in respectable society—that is if he has white skin. (297–98)

One way to think about Douglass’s embrace of self-making and, at least in this speech, of American exceptionalism is to recognize “Self-Made Men” as “a complex, rhetorical revisioning of national ethos” (Ray 643). Douglass himself was, after all, the quintessential self-made man: born into slavery, the self-taught fugitive labored as Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood

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a ships’ caulker, farmhand, waiter, coachman, chimney sweep, and wood sawyer before rising to international fame as an abolitionist crusader and newspaper editor. Along with celebrity, Douglass achieved political prominence within the Republican party. He served as marshal of the District of Columbia and U.S. minister to Haiti under Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison, respectively. Douglass’s assimilation of northern, middle-class, white ideals cannot be fully understood apart from its revolutionary potential. Again and again, through countless speeches over the course of many decades, Douglass preached an ethic of self-help to congregations of black people newly freed and struggling to gain an economic foothold: gainful employment, homeownership, and a decent education. At an 1848 meeting of the Spring Street A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) Zion Church in Rochester, NY, Douglass told the large and predominantly black audience, “Colored men and women should aspire to the highest intelligence and remember that knowledge is power. They should earn money, and be prudent in expenditures, curtailing their amusements, contribute rather to the education of themselves and children in all pursuits calculated to elevate them in the opinion of an observing community” (115). And yet, at the same time as Douglass touted an assimilationist politics of respectability for black people, he confronted head on—in many of the same speeches, in fact—the racist underpinnings of self-making. Before his white audiences, Douglass stood as a “model of personal excellence” uniquely shaped from black experience (Ray 634). “Self-Made Men” was not merely a call for black people to adopt the norms of white American culture, but rather a challenge to the white, nativist identity of that culture. Douglass’s transatlantic, multiracial set of archetypes in “Self-Made Men” (including the Scottish geologist Hugh Miller, the American diplomat Elihu Burrit, the Hungarian exile Louis Kossuth, the self-taught astronomer Benjamin Banneker, the businessman William C. Dietz, and the Haitian revolutionary Toussiant L’Ouverture) was remarkably provocative given how much Douglass’s list departs from the conventional form. Biographical sketches of model Americans— 140

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all white, Protestant, and native born—were a common trope of the discourse. Douglass’s 1860 Halifax speech, which includes an account of the men named above, universalizes self-making: “Such men, whether they were found in the factory or the college, whether at the handles of the plough or in the professor’s chair, whether at the bar or in the pulpit, whether Anglo-Saxon or of Anglo-African origin, ought to have awarded to them the honor of being selfmade men” (293). Douglass’s expanded litany of self-made men, which challenged white people to recognize models of greatness outside the limits of their own racial boundaries, is the source of even greater radicalness when in an 1893 version of the speech he explicitly associates blackness with pride, invention, and perfection. Speaking in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Douglass openly laments that Banneker “was not entirely black,” but rather mixed-raced, like himself (567). Dietz, on the other, is for Douglass, “positively and perfectly black; not partially, but WHOLLY black” (568). Later in the same speech, in lauding Toussaint L’Overture as a “brave and generous soldier, a wise and powerful statesman, an ardent patriot and successful liberator of his people and of his country,” Douglass asserts, “he was black and showed no trace of Caucasian admixture” (568). In Douglass’s words and through his presence, self-making is reappropriated as a vision of exemplary personhood not limited by biological traits of race difference. It is a vision that retains, even as it universalizes, conflations of soul and self: “Personal independence is a virtue and it is the soul out of which comes the sturdiest manhood. But there can be no independence without a large share of self-dependence, and this virtue cannot be bestowed. It must be developed from within” (557). “Self-Made Men” was, according to David Blight, Douglass’s “ultimate commentary on human nature” (566–67). As he counseled freed people to become self-made, to “affirm their natural equality with the Anglo-Saxon race,” he referred to “practical equality and equal attainments” (wealth, property, status) but also to moral equality and to the practices of education, self-respect, discipline, and moderation that could cultivate the soul (“Work and SelfElevation” 476). In speech after speech, Douglass rejected the idea of Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood

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“superior mental endowments,” rebuffed “accidents” or “chances” (what Blight calls, “the good-luck theory of human achievement”), and above all else venerated work (565): We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is Work! Work!! Work!!! Work!!!! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work, into which the whole heart is put, and which, in both temporal and spiritual affairs, is the true miracle worker. Everyone may avail himself of this marvelous power, if he will. There is no royal road to perfection. (556)

Douglass’s views on work, especially as they intersect with selfmaking, derive from antislavery, free labor doctrine that focused primarily on the intrinsic rewards of employment, namely moral development. Free labor advocates insisted that a slave’s “‘proverbial’ tendency to moral transgression” (to lie, steal, or be lazy) was the result of having, in the words of William Ellery Channing, “nothing to gain in life” and hence no motivation to “govern himself” (Foster 42). Connecting ideas of work and self-culture, free-labor advocates like Channing positioned labor as a vehicle for individuality. Douglass, similarly, imagines a “wholehearted” engagement with work— “patient, enduring, honest, unremitting, indefatigable”—as a means for the individual to cultivate his unique and perfect self. In 1873, Douglass lectured on “Self-Made Men” to black students at Fisk University in Nashville. As he would again in the 1893 version of this speech, Douglass mentioned Ralph Waldo Emerson (perhaps the most eminent mid-century theorist of self-reliance) by name: “Mr. Emerson has declared it is natural to believe in great men. Whether this be fact or not, we do believe in them and worship them” (548). Emerson’s understanding of labor as a form of active self-creation echoes loudly in Douglass, who called self-making a “ceaseless heart and soul industry” (294). Generally speaking, free labor sympathizers (like Channing, Emerson, and Douglass) shared a fundamental liberal embrace of the capitalist marketplace. “All like wages,” Emerson said in an 1862 speech, “and the appetite grows by feeling” (175). Emerson based his defense of the northern 142

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wage system (with its broad range of manual and professional occupations) on the fact that laborers could ostensibly choose the job that best suit their individual talents. While Douglass takes pains to promote all forms of labor in “Self-Made Men,” he could not accept Emerson’s wholesale vindication of differentiated wages on the somewhat naïve grounds that Emerson did. Douglass was keenly aware of the precarious role former slaves assumed in the northern wage system. While as a fugitive he pursued emancipation with an eye toward earning any form of pay; as an intellectual and cultural critic, Douglass routinely denounced the overt racism that locked black people into menial occupations. His critique of degraded, racialized labors, notably the stereotypical work of washerwomen and bootblacks, rested in the observation that these labors “move nowhere, proceed to nothing, and ‘bind’ an entire racial group to perpetual poverty” (Banner 295). Not surprisingly, Douglass’s pantheon of self-made black men marks a course toward various intellectual endeavors in science, mathematics, engineering, and architecture, as well as international politics and diplomacy. Douglass’s model of self-making rested in a profound respect for learning. Though self-taught, Douglass retained a reverence for educational institutions, announcing in his 1860 speech, “There never was yet a man who had educated himself who could not, by the same exertion and application and determined perseverance, have been better educated by the helps of the ordinary institutions of learning” (300). When in 1853 the National Negro Convention formed a committee to set up a manual-labor school, Douglass (a committee member) proposed an integrated school that would “combine manual labor with study, to impart a knowledge of trades as well as of books to teach an art with every science” (“Work and Self-Elevation” 477). Like Emerson, Douglass’s language yokes education and labor as the essential means of perfecting the individual. And yet, Douglass’s assertion of individualism was necessarily a cautious one. His fusion of independence and interiority (a core tenet of his philosophy of self-making) was complicated by the egalitarian Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood

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political requirements Douglass insisted upon—those that troubled his more overt and conservative messages of self-help. “Fair Play” and the Limits of Self-Reliance Much of the recent scholarship on Douglass, including works by Blight, Nicholas Buccola, and Adam Gopnik, takes note of the ways Douglass’s liberalism (particularly its classic commitment to individual autonomy and natural rights) existed alongside communal, egalitarian impulses, some quite radical in his day. These strands in thinking combine in a single phrase, repeated twice in the 1893 version of “Self-Made Men” and in other speeches: “Give the negro fair play and let him alone” (557). During the nineteenth century (especially in the declining years of Reconstruction), many prominent black leaders were frustrated by Douglass’s distrust of government and other institutional efforts to provide social support or charity to black people. As early as 1849, with over three million people enslaved, Douglass affirmed the obligation of black people to elevate themselves. In a speech titled “Self-Help,” delivered at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, Douglass asserts: Our white friends may do much for us, but we must do much for ourselves. Equality and respectability can only be attained by our own exertions. We require respect—not merely sympathy. We have no right to respect, if, being under the hoof of oppression, we are not manly enough to rise in our own cause, and do something to elevate ourselves from our degraded position. (168)

Transcribing this speech for the New York Herald, a reporter wrote that Douglass “concluded by a stirring appeal to his colored bretheren to rouse from their lukewarmness and apathy” (170). In Douglass’s own time, as in ours, people seized on such calls for selfreliance (some to affirm, others to rebuke), especially on Douglass’s insinuations that apathy lay at the root of personal degradation. But in elevating this single feature of his thought, it is easy to miss Douglass’s more radical point about how individuated selves form. In the antebellum period, when Douglass delivered “Self-Help,” 144

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abolitionists had adopted the conventions of sentimentalism as an attempt to mobilize the political implications of “right feeling.” In their speeches, essays, treatises, and novels, slaves were often cast as victims—illiterate, childlike, dependent creatures—who required physical care and moral assistance. White, female abolitionists especially (many of whom became Douglass’s close friends and associates) took the bereft, degraded slave as an “object,” grounding their superior, racialized moral authority and genteel purity in sympathy for the defiled. Examples include Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fictitious rendering of the dutiful, longsuffering slave Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (subtitled Life Among the Lowly) or Lydia Maria Child’s patronization of fugitive slave Harriet Jacobs in the editorial preface of Jacobs’s narrative. These texts were clear in their calls for abolition, but few lay the groundwork for real racial equality. When Douglass asserts “we require respect—not merely sympathy,” his message is twofold. For black people, it is one of pragmatic encouragement, a theme he drew upon throughout his career. Just one year earlier, in Rochester, NY, Douglass told the black congregants of Spring Street A.M.E. Zion Church to “therefore aim at a high standard of morality and self-respect. That they may command something more than sympathy, they must earn the respect of a community, of a nation; while they could never do this by exclusive organizations. . . they must be temperance people, otherwise, they may expect to remain in degradation (“Colored People Must Demand Respect” 113). For white abolitionist audiences, though, Douglass’s message is harsher, if but more subtle. In rejecting white pity for a much-preferred black self-respect, Douglass reveals sympathy—the principal affective strategy of the abolitionist movement—to be an impediment to true racial equality. In the waning years of Reconstruction, it can be more difficult to make sense of Douglass’s continued pleas for self-reliance, especially as the United States government failed to address the intensification of violence and discrimination against black people, including the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The year 1876 was particularly bleak: The Supreme Court, in a series of rulings, began to systematically weaken the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood

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that outlawed racial discrimination and guaranteed citizenship and voting rights to black people. The Waite Court embraced a states’ rights doctrine that all but released the federal government from its duty to protect southern blacks against voter intimidation, mob violence, and lynching. In 1874, white terrorists in Alabama committed individual and mass murders on Election Day to prevent unification of a republican, interracial coalition. That same year in New Orleans, thirty-five “white leaguers” occupied City Hall, driving out black militia and police. Throughout the decade, one out of every ten black members of southern constitutional conventions was either killed or wounded.1 Douglass’s celebrity did not shield him from this barbarism. In 1872, the Rochester home, where he’d lived with this wife Anna and five children for nearly twenty-five years, was purposely burned to the ground. According to Blight, Douglass “publicly placed his personal loss at the feet not only of Rochester but of the entire nation’s recent history of deadly racial violence” (522). This is to say that Douglass was certain the arson was racially motivated. Self-Made Men,” for which Douglass continued to receive frequent and profitable compensation, struck many in the black community as a feeble, inadequate response to raging vigilante violence. Passages like the following caused black editorialists to charge the elder statesman of having lost his radical edge: Give the negro fair play and let him alone. If he lives, well. If he dies, equally well. If he cannot stand up, let him fall down (557). And yet, as Blight has argued, what Douglass’s meant by “leave him alone” was actually “do justice” (426). In Douglass’s mind, for black men to become “architects of their own good fortunes. . . indebted to themselves for themselves,” they required the legitimacy of unassailable and uninhibited personhood, the bases of rugged self-reliance (550). In pragmatic terms, “fair play” meant integrated education, living wages, fair housing, due process, civil rights, and suffrage. And for this reason, Douglass campaigned, relentlessly, for every one of these civil liberties throughout his career. In the nineteenth century, such political demands were in fact revolutionary; their realization would have required extraordinary federal effort and social reorganization. 146

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As Douglass carried “Self-Made Men” across the country he became a staple of the lyceum circuit. The lyceum, which began in the 1840s as a loose organization of local civic improvement societies in the Northeast and Midwest, became, after the Civil War, a large entertainment enterprise under the auspices of lecturesponsoring associations run by white men. Douglass signed lucrative contracts with white agents and spoke regularly to white audiences. Douglass’s celebrity and exceptional entrée into white venues was crucial to his impact because the new order of “fair play” he urged was, to his mind, as much for whites to give as it was for blacks to seize. In lecturing on “Self-Made Men” to some two hundred whites in 1879, Douglass urged an embrace of interracial harmony akin to income redistribution: “Sell them your lands and let them practice your thrift and economy” (Blight 600). In 1893, the message was similar: “Throw open. . . the doors of your schools, the factories, the workshops, and all mechanical labors” (557). From Douglass’s point of view, the legacy of slavery necessitated a collective interracial response in order for individual black men to achieve moral and economic autonomy. The social remedies and utopic vision Douglass sought represents far more than a caveat to his repetitive calls for personal responsibility; rather they serve as the bedrock, the communitarian requirements, of self-making. Douglass understood that magical thinking helped to bolster the idea of selfmade men. In an 1860 speech he admitted (to loud applause), “there could not be self-made men in the world; all had begged, borrowed, or stolen from somebody or somewhere” (293). Indeed, Douglass did not understand self-making apart from mutual accountability, as he makes clear in an 1893 version of the speech: No possible native force of character, and no depth or wealth of originality, can lift a man into absolute independence of his fellowmen, and no generation of men can be independent of the preceding generation. The brotherhood and interdependence of mankind are guarded at all points. I believe in individuality, but individuals are, to the mass, like waves to the ocean. . . we differ as waves but are one as the sea. (549) Reframing of Nineteenth-Century American Personhood

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Douglass’s metaphor offers an explicit corrective to Emerson, whose radical views of individuation and “absolute independence” defended a liberty for Americans beyond the influence of intellectual tradition or of “fellow-men.” Douglass, on the other hand, understood democratic politics to be an inherently mutualistic proposition. Sounding far more like Walt Whitman, the Douglass of 1893 imagines striving selves—unique persons, who “differ as waves”—to be inextricably bound in “interdependence” and “brotherhood.” Such selves are “lifted” or buoyed not by a “native force of character” or by “depth of originality” (the very ingredients of Emersonian self-making) but by the energetic and immense power that is interconnected human society. Perhaps, above all, “Self-Made Men” matters for how this signature piece of oratory emblematizes Douglass’s remarkable and enduring faith in humankind. Through the long, harrowing epic of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, Douglass never surrendered his belief in the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution, in the Western tradition of natural rights, or in the power of individual Americans to establish, each for himself—by means of hard work and moral conduct—a place in the country’s free citizenry. Note 1.

Information about these events is taken from “Violence and Backlash.”

Works Cited Banner, Rachel. “Thinking Through Things: Labors of Freedom in James McCune Smith’s ‘The Washerwoman.’” ESQ, vol. 59, no. 2, 2013, pp. 291–29. Blight, David. W. Frederick Douglass Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster, 2018. Buccola, Nicholas. The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty. NYU P, 2012. Castiglia, Chris. “Interiority.” Keywords for American Cultural Studies, edited by Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler. NYU P, 2007, pp. 135– 37. 148

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Cutter, Marth J., and Caroline F. Levander. “Engendering American Fictions.” A Companion to American Fiction, edited by Shirley Samuels. Blackwell Publishing, 2004, pp. 40–51. Douglass, Frederick. “Brethren, Rouse the Church: An Address Delivered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 6 August 1847.” The Frederick Douglass Papers Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. vol. 2, edited by John W. Blassingame. Yale UP, 1985, pp. 90–93. ___________. “Colored People Must Command Respect: An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on 13 March 1848.” The Frederick Douglass Papers Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. vol. 2, edited by John W. Blassingame. Yale UP, 1985, pp. 112–15. __________. “Our Destiny Is Largely in Our Own Hands: An Address Delivered in Washington DC, on 16 April 1883.” The Frederick Douglass Papers Series One. vol. 5, edited by John W. Blassingame. Yale UP, 1985, pp. 59–80. __________. “Self-Help: An Address Delivered in New York, New York, on 7 May 1849.” The Frederick Douglass Papers Series One. vol. 2, edited by John W. Blassingame. Yale UP, 1985, pp. 167–70. __________. “Self-Made Men: An Address Delivered in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in March 1893.” The Frederick Douglass Papers Series One. vol. 5, edited by John W. Blassingame. Yale UP, 1985, pp. 545–75. __________. “The Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men: An Address Delivered in Halifax, England, on 4 January 1860.” The Frederick Douglass Papers Series One. vol. 3, edited by John W. Blassingame. Yale UP, 1985, pp 289–301. __________. “Work and Self-Elevation: An Address Delivered in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 14 April 1854.” The Frederick Douglass Papers Series One. vol. 2, edited by John W. Blassingame. Yale UP, 1985, pp. 475–79. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Political Emerson: Essential Writings on Politics and Social Reform, edited by David Robinson. Beacon P, 2004. Forster, Sophia. “Peculiar Faculty and Peculiar Institution: Ralph Waldo Emerson on Labor and Slavery.” ESQ, vol. 60, no.1, 2014, pp. 35–74.

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Gopnik, Adam. “American Prophet: The Gifts of Frederick Douglass.” The New Yorker, October 15, 2018, pp. 76–82. whyalmost50.blogspot. com/2019/02/american-prophet-gifts-of-frederick.html. Greeson, Jennifer Rae. Our South: Geographic Fantasy and the Rise of National Literature. Harvard UP, 2010. Ray, Angela G. “Frederick Douglass on the Lyceum Circuit: Social Assimilation, Social Transformation?” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, vol. 5, no. 4, 2002, pp. 625–47. “Violence and Backlash,” video. Facing History and Ourselves, www. facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/lessons/violence-and-backlash.

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Making the American Self and the Self-Made Man in The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography Amina Gautier

In his introduction to The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, historian Rayford W. Logan offers a description Alain Locke gave of Frederick Douglass as “a sort of Negro edition of Ben Franklin, reacting to the issues of his time with truly profound and unbiased sanity,” a descriptor which may initially seem curious, given the immediately apparent differences between the two men (“Introduction,” 16). Born in Boston in 1706, Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, twenty-eight years before Frederick Douglass would be born in Maryland in 1818. Franklin was white; Douglass was black. Franklin was a Founding Father of the United States who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution, whereas Douglass was born a slave whose personhood and rights were neither recognized nor guaranteed by any of these documents. Nevertheless, the commonality between Douglass and Franklin, as expressed in their autobiographies, bridge the century that separates them. Both men ended their lives as American citizens, although Franklin began as a colonial subject to the British crown and Douglass began as a slave. Both men rose above their original stations in life, published newspapers, became public figures, served as public servants, and were urged to write accounts of their lives that they revised and expanded after periods of war (Franklin returned to his autobiography after the Revolutionary War and Douglass to his memoirs after the Civil War). Composed over an eighteen-year period in multiple locations (England, France, and Philadelphia), Franklin’s Autobiography was never completed and was published posthumously. Douglass published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in 1845. Recounting his life as a slave, his escape north, and his first few months of freedom, Douglass’s first autobiography “was set down primarily so Making the American Self and Self-Made Man

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that Douglass might guarantee its authenticity” and “take personal possession of it, declare it his own property” (Sundquist 87). Douglass continued to revise and expand upon the story of his life, publishing My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855 and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass in 1881, which he expanded in 1892 in order to discuss his decade of public service as U.S. Marshall, then Recorder of Deeds, and finally, U.S. Minister Resident and Consul General to the Republic of Haiti. It is this final autobiography that merits more consideration because, in including Douglass’s postwar life and postbellum political success, it depicts Douglass’s life as not only one that has come full circle, but as one that has beaten the odds. Both Franklin’s Autobiography and Douglass’s final autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass offer narratives that depict the formation and evolution of the “self-made man,” of which they were both exemplary representatives. Self-Made Men In The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Douglass writes of himself: “I have sometimes been credited with having been the architect of my own fortune, and have pretty generally received the title of ‘self-made man’” (466). But what exactly is a self-made man? In “Self-Made Men,” a lecture Douglass frequently delivered over a thirty-year period, he defines the term: Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position and have learned from themselves the best uses to build upon worthy characters. They are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any of the favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results. (“Self-Made Men” 420–21)

Typically self-taught, self-made men are “often compelled by unfriendly circumstances to acquire their education elsewhere and, amidst unfavorable conditions” (“Self-Made Men” 421). Their 152

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accomplishments are achieved “in open and derisive defiance of all the efforts of society and the tendency of circumstances to repress, retard and keep them down” (“Self-Made Men” 421). As such, Douglass argues, they are “entitled to a certain measure of respect for their success and for proving to the world the grandest possibilities of human nature, of whatever variety of race or color” (“Self-Made Men” 421). Given all the barriers he faces, the selfmade man succeeds by taking advantage of his greatest strength, which is his willingness to work hard: “He was awake while we slept. He was busy while we were idle and he was wisely improving his time and talents while we were wasting ours” (“Self-Made Men” 426). Finally, self-made men are hard-pressed; they achieve their successes out of necessity. Without outside help, their industry and exertion build character and reputation, creating a social cachet that makes up for deficiencies in education, pedigree, and wealth, thus eventually allowing self-made men to rival and/or outpace others who possess educational, financial, and social advantages. Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass were both urged by others to publish their life stories because they embodied the concept of the self-made man and because of the social and national prominence they attained despite their humble origins. In the preface to the second portion of Franklin’s Autobiography, Abel James and Benjamin Vaughan both write to Franklin, asking him to resume the writing of his autobiography. James encourages Franklin to finish and publish his autobiography because “I know of no Character living. . . who has so much in his Power as Thyself to promote a greater Spirit of Industry and early Attention to Business, Frugality, and Temperance with the American Youth” (58). Vaughan urges Franklin to publish the autobiography because it will “give a noble race an example of self-education” (59), make an impression upon readers, especially youth, because Franklin’s lack of social pedigree show him to be “ashamed of no origin” (60), and in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War will offer “details of the manners and situations of a Rising people” (62). Just as Franklin’s Autobiography was seen as speaking for the American self newly formed in the wake of national independence, The Life and Times of Frederick Making the American Self and Self-Made Man

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Douglass, in telling the story of a slave who eventually rose to become a statesman “inspired Negroes and other disadvantaged Americans to believe that, despite the imperfections of American democracy, a self-made man may aspire to greatness” (15). James McCune Smith urged Douglass to publish another autobiography that would expand upon the first to include his life as a freeman, and he wrote the introduction to Douglass’s second autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, where he detailed the remarkable nature of Douglass’s personal journey and reminded readers that Douglass’s story was “not merely an example of self-elevation under the most adverse circumstances” (“Introduction,” 9), but also one which vindicated the antislavery movement. For Smith, Douglass is “a Representative American man” (“Introduction,” 19) and his autobiography is “an American book, for Americans, in the fullest sense of the idea” (“Introduction,” 25). Reflecting that of a slave-turned-statesman, one who began life as a slave neither protected nor recognized by the government and who later became one its highest officials, Douglass’s story of a journey that follows a man from rags to riches, slavery to freedom, and obscurity to fame, ultimately becomes “a classic account of the model African American life” (Sundquist 85). Men of No Origin Initially begun in 1771, Franklin’s Autobiography is addressed to his son William, who was then the Governor of New Jersey. Reminding his son of his long-held interest in “obtaining any little Anecdote of my Ancestors” and of his earlier trips to England in pursuit of genealogical information, Franklin undertakes to write his own autobiography under the presumption that his son shares his interests and wishes to know the details of his life, especially since Franklin rose from the “Poverty and Obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a State of Affluence and some Degree of Reputation in the World” (1). Franklin learns that his family had lived in the village of Ecton for at least three hundred years before immigrating to the colonies and finds “an Account of their Births, Marriages, and Burials,” which reveal that he is the youngest son of the youngest son 154

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for five generations (2–3). Despite tracing his paternal history back several hundred years in England and tracing his maternal ancestry back to Peter Folger “one of the first Settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather,” Franklin nevertheless considers himself to have been “born and bred” in “Poverty and Obscurity” of humble origins (5). Douglass’s narrative begins with him defining and describing himself in the absence of the genealogical information that Franklin can so easily access. Whereas Franklin “search’d the Register at Ecton,” (3) Douglass can only tell us, “I suppose myself to have been born in February 1817” (The Life 27). He is unable to search a register because “Genealogical trees did not flourish among slaves” and “Masters allowed no questions concerning their ages to be put to them by slaves” (The Life 27). Details of Douglass’s birth and history are instead replaced with absence, silence, and concealed by ignorance and threats, thus giving new meaning to Franklin’s notion of being born in “obscurity.” Douglass was no less desirous of information about his past and his family history, yet obtaining such details was far more arduous for him than Franklin, given the lack of records kept for slaves and the fact that Douglass could not turn to his own family members, but had to rely upon his former masters and their descendants. When serving as a delegate for the National Loyalist’s Convention in Philadelphia, Douglass encounters Amanda Sears (née Auld), the granddaughter of his former master. From her, Douglass seeks to “know if my kinfolk still lived and what was their condition” (The Life 393). Several years later, Douglass visits Maryland and meets with his former master Captain Auld, returning to the land he once left as a fugitive slave now as a free man and a U.S. Marshall, but other than discovering the fate of his grandmother, Douglass learns nothing new of his parentage or lineage, or of the whereabouts of his siblings (The Life 443). In 1891, Douglass writes to Thomas “Tommy” Auld, whom a young Douglass had once been sent to Baltimore to care for, asking for details, dates, and facts, hoping to discover the year he had first come to Baltimore (Walker 234–35). In 1894, one year before his death, and a year after the publication of the final version of The Life and Times of Frederick Making the American Self and Self-Made Man

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Douglass, Douglass returned to Maryland one last time, this time to visit Dr. Thomas Sears, Amanda Sears’s son and his former master’s great-grandson, in an effort to glean more information about his own past, wanting “as many ‘facts’ as the doctor could give him about his old master and his family,” but learning very little (Walker 211). Unlike Franklin whose family anecdotes are corroborated by records and documents, the information Douglass seeks proved to be elusive. Fugitives Despite their mutual desire to detail their family histories, neither Frederick Douglass nor Benjamin Franklin owed their social and national prominence to their family trees. Both men of no special origin, neither was expected nor trained up to live a remarkable life. While Franklin’s older brothers were all apprenticed out to tradesmen, Franklin was originally intended for the clergy until the price of such an education proved too costly, and he was taken out of school to assist his father as a soap and candlemaker (6). At the age of twelve, Franklin was apprenticed, under articles of indenture, to his brother James who was a printer. When James was jailed for material he’d printed and subsequently banned from printing his newspaper, he opted to print the paper under Benjamin Franklin’s name, which could only be done if Franklin were not an apprentice. Officially releasing Franklin from his indenture, he then signed him to a secret contract for the remaining years owed. Franklin takes advantage of this situation to claim his independence at the age of seventeen. Consequently, his brother has him blacklisted: “When he found I would leave him, he took care to prevent my getting Employment in any other Printing-House of the Town, by going round and speaking to every Master, who accordingly refus’d to give me Work” (17). Not only was Franklin unable to obtain work as a printer in his hometown, his father forbade him from leaving town to find work elsewhere (the intention being to force Franklin to return to his brother’s employ). Aware that “if I attempted to go openly, Means would be used to prevent me” (17), Franklin passed himself off as a man escaping a shotgun wedding, buying private 156

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passage aboard a sloop, and leaving town in secret, sailing to New York. Unlike Franklin, whose indenture would have been discharged at the age of twenty-one, Douglass was a “slave for life” (The Life 83). In Baltimore, Douglass learned to be a caulker, but upon reaching his majority at age twenty-one there was no release from his bonds, and no opportunity to ply his trade as a freeman, the fact of which he reminded the young white playmates he encountered on the streets of Baltimore: “You will be free, you know, as soon as you are twenty-one, and can go where you like, but I am a slave for life” (The Life 83). At the age of twenty, unwilling to be a “slave for life,” Douglass escaped to freedom. Unlike Narrative and My Bondage and My Freedom, which were both published before the Civil War at a time during which revealing his methods of escape could “prevent the future escape of one who might adopted the same means,” Douglass faced no such constraints when publishing The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass in 1881 and thus revealed his escape (197). From a free colored man Douglass obtained “a sailor’s protection,” which served the same purpose as free papers, and boarded a northbound train just at its moment of departure, making his escape out of Baltimore by posing as a free black sailor (The Life 198).1 Both Franklin and Douglass undertook singular paths to achieve their freedom as young men, Franklin breaking free of his indenture to his brother James at the age of seventeen, Douglass breaking free of slavery at the age of twenty. Both men escaped in secret via sea and both washed up in New York City, where they rethought their actions. Franklin and Douglass both arrived in New York bedraggled, poor, hungry, and without connections or further directions, circumstances that Douglass tells us make many runaway slaves prone to return South rather than face “the life of loneliness, apprehension, hunger, and anxiety which meets them on their first arrival in a free state” (My Bondage 272) and similarly cause Franklin to “wish I had never left home” (19). Upon arrival, both men face the danger of being apprehended. Despite his “joyous excitement” (The Life 202) at his escape, Douglass soon discovered “New York Making the American Self and Self-Made Man

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was not quite so free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed” (The Life 203) and learned that he was at the mercy of slavecatchers and spies. Similarly, Franklin was also at risk. Because of his poor appearance, he is presumed to be “some runaway Servant” and finds himself “in danger of being taken up on that Suspicion” (19). Finding New York too dangerous a place to stay, both travel on; Douglass headed North for New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Franklin traveled South to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Self-Educated Franklin’s formal education ended when he was ten, and Douglass famously taught himself to read. That two such articulate and eloquent men should both have lacked formal educations is perhaps not as surprising as was their hunger to learn, and the industrious methods of self-improvement they employed. Avid readers at early ages, both Franklin and Douglass undertook pains to pursue their love of reading. Franklin surreptitiously borrowed the books that came his way as the apprentice to a printer: “Often I sat up in my Room reading the greatest Part of the Night, when the Book was borrow’d in the Evening and to be return’d early in the Morning lest it should be miss’d or wanted” (10). A slave with no income, Douglass yet managed to save for and purchase The Columbian Orator despite being forbidden to learn to read by his masters. Bemoaning their lack of formal education, Douglass and Franklin both deployed model-based methods of learning to improve their writing and literacy. Chided by his father, who intercepted one of his letters and pointed out the areas in which Franklin “fell far short in elegance of Expression, in Method, and in Perspicuity,” Franklin decided to become “more attentive to the Manner in Writing” (11). Following his resolution, he took the Spectator, a weekly periodical, for his model. After “making short Hints of the Sentiment in each Sentence,” Franklin “laid them by a few Days, and then without looking at the Book, tried to complete the Papers again, by expressing each hinted Sentiment at length and as fully as it had been express’d before, in any suitable Words that should come to hand” (11). Using the Spectator as his guide, Franklin improved 158

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his language and composition through a process of memorization, paraphrasing, and transcription. Similarly, a young Douglass turned to his copy of The Columbian Orator as a model of learning. Impressed by the section where a slave wields rhetoric as a weapon against his master to obtain his freedom, Douglass obtained material to counter proslavery arguments and becomes inspired to learn how to write as a preparatory step to freedom. Contriving ways to further his literacy without detection, Douglass brought a flour-barrel into the kitchen loft where he slept, upon whose head he wrote, “till late at night and when all the family were in bed and asleep” (The Life 93). Understanding literacy to be the “direct pathway from slavery to freedom,” Douglass worked to improve his literacy, bribing indentured boys with bread to get them to teach him to read, and challenging local boys to spelling contests and using their arrogance against them to learn to write his alphabet (The Life 79). Douglass engaged Webster’s blue-black spelling book in a similar fashion as Franklin engaged the Spectator, memorizing and transcribing, “copying the italics in Webster’s Spelling Book until I could make them all without looking on the book” (The Life 93). Douglass then made use of his young master’s old copy books: “I got Master Tommy’s copy books and a pen and ink, and in the ample spaces between the lines I wrote other lines as nearly like his as possible” (The Life 93). Upon learning the basics, he, like Franklin, began “copying” (The Life). Douglass turned the city of Baltimore into his very own copybook upon which he practiced his penmanship and spelling: “With my playmates for my teachers, fences and pavements for my copybooks, and chalk for my pen and ink, I learned to write” (93). Given the rigorous methods of self-improvement undertaken by both men, Franklin and Douglass understandably both attribute their social ascension to their ability to write well. Editors As young men, both Franklin and Douglass left Massachusetts, where they were relatively settled, over differences in opinions with those who had behaved in guardian-like roles for them in order to start their own lives as printers (Franklin splitting from his brother and Making the American Self and Self-Made Man

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Douglass splitting from the followers of William Lloyd Garrison) and both used their positions as editors to great avail applying their writing to persuasive and political ends. James McCune Smith contextualizes the importance of Douglass’s newspaper The North Star (later Frederick Douglass’ Paper) and the role of the editor in popular culture: “Mr. Douglass had raised himself by his own efforts to the highest position in society. As a successful editor, in our land, he occupies this position. Our editors rule the land and he is one of them” (“Introduction” 18). When he first began as an independent printer, Franklin’s skill in writing set him apart from William Bradford and Samuel Keimer, the other two printers in Philadelphia whom he characterizes as “very illiterate” and “poorly qualified for their Business” (22). His writing ability directly impacted the success of his printing business. Because he could write well, he exerted greater influence over the content of his newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette and was thus able to drum up subscriptions by arousing interest in his readers through the inclusion of “spirited remarks,” which provided commentary on local political doings (51). “This,” Franklin self-effacingly asserts, “was one of the first good Effects of my having learned a little to scribble,” a difference noticed and felt by readers who recognize when a paper is “in the hands of one who could also hold a pen” (51). Franklin’s Autobiography demonstrates the cohesion he was able to create between his writing and his political influence. His writing paves the way for his implementations in the city of Philadelphia. Franklin’s projects are all implemented according to a familiar pattern wherein which he conceived an idea or project for the city’s improvement, then wrote a persuasive and informational document that accustomed readers to the merits of his proposal, which he either printed and distributed as a pamphlet or published in his newspaper, after which he collected the necessary subscriptions, signatures, or votes to bring about the desired change. In 1751, when recruited to help garner subscriptions for the establishment of a hospital, before soliciting subscriptions from others, Franklin “endeavored to prepare the Minds of the People by writing on the Subject in the Newspapers, which was my usual Custom” (103). In order to 160

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get his neighborhood streets paved, he “wrote and printed a Paper,” then distributed the pamphlets to his neighbors who “unanimously sign’d” (105). By this method, he eventually got the city’s streets paved and obtained street lamps to light the city in the evening (104–06). His plans for a fire company, an academy for youth, and a group of voluntary militia all began with Franklin’s composition and dissemination of a paper (91–92). With a press at his disposal, Franklin conjoined his ability to handle the pen with his resources to print and distribute information, disseminate his opinions to the public, and thus implement his civic, political, and social goals. Frederick Douglass’s popularity on the antislavery lecture circuit indirectly led to his creation of his newspaper The North Star. A fugitive from slavery, Douglass’s public speaking rendered him “notorious” among the public and left him “exposed to arrest and capture” (The Life 256). In order to evade capture, Douglass travelled to Great Britain to continue antislavery lectures there, spending a full two years in England, where his freedom was purchased by antislavery advocates for the sum of £150 (My Bondage 300). Before returning to America, his antislavery friends offer him a monetary gift, but instead Douglass requested and was granted “the means of obtaining a printing press and materials to enable me to start a paper advocating the interests of my enslaved and oppressed people” (The Life 257). Douglass’s desire to publish his own newspaper signaled the beginning of his separation from the Garrisonians, followers of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (editor of The Liberator), all of whom discouraged him although “there was not a single newspaper in the country regularly published by colored people” (The Life 257). Believing that “a tolerably well-conducted press in the hands of persons of the despised race would. . . prove a most powerful means of removing prejudice and awakening an interest in them” (The Life 257), Douglass recognized that although his own lack of education might not make him the best choice, the compelling need for such a paper could spur him toward self-improvement: “I felt that the want of my education, great as it was, could be overcome by study, and that wisdom would come by experience” (The Life 260). Notably, the white abolitionists’ response caught him by surprise. Making the American Self and Self-Made Man

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Expecting to find his friends “favorably disposed toward my cherished enterprise” (The Life 259), Douglass encountered the racial prejudice of the white abolitionists, whose paternalism was formerly hinted at on the antislavery lecture circuit when Douglass was asked to modify his public speeches to include “a little of the plantation speech” so as not to appear “too learned” (The Life 218). Moving forward with his project, despite opposition, Douglass relocated to Rochester, NY for “motives of peace” in order to establish his press in a location where his paper “would not interfere with that of the Liberator or the Anti-Slavery Standard” (The Life 260). Disproving predictions of the newspaper’s sure failure, Douglass’s paper “quickly became the most influential black abolitionist newspaper in the country” and “Douglass’s editorial role gained him a wider audience and augmented his personal campaign to make literacy the most potent weapon in the battle against slavery” (Sundquist 103). Taken together, Douglass’s autobiographies and newspaper proved that “[Not] simply the voice but the pen was the key to liberty, no less for black Americans than it had been for the pamphleteers of the revolutionary period” (Sundquist 104). Like Franklin, Douglass also used his newspaper to espouse his ideas, influence public opinion, and sway popular sentiment while endorsing social projects. To great effect he used his newspaper as a forum to address his black readership and apprise them of the political developments affecting them. Exhorting black men in the North to enlist in the first colored regiment of the Union Army, Douglass “urged every man who could, to enlist, to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his shoulder, and the star-spangled banner over his head” (The Life 338) and was instrumental in filling the 54th and 55th regiments. The content of Douglass’s newspaper was regularly “copied in the leading journals” (The Life 338) and Douglass could use his newspaper to encourage or to condemn. While prompting black men to go to Massachusetts to enlist in the 54th regiment, Douglass simultaneously shamed New York (where his newspaper was based) for not developing its own colored regiment, pronouncing “I wish I could tell you that the State of New York calls you to this high honor. For the moment, her constituted 162

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authorities are silent on the subject. . . but we are not compelled to wait for her. We can get at the throat of treason and slavery through the State of Massachusetts” (The Life 340). Asked by recruiter George Luther Stearns (who had been appointed by Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew) to help recruit black soldiers, Douglass halted his efforts after six months when he learned that the promises that had been made to the black soldiers had not been kept (The Life 345–46). Douglass wrote a letter of complaint to Stearns, which he then published in his newspaper for all to see. Upon receiving assurances from Stearns, Douglass published that information as well to keep his black readership abreast of the situation. Though Franklin and Douglass both used their newspapers to promote civic engagements, Franklin preferred anonymity to achieve his goals. Often publishing his opinion pieces anonymously, Franklin masked his individual endeavors by presenting himself as the chosen speaker of a fabricated group, a privilege that Douglass did not enjoy (99). Douglass relied on his reputation and publicity to achieve his goals and his popularity and visibility consequently often made him a public target, which necessitated his use of his newspaper and final autobiography to squelch gossip, rebut criticism, vindicate his own actions, and publicly document said vindication. Errata Both Franklin and Douglass used their autobiographies to address failures and mistakes. Franklin called these his Errata, a printing term for a mistake that can be fixed in the next edition, among which he included breaking his indenture to his brother James, his lapsed courtship of his future wife, and the spending of money he had been asked to hold in trust for someone else, all of which he eventually rectified. In The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Douglass addressed what he considered to be three major misunderstandings occurring in his later life, i.e., his editorship of the New National Era, his presidency of The Freedmen’s Savings Bank, and his role as Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti. After retiring, Douglass was asked to come to Washington, DC to establish a new newspaper “devoted to the defence and Making the American Self and Self-Made Man

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enlightenment of the newly emancipated and enfranchised people” (The Life 399). Promised support, cooperation, a salary, and investment shares, none of which manifested, Douglass was left “alone, under the mental and pecuniary burden involved in the prosecution of the enterprise” (The Life 399). After pouring much of his own money into the newspaper in order to keep it afloat, Douglass, who had “become publicly associated” with the paper and thus “unwilling to have it prove a failure” ended up having to purchase it in its entirety to gift to his sons (The Life 400). Asked to assume the presidency of The Freedmen’s Saving Bank, of which he was already a trustee, Douglass spent his first three months as president scouring the bank’s records, where he discovered that the bank had “sustained heavy losses” and that its records showed a “discrepancy on the books of forty thousand dollars for which no account could be given” (The Life 403). Learning that the bank had exhausted its reserves, Douglass concluded “it was no longer a safe custodian of the hard earnings of my confiding people,” reported its insolvency to Congress, and suggested the closing of the bank (The Life 404). Publicly slandered for this decision and falsely accused of bringing the bank to ruin and squandering its money through bad loans, Douglass lamented that prior to his bank presidency he’d had a “tolerably fair name for honest dealing,” but had now become subject to “envious and malicious assaults” (The Life 405–06). Douglass’s appointment as Minister to Haiti was met with criticism from the start, which Douglass attributed to “American race and color prejudice” and jealousy (The Life 596). Accused of wasting a year in his post, chastised for not successfully negotiating to obtain a U.S. naval station in Haiti, and accused of disloyalty, i.e., acting in the interests of the Haitians, Douglass offered “the plain facts in the case” (The Life 603), laying out “what, at the time, was my part, and what was not my part, in this important negotiation, the failure of which has unjustly been laid to my charge” (The Life 609). After thoroughly detailing the ways in which the behavior of Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi (the principal negotiator) earned the mistrust of Haitian President Louis Mondestin Florvil Hyppolite, Douglass surmised, “I do not now think that any earthly power 164

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outside of absolute force could have gotten for us a naval station at the Môle-St. Nicolas” (The Life 618). Unlike Franklin’s Errata, all moral lapses of a personal and private nature, in which he failed to behave appropriately toward another person, the failures Douglass addresses are not mistakes of his own making, but ones for which he is nevertheless blamed. Arguing that the former two ventures were failing enterprises before he undertook them and that the third was detrimental to the Haitians, Douglass’s purpose in discussing these failures is to demonstrate his innocence, set the record straight, and remove the blot on his reputation. In their autobiographies both Franklin and Douglass detailed their public lives, their patriotism, and their views of the current social, political, and economic issues that plagued their times. Both men considered themselves to be living at unique and crucial time periods worthy of recording. Franklin lived during the formation of the United States and its consequent revolution from England; Douglass lived through the Antislavery Movement, the Civil War, the Reconstruction, and the Post-Reconstruction. Both men changed their political beliefs during their lifetimes, Franklin going from Loyalist to Revolutionary and Douglass from a Garrisonian antislavery man to one who believed that the Constitution did not allow for slavery and that abolitionists should vote rather than refrain from voting. Both lived through wars whose efforts they supported and both later became statesmen. Both used their printing presses to push through social initiatives. Both Franklin and Douglass were urged to publish their autobiographies because of their singular and remarkable stories, though Franklin’s busy life as a public servant kept him from completing his autobiography and Douglass’s busy life kept him going back to expand upon his story. By telling stories of individual triumphs, both men managed to simultaneously represent the individual and the everyman. Their own personal talents and industry charted their courses of social mobility, yet their scaling the social ladder by sheer dint, without the aid of patrimony, inheritance, family wealth or any other such aids, suggest the availability of such success to any person who dares to try. When viewed across the span of time that divided them, it is perhaps not difficult to see why Making the American Self and Self-Made Man

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Alain Locke dubbed Frederick Douglass “a Negro edition of Ben Franklin.” Nevertheless, although the similarities in the journeys of the two men are evident, Douglass is, of course, not merely a “Negro edition of Ben Franklin.” To say so ignores the racial difference that impacts Douglass’s unique story. Though Douglass had taught himself to read and write and had escaped slavery, all by dint of his own wits and efforts, educating himself to rhetorical and oratorical mastery in an incredibly short amount of time, he was deemed incapable of being able to learn enough to run a printing press by those with whom he had worked most closely. Though Douglass, like Franklin, agreed to accept a military commission during time of war (Franklin was a Commander during the French and Indian Wars), he was never granted one. After drumming up support and convincing black men to enlist in the Union Army, Douglass never receives his promised commission because of the government’s prejudice against making black men military officers: “The government, I fear, was still clinging to the idea that positions of honor in the service should be occupied by white men” (The Life 350). Although Douglass deemed the self-made man “entitled to a certain measure of respect for their success” no matter his race, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass details how often prejudice complicated or negated that expectation (The Life 421). Begun at the age of sixty-five, Franklin’s Autobiography, which presents success as something available to any man of industry, describes a success that was largely available only to free white men, whereas Douglass’s final autobiography, first published in 1881 when he was sixty-three and then revised and enlarged in 1892 when he was seventy-four, shows the complications and obstacles to self-determination one faces when also hampered by slavery, racial prejudice, and paternalism.

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Note 1.

Despite revealing the manner of his escape, Douglass fails to mention the role his intended wife Anna Murray played in aiding his escape to freedom. Anna’s employment as a laundress enabled her to provide Douglass with a sailor’s outfit, which Douglass donned to board a ship and sail north.

Works Cited Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845).” Classic Slave Narratives, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Signet, 2002, pp. 323– 436. __________. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Written by Himself: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History (1892). Collier, 1962. __________. My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), edited by David W. Blight. Yale UP, 2014. __________. “Self-Made Men (1893).” The Speeches of Frederick Douglass: A Critical Edition, edited by John R. McKivigan, Julie Husband, and Heather Kaufman. Yale UP, 2018, pp. 414–53. Franklin, Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1791), edited by Leo Lemay and P.M. Zall. Norton, 1986. Logan, Rayford W. Introduction. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Written by Himself: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History (1892). London: Collier, 1962, pp. 15–24. McCune Smith, James. Introduction. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass (1855), edited by David W. Blight. Yale UP, 2014, pp. 9–25. Sundquist, Eric J. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1993. Walker, Peter. Moral Choices: Memory, Desire, and Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Abolition. Louisiana State UP, 1978.

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Black Voices for Freedom: Frederick Douglass and José María Samper’s Florencio Conde Nydia R. Jeffers

The crime against humanity of enslavement has existed for most of human history. After the independence of many nations and even after abolition, the acquisition of people by force has continued in the form of human trafficking. In 2016, the International Labor Organization (ILO) of the United Nations (UN) estimated 24.9 million victims of bondage around the world, including the Americas. Migrants are acquired through force, fraud, or deception. In the nineteenth century in the United States and in Colombia, the enslaved became synonymous with the black race, and books were written to justify a hierarchy of races, such as Josiah Clark Nott and George Glidden’s Types of Mankind (1854). However, others raised their voices for equality and freedom until emancipation was issued by Abraham Lincoln in the United States of America in 1862. An African American leader in the history of the United States, writer, orator and statesman, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) denounced enslavement and the inhumane acts that terrorized other slaves, such as sexual slavery, torture, persecution, and even murder, in his first autobiography: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Douglass had suffered and witnessed the horror of enslavement as a domestic slave and as a tobacco, corn, and wheat field hand. His autobiography narrates his experiences between his birth and his twentieth birthday (1818–1838). Another author who protested against the dangers of enslavement endured by black people was Colombian novelist, lawyer, and politician José María Samper (1828–1888). Samper set his novel Florencio Conde: Escenas de la vida colombiana. Novela original (1875) [Florencio Conde: Scenes of Colombian Life. Original Novel] from the time of slavery up to abolition in 1851. The main characters of his novel, Segundo Conde, who is forced to work in a gold mine, and his son Florencio Conde, who 168

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is born free but is affected by racism, are similar to the self-portrait of Frederick Douglass. Even though Douglass and Samper did not know each other, they can be compared because of how they protect human rights, termed as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence of the United States (1776) by President Thomas Jefferson and “according to the tranquility and happiness of the public” (my translation) [conforme a la tranquilidad y felicidad pública] in the Declaration of Independence of Colombia (1810) by Juan Jurado, et al. Douglass and Segundo Conde were enslaved children and teenagers but became self-educated men who achieved positions as founders of newspapers and orators at conventions (Douglass) and Congress (Florencio Conde). They also married white women who replaced racial prejudice with admiration. Therefore, the analysis will delve into comparing the public and private characterization of Douglass, Segundo Conde, and his son Florencio Conde as abolitionists and as husbands. The theoretical frame to review the narrative texts of Douglass and Samper follows Susan Suleiman’s definition of “ideological works,” namely literature that puts forward a doctrine in a nonambiguous way. As Suleiman puts it, ideological authors “seek to persuade their readers of the correctness of a particular way of interpreting the world” (1). The clear message that emerges from both narratives is the abolitionist-oriented plot. As equal members of a nation, white and nonwhite people are entitled to freedom from enslavement, equal access to an education, political representation, and a right to interracial marriage. Without equality, as David Brion Davis explains, there is a danger to human beings, especially when the self-image of a race is enhanced by contrast to the imaginary image of another race, the Other (18). The common ideology of the two authors has been overlooked in literary criticism. Yet, Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Samper’s novel Florencio Conde (1875) lead readers to think of the descendants of African people as human, motivated by academic learning despite the dehumanizing effects of violent forced work and forced Black Voices for Freedom

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illiteracy. Douglass escaped slavery before his British abolitionist friends purchased his freedom, and the father of Florencio Conde kept a wage on Sundays as a result of a negotiation with his master for his freedom and that of his family. Their marriages epitomize the potential of interracial relationships. The Abolitionist Message of Douglass and Samper The writings and speeches of Douglass have been hailed as abolitionist by historians John Blassingame and Philip Foner, philosophers Howard McGary and Bill Lawson, and political theorists Nicholas Buccola and Neil Roberts. On the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass in 2018, his leading contributions to abolition and social justice were remembered in biographies by Celeste Marie Bernier and Andrew Taylor, Leigh Fought, and David William Blight. The three autobiographies of Douglass, published in 1845, 1855, and 1881 (revised in 1892) denounce the aggressions of slavery and how he escaped and became an abolitionist orator. Douglass fought for an end to the “dehumanizing effects of slavery” (Narrative of the Life 14) or “soul-killing effects of slavery” (Narrative 15). He details the “hardship, hunger, whipping, and nakedness” (Narrative 28) of the lives of slaves and how cruelty transforms the appearance of slaveholders to that of the devil. Samper silences the graphic descriptions of bloody scenes but still depicts the master threatening Segundo Conde with whippings, if he does not obey his every command. The literary review of Samper’s novel recognizes the social and legal reform that the work models. Raymond Lee Williams studies it as an example of how racial prejudice in Colombian society can be overcome with educational and economic success: “a paragon of how Colombian society should operate” (31). Alejandra Toro Murillo explains how this model society believes in liberalism and the efforts by free individuals to create a true civilization (101). In fact, Samper’s novel culminates with the abolition of slavery in Colombia (1852), a feat attributed to Florencio Conde, the mixedrace lawyer and journalist whose merit in defending human liberty was financed by his father, Segundo Conde, a former black slave of 170

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a gold mine who became a successful businessman and provided his son with college education. The purchase of Segundo Conde’s freedom from the mine is followed by the commitment of his son to the cause of abolition. In another monologue, Florencio promises to himself that he will devote his mind to eradicate slavery to generate a democratic government and a Christian just law (Florencio Conde 158–59). To the moral and emotional arguments that slavery is the antithesis of justice and an embarrassment for the Republic, Florencio Conde adds the legal argument that slavery is [a crime against God and mankind] (my translation) “un crimen contra Dios y contra los hombres” (Florencio Conde 164). The preface to the novel reinforces Samper’s social commitment. He indicates in a note to a journalist that [the guiding principle of his novel is justice, as formulated in modern times in democratic freedom] (my translation) “su idea dominante es el principio de justiciar que nos ha guiado a usted y a mí en todo tiempo, la justicia, cuya fórmula ha guiado nuestro espíritu moderno en la libertad democrática” (Florencio Conde n. p.). Samper also opposed slavery in the essay “Political Revolutions,” where he refers to “the violence and horrors of slavery” (Samper 299), adding that “there is no man in the world, regardless of his condition, who does not recognize that slavery is a dangerous and complex evil” (Samper 66). The protest of both authors is also convincing by the description of the black protagonists. Human Portraits of Douglass and the Condes The self-perception as human despite the inhuman treatment that Douglass and Segundo Conde suffer is a common feature across the two works. The human characterization of the enslaved characters starts with the self-realization that they are not things, but people. Douglass portrays himself as deprived of the necessary love from his mother, forcefully separated from her since infancy. One of the first statements of Segundo Conde refers to the same idea that he could not be identified as a human being because he did not have an independent life (Florencio Conde 9). Despite the degrading effects Black Voices for Freedom

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of slavery, Douglass and the Condes narrate their humanity by the friendships that they develop. Douglass appeals emotionally to the reader when he ponders how much he loves his friends despite his decision to leave: “The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to contend. The love of them was my tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else” (Narrative of the Life 106). His friends included white and black people. Douglass’s representation of his life demonstrates the solidarity and unity from within the black race and with the white race. Douglass gained the admiration of both black and white audiences and associations from the United States and Britain. He earned the financial support of his black and white sponsors and friends. His first sponsor included his first wife, Anna Murray, who aided him in his escape. Murray died after forty years of marriage while his second wife, Helen Pitts, remained a faithful friend until his final days. Another stage along the way of recovering human dignity as men includes the capacity to confront the master with physical resilience and intellectual resistance. The pivotal moment when Douglass fights back the slave breaker frees him. After developing friendships and distancing themselves from the masters, Douglass and Segundo Conde are eager to work as free men to own their earnings. Douglass explains: “I could see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my toil into the purse of my master” (Narrative of the Life 102). The responsibility to work and save money defines a work ethic: “by the most untiring perseverance and industry, I made enough to meet my expenses, and lay up a little money every week” (Narrative of the Life 104). The humanization process includes the right to social mobility. Likewise, Samper’s novel confirms the right to the product of his labor when Segundo Conde explains that he will recover his dignity by means of a work ethic and individual freedom (Florencio Conde 8). His negotiation skills take him to own a business in the city and he becomes rich, earning on his own a high socio-economic status, rather than inheriting a fortune from his family. 172

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[I am black, black like coal, and my master is white. . . What is the difference? That he is a man because he is free and owns things, and I am a thing, a kind of brute because I am dispossessed. But can I not change from a thing to a man, at the cost of working on Saturdays and keep what I earn with this work?] (my translation) “Yo soy negro, negro como el carbón, y mi amo es blanco. ¿En qué consiste pues la diferencia? En que él es un hombre porque es libre y posee, y yo una cosa, una especie de bruto porque soy poseído. ¿Pero no podré convertirme de cosa en hombre, a fuerza de trabajar todos los sábados y guardar lo que gane con este trabajo?” (Florencio Conde 17).

The work ethic illustrates the individual initiative to generate savings via the trade in tools to obtain more gold from the mine in an easier manner. Segundo Conde’s interior monologue reveals that commerce is one former slave’s way to produce income: [Commerce was, without a doubt, the type of industry that was more accessible to the free black man. . . . Any person who needs something enters a store, and if the item is found, it is bought, whether the businessman is white or black, handsome or ugly, liberal or conservative] (my translation) “El comercio era, sin duda, el género de industria más accesible para un negro liberto… En una tienda entra todo el que necesita algo, y si lo halla lo compra, ya sea el mercader blanco ó negro, buen mozo ó feo, liberal ó conservador” (Florencio Conde 102).

Douglass explains that black people are fit for freedom because they have the capacity to decide for themselves how to make a living. In his Autobiography: Life and Times (1881), Douglass states that “the most telling, the most killing refutation of slavery is the presentation of an industrious, enterprising, thrifty, and intelligent free black population” (226). Samper expresses a similar opinion when he refers to the black protagonist: [Character (physical and moral disposition), activity (a dedication to producing the means of life) and property (earning prosperity) are the three expressions of a complete man who owns who he is, governs Black Voices for Freedom

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himself and functions as a useful member of the social family] (my translation) “La personalidad (o facultades físicas y morales), la actividad (su aplicación a producir los medios de adquirir bienestar) y la propiedad (adquisición del bienestar), he ahí las tres expresiones del hombre completo del hombre que se posee, se gobierna y funciona como un miembro útil de la familia social” (Florencio Conde 16).

The argument of economic justice is true of the success story of Florencio Conde. Florencio Conde, who is born free, is proud of the paid employment of his father and that of his own. Similarly, Douglass accounts “with a glad heart and a willing hand” how he found a paid job for the first time: “I was now my own master. It was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by those who have been slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own” (Narrative of the Life 109). In summary, Douglass and the Condes lead parallel lives because of their vocal liberation from slaveholders and their social advancement into happy, “Arcadian” endings (Patricia D’Allemand 2). With their powerful words and example, the U.S. American and the Colombian authors garnered the support of free black and white people, from housekeepers to presidents. Together, they agitated the antislavery movement in the Americas. Douglass and the Condes: Black Happy Husbands With the promise of economic self-sufficiency, Douglass and the Condes felt free to marry. Douglass married two times. His first wife, Anna Murray Douglass, was a symbol of stability in the life of Frederick Douglass. She was not born into slavery, but her parents were enslaved. Although twenty-year-old Douglass was forced to turn over almost all his wages to his master, twenty-five-year-old Murray was a paid housekeeper and laundress who supported her boyfriend’s escape from Maryland to Philadelphia. She sold one of her two featherbeds to help pay for his train ticket. She also sewed a sailor outfit, which he wore as a disguise. His knowledge of the sailor jargon and some borrowed papers from a retired sailor helped him pass as a sailor in his final and successful escape to a free state. 174

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Blight thinks that they must have met in the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, a charitable and educational organization whose members were free young black men, “or perhaps as likely at the Sharp Street AME Church, which Douglass joined” (79). Murray could barely read or write. She raised five children and earned an income as a shoe binder and a seamstress. Murray did not join her husband at his abolitionist meetings across the country or abroad but she established her house at Rochester (New York) as a safe house for the Underground Railroad network to aid fugitive slaves on their way to Canada before the Civil War. After the death of their youngest child, Annie, her health deteriorated. She suffered a long crippling disease and died in 1882. They were married for forty-four years. Douglass mentions his wife-to-be and then his wife, Anna Murray, on two different occasions: in the autobiography from 1845, where he remembers the month of his escape and wedding (September 1838), and in the letter written to the enslaver he had fled from, Thomas Auld (September 1848). He narrates the difference from living as a runaway slave, concerned about his survival and safety, versus experiencing life as a free man, caring for the love of his wife and children in a home of his own. In 1838, Douglass had described himself as “a toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.” He recalls the “feeling of great insecurity and loneliness” having told noone of his escape to New York, “in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger [ . . . ] without home or friends—without money or credit,” feeling “pursued by merciless men-hunters.” He expressed his “love and gratitude” to David Ruggles, secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee, who aided runaway slaves (Douglass 89–90). Ruggles served as witness in the marriage ceremony to Anna Murray mentioned in his biography as his “intended wife” (Douglass 91). In the second reference to Murray, she was identified as the person who had shouldered one part of their baggage to set out to New Bedford (Massachusetts). On the steamboat, they befriended two “excellent gentlemen” who referred them to Nathan Johnson, a friend he describes “with a grateful heart” (Douglass Black Voices for Freedom

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96). However, the relationship with Anna Murray is not further mentioned, preoccupied to make a living. His priority after safety, was “to prepare ourselves for the duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom” (Douglass 92). He felt like his “own master” and was willing to take on “dirty, hard work” loading oil to work for himself and his newly married wife (Douglass 95). As a result of different jobs, he was no longer in “the homeless, houseless and helpless condition” he had suffered in New York (Douglass 91). Douglass would not only make a living: he made a career. In 1841, Douglass attended an antislavery convention organized by William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. After Garrison heard Douglass speak for liberty and humanity, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society hired him to publish his autobiography (which became a best seller) and to lecture full time in the region. He travelled with Garrison to Britain, where his friends Anna and Ellen Richardson of Newcastle (England) collected the money to acquire his freedom. After his return to the United States, in 1847, the Englishwomen raised money for him to start a newspaper, which he would call The North Star. Douglass’s purpose of the paper was “to attach slavery in all its forms and aspects; advocate universal emancipation; exalt the standard of public morality; promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the colored people; and hasten the day of freedom to the three million of our enslaved countrymen” (Adler 62). Douglass also wrote about his success. In 1848, with a steady income and living in a nine-room house in Rochester (New York), Douglass wrote to his former master that he had escaped from him for good reasons. He published the letter in the newspaper, The Liberator. In it, Douglass informed Auld about his “own happiness and prosperity” (Douglass 341). After condemning Auld for inflicting “theft, robbery and murder” on slaves (Douglass 337) he turned to his “domestic affairs” free from him: “I have an industrious and neat companion, and four dear children.” He told Auld that: “my children are perfectly secure under my own roof. There are no slaveholders here to rend my heart by snatching them from my arms, or blast a 176

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mother’s dearest hopes by tearing them from her bosom” (Douglass 341). At age twenty, Douglass had married a black free woman, Anna Murray, “the color of [his] mother” and at age sixty-six, after a year of depression at the death of his “dear” wife, he wedded a white free woman, Helen Pitts, who was “the color of [his] father” (Miller 34). Pitts, his white former secretary when he was recorder of deeds, was a suffragist, abolitionist, and temperance activist who admired Douglass for his shared achievements. Like her, he had written for women’s rights and taught former black slaves. The interracial marriage faced press and family objections, including his children and his father-in-law. His eldest daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague, recalls the support that his father received from his mother in the memoir “My Mother, As I Recall Her” (8). The references to his eleven year-long marriage (1884–1895) to a white woman twenty years his junior came in response to the race and age differences that the press and relatives criticized. Douglass told the critics that it would be an act of prejudice to refuse to marry Pitts because she was white. His wife responded: “Love came to me and I was not afraid to marry the man I loved because of his color.” As a couple who shared a passion for activism, Pitts and Douglass hosted reunions and made public appearances together. The Douglasses found in each other a “fellow traveler and fellow reader” (Blight 654). Interracial marriage is a common feature with Samper’s novel. Camila and Rosa are the happy wives of black men in the Colombian novel. The Condes married their wives at the height of their careers. Their marriages take place as personal rewards for free black men. Segundo Conde courts Camila as a man who had negotiated and purchased his freedom and that of his mother and his sisters. The rise up from slavery of his father culminates with Florencio Conde’s position as a lawyer and an antislavery journalist who contributes to the legal emancipation of slaves in Colombia by the end of the novel. In addition to the admiration of their wives, Segundo and Florencio Conde gain the acceptance of their fathers-in-law. Black Voices for Freedom

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Camila’s father, a captain, approves of Segundo Conde when he finds out that as a young soldier, Segundo Conde, had fed him and guided him to safety during the independence war of the Republic of Colombia. In his deathbed, the captain trusts Segundo Conde with his orphan-to-be daughter. After Segundo Conde takes care of her as a friend, he finds out that Camila is in love with him. In an act of gratitude and admiration, the white daughter of the captain asks him to marry her. They join hands in a small business that they start together, they marry, and they decide to have their first and only son, Florencio Conde. Like his father, Florencio Conde is a black role model for Colombia. The father had freed himself and paid for his son’s college. Florencio Conde studies law before he courts the daughter of an aristocrat who has financial difficulties. He also gains his trust by his help paying a family debt. The last lines of the novel show the change of heart of the father-in-law of Florencio Conde: from fearing him as the husband of his daughter to admiring his noble character. The daughter is morally persuaded with his diligence and generosity, and they happily marry at the end. The reader concludes that it is fair that his sacrifice is rewarded, the same way that it is fair that his labor is voluntary and proportionally paid to his education. The poetic and social justice of Florencio calls for the human consideration of the black protagonist who fights for his freedom and his love, despite enslavement and white racism. The interracial marriages put an end to the biases against the black characters through moral antislavery values, earned reputations, and economic success. The focus of the Colombian novel on education and wealth is taken as an exemplary story of well-deserved success at the academic, professional, and personal levels to the point that the lawyer ennobles himself though his own effort to equal the status of the aristocrat Rosa Fuenmayor. The integration of the ex-slave into the upper class is possible with a higher education, a high-paying profession, and the decision to pay a debt that his future father-in-law had contracted. Florencio Conde becomes an aristocrat by his own merit: “intelligence” (Florencio Conde 146) and morally “good” character 178

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(Florencio Conde 145). Williams rightly points out that “Samper questions the prejudices that the upper class holds against the mulatto of less social prestige” (31). Samper’s novel is unprecedented in the history of Afro-Hispanic Literature for advancing the idea that a black ex-slave is morally and emotionally compatible with the elitist group of aristocracy and, at the same time, intellectually and financially capable of marriage and/or parenthood with a higher social status represented in the daughter of a captain and the daughter of an aristocrat. In conclusion, Douglass and Samper delve into lived and imagined experiences of slavery, to argue, in fact and in fiction, against the crime, evil, and horror of continuing slavery in the nineteenth century in the slave states of the United States. The essay has examined the rise of black young men from having masters to being their own masters, in other words, from owing their physical labor to their violent masters to owning the earnings of their physical and then intellectual labor. Douglass’s and Samper’s works teach about antiracism because they affirm an equal human dignity for blacks and whites. By comparing the antislavery efforts of Douglass and the Condes, before and after the legal abolition of slavery in the United States (1865) and in Colombia (1851), this article has illustrated the academic, professional, and personal success of black role models of social justice in two national literatures of the nineteenth century. Works Cited Adler, D. A. Frederick Douglass: A Noble Life. Holiday House, 2010. Bernier, Celeste Marie, and Andrew Taylor. If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection: A 200 Year Anniversary. Edinburgh UP, 2018. Blight, David William. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster, 2018. Buccola, Nicholas. The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty. New York UP, 2012.

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D’Allemand, Patricia. “Hacia una relectura de la producción novelística de José María Samper.” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1–14. Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation. Vintage, 2015. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by himself. 1845. Documenting the American South, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html. __________. The Life and Writing of Frederick Douglass,edited by Philip S. Foner. 5 vols. International Publishers, 1950–75. __________. Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Library of America, 1994. __________. The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series Two: Autobiographical Writings, edited by John W. Blassingame, Peter Hinks, and John R. McKivigan. vol. 1. Yale UP, 1999. Fought, Leigh. Women in the World of Frederick Douglass. Oxford UP, 2017. International Labor Organization. Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labor and Forced Marriages. International Labor Organization and Walk Free Foundation, 2017. Jefferson, Thomas, et al. Copy of Declaration of Independence. Library of Congress, July 4, 1776. Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/ mtjbib000159/. Jurado, Juan, et al. July 20, 1810. Declaración de Independencia de Colombia. Wikisource, es.wikisource.org/wiki/Declaraci%C3%B3n_ de_independencia_de_Colombia. Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Nation Books, 2016. McGary, Howard, and Bill E. Lawson. Between Slavery and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery. Indiana UP, 1992. Miller, D. Frederick Douglass and the Fight for Freedom. Facts of Life, 1988. Nott, Josiah C, et al. Types of Mankind: Or, Ethnological Researches: Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon their Natural, Geographical, Philological and 180

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Biblical History, Illustrated by Selections from the Inedited Papers of Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson. J.B. Lippincott Grambo, 1854. Roberts, Neil, editor. A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass. UP of Kentucky, 2018. Samper Agudelo, José María. Florencio Conde: escenas de la vida colombiana: novela original. Imprenta de Echevarría, 1875. __________. Ensayo sobre las revoluciones políticas y la condición social de las repúblicas colombianas. Imprenta de E. Thurnot, 1861. Sprague, Rosetta Douglass. Anna Murray Douglass: My Mother As I Recall Her, 1900. LOC. The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/ resource/mfd.02007. Suleiman, Susan. Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre. Princeton UP, 1993. Toro Murillo, and Alejandra María. “Florencio Conde y los valores de la nación de acuerdo con la ideología liberal de José María Samper.” Estudios de Literatura Colombiana, no. 27, 2010, pp. 98–118. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 2018. United Nations, www.unodc.org/unodc/data-andanalysis/glotip.html. Williams, Raymond Leslie. La novela colombiana. Texas UP, 1991.

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Frederick Douglass: Legacy and Influences Dike Okoro

A survey of Frederick Douglass’s influences on contemporary American poets reveals the numerous ways his work and ideology continue to serve as a source of inspiration for poets of African American and Latino ancestry. That many of these poets consider him as a literary forebear is not an aberration. Douglass wrote poetry and is remembered for penning the poem “Liberty” (Bonner, Jr. 108). Maya Angelou, in speaking of her reverence for the autobiography form, concedes, “I liked the form—the literary form—and by the time I started Gather Together I had gone back and reread Frederick Douglass’s slave narrative” (286). By the late 1800s, Paul Laurence Dunbar, the son of a freed slaves, saw his status as a poet elevated nationally and internationally, and, according to Terrence Hayes, poet and MacArthur fellow, “the statesman Frederick Douglass heralded the poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, as ‘the most promising young colored man in America’” (“Rubbed”). Maureen McGavin, in writing about an art exhibit of Civil War materials at Emory University, recalls seeing a poem by erstwhile US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey begin with a reference to Douglass, stating thus: “The exhibit was inspired by the Civil War poem ‘Native Guard’ by Trethewey, [and] the poem begins with an epigraph by Frederick Douglass: ‘If this war is to be forgotten, then I ask in the name of all things sacred what shall men remember?’” (McGavin). By far, Douglass’s legacy and influences are represented thoroughly in the materials, concepts, motif, themes, and symbols these poets display exhaustingly. Whether combining traditional western poetic techniques or utilizing free verse influenced by indigenous rhetoric, the poets’ messages written as tributes to Douglass or the virtues and ideals he championed depict authenticity, passion, and reverence. Throughout Douglass’s lifetime, especially after the publication of his autobiography, he leaned toward the activist role, and he was noted for speaking vehemently against what he considered “the 182

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hypocrisy of slavery in a nation founded on principles of, in his words, ‘justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence’” (Austin 46). This chapter argues that contemporary American poetry, especially poems by writers of African American descent, and with a few examples, poets of Latino heritage, represent forms of poetry that serve as a continuation of poetic response and tribute to Douglass. Background Frederick Douglass is considered “the most famous and respected African American in the United States for much of the nineteenth century” (Austin 46). In 1845, he published his widely acclaimed autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a book that became an overnight success among readers in America and across the world for its passionate and vivid account of Douglass’s birth as the son of a slave and an unknown white man, his formative years as a slave in Maryland, and up to the point of his escape to freedom in 1837. As a child living with his owner, shipbuilder Hugh Auld, Douglass had been exposed to the kind of reading culture that helped him become familiar with the different literary genres, including poetry. For example, young Frederick was privileged to learn through the occasional reading and writing lessons he received from Auld’s wife, Sophia. These instances coupled with the numerous times he received books secretly from white friends enormously augmented young Frederick’s knowledge base (McGrath). In fact, Michael Austin asserts copiously that Douglass’s one guide in his effort to learn to read and write was “the children’s schoolbook The Columbian Orator, a collection of great speeches, poems, soliloquies, and occasional pieces used to teach rhetoric and public speaking” (46). His exposure to this book helped him to realize his potential and embrace the nascent space that characterized his emergence as a gifted individual. That American poets in the generations succeeding Douglass’s and those in the later years chose to honor or allude to him in their works is not an aberration. During Douglass’s life he also wrote poems alongside other writings and speeches that highlight his prowess as one of America’s greatest orators. Legacy and Influences

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Discussion of Poems When discussing Douglass’s legacy, it is important to examine the role of tradition in the manner in which his work has influenced contemporary American poetry. T.S. Eliot is credited with stating that “The historical sense, which a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer more acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity” (Eliot 37). While Douglass’s legacy and influence extends to generations succeeding him through contemporary American poetry, the names most famously associated with poetry that honored Douglass, either shortly before he died or following his death, were Paul Laurence Dunbar and W.E.B. Du Bois. In the poems written by these writers/scholars, there is a wealth of ideas that trivialize the elasticity of freedom and dignity for humans, as well as the allusion to principles that abrogate character and integrity. Dunbar’s poem published in honor of Douglass’s death entitled “Frederick Douglass” combines allusions, images, and diction that lend importance to the person for whom it was written. Lines such as “A hush is over all the teeming lists, / And there is pause, a breath-space in the strife; /A spirit brave has passed beyond the mists” suggest a transition to the afterlife, but upon a close reading, and because the subject matter is Frederick Douglass, the poem represents a historical document to all who have suffered oppression and fought for liberty (Dunbar 6). Douglass’s life is reflection of resistance and victory over oppression; however, it also symbolizes the union of many oral resources, given that his mother was a black slave. Hence Dunbar’s allusion to real, physical spaces outside of the Americas as he attempts to situate the profound influence Douglass had on him and his generation, provides a modest and genealogical recognition of the American slave’s link to an ancestral home in Africa. This aspect of Dunbar’s poem is noted in the very lines, “And Ethiopia, with bosom torn, / Laments the passing of her noblest born” (Dunbar 6). Furthermore, Dunbar’s poem for Douglass points thematically at Douglass’s involvement in advocacy that was recognized outside 184

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the shores of the Americas. In using the pronoun “she” to effeminate Ethiopia, thereby looking upon her as a mother, Dunbar also links Douglass’s legacy to the African continent. Douglass had traveled widely during his lifetime, and Africa was a place of interest at heart to him during those trips. The fact that Dunbar mentions Africa, in addition to the continent’s documented past with colonialism, which for Douglass represented a form of ownership, bolsters his advocacy for freedom there. In lines such as “She weeps for him a mother’s burning tears— / She loved him with a mother’s deepest love. /He was her champion thro’ direful years / And held her weal all other ends above / When Bondage held her bleeding in the dust,” Dunbar’s use of the anaphora is pivotal (6). The repeated use of “she” conveys that the poem is not a mere tribute, but an account of honor connected to places and experiences of significance. Ethiopia, like other African countries, experiences political and economic instability because of historical forces. Furthermore, by virtue of proffering praises on Douglass’s advocacy for freedom and quest to end all and every form of bondage associated with people of African descent, Dunbar is continuing on a pathway blazed by Douglass. For this reason it becomes pertinent to look at how this trend is reflected in the works of the generations of poets of African American descent born several decades after Dunbar. In , Ishmael Reed strolls through a narrow pathway as he makes a case about political poetry, claiming, “Shelly, Byron, Milton, touted as among the greatest writers in the English language, all wrote political poetry. . . Although students are taught that you aren’t supposed to be angry, traditionally poetry has conveyed a healthy dose of anger and invective” (191). But if Reed’s statement is to be taken lightly, it only presents on the surface level the link between African American protest poetry and Frederick Douglass. It is this link that Trudier Harris attempts to explain as she concedes that “Given the secondary positions of persons of African descent throughout their history in America, it could reasonably be argued that all efforts of creative writers from that group are forms of protest” (TeacherServe). Therefore, one can understand clearly the social and cultural implication of Reed’s anthology, especially as it pertains to a Legacy and Influences

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poem by Cecil Brown, “Integrating the Strawberry Swimming Pool in 1998” which, as Reed contends, is “a work that employs irony and humor as it shows that the fight for public accommodations first waged by Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells continues” (191). Reed insists the poem is about racial profiling, and any reader with quick eyes for details can detect this from reading Brown’s poem, which conveys subversion and defiance. Further, the mood of anger mingles with a deep sense of collective social deprivation of certain rights. The speaker states, Strawberry Canyon Swimming Pool, Ain’t been there befo’ Strawberry Canyon Swimming Pool, Ain’t been there befo’ I been once, they don’t want no blacks up there Ain’t goin’ there no mo’ In the merry month of May, 1998 I was swimming in the lane, at the Strawberry swimming pool, When I saw two cops in blue, black Gestapo boots, waitin at the end Isn’t it strange, I’m thinking, how they now have cops everywhere One of them beckoned to me, I thinking, it’s a joke. Can we speak to you, he demanded with twisted gesture What is it? I asked The short dark-haired one says, Are you a professor here? Yes, I answer Where’s your office, the tall, old, yaller-haired one asked. My office? I’m not teaching now. What’s the beef? We got report that somebody’s been tellin’ People they’re a professor. What has that got to do with me? (194)

The environment and dialogue captured in the poem demonstrates the kind of scenery one is bound to experience when reading reports of a racial profiling. Brown creates a text that utilizes poetic activism and environmental rights to remind us of the kind of human rights Douglass would advocate for. His call for social/environmental justice comes later in the poem, after the police officers had 186

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confirmed the swimmer being questioned is actually a postdoc researcher and therefore believed his story that he had every right, like the other users of the swimming pool, to use the space allotted to all university employees: What’s your status here? I’m a researcher postdoctoral With a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley So what? the blonde one says, I ain’t got nothing but a eight grade Can you prove it? I motioned to the bundle of clothes at the other end of the pool (195)

By the time the ongoing conversations about the speaker’s identification and status ends, there is a change in the police officer’s tone and countenance as one of the officers returns the speaker’s “license and UC Berkeley identification” and adds: “You can go on with your swim” (Reed 196). What would Douglass say if he had witnessed this encounter? What would those, regardless of race or cultural identification, who believe in equal rights and fair justice conclude? Brown’s poem is an indictment of America’s social structure and at the same time a call on advocates to act for change in a way that carries on Douglass’s stance on freedom and human rights. Further, Brown’s account of the incident pushes us to rethink the spaces of environmental rights and racial profiling in society. The poem reminds us of the importance of accommodating an interdisciplinary structure of education at the college level. The benefit of this suggestion becomes plain much later in the poem, when the speaker mulls the circumstances of his encounter with the police and then laments: Not more than a few hours I asked the Department of __________ To teach a course in James Baldwin No, we have no money to pay for a Baldwin course Now I see the connection.

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The threshold guardians keep Baldwin out The police guard the swimming pool. The police are working for the professors, My liberal colleagues, The heads of the departments, too Grin in your face, how do you do Baldwin is kept out, just’s I am kept out (197)

Poetry, like other genres of literature, exhibits tendencies that are inseparable from truth-telling. Brown is pointing out the freedom to think and write, as it pertains to education that frees the mind. This poem embodies this aspect and further echoes Douglass’s advocacy for freedom. The reference to James Baldwin is significant in the sense that Baldwin was actively involved in the civil rights movement and marched with Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The fact that both men participated in marches that brought to limelight the importance of freedom in a democratic America, thus makes the ideas encapsulated in this pivotal protest not only as a form of education but also as a redress for social issues and problems that are of paramount importance in America. Racial inequality creates a divide in society and far still, when left to carry on for so long, hinders progress among all social/ethnic groups. In the opening pages of his 2014 article in The Guardian, entitled “A Mental Tyranny is Keeping Black Writers from Greatness,” Ben Okri provides a philosophical view of literature and its purpose. He argues, “The basic prerequisite of literature is freedom. And the first freedom is mental freedom . . . The most striking thing about great literature is the strength of freedom that flows through its pages.” Okri’s engaging claim echoes the values and issues fundamental to the writings of Frederick Douglass and the ideas espoused by many poets from different backgrounds who have paid homage to Douglass. For example, Martin Espada remembers Douglass in a historical tribute poem that situates Douglass’s influence on present day American politicians. The poem alludes to Douglass as a forebear to Barack Obama, and its setting brings the relevance of analogy and symbolic importance to mind. Entitled “Litany at the Tomb of Frederick Douglass,” Espada’s poem is a historical 188

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masterpiece that functions as a treatise and attempts to resurrect Douglass in dialogue with twenty-first-century America. Espada writes, “this is the crossroads of the unimaginable: / the tomb of Frederick Douglass, three days after the election,” representing both a prophetic stance and a symbolic appropriation of Obama’s ascension to the presidency of the United States from the same pathway and fight for freedom paved by individuals like Douglass (532). That Obama, too, is African American makes more relevant the comparison and the closure of the poem’s meaning. With Obama becoming a president of a country that once enslaved his ancestors, Espada’s central motif hinges on the simple fact that victory has been attained against all forms of indignity and inhumanity suffered at the hands of the slave owner. He writes, “This is the tomb of a man in chains, / who left his fingerprints / on the slavebreaker’s throat / so the whip would never carve his back again” (533). While the interpretation of poetry remains subject to ambiguity, it is always fulfilling to note the poet’s point of view. Reflecting upon his poem, Espada shares: While we all have our criticisms of President Obama, we must not forget the history he made in 2008, and the history we all made by voting for him And the feeling behind the making of that history. [. . .] Right after the election, I found myself in Rochester, New York. And it so happens that’s where Frederick Douglass is buried, and so this is the poem that came out of it. First, it’s not an Obama poem; it’s a Frederick Douglass poem. Second, It’s a poem about the making of history; it’s about how we felt at the moment that history was made. . . . We can’t lose the feeling, even as we become frustrated or disillusioned. . . . We can’t lose the way we felt at that moment (532)

Espada’s assertion is a vivid account of the obvious socio-cultural ties of the poet to the political climate of his time. Being aware of his particular place in time and, taking into consideration the situational events that shape his attempts to comprehend the historical events that impact his generation, he becomes a witness and spokesperson for his generation. Hence, the appointment of President Obama Legacy and Influences

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makes him view Obama in light of Douglass’s legacy as one who challenged the impossible to make possible that which had been imagined as impossible. Many other poems that celebrate Douglass’s legacy today reflect the kind of hope reflected in Espada’s views of Obama. For example, in the poem “Monuments,” Myra Sklarew embarks on the same trail as Espada, but adopts a narrative tone as she weaves in bits and pieces of American history to educate the reader. Throughout the poem she alludes to slavery, but she also stresses the importance of nature as a companion to human actions. This sentiment resonates in the lines, “Today the moon sees fit to come between a parched earth / and sun, hurrying the premature darkness” and the lines “We have known other dark hours: Here, coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig / of lilac—Lincoln’s death, winding procession toward sleep. / We have known slave coffles and holding pens in yards / not half a mile from our Capitol, wooden palings sunk in earth” (Sklarew). The speaker proceeds from a reflection on nature as a participant in human circumstances to naming directly historical events that shaped America’s past. The allusion to Lincoln makes the poem ironic, in that it hinges on an unexpected end that was once promising. This is especially true in light of his role as an abolitionist, which has often been the subject of debates for scholars of American history. While Lincoln believed in freeing the slaves, his ideas toward such a decision were predicated on his commitment to the Union. He engaged in war without focusing on the liberation of the slaves, and was criticized by Horace Greeley, the notable editor of The New York Tribune for taking such a stand (Smith). Nevertheless, the poem’s conceptual trappings are not meant to apportion blame on Lincoln but to situate his importance as a prominent American who, like Douglass, believed and advocated for liberty. Thus, the poem’s diversion to “slavery” and “capitol” meshes the end of slavery to political decisions to grant freedom and dignity to the oppressed. Again, these were ideals Frederick Douglass espoused and canvassed for. When “Monuments” states, “This whole city / sings their songs. / Say their names. In this city / they are our monuments: Frederick 190

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Douglass, our / Rayford Logan, Alain Locke, Franklin Frazier, Georgia Douglass Johnson. . .” we are presented with a roll call of forebears, both historical and cultural, whose achievements in the arts and politics helped to reconstruct African American identity in America, and offer a sense of belonging and hope to the up-andcoming generation. This idea is further enunciated at the poem’s end with the line, “Each of us has monuments in the bone case of memory” (Sklarew). Another poet who writes about Douglass’s legacy and espouses characteristics of poetry continuing the tradition of poetic treatment of Douglass is Evie Shockley. Her poem “The Lost Letters of Frederick Douglass” details the experiences of history and memory imagined to educate a child. In the poem, she uses Douglass as a source of discourse and character for the reinvention of knowledge. The poem features a parent having a discussion with a child. Shockley depicts Douglass as a very personal role, and his presence in the poem lends vividness to its subject matter. In the poem she states thus: Dear Daughter, Can you be fifty-three this Month? I still look for you to peek around My door as if you’d discovered a toy You thought gone for good, ready at my smile To run up and press your fist into my Broken palm. But your own girls have outgrown Such games, and I cannot pilfer back time I spent pursuing Freedom. Fair to you, To your brothers, your mother? Hardly. (Shockley)

According to Cultural Front, “Evie continues the tradition of poetic treatments of Douglass” (“Evie”). Besides making the poem an epistolary document, Shockley dabbles into virtues such as ‘freedom’ and ‘equity’, two principles Douglass defended during his lifetime as she looks inward to dramatize Douglass in a poem written for a contemporary readership. The pursuit of freedom is a theme revisited here, and Shockley deploys nostalgia as she paints Legacy and Influences

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images of a daughter-mother relationship. Of great importance in this poem is the intimate relationship the daughter shares with her mother. Through the eyes of the past she recovers her childhood and looks at the treasured moments of growing up, taking from the fears, doubts and discoveries, what it means to rely on someone whom you love, a parent, even when you experienced doubts. That decision to find happiness through freedom is tied to Douglass’s belief in freedom, which Shockley tries to connect to her anecdotes in this poem. In much the same way that Shockley addresses Douglass in her poem, Robert Hayden presents a formidable image of Douglass in the poem “Frederick Douglass.” In accordance with Douglass’s position on freedom and equality, Hayden’s tribute situates Douglass as an advocate for rulings against slavery: this man shall be remembered—oh, not with statues’ rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, but with the lives grown out of his life (qtd. in Neklason).

Ideologically, “the lives grown out [Douglass’s] life” could be a reference to his descendants. African American poets of the present generation and their literary forebears from the generations before them remain extensions of Douglass. They are basically “the lives grown out his life.” The fact that they nurtured his ideas for freedom, adopted his stance as activists, and modeled their motivations for writing on the principle that their story must told, be it as a form of poetry of witness or protest, suggests they have fulfilled the very essence of Hayden’s message in his tribute to Douglass for whom they are essentially like his children. Therefore, a poem such as “Carp Poem” by Hayes brings again to our attention the tradition of poets paying tribute to Douglass. Hayes is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, which qualifies him as a genius. “Cape Poem” serves as a good example to illustrate how school children from African American communities are coping with transformations at schools named after Frederick Douglass. The image evoked by the poem is one of deterioration, and the images 192

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show a clash in the hopes and dreams of a community attempting to break out of hardship: After I have parked below the spray paint caked in the granite grooves of the Frederick Douglass Middle School sign where men and women sized children loiter like shadows draped in the outsized denim, jerseys, bangles, braids, and boots that mean I am no longer young, after I have made my way to the New Orleans Parish Jail down the block where the black prison guard wearing the same weariness my prison guard father wears buzzes me in, I follow his pistol and shield along each corridor trying not to look at the black men boxed and bunked around me until I reach the tiny classroom where two dozen black boys are dressed in jumpsuits orange as the pond full of carp I saw once in Japan (Hayes, “Carp Poem”)

The speaker visits a jail to engage a group of young African American boys in poetry reading. Central to the poem is the importance of knowledge, for the speaker attempts to demonstrate how the underprivileged might triumph over crime. The first line of the poem, “After I have parked below the spray paint caked in the granite” suggests the excessive wear in the building structure, which could be as a result of vandalism that occurs at the neighborhood. Adding to the speaker’s concern is the fact that a jail is located near the school, and this, unfortunately, suggests students will be tempted to follow a life of crime instead of higher education. Hayes, like the aforementioned poets referenced in this chapter, continues the tradition of poetic treatment of Douglass. Put simply, he uses poetry to evoke not only historical circumstances but to affirm in relation to Douglass’s beliefs the realities of his subjective matter to ideas espoused by Douglass. In another poem titled “Tafetta” Hayes continues the tradition of poetic treatment of Douglass by looking at himself and reminding Legacy and Influences

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himself that he has to be self-assured like Douglass. In the poem his symbols are itemized. From words to proper nouns, we are given cues to work with as the first person “I” leads us through the piece: The next morning I was discussing My Bondage and My Freedom with the Frederick Douglass t-shirt spread out on my bed like a flag. I’d climbed out of the sheets believing myself a slave to various pornographies of style (hair, language, demeanor), and because “I don’t know if it’s the guy who wears eyeglasses that’s me, the guy who wears contacts, or the guy who wears nothing at all.” Frederick Douglass wrote, “I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others,” but the t-shirt was silent. (Hayes “Tafetta”)

The speaker, perhaps Hayes himself, experiences an introspective moment while reading My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass’s second autobiography. He is concerned about his image and his choices in life that affect his appearance such as T-shirts, hair, and contacts. Each item evokes something questionable and important because it pertains to his appearance. And for this reason, it troubles him, but he finds consolation in Douglass, whose words help elaborate on the intricacies of his state of mind. As he examines the tripartite nature of his being—“I don’t know if it’s the guy who wears/eyeglasses that’s me, the guy who wears contacts, /or the guy who wears nothing at all”—he realizes he has a relationship with a forebear whose sense of sincerity he admires (“Tafetta”). Thus, he finds importance in Douglass’s words that he must be “true to [himself]”. The poem does not blame him for his thoughts or choices; the human mind is instead presented as one at the mercy of forces that require equilibrium to find peace. Hayes’s poem, put simply, enunciates the vulnerability of man experiencing the volatility of doubt. In the end, he treats Douglass as both motivator and helper, given the uplifting sense or feeling his predecessor’s ideas present to him, mentally and logically. Further, Hayes’s speaker in the poem 194

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views Douglass as a sort of muse, his inspiration for writing; hence he is determined to prosper despite having expressed doubts as regards his self-confidence in the beginning of the poem. Conclusion The variety of ways that contemporary American poets respond to Frederick Douglass is both fascinating and engaging. That many of the poets who engage in this practice are of African American descent is not surprising, and it demonstrates the great impact Douglass has had on the African American literary tradition. More importantly, Douglass’s influence also spreads across America’s ethnic lines, and the poetry of Espada serves as a case in point. Like other poets discussed in this chapter, Espada demonstrates, through figurative language and imagery, the way that a cinematographic account of past situations revisited in contemporary environments validates Frederick Douglass’s legacy. Besides offering unique perspectives, these poets illustrate the importance of Douglass and display a loyalty to Douglass’s values and principles such as freedom and equality. These vital virtues allow people, irrespective of race, to meet their goals and defend their integrity as human beings. In the process of pursuing these principles comes passing on a legacy of hope and dreams to the coming generations. Their poems help to affirm the psychological depth, emotional edge, and the mood of immediacy, especially as it pertains to individuals who have encountered discrimination of different forms. They show how literary texts are extensions of social experiences that have shaped the consciousness of our generation. Douglass’s life has indeed served as a model for contemporary poets, and how they respond to Douglass depends on their lives, studies of Douglass, and the appropriation of his work as part of theirs. Like Henry Louis Gates Jr. contends, The poet Robert Hayden has exhorted us to remember Douglass “not with statutes’rhetoric, / not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone / but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.” Legacy and Influences

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And, indeed, the life of Douglass has been important as an example for other lives. Yet in this era of tell-all biographies that somehow manage to tell us very little, Douglass is also important as a study in fame and self-creation. He belongs to the company of Victorian sages, but he was also a full-blown celebrity before the era of celebrity—someone who during the greatest moral struggle of modern times used the public presentation of his life as his chosen weapon. (The New York Times)

In fact, Gates Jr. suggests that shared memory through the years, especially when retained through poetry, might be a most effective way to celebrate Douglass’s legacy. After all, Douglass’s story has been shared and continues to be shared by many up-and-coming poets of African American and Latino background. What he means to them and the significance of his legacy remains remarkable for a number of reasons. Therefore, as we note, we have a poet whose simple but bold declaration has become a futuristic adumbration that suggest that, at the end of the day, when it is all put together, the inspiring speeches, the writings that leave hairs standing, Frederick Douglass shall be remembered as a human being and man whose ideals set many during his time thinking. And today the same ideals are important for the way they inspire individuals to value self-creation. From Maya Angelou to Natasha Trethewey, or from Evie Shockley to Terrence Hayes, the conscious effort to conjure Douglass poetically has paved way for new ways of celebrating his legacy. Works Cited Angelou, Maya. “An Interview with Maya Angelou.” Interview by Carol E. Neubauer. The MassachusettsReview. vol. 28, no. 2, spring 1987, pp. 286-292. Austin, Michael. “Frederick Douglass: Learning to Read (1845).” in Reading the World: IdeasThat Matter, edited by Michael Austin. 2nd Ed. W.W. Norton & Co., 2010: pp. 46. Bonner, Thomas. “‘Liberty’: A Poem by Frederick Douglass.” Resources for American Literary Study, vol. 8, no. 1, 1978, pp. 108–14. 196

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Dunbar, Paul Laurence, and William Dean Howells. The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dodd, Mead & Co., 1913. Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” 1919. Reprinted in Perspecta, vol. 19, 1982, pp. 36–42. Espada, Martin. Interview with Brian Lehrer. The Brian Lehrer Show. WNYC.org. 14 Apr. 2011, www.wnyc.org/story/124060-poetrymonth-martin-espada/. __________. “Litany at the Tomb of Frederick Douglass.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mays, Portable 12th ed., W. W. Norton, 2017, pp. 532–33. “Evie Shockley and This Douglass Poetry Discourse.” Cultural Front. 2011, www.culturalfront.org/2011/04/evie-shockley-and-this-douglasspoetry.html. Gates Jr., Henry Louis. “Dangerous Literacy: The Legacy of Frederick Douglass.” The New York Times, 28 May 1995, www.nytimes. com/1995/05/28/books/a-dangerous-literacy-the-legacy-offrederick-douglass.html. Harris, Trudier. “African American Protest Poetry.” Freedom’s Story: Teaching African Literature and History. Teacher Serve, nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/ aaprotestpoetry.htm. Hayden, Robert E. “Frederick Douglass.” The Atlantic. Feb. 1947, www. theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/04/robert-haydenstribute-frederick-douglass/586942/. Hayes, Terrence. “Carp Poem.” Afropoets, www.afropoets.net/ terrancehayes8.html. __________. “Rubbed by light.” Pitt Magazine. University of Pittsburg, Spring 2015, www.pitt.edu/about/terrance-hayes. __________. “Tafetta.” Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life. commonplace.online/article/taffeta/. McGavin, Maureen. “Trethewey’s Civil War Poem Inspires Display.” Emory News Center. 6 Feb. 2014. McGrath, Brian S. “Frederick Douglass.” Time for Kids. TFK Library/ History. 5 July 2018, www.timeforkids.com/g56/frederick-douglass/. Moore, Taylor. “The Activist Legacy of Frederick Douglass.” Chicago Review of Books. 10 July 2018, chireviewofbooks.com/2018/07/10/ the-activist-legacy-of-frederick-douglass/. Legacy and Influences

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Neklason, Annika. “The Books Briefing: An Ode to Elegies.” The Atlantic. 12 Apr. 2019, www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/04/ robert-hayden-and-natasha-trethewey-books-briefing/586741/. Okri, Ben. “A Mental Tyranny Is Keeping Black Writers from Greatness.” The Guardian. 27 Dec. 2014, www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2014/dec/27/mental-tyranny-black-writers. Reed, Ishmael. From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2002. Cambridge: Da Capo P, 2002. Shockley, Evie. “From the Lost Letters of Frederick Douglass.” The New Black. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2011. Sklarew, Myra. “Monuments.” Beltway Magazine. The Poetry Foundation, Washington DC, 2004, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52950/ monuments-56d231d418a80. Smith, George. H. “Abraham Lincoln and the Abolitionist.” Libertarianism. Org. 19 Jan. 2018, www.libertarianism.org/columns/abrahamlincoln-abolitionists.

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Critical Insights

Frederick Douglass in James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird Robert C. Evans

One of the most widely read—and also controversial—depictions of Frederick Douglass ever published appears in James McBride’s 2013 comic novel The Good Lord Bird, which was the surprise winner of that year’s National Book Award and has sold millions of copies since it was first released. The novel has now been turned into a television series for the Showtime Network, which will undoubtedly increase sales of the already-popular book. Frederick Douglass (played by Daveed Diggs) appears in the TV series as well as in the novel, and it will be interesting to see precisely how, if at all, his character may be transformed in the transition to the small screen. In the novel, Douglass is presented mainly as a pompous, self-important hypocrite who is involved with a white woman in addition to being married to his loyal black wife. But the real surprise comes when McBride’s Douglass tries to seduce the novel’s main character—a young girl (somewhere between the ages of twelve and fourteen) who is actually a young boy in disguise. This entire presentation of Douglass is actually quite funny: the would-be pedophile is easily handled by the young girl/boy (named Henrietta but called “Onion”), who easily manages to get “her” overaged suitor too drunk even to speak clearly, let alone sexually seduce her. McBride has real fun at Douglass’s expense, but there is also a serious dimension to the way Douglass is presented as a self-serving hypocrite whose motives and behavior cannot be trusted. Why did McBride choose to depict Douglass in a way he must have known would provoke real objections? How, precisely, does he present Douglass? How is his presentation artistically effective? These are some of the questions this essay will try to answer.

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McBride’s Defenses of His Depiction of Douglass McBride’s satirical presentation of Douglass was a frequent topic during interviews he conducted about his novel. Most interviewers, like most reviewers and readers of the book, were genuinely impressed by The Good Lord Bird, but they often asked McBride why he had depicted Douglass in such an unusual fashion. In a 2013 interview with Steve Bertrand, McBride admitted, I should say the book does have a little fun with Frederick Douglass. It does have a little—you know, pokes fun at him a little bit. Look, I respect all these guys [i.e., the abolitionists depicted in the book, especially John Brown, its major character]. I like them a lot, but how you gonna learn about American history if its just a bunch of, you know, drudge, dreary, you know, boring books that really don’t . . . Bertrand: You’ve got Frederick Douglass hitting on who he thinks is a young girl but turns out to be a boy. McBride: That’s true, but I mean Frederick Douglass did hit on several women there in the course of his life, and he, and this book points out that he had a black wife and he had a white mistress that lived in the same house—stayed in the same house. Bertrand: Talk to me about poking fun at Frederick Douglass and poking fun at John Brown, because, when I read the interviews you’ve done and different people who have written about this book they—not that they take issue but they make an issue with the fact that you’re poking Frederick Douglass but not so much John Brown—almost like it’s okay for Brown but not—but Douglass is a bit more sacrosanct. McBride: Yeah, that’s true [proceeds to comment on Brown]. . . . Frederick Douglass was like a serious guy, was a serious, you know, I wouldn’t say he was a buppy [a black upwardly mobile professional person] but he was a serious speaker and a man of letters and a man of great, you know, historical importance but he was kind of funny, too. I mean this book is a satire, so cari . . . —these, these people are caricatures and ultimately after you read the book you realize that I really have a lot of respect for all of these people. (Bertrand, beginning at 2:43)

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McBride made similar points in other interviews. When talking about his novel with interviewers for PBS, for example, one interviewer, Jeffrey Brown, remarked, along the way you’re messing with some big icons, John Brown, of course. Frederick Douglass comes in for a cameo here. And you—it’s not the most reverent view of Frederick Douglass I have ever read, that’s for sure. McBride: Well, yes, I got scorched a little bit by that Frederick Douglass depiction, but it is funny. And Frederick Douglass in real life was married to a black woman and had a white mistress and they lived in the same house together. I mean, that—you know, you can’t do that in Brooklyn now. (LAUGHTER) I don’t know where you can do it. Maybe there are places you can do it. But my point is that it’s just ripe for making—for cracking a joke about it.

When Judi Goldenberg, an interviewer with the magazine Publishers Weekly, asked McBride why he had re-created “legends like Brown and Frederick Douglass,” he replied, The book is meant to be a kind of tragicomedy parody of the past. It’s not meant to accurately reflect everything that was said and done. I’m sure Frederick Douglass wasn’t chasing a 12-year-old girl/boy around his sitting room while drinking bourbon, but, like most men of that era, he had some antiquated views about women. It’s fun to show how these characters might have acted.

McBride responded similarly when questioned on American University’s WAMU radio in Washington, DC during an interview with by R. Kojo Nnamdi, who asked, “What response have you gotten for making fun of great historical figures like Frederick Douglass?” McBride responded, “Well, people don’t mind me making fun of John Brown, but some people take umbrage to me poking fun at old Fred. I mean, you know, that is a, you know, that’s one of the sacred cows of African American history.” Nnamdi jokingly replied, “Can’t be having Fred hitting on nobody,” which provoked McBride to say, “Well, Fred, you know, let’s be honest, I mean Frederick Douglass had a black wife and he had a white mistress living in the same place. James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

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I mean, you can’t do that in Brooklyn. I don’t know how that goes in DC. So that was, that was just ripe for satire.” During the course of the interview, Nnamdi received an email from a listener named Mary who wrote that she “‘was upset at the degrading statements [McBride had made] about African-Americans.’” Mary asked, “‘How does Mr. McBride justify that?’ Unfortunately,” Nnamdi explained, “Mary did not specify what she considered to be the degrading statements, but I suspect she probably thinks that making fun of African-Americans who were either slaves or, in the case of Frederick Douglass, leaders, was not okay.” McBride responded: “Well, you know, I’m sorry she feels that way. I mean, I’m not sure that—I’m not sure she’s read the book. I think if she read the book she would probably feel a little differently. The book doesn’t poke fun at—the book pokes fun at everybody, but it doesn’t do it in a, you know, if you want to find people who make degrading statements about African-Americans, turn on some of those comedy channels and hear some of those African-American comedians, you know, where they talk about women and so forth. I just think that she—if she read the book she’d probably feel a little bit differently.”

Reviewers’ Responses Mary, however, was not the only member of McBride’s audience who seemed disturbed by the novelist’s depiction of Douglass. Catherine Taylor, writing in the London Telegraph, greatly admired The Good Lord Bird but felt that it had portrayed Douglass “with downright contempt,” while Laura Eggertson, in the Ottawa Star, felt that Douglass was presented as a man with feet of clay—at least where Brown is concerned.” Perhaps the strongest attack on the novelist’s presentation of Douglass, however, came from Hector Tobar, writing in the Los Angeles Times. According to Tobar, readers looking for verisimilitude or gravitas in their historical fiction might want to avoid The Good Lord Bird. McBride makes it clear he’s willing to kill just about any sacred cow for laughs. Douglass enters the novel about halfway through when Brown comes to live with the great abolitionist in Rochester, New York. This is a true historical 202

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encounter. But the Douglass of The Good Lord Bird is a figure largely unrecognisable to those who love African-American history. Among other things, he’s a lush and a lech. McBride’s portrait of Douglass felt downright sacrilegious to me. . . . In The Good Lord Bird, the America of legalised slavery is a land of such moral vacancy even the country’s heroes are devoid of decency.

Most reviewers, however, seemed willing to cut McBride some slack. Although Baz Dreisinger, in the New York Times Book Review, thought the novelist had “reduced” Douglass “to a drunken, ostentatious hot mess,” he quickly defended McBride’s general willingness to write complex historical fiction by using what might be called a “warts and all” approach. Marie Arana, in The Washington Post, merely mentioned in passing that McBride had depicted Onion “guzzling ‘giddy juice’ with the randy Frederick Douglass,” while Publishers Weekly saw in the novel’s Douglass “a great man but a flawed human being.” Meanwhile, Carol Memmott, in The Chicago Tribune, simply said (somewhat ambiguously) that Douglass was one of a number of people in the novel who “play a part in Onion’s moral awakening,” not mentioning that Onion is awakened (and dumbfounded and disturbed) partly by Douglass’s alleged sexual predation. All in all, most readers and reviewers granted McBride the artistic license to present Douglass as a character in a work of fiction, not as a figure in a historical tome. McBride himself, asked by a reader, Cynthia Shannon, how much the “real” Frederick Douglass resembled the Douglass presented in The Good Lord Bird, simply responded, “He was like Douglass only in the sense that Douglass did have a black wife and a white mistress, and they were in the same house for a time. The white mistress died in sad circumstances. I believe she returned to Germany and committed suicide there.” In a longer and more intriguing comment, this time in an interview with Scott Simon of National Public Radio, McBride said, “Listen, don’t meet your heroes. If you meet your heroes, you’re always going to be disappointed. Frederick Douglass was a great man, but would I want my daughter to marry him? Probably not. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think he’s a great man. . . . I think he was a James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

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great leader and he was a profoundly gifted writer as well. But you know the problem with leaders is that they have personal lives. Look, I think Frederick Douglass was flawed in the sense that he lived like a man who had power lived back in that time, and most men who had power lived the way they wanted to live. And women had very little, if any, power at all. I hope people don’t take it personally; it’s just an illumination.”

Douglass, Women, and “Onion” Little, if anything, in the scholarly record seems to support McBride’s depiction of Douglass as a sexual predator and potential pedophile. Douglass did seem to have important relationships with at least two white women during his first marriage to Anna Douglass, his black wife who was also the mother of his children. The precise nature of his relationships with the two white women—Julia Griffiths and Ottilie Assing—is unclear. Some scholars have suggested that one or both of the relationships may have been sexual, and there is definite evidence that Anna Douglass was bothered by the attention her husband paid to Julia and Ottilie, both of whom were intellectuals who first came into contact with Douglass because they admired and shared his opposition to slavery. Douglass’s enemies (ironically, enemies within the abolitionist movement) spread and even actually published rumors that his relationship with Julia Griffiths was sexual, and these rumors forced Douglass to issue public denials. But the whole matter is complicated and is not worth pursuing here. Suffice it to say that McBride was not inventing, out of whole cloth, the suggestion that Douglass may have been unfaithful to his wife.1 My main interest here is simply in exploring, in detail, how and why the main Douglass episode in The Good Lord Bird (ironically titled “Meeting a Great Man” [218–28]) is effectively designed and written—how it “works” as a piece of successful fiction, especially in characterization—and how it contributes to some of the overall themes and methods of the novel as a whole. Everything in the book is reported in first person by Onion “herself,” and so everything in the book inevitably helps characterize Onion more than any other persona in the novel. This is especially worth remembering when we look at the Douglass episode: we are getting Onion’s perspective, 204

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and not only Onion’s perspective, but the perspective of Onion as s/ he looks back on events that occurred many decades earlier, when s/he was a pre-adolescent rather than the old man who narrates the novel. Some of Onion’s claims about Douglass seem definitely untrustworthy, and so McBride is probably having some fun at the expense of his narrator, not simply at the expense of Douglass himself. In any case, when Onion and Brown arrive at the train station in Rochester, New York, we and Onion both get a first glimpse of the “Great Man”: “He was a stout, handsome mulatto with long dark hair parted in the middle. His shirt was starched and clean. His suit was pressed and flat. His boots spotless. His face was shaved and smooth” (215). Many of these details resemble ones found in photos of Douglass, but mainly they imply a theme important in McBride’s overall depiction of Douglass. He is a civilized, cultured person, in contrast to John Brown, his rather uncouth, plain-spoken, raw and rough-hewn, a fellow abolitionist. (And in contrast, it should be added, to the equally “uncivilized” Onion.) Ironically, Douglass’s immaculate physical appearance and his apparently flawless behavior and demeanor will contrast with later details of his personality and conduct, not only when he tries to seduce Onion but also when, even later in the novel, he refuses to join Brown’s famous but disastrous attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. The novel presents Douglass as a man of mere (somewhat empty) words rather than of courageous (if fool-hardy) deeds, and for Onion Douglass’s apparent hypocrisy in this latter respect resembles the hypocrisy of his other behavior. Brown, presenting Onion to Douglass, describes “her” as Brown’s “consort,” a word that will eventually have ironic overtones in light of Douglass’s later attempts to seduce the girl (as well as in light of Douglass’s relationship with a live-in “consort” of his own) (215). Onion is never an object of sexual attention from Brown, the white man, or from any of Brown’s young adult white sons or other white allies, but she does, ironically, become the target of perhaps the most famous African American abolitionist of the era. However, the first indication that things will not work out well between Douglass James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

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and Onion comes when Onion introduces herself to the great man with the simple words “Morning, Fred” (215). Her spontaneity and informality contrast with Douglass’s formality and stiffness; she is unpretentious, but he seems pompous and full of pride: “How old are you?” “Twelve.” “Then where is your manners, young lady?” (215)

The use of “is” here already helps remind us that little of the phrasing attributed to Douglass is likely to be exact and accurate; we are hearing Douglass’s words filtered through Onion’s decadesold recollections and through Onion’s homespun, plain-spoken idiom. These facts should help caution us against attributing Onion’s perceptions of Douglass simply or entirely to McBride. McBride may indeed be joking, in this whole episode, at Douglass’s expense, but he is also having some fun with Onion (and the reader). It seems unlikely, for instance, that the famously eloquent Douglass would really say, as he now says to Onion, “why do you address me as Fred? Don’t you know you are not addressing a pork chop, but rather a fairly considerable and incorrigible piece of the American Negro diaspora?” (216). At this point, Douglass insists on being called Mr. Douglass. Later, though, his treatment of Onion will relax considerably. There is already a hint of what is to come when Douglass, referring to Onion, tells Brown, “I suspect there is a pretty little piece of pork chop under all them rags.” He continues: “And we will forthrightly teach her some manners to go with them fair looks”—phrasing that seems especially ironic in view of the “teaching” to which he actually tries to subject her (216). Brown replies, “She a spritely little package, Douglass”— words that might at first suggest that Brown himself has some sexual interest in her; but then Brown immediately continues, saying that Onion “has showed pluck and courage through many a battle” (216). These words undercut any potential sexual overtones: Brown admires Onion’s personality—her determination and bravery—not her body, to which he pays almost no attention. (So little attention, 206

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in fact, that it never seems to occur to him that Onion is actually a young boy.) This whole introductory passage is full of ironies: Brown assumes it will be the “highlight” of Onion’s life to meet Douglass, “the man who is going to lift her people from the chains of the underling world” when in fact Onion will soon come to despise Douglass, not only because of his sexual aggressiveness but also because he will disappoint Brown himself so deeply (216). The ironic foreshadowing is even more apparent when Brown claps Douglass on the back and tells Onion, “I has been disappointed many times in my life. But this is one man on whom the Old Captain can always depend” (216). In response, Douglass smiles, and Onion notes that he “had perfect teeth”: he is superficially attractive, but the contrast between his handsome appearance and his disappointing behavior will soon be very obvious (216). Indeed, Onion even hints that Brown himself (whom Onion often calls “the Old Man”) will soon have real reason to be disappointed in Douglass: “like most things the Old Man done, his business didn’t work out the way it was drawed up” (216). Onion then elaborates, saying that Brown couldn’t have been more wrong about Mr. Douglass. Had I knowed what was coming, I expect I’d have taken that little derringer I kept from my Pikesville days out my pants pocket and popped Mr. Douglass off in the foot, or at least cleaned him up with the handle of it, for he would short the Old Man something terrible going forward, at a time when the Captain needed him the most. And it would cost the Old Man a lot more than a train ticket to Rochester. (216–17)

At first the foreshadowing here (presented in Onion’s typically vivid and inventive language) might seem to anticipate Douglass’s sexual designs on Onion, but ultimately it becomes apparent that Onion, in “her” usual way, is actually thinking more of Brown than of herself. Although The Good Lord Bird’s depiction of Douglass is most notorious for presenting him as a would-be sexual predator, in fact the novel’s final view of him emphasizes the way he allegedly betrays Brown in Brown’s greatest hour of need. Douglass may James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

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eventually try to seduce Onion, but when he last appears in the novel it will be Brown whom he truly betrays. Onion reports that Brown stayed at Douglass’s home for several weeks in the year or so before the attack on Harper’s Ferry. This report is historically accurate. Also accurate is Onion’s claim that Brown “spent most of that time in his room, writing and studying” (218). At one point, Onion says that he heard Douglass, in Brown’s room, shout “Unto the death!”—suggesting that Douglass may have pledged his willingness to die in support of Brown’s plans to attack the arsenal (219). In fact, Douglass felt great skepticism about the wisdom of Brown’s scheme almost from the start, and indeed he tried to dissuade Brown from pursuing a plot he considered suicidal and counterproductive. McBride underplays the sincerity of Douglass’s rejection of the plan, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that Onion (not McBride) does so, or that Onion may not even know how strongly Douglass resisted the idea. In any case, Onion’s real concern, at least for the time being, is with the living arrangements and lifestyle he encounters in the comfortable, middleclass Douglass home. Onion reports that the time spent there gived me plenty of time to get acquainted with the Douglass household, which was run by Mr. Douglass’s two wives—a white one and a colored one. That was the first time I ever saw such a thing, two women married to one man, and both of ’em being of a different race. Them two women hardly spoke to one another. When they did, you’d a thunk a chunk of ice dropped into the room, for Miss Ottilie was a German white woman, and Miss Anna was a colored woman from the South. They was polite enough to each other, more or less, though I expect if they weren’t civilized, they’d a punched each other wobbly. They hated each other’s guts, is the real picture, and took their rage out on me, for I was uncouth in their eyes and needing barbering and learning of proper manners, ways to sit and curtsy and all them things. (219)

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Critical Insights

different white women living in his home with him, his wife, and children, much to Mrs. Douglass’s apparent chagrin. Ottilie Assing, the German woman living in the home during the visit Onion recounts, actually seems to have been less controversial than Julia Griffiths, the white Englishwoman who had lived in the Douglass home several years earlier. It was Griffiths, rather than Assing, who was actually openly accused of being romantically and/or sexually involved with Douglass, although some scholars have suspected the same thing about Assing. Whatever the truth of such speculation, the aspect of the Douglass household that seems to bother Onion the most is its “civilized” atmosphere, and especially the pressure Onion feels to conform to “civilized” expectations (219). It is here that Onion most obviously resembles Huck Finn, his great literary forebear: both boys can’t stand the thought of being “sivilized.” Onion, like Huck, soon comes to associate civilization with hypocrisy, conformity, and a lack of true freedom. He also associates it with softness and a prim distance from the true realities of life. Onion says of Brown, for instance, that the Old Man couldn’t sit at a hearth long, or sleep on a feather bed, or even eat food that was cooked for civilized people. He liked wild things: coons, possum, squirrel, wild turkeys, beavers. But food prepared inside a proper kitchen—biscuits, pie, jam, butter—he couldn’t stand the taste of them things. (218)

But at least Brown is left alone by Anna and Ottilie. They (perhaps because they assume that Onion is really a girl) immediately get to work trying to “sivilize” him. They try to get the “girl” to change into better clothes and try to give the “girl” a bath in front of them, but Onion manages to evade their efforts as skillfully as he later evades Douglass’s attempted seduction. Douglass, meanwhile, is presented as a sexist patriarch (despite his actual, real-life advocacy for women’s rights): every inch of movement in that house, every speck of cleaning, cooking, dusting, working, writing, pouring of lye, and sewing of James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

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undergarments revolved around Mr. Douglass, who walked about the house like a king in pantaloons and suspenders, practicing his orations, his mane of dark hair almost wide as the hallways, his voice booming down the halls. (220)

Just as Douglass expects to be served and catered to by both of “his” women, so he later expects the same thing when he goes after Onion: Them women tried to outdo each other with the handling of him, even though he regarded them both like they was cooters and stink bombs. When he took meals, he took them alone at the big mahogany desk in his office. That man gobbled down more in one setting than I seen thirty settlers chunk down in three weeks out in Kansas Territory: steak, potatoes, collard greens, yams, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, chicken, rabbit, pheasant, buck meat, cake, biscuits, rice, cheeses of all types, and kneaded bread; he washed it down with milk, curd, peach juice, cow’s milk, goat’s milk, cherry juice, orange juice, grape juice. Neither did he turn away from alcohol libations and drinks of all sorts, of which several types was kept on hand at the house: beer, lager, wine, seltzer, even bottled water from various springs out west. That man put a hurting on a kitchen. (220)

This passage exhibits McBride’s splendid talent for creating vivid lists, a talent that appears everywhere throughout the book. Meanwhile, Douglass’s appetite here for food and alcohol prefigures his later appetite for young “female” flesh. In the way he “gobble[s] down” food, as in the way he later tries to control Onion, he is less civilized than he wants to appear. Onion, in his meantime, feels “exhausted with being a girl a week into the stay, for a damsel out west on the trail could spit, chaw tobacco, holler, grunt, and fart” and not attract any attention (221). S/he explains, “But in Rochester, by God, you couldn’t so much as doodle your fingers without insulting somebody on the question of a lady behaving thus and so, even a colored lady—especially a colored lady, for the high-siddity coloreds up there was all tweet and twit and whistle” (221). Ironically, having escaped literal slavery, many of the bourgeois African Americans Onion encounters in Rochester have submitted to a whole new kind of social control. They want 210

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to behave, and to be seen behaving, like “civilized” whites. They monitor Onion’s behavior in ways that seem both oppressive and superficial: “Where’s your bustle?” a colored lady snapped at me when I walked down the street. “Un-nip your naps!” piped up another. “Where’s your wig, child?” asked another. I couldn’t stand it and retreated back to the house. All that blitzing and curtsying pressured me, and I got the thirst, needed a jag, a sip of whiskey, to clear me out. (221)

McBride’s novel implies that issues of class, race, and gender all intersect when it comes to how Onion is expected to behave: he must conduct himself like a proper “Negro,” a proper young lady, and a proper member of the black bourgeoisie. He can hardly stand it and instead takes refuge in alcohol. But even the taverns in Rochester “weren’t nothing compared to taverns in Kansas Territory. They was more like libraries or thinking places, full of old farts in button-down frock coats setting around sipping sherry and wondering about the state of the poor Negro not prospering, or drunk Irishmen learning to read” (221). In any case, females were forbidden, and young “girls” such as Onion would never be admitted. Paradoxically, the lower-class, uncouth Onion soon comes to feel superior to “most of them citified easterners who ate toast with jam and moaned and crowed about not having no blueberries in the winter months” (222). To cope with his frustrations, he begins to plunder Douglass’s copious stash of alcohol and is nearly caught in the process by Ottillie, only to discover that she has come to announce that “Mr. Douglass asks to see you in his study now” (222). Entering the room, Onion describes Douglass as “a short man,” so that “the top of the desk was nearly as high as he was. He had a big head for such a tiny person, and his hair, standing on end like a lion’s mane, loomed over the top of the desk” (222). Douglass did in fact have impressively lofty hair, but he does not seem to have been short. In fact, Ottillie Assing herself, in real life, emphasized his impressive height (Blight 292). Perhaps McBride makes him short to make him seem less impressive, less literally and figuratively upstanding. In James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

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any case, Onion remembers him as a small man in several different senses of that term. In the dialogue between Onion and Douglass, Douglass continues to speak in improbable ways. We hear him as the essentially illiterate Onion remembers him talking, reminding us that everything we read about Douglass in this novel is filtered through Onion’s perspective: He seen me coming and bid me to close the door. “Since you are in the employ of the Captain, I has got to interview you,” he said, “to make you aware of the plight of the Negro in whose service you has been fighting.” Well, I was aware of that plight, being that I am a Negro myself, plus I heard him bleating it about the house, and the truth is, I weren’t interested in fighting for nobody’s cause. (222)

Douglass wastes no time. Ironically, he seems attracted to Onion partly because Onion is “almost white.” Describing himself as “of a brown hue,” Douglass continues, “You, on the other hand, is nearly white, and comely, and that’s a terrible dilemma, is it not?” (223). Paradoxically, then, one of the greatest of all black abolitionists is, in this book, especially interested in a “nearly white” pre-adolescent, in much the same way that his adult romantic interests run toward purely white women. McBride complicates and undermines simple binaries. One main character of the book is a heroic old white man who fights more intensely for the freedom of blacks than many black people (such as Douglass) themselves do. Another main character is a “nearly white” young black boy pretending to be a young black girl who is herself targeted sexually by a hypocritical older “brown” man. The most “civilized” of these three characters is also the least admirable and least trustworthy. He tries to deceive not only the ironically named Brown but also his black wife and white mistress. Nothing is plain and simple in this novel, and surely that is part of McBride’s somewhat “post-racial” point. And yet even this claim is complicated, because the book also reveals that race can never be ignored as a factor in the story it tells, just as the same thing is true of gender and class. 212

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Douglass Seduces Onion As Douglass tries, both figuratively and literally, to put the squeeze on Onion, McBride (himself a “mulatto” who has written movingly about his white mother) enhances the ridiculousness both of the situation and especially of the diction and dialogue: “I’m a mulatto myself,” [Douglass] said proudly. “Yes, sir.” “Being comely, we mulattoes have therefore various certain experiences that define our existence and set us apart from the other adherents of our racial congruities.” “Sir?” “We mulattoes are different from most Negroes.” “We is?” “Of course, my child.” “I reckon so, Mr. Douglass, if you say so.” “I deedy doody say so indeed-y,” he said. I reckoned he said that as a joke, for he chortled and looked at me. “Ain’t that funny?” “Yes, sir.” (223)

McBride is a master both of word-choice and of presenting characters in speech and conversation, and this passage typifies that mastery. But McBride also loves to complicate situations in intriguing ways. Douglass, the champion of “Negroes,” is proud of being partly white. Onion must show respect to Douglass, partly because Onion is a young “girl.” Douglass uses fancy language to impress and intimidate an illiterate youngster, but Douglass himself speaks in ridiculous and improbable ways (“I deedy doody say so indeed-y”), so that we are never allowed to forget that we are reading a novel written by McBride but told from Onion’s point of view. As the attempted seduction continues, Douglass increasingly resembles an archetypal predator. He plops Onion into a “love seat,” offering to “‘explain to you further the plight of our people’” even as his real interests are abundantly clear:

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“You are a country girl,” he chortled. “I love country girls. They’re fast. I’m from the country myself.” He pushed me down in the love seat and sat down on the other side of it. “This love seat’s from Paris,” he said. “Is she a friend of yours?” “It’s the city of light,” he said, sneaking an arm around my shoulder. (224)

Douglass continues, even when Onion says s/he reckons herself to be “about twelve or fourteen” (226). Ironically, Douglass complains about the ways black people—and black women in particular—are manipulated by whites even as Douglass himself tries to manipulate Onion: He squeezed my shoulder. “That is merely flesh. You are natural prey to the carnal wisdom and thirst of the slave owner, that dastardly fiend of fiendishness. Your colored woman knows no freedom. No dignity. Her children are sold down the lane. Her husbands tend the field. While the fiendish slave owner has his way with her.” “He do?” “Of course he does. And see this?” He squeezed the back of my neck, then stroked it with fat fingers. “This slender neck, the prominent nose—this, too, belongs to the slave owner. They feel it belongs to them. They take what is not rightfully theirs. They know not you, Harlot Shackleford.” “Henrietta.” “Whatever. . . . You’re but chattel to them, stolen property, to be squeezed, used, savaged, and occupied.” Well, all that tinkering and squeezing and savaging made me right nervous, ’specially since he was doing it his own self, squeezing and savaging my arse, working his hand down toward my mechanicals as he spoke the last, with his eyes all dewy, so I hopped to my feet. (226)

The ironies continue and pile on top of one another. But Onion, despite “her” youth and apparent lack of sophistication, quickly outmaneuvers “Fred.” She easily gets him drunk (despite his advanced age, he can’t handle his liquor nearly as well as the harddrinking Onion can). By the end of the scene, Douglass is a drunk 214

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mess and is in no position (so to speak) to perform sexually. Instead, he resorts once more to his first love—making speeches: “The more stupefied he got, the more he forgot about the hanky-panky he had in mind and instead germinated on what he knowed—orating” (227). For Onion (and perhaps also for McBride)—not only here but later in the book—Douglass is first and foremost a man of empty words, not determined action, whether courageous or otherwise. Eventually, though, even his lofty words desert him: “The more bleary-eyed he got, the more he talked like a right regular down-home, pig-knuckleeatin’ Negro” (228). Ultimately, it is young Onion, rather than the older and presumably wiser Brown, who realizes that Douglass is a hypocrite. Onion could have told Brown about Douglass’s attempted assault, but Onion, with his/her typical kindness, does not want to destroy the old man’s illusions about his respected, seemingly respectable friend. And, to make matters even more complicated, Onion, as a young “girl,” probably would not have been believed in any case. When we last see Douglass, he has just refused to participate in, or even assist, Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry. Onion, using language that emphasizes issues of class more than anything else, comments, “standing there in his frock coat, Mr. Douglass weren’t up to it. He had too many highballs. Too many boiled pigeons and meat jellies and buttered apple pies. He was a man of parlor talk, of silk shirts and fine hats, linen suits and ties. He was a man of words and speeches” (331). Although there were actually good, sensible reasons for Douglass to reject the idea of the raid, McBride (or at least Onion) implies that the raid might have succeeded if Douglass had agreed to do his part. The novel even suggests that Brown went forward with the raid even though he knew that, lacking Douglass’s endorsement, it was bound to fail. Onion says that Brown “knowed he was gonna lose fighting for the Negro, on account of the Negro, and he brung hisself to it anyway, for he trusted in the Lord’s word. That’s strong stuff. I felt God in my heart for the first time at that moment” (332). But these are the last words Onion ever offers about Douglass: “[I] Knowed from the first, really, that there weren’t no James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

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way Mr. Douglass could’a brung hisself to fight a real war. He was a speeching parlor man” (332). He was, in other words—to add to the novel’s many paradoxes—a man like McBride, who has won renown through his skill in using words. Conclusion McBride’s decision to have some fun with Frederick Douglass is no reason to condemn his novel, and most critics seem to realize this. Only a few reviewers seem to have been highly offended by the way Douglass is depicted in the book. Most readers have taken the depiction as part of the novel’s general commitment to comedy. It is a book in which practically everyone, including John Brown and including Onion himself/herself, is an object of fun to one extent or another. McBride does seem to have been genuinely surprised to learn about Douglass’s close involvement with women other than his wife, and the fun he has with Douglass can, in fact, be seen from a feminist point of view. His satire of Douglass seems to have been intended, in part, as a satire of the male power structure of Douglass’s day—a power structure that is still very visible in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Douglass’s wife seems to have been herself uncomfortable with Douglass’s involvement with other women, and so McBride can be seen as voicing, in a basically funny way, some of her concerns, as if to suggest that even Douglass, like most people, was not a perfect human being. After all, few of us are, and Douglass was probably no exception. Note 1.

For relevant discussions see, especially, Blight (290–309, 451–54, 510–19) and Fought (131–51).

Works Cited or Consulted Arana, Marie. Review of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. The Washington Post, 19 Aug. 2013. www.washingtonpost. com/entertainment/books/the-good-lord-bird-by-jamesmcbride/2013/08/19/e0759a98-05e1-11e3-88d6-d5795fab4637_ story.html?utm_term=.513792d43235. 216

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Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon and Schuster, 2020. Dreisinger, Baz. “Marching On.” Review of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. The New York Times, 18 Aug. 2013, n.p. www.nytimes. com/2013/08/18/books/review/james-mcbrides-good-lord-bird.html. Eggertson, Laura. “The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride.” Review of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. The Toronto Star, 31 Dec. 2013, n.p. www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2013/12/31/ the_good_lord_bird_by_james_mcbride_review.html. Fought, Leigh. Women in the World of Frederick Douglass. Oxford UP, 2017. McBride, James. “Steve Bertrand on Books: James McBride on ‘The Good Lord Bird.’” Interview with Steve Bertrand. Bertrand on Books. YouTube, 30 Aug. 2013. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Z25CTmzwknQ. __________. “James Bride on ‘The Good Lord Bird.’” Interview with Jeffrey Brown and Judy Woodruff. PBS NewsHour. YouTube, 2 Dec. 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GKskSwAEHQ. __________. “Flawed Heroes: PW Talks with James McBride.” Interview with Judi Goldenberg. Publishers Weekly, 12 July 2013, n.p. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/ article/58205-flawed-heroes-pw-talks-with-james-mcbride.html. __________. “‘The Good Lord Bird’ by James McBride.” Interview with R. Kojo Nnamdi. The Kojo Nnamdi Show. 2 Dec. 2013. thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2013-12-02/good-lord-bird-jamesmcbride. __________. “How Much Like the Real Frederick Douglass is the Frederick Douglass in ‘The Good Lord Bird’”? Interview with Cynthia Shannon. Good Reads, n.d. www.goodreads.com/questions/1674how-much-like-the-real-frederick-douglass. __________. “‘Good Lord Bird’ Gives Abolitionist Heroes Novel Treatment.” Interview with Scott Simon. Weekend Edition Saturday, National Public Radio, 17 Aug. 2013. www.npr. org/2013/08/17/212588754/good-lord-bird-gives-abolitionistheroes-novel-treatment. Memmott, Carol. Review of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. The Chicago Tribune, 23 Aug. 2013. www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird

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books/ct-prj-0825-good-lord-bird-james-mcbride-20130823-story. html. Taylor, Catherine. Review of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. The Telegraph, 20 Dec. 2013. www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/ bookreviews/10528080/The-Good-Lord-Bird-by-James-McBridereview.html. Tobar, Hector. “‘The Good Lord Bird’ Is a Twisted Take on an Abolitionist’s Story.” Review of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. The Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2013, www.latimes.com/books/la-xpm2013-aug-30-la-ca-jc-james-mcbride-20130901-story.html.

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Black Writers Matter: Frederick Douglass in the Literary Present Laura Dubek

Thus early I learned that the point from which a thing is viewed is of some importance. Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

In February 2017, Horn Book Magazine, the oldest and most prestigious reviewer of children’s and young adult (YA) books, published its Frederick Douglass booklist, offered by the editors as “a good entry point into Douglass’s invaluable legacy” (Horn Book). The list included a variety of picture books and biographies for primary, intermediate, and advanced readers. At the same time, at an event celebrating Black History Month at the White House, the place where, in 1863, Douglass discussed pay equity for black soldiers with President Lincoln, Donald Trump praised the slaveturned-activist as “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more” (Graham). Widely recognized (and ridiculed) as a disturbing sign of significant gaps in the newly elected President’s historical knowledge, Trump’s 2017 declaration actually rang true: in the last ten years, in both scholarship and popular culture, including books for children and young adults, Douglass has been in vogue. In this chapter, I explain the reemergence of the most noteworthy nineteenth-century abolitionist, in the second decade of the twenty-first-century, as the result of both timing and the times; I survey selected children’s and YA literature about Douglass by award-winning authors, texts that memorialize Douglass in ways that keep him safely in the past; and I discuss David F. Walker’s extraordinary The Life of Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Narrative of a Slave’s Journey from Bondage to Freedom (2019) as a forward-thinking text that presents a new Douglass for both young and adult readers. Black Writers Matter

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“He died in 1895 / He is not dead”: Remembering Douglass Anniversaries associated with historical figures and events provide opportunities for reflection and retrospective analyses as well as renewed calls for action. In 2018, on the bicentennial of Douglass’s birth, the Guardian launched the Frederick Douglass 200, a yearlong project that identified 200 individuals alive today “who best embody the work and spirit of Douglass across those areas where he had such an impact—abolitionist, politician, writer, feminist, educator, entrepreneur and diplomat” (“Frederick Douglass 200”). By recognizing the various roles Douglass played, the Guardian claimed a much wider sphere of influence for a historical figure known primarily for his 1845 slave narrative and his subsequent efforts advocating for abolition. The honorees at the award ceremony on February 14, 2019—the day Douglass chose to celebrate his birthday—included abolitionists Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza, co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement; educator David W. Blight, author of the 2018 Pulitzer prize-winning biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom; and writers Jason Reynolds, Jacqueline Woodson, and Tahereh Mafi, all of whom write books for children and young adults. In the lives and work of this incredibly diverse group of people, from Noam Chomsky to Kendrick Lamar, the Guardian insists that Douglass lives on. Put another way, the newspaper affirms what Robert Hayden asserts in his 1966 tribute to Douglass: the former slave, the poet wrote, would be remembered “not with statues’ rhetoric, / not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, / but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives / fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing” (Hayden). The “beautiful, needful thing” in Hayden’s day could be found written on signs carried by civil rights marchers: freedom. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. notes that Douglass reemerged during the midtwentieth-century freedom struggle after decades of neglect (Stony). The resurrection of Douglass in the 1960s speaks to what historians call the long civil rights movement, a term that draws attention to a history of sustained and varied black protest beginning in 1619 and 220

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continuing today. Douglass advocated for freedom and civil rights in the ante- and postbellum periods. In his own tribute to Douglass, also published in 1966, Langston Hughes makes clear the context for Douglass’s particular brand of social and political protest: Douglass was someone who, Had he walked with wary foot And frightened tread, From very indecision Might be dead, Might have lost his soul, But instead decided to be bold And capture every street, On which he set his feet Toward freedom’s goal, To make each highway Choose his compass’ choice To all the world cried, Hear my voice! . . . Oh, to be a beast, a bird, Anything but a slave! he said. Who would be free Themselves must strike The first blow, he said. He died in 1895, He is not dead. (“Frederick Douglass: 1817–1895”)

Published in the Liberator three years after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and two years before King would be assassinated in Memphis, Hughes’s poem links the present with the past, providing inspiration to a new generation of freedom fighters by insisting, like the Guardian’s Frederick Douglass 200 in our own time, that Douglass’s spirit lives on. The current resurgence of Douglass in scholarship and popular culture has taken place during a period spanning two political administrations and marked not only by intense partisanship and a Black Writers Matter

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revivification of the culture wars but also by renewed attention to racism and white nationalism. Near the end of his presidency, at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016, Barack Obama echoed the sentiment in Hughes’s poem honoring Douglass—that the march “[t]oward freedom’s goal” continues. After reminding his audience that this march does not proceed in a straight line, Obama quoted James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” in order to underscore storytelling as integral to the process of reflection and renewal, of building a more perfect union. In August 2019, the New York Times, in a series of articles and podcasts, began telling the story of America starting not with the revolution of 1776, but with the arrival of the first slave ships. The 1619 Project explores the legacy of slavery in contemporary life. Launched two years after Tiki torch-wielding white men marched in Charlottesville, North Carolina, their defense of Confederate monuments drawing swift comparisons to Ku Klux Klan rallies and a history of hate masked as a celebration of (southern) heritage, the 1619 Project challenges readers to recognize the deep roots of white supremacy in the United States and to confront the strange and poisonous fruit it continues to bear. The (white) backlash to the advances (real and perceived) of the Obama era echoes the racial dynamics of previous historical periods. Gates explores these echoes, with a focus on racist imagery, in The Stony Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (2019). The co-editor of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, a prolific critic and public intellectual, Gates takes his title from the first line, second verse of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the Black National Anthem: “Stony the road we trod, / Bitter the chast’ning rod, / Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; / Yet with a steady beat, / Have not our weary feet / Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?” The question mark remains pertinent, explaining the continued relevance of both Douglass and the ballad penned by James Weldon Johnson in 1900, five years after Douglass’s death and three years before W. E. B. Du Bois predicted that the problem of the twentieth-century would be “the color line.” In May We Forever Stand (2018), Imani Perry traces the history of 222

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Johnson and his brother’s song, noting that while written to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday, the song’s particular brand of protest and uplift is more appropriately associated with Douglass. After examining the anthem as a through-line in the twentieth-century freedom struggle, Perry poses provocative questions about the present moment and the uses to which we put the past. In her Afterword, she argues that “[t]oday, it often seems, our impulse to memorialize landmark marches and civil rights heroes isn’t forward-looking. Looking to the past often isn’t a means for understanding the present. Rather, memorialization stands in lieu of the burden of figuring out our time” (223). Perry cautions against being “deceived about the moment in which we live, grasping somewhat randomly into traditions and their archives and yet in desperate need of rebuilding traditions, or building anew” (225). Imani’s work provides a useful framework for assessing contemporary children’s and YA literature about Douglass. In the next section, I discuss the uses to which Douglass is being put in selected texts by award-winning authors and illustrators. To a large extent, these texts memorialize a civil rights hero in ways that indeed mask or minimize “the burden of figuring out our time.” Reading Is Not Optional: Douglass in Books for Children and Young Adults When Horn Book published its Frederick Douglass booklist, Walter Dean Myers’s posthumously published Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History (2017) had just arrived in bookstores. A twotime Newbery Award-winner, five-time Coretta Scott King Awardwinner, and the recipient of the American Library Association’s 2019 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, Myers wrote prolifically and in multiple genres, including opinion pieces arguing for more diversity in children’s literature. In “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?”, published in the New York Times less than three months before his death in 2014, Myers reflects on his long writing career and, more to the point, what preceded and prompted it—a young reading life bereft of black characters and stories. This situation changed when Myers read Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”: “I didn’t love the story, but I was lifted by it, for it took place in Black Writers Matter

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Harlem, and it was a story concerned with black people like those I knew. By humanizing the people who were like me, Baldwin’s story also humanized me. The story gave me a permission that I didn’t know I needed, the permission to write about my own landscape, my own map” (Myers). As the third National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Myers highlighted the relationship between reading and a sense of one’s own humanity and agency in his official platform: Reading Is Not Optional. It is both fitting and a bit surprising that Myers’s last book, published posthumously, features the historical figure whose best-selling slave narrative established the central theme of the African American literary tradition—the quest for freedom and literacy. Contemporary children’s and YA books about Douglass, including Myers’s Lion, underscore the theme of reading and in so doing, present Douglass as a role model. Targeted for grades 2–5, Myers’s text, with illustrations by Floyd Cooper, emphasizes the “careful and wise decisions” Douglass made, beginning with learning to read. Lesa Cline-Ransome (author) and James E. Ransome (illustrator) make clear the importance of reading in their title: Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass (2012). Nikki Giovanni’s Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship (2008), also for primary school children, draws multiple parallels between the slave and the future president, two boys born nine years apart. On one page a young Douglass writes the word freedom on a scrap of parchment; on the facing page, a young Lincoln reads a book. Giovanni writes: “Both young men studied by kerosene light to read the Bible, print their letters, and better themselves” (n.p.). The illustrations by Caldecott Award-winner Bryan Collier underscore the “equal” status of Lincoln and Douglass, extending even to their skin tones, which, with a few exceptions, are barely distinguishable. In addition to being self-taught, the two men are equally horrified by slavery, and in a scene common to Douglass biographies for children—the 1863 meeting in the White House— Giovanni elevates her main subject’s status by putting him in the position of schooling the wartime president: “Douglass wanted to teach; Lincoln wanted to learn.” Lincoln and Douglass ends in 1865 224

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with scenes from Lincoln’s second inaugural reception, an event that Douglass almost missed because he refused to enter through a back door. After Lincoln apologizes for what Douglass calls “a misunderstanding,” the two men stand together on the balcony and discuss “the difficult days ahead.” To Douglass’s insistence that “we have the right captain to steer the good ship America,” Lincoln responds, “With good friends offering wise counsel . . . I don’t worry either.” Douglass’s confidence and Lincoln’s smile reassure young readers that all will be well in the end. Books about Douglass written for intermediate and advanced readers emphasize the characteristics the former slave shares with other notable (male) figures in American history, particularly selfsufficiency or the idea of being “self-made.” A multiple Newbery Award-winning author best known for Lincoln: A Photobiography (1987), Russell Freedman first became aware of Lincoln’s friendship with Douglass from a 2009 essay in the New York Review of Books. Garry Wills’s “Lincoln’s Black History” led Freedman to several book-length studies, each of which foregrounds the black man’s pivotal role in the white man’s thinking about the purpose of the Civil War and the possibilities of postwar race relations. Freedman ends Abraham Lincoln & Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship (2012) by quoting what Douglass wrote about Lincoln—“‘He was the architect of his own fortune, a self-made man [who] ascended high, but with hard hands and honest work built the ladder on which he climbed’”—before stating that these are “words that Douglass, as he was aware, could easily have applied to himself” (103). The book jacket underscores this connection: “Both were self-educated, and both rose to prominence—one as president of the United States, the other as the foremost black abolitionist spokesman—by their own efforts.” A critically-acclaimed author of biographies of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, David A. Adler makes this same point but with a singular focus on Douglass in Frederick Douglass: A Noble Life (2010). In fifteen chapters, with titles that draw from Douglass’s own writing and speeches, Adler covers Douglass’s entire life, presenting him as someone who “with his strength of character and great intelligence transformed himself Black Writers Matter

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into one of America’s foremost citizens” (Preface). Both Freedman and Adler consider Douglass’s efforts to learn to read in the context of his “rise from obscurity to greatness” (Freedman 103). Young readers of these two books thus learn that to achieve greatness, to satisfy a particular definition of success, reading was indeed not optional for either the Civil War president or the escaped slave and abolitionist. While Douglass’s blackness helps to explain the hardships and trauma he experiences as a slave, as well as the work he pursues as a “free” man, his racial identity in these texts is almost incidental to the message(s) they convey. Written as short or long biographies, with original illustrations or black-and-white reprints, these selected texts position Douglass as a historical figure who exemplifies certain values and exemplary behaviors. L. Diane Barnes argues that these values give Douglass staying power: “One reason Douglass’s story continues to resonate is that his life embodies the American dream of overcoming obstacles and reaching one’s goals” (Barnes). To borrow a phrase from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance initiative, this type of storytelling is not “hard history”; it is palatable history, packaged and presented to American school children in a way that perhaps widens their historical knowledge but does not deepen their understanding of and appreciation for Douglass’s relentless challenge to white America’s understanding of itself. The ramifications of such (mis)education were on full display at the unveiling ceremony of Douglass’s statue in the United States Capitol in 2013. David Blight writes about this moment in a 2018 op-ed titled “How the Right Co-opts Frederick Douglass.” Republican lawmakers at this event wore large buttons proclaiming “Frederick Douglass Was a Republican.” Blight recalls that scholars such as himself, who had “different training,” as well as Douglass’s descendants present at the event, “smiled and endured.” He also imagines that if Douglass were alive, the abolitionist would “most likely laugh,” given that in his day, the party of Lincoln “stood for using government to free people.” Blight uses this memory to contextualize his response to a book recently published by the Cato 226

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Institute. In Self-Made Man, Timothy Sandefur presents Douglass as “a radical for individualism” whose “essential legacy lies in his advocacy of liberty, individualism and private property and free enterprise” (23). Blight counters what he calls conservatives’ “cherry-picking” of Douglass’s words by presenting the former slave and activist as a community-made man: On the surface Douglass does appear to be self-made—he was the escaped slave who willed his own freedom, stole the master’s language and wrote masterpieces of antislavery literature. But without many people, especially women (his grandmother, two wives, a daughter and countless abolitionist women who supported his career) as well as male mentors, both white and black, he would not have survived and become Douglass. (23)

Blight’s op-ed not only previews his own biography of Douglass, published later that year and awarded the Pulitzer prize; it also makes clear the catalyst for David F. Walker’s 2019 graphic narrative for young readers: how we memorialize Douglass reflects how we understand our present and thus how we continue the march towards freedom’s goal. Hard History: David F. Walker’s Tribute to a Great American Writer A collaboration with illustrators Damon Smyth and Marissa Louise, Walker’s stunning The Life of Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Narrative of a Slave’s Journey from Bondage to Freedom (2019) is a game-changer with regard to how it positions Douglass as a literary ancestor and freedom fighter in the Black Lives Matter era. Walker prepared to write the book by immersing himself in all things Douglass—his autobiographies, speeches, and journalism as well as accounts of his interactions with Lincoln. For Walker, Douglass is “the quintessential American. . . . His story speaks to the American experience because the American experience is so directly tied to slavery—the fight against slavery and the ideology that allowed it to exist, the ideology that led to the Civil War, the ideology that contributed to the failure of Reconstruction. . . . He is one of the Black Writers Matter

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greatest heroes in America” (Betancourt). A creator of superheroes for Marvel and DC Comics, Walker uses the word hero deliberately, and while his text makes clear all the heroic acts that make that moniker appropriate, one stands out—Douglass wrote. Walker’s text depicts the slave-turned-activist remembering, reflecting, and throughout his life, writing. The first page of Chapter One features three panels. In the first, which occupies the entire upper half of the page, a white-haired Douglass holds a kerosene lamp and looks out a window. The bottom half of the page contains two panels; in the left, Douglass sits at a desk, holding a pen, and in the right, he dips the pen into an ink bottle. The text reads: “More than twenty years of my life were spent within the peculiar institution known as slavery. The name by which I am best known, Frederick Douglass, was taken after my escape from slavery, as I embarked on a new life as a free man” (5). This image of an elderly Douglass writing at his desk recurs throughout the narrative, reminding the reader of a specific storytelling situation: a black man, having reached the end of his life, is looking back and telling a gripping (hi)story. The back cover features an enlarged version of the feather pen with the inkwell featuring Douglass’s initials. Like other children’s and YA works about Douglass, Graphic Narrative draws on Douglass’s own writing and speeches for content. The title samples all three titles of his autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845); My Bondage and My Freedom (1855); and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised in 1892). Walker’s text deviates from the others, however, in that he writes the story in Douglass’s own voice, which he says “enabled him to tell the story more emotionally and give readers a sense of the abolitionist at his most brave, flawed and inspirational moments” (Betancourt). In his Introduction, Walker foregrounds the mystery and mythology of Douglass’s life before explaining his decision to use first-person: “I want to make clear that the voice narrating this book is based on Douglass’s writing, but it is not actually his writing. . . . The narration in this book is a distillation of what Douglass wrote, crafted to work with the specific medium of the graphic novel” 228

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(2). Walker’s unique approach makes it difficult to categorize his text: reviewers describe it as a graphic novel, graphic narrative, and graphic work. To be sure, the generic hybridity of the text gives new meaning to the final and arguably most significant phrase of Douglass’s 1845 slave narrative—Written by Himself. Except for the Epilogue, which Walker writes in the third-person, the book could be read as a graphic literary autobiography, ghost-written by a comic book writer and filmmaker from the future. Signifying on and sampling from an impressive number of primary and secondary works, Walker creates a hybrid text that looks like a comic book, reads like an action thriller, and carries the weight of history as well as the force and relevancy of contemporary debates about the role of slavery in American life. In this way, Walker not only entertains and educates his readers: he pays tribute to Douglass and distinguishes his text from other children’s and YA books by making Douglass’s blackness central to his Americanness. Walker puts himself directly in conversation with contemporary debates about white supremacy with three inserts that resemble chapters in a standard history textbook, his text anticipating and complementing the 1619 Project and thus qualifying as hard history. The insert “A Brief History of Slavery” features a timeline to help readers understand “the world Frederick Douglass was born into” (12). By 1860, this world included nearly four million black slaves, human beings counted, in the census, as property, not people. Many of the key events in the timeline relate to abolitionist work by such notables as Nathaniel Bacon, the Quakers, John Jay, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln. The insert “A Brief History of the Civil War” explains that “[e]nding slavery was not a priority for Lincoln,” though “[i]n time, Lincoln came to understand that even though the North was fighting to restore the Union, the South was fighting to maintain slavery, and that abolition lay at the heart of the conflict.” Walker emphatically states that the “Civil War was, in fact, a war for abolition, and victory could only come with the destruction of slavery” (127). By contextualizing Douglass’s life story with these two inserts, Walker launches a direct attack on continuous efforts, Black Writers Matter

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beginning during Reconstruction, to promote a revisionist history that denies the deep investment, in the south and the north, for both economic and psychosocial reasons, in the continued oppression of black people in America. The third insert, “Photography and Frederick Douglass,” draws from the stunning work in Picturing Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American (2015), inviting readers to consider the full force and effect of the visual imagery in Graphic Narrative. In an essay written for Picturing Douglass, Gates calls attention to Douglass’s theories of the nature and function of visual art, arguing that “Douglass was acutely aware that images matter” (204). Gates notes that Douglass used photography to “further his antislavery political agenda, to show the variations in forms of black subjectivity.” The photographs illustrate “a range of selves over time,” not a Douglass, but multiple Douglasses: “And that, for him, was his ultimate claim on being fully and equally and complexly human” (203). A student of photography himself, Gates links what he considers Daguerre’s genius—“render[ing] in two dimensions, in tangible form, this wondrous process of visualizing ourselves doing an action and reflecting upon it as we do it, rendering the subjective ‘objective,’ giving it form” (216)—to Du Bois’s concept of double-consciousness. For Douglass, Gates argues, this process of visualizing oneself amounts to a sort of black superpower, a position from which Douglass could expose the contradictions in America’s vision of itself. Photography allowed Douglass to not only utilize, to his political advantage, the “gift of second sight,” but also to offer it to his audience—both in his historical present and the future. The illustrations in Graphic Narrative thus do more than bring Douglass’s story to life for a contemporary audience: they honor Douglass’s legacy by demonstrating the power of visual rhetoric to counter racist stereotypes and efforts to essentialize black identity. Walker’s primary purpose is to humanize Douglass and by extension, every black person enslaved in America. In his Introduction, Walker explains his use of first-person, what I am calling his bold choice to ghostwrite Douglass’s autobiography, 230

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in terms of carrying on Douglass’s legacy: “Frederick Douglass spent most of his life fighting to reclaim the humanity denied to millions of Africans and their descendants, who had been reduced to nothing more than property.” Counting himself and his relatives among those descendants, Walker declares that he writes about “a past from which I come” (2). This personal connection explains why Walker put his Introduction after four pages of head-and-shoulder sketches. “Who’s Who: Frederick Douglass and the People in his Life” features Douglass (entire first page), his grandmother Betsey Bailey, mother Harriet Bailey, wife Anna and their four surviving children: Lewis, Charles, Frederick Jr., and Rosetta (second page). The next two pages picture ten prominent people in Douglass’s life, including Aaron Anthony, Hugh and Sophia Auld, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, and Lincoln. Placing the (national) portrait gallery before the Introduction foregrounds Douglass’s humanity as well as his “people,” people that include Walker as well as the reader. Scholars of children’s and YA literature will recognize that these sketches bear a striking resemblance to those in the 1940 Caldecott Award-winning book They Were Strong and Good, an illustrated story of America and “good” Americans who immigrated to the land of the free, worked hard, raised families and fought for the Confederacy. Graphic Narrative is clearly Walker’s literary challenge to a revisionist history, written into the children’s literary tradition, that ignores, minimizes, and/or distorts the contributions of black Americans. Through his research, Walker discovered that what he knew about Douglass—gleaned from textbooks, encyclopedias, and black magazines—was woefully insufficient, so in that sense his text fills gaps in his (and others’) historical knowledge, but in ghostwriting and illustrating Douglass’s three-volume autobiography, Walker and his collaborators accomplish something remarkable: they reclaim Douglass for a black audience. Throughout his life, in speeches and written work, Douglass spoke largely to a white audience. In Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019), the Pulitzer and Nobel prizewinning writer references Douglass when she says, “He didn’t write for me.” Acutely aware of the constraints on a black writer Black Writers Matter

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confronted with a white audience, Morrison declared that “the matrix of the work I do is the wish to extend, fill in and complement slave autobiographical narratives” (Morrison 77). In Walker’s work, the recurring image of an elderly Douglass writing at his desk removes Douglass from the rhetorical situation of his bestselling slave narrative. While remembering the story of his enslavement and escape—the events chronicled in his 1845 Narrative—Walker’s Douglass need not take into consideration the psycho-social needs of his white audience. He can both challenge and enrich the historical record by doing what Morrison did in her fiction—lifting the “veil” that kept hidden the “interior life” of the black subject. In Douglass’s case, that interior life includes his relationship with his family and friends as well as a wide range of emotions. Readers, black and nonblack, who encounter Graphic Narrative before Douglass’s 1845 slave narrative will thus gain a greater appreciation not only for Douglass, his life and times, but also for the rhetorical strategies Douglass employed in his text to reach a white audience who may have supported abolition without a concomitant belief in an antiracist political and social agenda. The Past Is Prologue: Our Lives and Times In contemporary children’s and YA literature, Douglass’s life teaches lessons in perseverance: presented as a self-made man, Douglass saves himself from slavery and then during the Civil War, helps to save the nation. Walker, however, warns against seeing Douglass as a sort of superman: “As much as I love pop entertainment, I think that we do [so] much escaping into popular culture that we run away from our own realities. We don’t want to face the real demons that are out there. . . . I wish that more people would sort of look toward history for inspiration and for strength because at the end of the day, Superman doesn’t show up and save the day in real life” (Betancourt). On the final two pages of his Epilogue, Walker depicts Douglass’s fatal heart attack on February 20, 1895. Douglass had spent the morning addressing the National Council of Women in DC, and upon returning home, his second wife Helen asks him if Susan Anthony still carries “a grudge.” Their playful banter is interrupted 232

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when Douglass cries out, clutches his chest, and falls to the floor. “He died as he was born—a human being,” Walker writes. “Through the course of his life, Frederick Douglass played many roles—father, son, husband. Different words were used to identify him—slave, runaway, abolitionist, writer, speaker. In the end, Frederick Douglass was, above all the roles and identifiers used to describe him, a man. A man who changed the world” (173). Implicit in Walker’s declaration is the fact that the world in Douglass’s era needed changing. In this way, his work qualifies as the type of “forward-looking” text Imani Perry imagines would prompt us, in this current historical moment, to recognize all the ways the world has remained the same and to respond, as active participants in a democracy should, by “forever stand[ing].” Readers, young and adult, black and nonblack, should come to the end of Graphic Narrative with a renewed sense of the power and responsibility each person has to confront and challenge the hard truths of our nation’s past and present. Works Cited Adler, David A. Frederick Douglass: A Noble Life. Holiday House, 2010. Barnes, L. Diane. “Frederick Douglass: From Slavery to Freedom and Beyond.” Feb. 2009. Oxford African American Studies Center, oxfordaasc.com. Betancourt, David. “The Voice Behind Some of the Top Black Superheroes in Comics Is Now Writing about Frederick Douglass.” The Washington Post, 15 Jan 2019. Blight, David W. “Co-opting Frederick Douglass.” New York Times, 13 Feb. 2018: Sec. A, p. 23. “The Frederick Douglass 200.” The Guardian, www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2018/jul/05/the-frederickdouglass-200. “Frederick Douglass Booklist.” The Horn Book Inc. 3 Feb. 2017, www. hbook.com/?detailStory=frederick-douglass-booklist. Freedman, Russell. Abraham Douglass and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship. Clarion Books, 2012. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. “Frederick Douglass’s Camera Obscura: Representing the Anti-Slave ‘Clothed and In Their Own Form.’” Black Writers Matter

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Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American, edited by John Stauffer and Zoe Trodd. Liveright, 2015, pp. 197–216. __________. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. Penguin, 2019. Giovanni, Nikki. Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship. Henry Holt & Co., 2008. Graham, David A. “Donald Trump’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” 1 Feb. 2017, The Atlantic, www.theatlantic.com/politics/ archive/2017/02/frederick-douglass-trump/515292/. Hayden, Robert. “Frederick Douglass.” 1966. Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Liveright, 2013, p. 62. Hughes, Langston. “Frederick Douglass: 1817–1895.” 1966. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: The Poems: 1951–1967, edited by Arnold Rampersad. U of Missouri P, 2001, p. 153. Morrison, Toni. “The Site of Memory.” Toni Morrison: What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction, edited by Carolyn C. Denard. U of Mississippi P, 2008, pp. 65–82. Myers, Walter Dean. “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” New York Times, 15 Mar. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/ opinion/sunday/where-are-the-people-of-color-in-childrens-books. html. Perry, Imani. May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem. U of North Carolina P, 2018. Walker, David. F. The Life of Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Narrative of a Slave’s Journey from Bondage to Freedom. Ten Speed P, 2018.

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RESOURCES

Chronology of Frederick Douglass’s Life 1818

Douglass is born in Talbot County, Maryland, as the son of an unknown white man and Harriet Bailey, and is named Frederick Bailey.

1819-1825

Douglass lives under the care of his grandmother Betsey Bailey.

1825

His mother (whom Douglass saw only four or five times in his life) passes; he moves to the Wye House Plantation and is separated from his grandmother. While there, he primarily runs errands and completes yard work, but also observes the brutality of slavery.

1826

Douglass is sent to Baltimore to work with Hugh and Sophia Auld, and he begins learning to read with the help of Sophia Auld.

1830

He reads The Columbian Orator, which helps him develop his conception of freedom and human rights.

1833

Douglass is forced to leave Baltimore to work for a new master, Thomas Auld of St. Michaels in Talbot County, Maryland.

1836

Douglass returns to Baltimore.

1838

Douglass escapes slavery. He marries Anna Murray in Baltimore in September and moves to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he begins working as a general laborer.

1839

He receives a license to preach from the New Bedford African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Douglass’s daughter Rosetta is born in June. 237

1840

Douglass’s son Lewis Henry is born in October.

1841

The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society hires Douglass as a salaried lecturer. Douglass shares his experiences as a slave throughout New England. He forms a friendship and working relationship with prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

1842

Douglass’s son Frederick Douglass, Jr. is born in March.

1844

His final son, Charles Remond Douglass, is born in October.

1845

The Anti-Slavery office in Boston publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. He travels to Great Britain and embarks on a speaking tour.

1847

Douglass returns to the United States and relocates to Rochester, New York. He begins publishing The North Star, an antislavery weekly newspaper.

1849

Douglass’s daughter Annie is born.

1851

Douglass alters his beliefs about antislavery strategy and breaks from his prior alignment with William Lloyd Garrison over disagreements about the use of violence or force and the need for an African American press. He begins publishing the Frederick Douglass’ Paper.

1852

In Rochester, Douglass delivers his famous speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” and publishes it as a pamphlet later during the year.

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1853

The Heroic Slave is published as part of Autographs for Freedom, a collection of poems, letters, and other antislavery writings edited by Julia Griffiths, Douglass’s friend and advisor.

1855

My Bondage and My Freedom is published.

1859

Douglass meets with abolitionist John Brown and opposes Brown’s plan to organize a guerrilla army to support escaped slaves. Douglass later travels to Canada when Brown’s mission fails, and he is accused of conspiring with Brown. He also begins publishing Douglass’ Monthly.

1860

Douglass’s daughter Annie dies; he supports Abraham Lincoln for president of the United States.

1861

Douglass supports the beginning of the Civil War and advises President Lincoln to allow African American men to serve in the Union Army.

1863

Douglass halts the publication of Douglass’ Monthly. He recruits soldiers for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment. Two of his sons, Charles Remond and Lewis Henry, serve as members.

1864

He supports President Lincoln’s reelection.

1866

Douglass becomes a critic of President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policies. He begins lecturing as a lyceum speaker.

1870

He becomes the editor-in-chief of The New National Era in Washington, DC.

Chronology

239

1871

President Ulysses S. Grant appoints Douglass as assistant secretary of a group investigating the possible annexation of the Dominican Republic.

1872

A fire destroys Douglass’s house in Rochester.

1881

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is published.

1882

Wife Anna Murray Douglass dies.

1884

Douglass marries Helen Pitts, a white woman, and subsequently faces criticism from African Americans and white Americans.

1886-87

He travels to Europe with Helen Douglass.

1889

President Benjamin Harrison chooses Douglass to serve as Minister and Consul General of Haiti.

1891

Douglass resigns as Minister and Consul General of Haiti.

1892

He releases an expanded edition of Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

1894

Douglass publishes The Lessons of the Hour, a pamphlet featuring his condemnation of lynching.

1895

Douglass passes on February 20 after speaking with the National Council of Women and is buried February 26 at Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery, New York.

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Works by Frederick Douglass Fiction

The Heroic Slave, 1855 Nonfiction

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 1845 My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 1881, revised 1892 Posthumous Collections of Douglass’s Speeches

Buccola, Nicholas. The Collected Speeches of Frederick Douglass. Hackett, 2018. Foner, Philip S. Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings. Lawrence Hill, 1999.

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Bibliography Andrews, William L. Critical Essays on Frederick Douglass. G.K. Hall, 1991. __________.“The Representation of Slavery and the Rise of AfroAmerican Literary Realism, 1865–1920.” Slavery and the Literary Imagination, edited by Deborah E. McDowell and Arnold Rampersad. Johns Hopkins UP, 1989, pp. 62–80. __________. To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865. U of Illinois P, 1988. Appiah, Anthony, editor Early African-American Classics. Bantam Books, 1990. Baker, Houston A. “Autobiographical Acts and the Voice of the Southern Slave.” The Slave’s Narrative, edited by Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Oxford UP, 1985, pp. 242–61. __________. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory. U of Chicago P, 1984. __________. Introduction. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass, 1845. Penguin, 1982, pp. 7–24. Baxter, Terry. Frederick Douglass’s Curious Audiences: Ethos in the Age of the Consumable Subject. Routledge, 2004. Becker, Peter. “Genealogies of Sympathy: Reclaiming the Maternal in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” Arizona Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 4, Winter 2019, pp. 1–28. Bennett, Nolan. “Unwillingness and Imagination in Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave. The Review of Politics, vol. 81, no. 2, 2019, pp. 281–303. Bernier, Celeste-Marie. “‘His Complete History’? Revisioning, Recreating, and Reimagining Multiple Lives in Frederick Douglass’s Life and Times (1881, 1892).” Slavery & Abolition, vol. 33, no. 4, Dec. 2012, pp. 595–610. Black, Kelvin C. “Bound by ‘The Principles of 1776’: Dilemmas in AngloAmerican Romanticism and Douglass’s The Heroic Slave.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 56, no.1, 2017, pp. 93.

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Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster, 2018. Braxton, Joanne M. Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition within a Tradition. Temple UP, 1989. Chaffin, Tom. Giant’s Causeway: Frederick Douglass’s Irish Odyssey and the Making of an American Visionary. U of Virginia P, 2014. Chaney, Michael A. Fugitive Vision: Slave Image and Black Identity in Antebellum Narrative. Indiana UP, 2008. Chesebrough, David B. Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery. Greenwood P, 1998. Collins, Patricia Hill. Reconceiving Motherhood. Demeter P, 2014. Davis, Reginald F. Frederick Douglass: A Precursor to Liberation Theology. Mercer UP, 2005. Deacon, Andrea. “Navigating ‘The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake’: Re-Assessing Frederick Douglass, the Orator.” Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, vol. 57, no. 1, 2003, pp. 65–81. Dilbeck, D.H. Frederick Douglass: America’s Prophet. U of North Carolina P, 2018. Douglass, Frederick. The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series Three: Correspondence, vol.1, 1842–1852, Yale UP, 2009. __________. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: From 1817– 1882. Stanford U Libraries, 1882. Douglass, Frederick. “Self-Made Men.” The Speeches of Frederick Douglass: A Critical Edition, edited by John R. McKivigan, Julie Husband, and Heather L. Kaufman. Yale UP, 2018, pp. 414-453. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. CreateSpace Independent Reader Publishing Platform, 2013. Du Bois, W. E. B. Darkwater: Voices from Beyond the Veil. 1920. Dover Publications, 1999. Ellis, Cristin. “Amoral Abolitionism: Frederick Douglass and the Environmental Case against Slavery.” American Literature, vol. 86, no. 2, June 2014, pp. 275–303, Ernest, John. Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794–1861. U of North Carolina P, 2004.

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__________. Resistance and Reformation in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature: Brown, Wilson, Jacobs, Delany, Douglass, and Harper. UP of Mississippi, 1995. __________. “Revolutionary Fictions and Activist Labor: Looking for Douglass and Melville Together.” Frederick Douglass & Herman Melville: Essays in Relation, edited by Robert S. Levine and Samuel Otter. U of North Carolina P, 2008, pp. 19–38. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Grove, 2008. Fought, Leigh. Women in the World of Frederick Douglass. Oxford UP, 2017. Gates, Jr. Henry Louis. “Frederick Douglass’s Camera Obscura: Represented the Antislave ‘Clothed and in Their Own Form.’” Critical Inquiry, vol. 42, no. 1, 2015, pp. 31–60. __________. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. Oxford UP, 1988. Grace, Daniel. “Infidel America: Puritan Legacy and Antebellum Religious Persecution in Frederick Douglass’s Transatlantic Speeches, 1841– 49.” American Literature, vol. 90, no. 4, Dec. 2018, pp. 723–52. Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford UP, 1997. Hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2014. Jones, Douglas A. “Douglass’ Impersonal.” ESQ, vol. 61, no.1, 2015, pp. 1–35. Lee, Maurice S., editor. The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass. Cambridge UP, 2009. Leroux, Neil. “Frederick Douglass and the Attention Shift.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2, 1991, pp. 36–46. Levine, Robert S. The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Harvard UP, 2016. __________. Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity. U of North Carolina P, 1997. Lyons, Mary E. Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs. Simon Pulse, 2007. McBride, Dwight A. Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony. New York UP, 2001. Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of A Black Radical Tradition. U of Minnesota P, 2003. Bibliography

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Newman, Lance. “Free Soil and the Abolitionist Forests of Frederick Douglass’s ‘The Heroic Slave.’” American Literature, vol. 81, no. 1, 2009, pp. 127–52. Noble, Marianne. “Sympathetic Listening in Frederick Douglass’s ‘The Heroic Slave’ and My Bondage and My Freedom.” Studies in American Fiction, vol. 34, no.1, 2006, pp. 53–68. Olney, James. “‘I Was Born’: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature.” Callaloo, no. 20, 1984, pp. 46–73. Person, Leland S. “In the Closet with Frederick Douglass: Reconstructing Masculinity in The Bostonians.” The Henry James Review, vol. 16, no. 3, 1995, pp. 292–98. Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. Associated Publishers, 1948. Riss, Arthur. Race, Slavery, and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Cambridge UP, 2009. Schneider, Ryan. The Public Intellectualism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and W.E.B. Du Bois: Emotional Dimensions of Race. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Schultz, Jane E. “Gimme Shelter: The Ironies of Refuge in Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave.” The Journal of African American History, vol. 102, no. 1, Winter 2017, pp. 52–63. Sekora, John. “Black Message/White Envelope: Genre, Authenticity, and Authority in the Antebellum Slave Narrative.” Callaloo, no. 32, 1987, pp. 482–515. Sharpe, Christina. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects. Duke UP, 2010. Smith, Mark M. Listening to Nineteenth-Century America. U of North Carolina P, 2001. Spillers, Hortense J. Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture. U of Chicago P, 2003. Stauffer, John, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier. Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American. W.W. Norton & Co., 2015. Stepto, Robert B. “Storytelling in Early Afro-American Fiction: Frederick Douglass’ ‘The Heroic Slave.’” The Georgia Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 1982, pp. 355–68.

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Trotman, James C. “Prophetic Witness(es) in the Speeches of Frederick Douglass.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 37, no. 1, 2018, pp. 67–78. Warren, Calvin L. Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation. Duke UP, 2018. Weheliye, Alexander. Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Duke UP, 2014. Wilderson, Frank, III, Afro-Pessimism. Liveright, 2020. Wilson, Ivy G. “On Native Ground: Transnationalism, Frederick Douglass, and ‘The Heroic Slave.’” PMLA, vol. 121, no. 2, 2006, pp. 453–68.

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About the Editor Jericho Williams is professor of English and director of the Write Place at Spartanburg Methodist College. His broad research interests include American and African American literature. He has published prior essays about Frederick Douglass in Ecogothic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2017) and Critical Insights: Inequality (2018), as well as essays about the literary works of James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, Solomon Northup, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Willa Cather, Richard Wright, Harper Lee, and Toni Morrison. He is currently researching Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wells Brown, and Claude McKay.

249

Contributors Srimayee Basu is a PhD candidate and Mellon Intersections Doctoral Grantee in the department of English at the University of Florida. Her dissertation studies the intersections between print culture, carcerality, and citizenship in African American Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century. She has presented her work at the annual conferences of the American Studies Association, C19 (The Society of Nineteenth Century Americanists), NASSR (North American Society for the Study of Romanticism), and the Modern Language Association (MLA). Her articles have appeared in Modern Language Studies and Albeit. Jade M. Becker’s research interests lie at the intersection of African American literature and philosophy. He earned his MA in English at Oregon State University and currently resides in Oregon where he teaches writing. His work has been presented at the American Literature Association (ALA) and the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conferences. Rachel Boccio is an assistant professor of English at LaGuardia Community College in the City University of New York (CUNY). Her scholarly interests range widely across the American nineteenth and twentieth centuries with a focus on literature, education, and incarceration. Her articles have appeared in Pedagogy, Rethinking Schools, The Edgar Allan Poe Review, and The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review. Prior to joining the faculty at LaGuardia, Dr. Boccio taught English and American literature for two decades at John R. Manson Youth Institution, a maximum-security prison for adolescent males in Connecticut. An essay drawing on this work will appear in the forthcoming MLA volume, Approaches to Teaching Literature and Writing in Prison. Litasha Dennis is a professor of English at Spartanburg Methodist College. In her twenty years of teaching, she has been fortunate to work with students at all levels of education from developmental to graduate. She received her Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in English from Winthrop University and completed her doctoral program at the University 251

of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research interests include twentieth century African American literature and African American women writers. Kimberly Drake teaches writing and literature at Scripps College where she is an associate professor of writing and Chair of the Writing and Rhetoric department. Her scholarly interests lie in writing that brings attention to social justice issues concerning disability, incarceration, race, class, gender, and sexuality. Publications reflect this interest: a monograph Subjectivity in the American Protest Novel (Palgrave Macmillan 2011) and five edited volumes for Grey House Press, including Literature of Protest (2013), The Slave Narrative (2014), Paranoia, Fear, and Alienation (2017), Inequality (2018), and Richard Wright (2019), along with articles on the work of Chester Himes, Ann Petry, and Toni Morrison. Laura Dubek earned her PhD from the University of Iowa. She is currently professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University where she teaches courses in African American literature, Southern literature, and writing. Her literary criticism has appeared in African American Review, College Literature, Journal of American Culture, Journal of Popular Film & TV, MELUS, Mississippi Quarterly, Southern Literary Journal, Southern Quarterly, and Women’s Studies. She is the editor of Living Legacies: Literary Responses to the Civil Rights Movement (Routledge 2018). She writes and teaches about all the ways writers and writing matters. Robert C. Evans is I. B. Young Professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM). He earned his PhD from Princeton University in 1984. In 1982 he began teaching at AUM, where he has been named Distinguished Research Professor, Distinguished Teaching Professor, and University Alumni Professor. External awards include fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Philosophical Society (APS), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Folger, Huntington, and Newberry Libraries. He is the author or editor of over fifty books and of more than four hundred essays, including recent work on various American writers.

252

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Amina Gautier is an associate professor of English at the University of Miami. She earned her PhD in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in nineteenth-century American literature and African American literature. Gautier is the author of three short story collections At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy, and The Loss of All Lost Things, and a recipient of the Pen/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her critical essays and reviews appear in African American Review, Daedalus, Journal of American History, Libraries and Culture, Nineteenth Century Contexts, and Whitman Noir: Essays on Black America and the Good Grey Poet. Nydia R. Jeffers has been an assistant professor of Spanish at Henderson State University for five years. She has taught Spanish language and culture courses in high schools, colleges, and universities for sixteen years. Dr. Jeffers completed a master’s degree in teaching Spanish, a master’s degree in Hispanic literature and a PhD in Hispanic literature from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (2013) with the dissertation entitled: “The Black Protagonist in the Abolitionist Latin American Narratives of the XIXth Century” (2013). Her eleven journal articles and nineteen conference presentations range from critical readings of literature in Spanish and Spanish language pedagogy. Tammie Jenkins received her doctorate degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Louisiana State University. Her recent publications include “(Re) Writing the Black Female Body or Cleansing Her Soul: Narratives of Generational Traumas and Healing in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory” (Taylor & Francis) and “Culture, Identity, and Otherness: An Analysis of Kino’s Songs in John Steinbeck’s The Pearl and Pilate’s Melody in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon” (Salem Press). She serves as an associate editor for The Criterion. She currently works as a special education teacher in her local public-school system. Mike Kolakoski is a senior lecturer in the English department at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his PhD in literature from the University of Arizona. His areas of specialty include American literature, the literature of slavery, and listening studies.

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David Lawrimore is an assistant professor of English at Idaho State University. His research focuses on early and nineteenth-century American literature. His essays have appeared in American Literature, Early American Literature, Studies in American Fiction, and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. He often contributes to the Just Teach One project. He is currently completing his book manuscript, tentatively titled The Natural Aristocracy: The Novelist as Intellectual in the Early Republic. Lori Leavell is an associate professor of English at the University of Central Arkansas where she teaches courses in American, African American, and southern literature. With particular interest in the material and cultural histories of nineteenth-century African American writing, her research can be found in the Mississippi Quarterly, Callaloo, and Book History. Dike Okoro is an associate professor of English/African American studies and chair of the department of humanities at Harris Stowe State University, St. Louis, MO. He is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Sam Walton Fellowship and a Newberry Scholar-in-Residence Award. He was shortlisted for the 2016 Cecile de Jongh Literary Prize (Poetry) and recently served as a visiting researcher at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. His book chapters and essays have appeared in Routledge Handbook of Minority Discourse, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New and Beginner Poets. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is professor of English at Central Michigan University and an associate editor for The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He is also the author or editor of 24 books, the most recent of which are The Monster Theory Reader (Minnesota UP), The Mad Scientist’s Guide to College Composition (Broadview), The Cambridge Companion to the American Gothic (Cambridge UP), and Critical Approaches to Welcome to Night Vale: Podcasting Between Weather and the Void. Visit him at JeffreyAndrewWeinstock.com. Regina Yoong holds a PhD in Literary History from Ohio University. Her area of interest is nineteenth-century American literature, focusing 254

Critical Insights

on religion, gender, and race. A Fulbright scholar from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Yoong has just completed her dissertation, “Faith as Fine Invention: Epistemology and Truth in Emily Dickinson’s Poems,” which investigates Dickinson’s search for truth through the framework of selfcreated roles—the rejected and rejecting outcast, the passive supplicant, and the playful warrior. Regina’s work on Douglass and Emerson is part of her larger interest in the way minority voices speak against dominant power structures.

Contributors

255

Index 1619 Project (New York Times) 222, 229 abolitionist movement 47, 54, 56, 82, 83, 107, 145, 204 Abraham Lincoln & Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship 225 acquisition xvii, 14, 70, 168 Adler, David A. 225 admiration 22, 82, 169, 172, 177, 178 adulthood 19, 54 African American autobiography x, xiv, xxii, xxxii, xxxiii, 3, 4, 6, 8, 14, 17, 19, 27, 29, 53, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 78, 83, 90, 103, 137, 151, 152, 153, 154, 163, 165, 166, 168, 175, 176, 182, 183, 194, 229, 230, 231 African American community xxix, 72 African-American history 203 African American identity 191 African American literature vii, 18, 61, 62, 63, 73, 121 African American philosophy 34 African American poets 192 African American radicalism 43, 44 African American religious community 72 African Americans ix, x, xiii, xv, xvii, xix, xxiv, xxx, 63, 68,

69, 71, 72, 99, 100, 130, 131, 210 African American studies vii African American women 61 African colonization 109 African descendants 109 African rhythm 24 African slavery 11 Afro-Hispanic literature 179 Afro-pessimism 43, 45 Age of Revolution 121, 133, 134 Alexander, Vera 132 Alger, Horatio 6, 137 alienation xix, 33, 35, 38 allusion 184, 190 altruism 121 American Antislavery Society 25, 65 American canon 61 American Civil War 46 American Colonization Society 109, 130, 134 American democracy 123, 127, 154 American Dream 6 American Dream for Dummies, The 6 American exceptionalism 139 American experience 227 American fiction 78 American heroism xxi American history vii, ix, xiii, xv, xx, xxi, 6, 125, 190, 200, 201, 203, 225 American identity 49, 191 American individualism 92, 95 257

American Jeremiad 29 American landscape xviii, xxiii American law 125 American literature vii, viii, xiii, xiv, xv, xix, xx, xxii, xxvi, 18, 61, 62, 63, 73, 121 American Negro diaspora 206 American poetry 183, 184 American Renaissance viii, xiv, xv, xix, xxii, xxiii, xxvi, 104 American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman xiv “American Scholar, The” xvi, xvii, xviii, xxvii American slavery xxxi American slave ships 123 American Union 139 A.M.E. Zion Church 145 Amistad (slave ship) 122 Andrew, John A. 163 Andrews, William L. xxvi, xxvii, 28, 29, 75, 76, 104 anecdote 86 Angelou, Maya 182, 196 Anglo-American Claims Commission 124 antebellum America xxiv, 86, 88, 107, 108 Anthony, Aaron 26, 231 Anthony, Susan 232 antiblack racism 34, 42, 126 Antislavery Movement 165 Anti-Slavery Society 8, 21, 23, 65, 120, 133, 176 Anti-Slavery Standard 162 anxiety 157 Arana, Marie 203 arrogance 159 258

Assing, Ottilie 204, 209 Atlantic World slavery 124 Auld, Hugh 14, 183 Auld, Sophia 9, 10, 14, 101, 231 Auld, Thomas 25, 37, 38, 39, 175 Aunt Hester 12, 51, 52, 53, 79, 80, 84 Austin, Michael 183, 196 autobiography x, xiv, xxii, xxxii, xxxiii, 3, 4, 6, 8, 14, 17, 19, 27, 29, 53, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 78, 83, 90, 103, 137, 151, 152, 153, 154, 163, 165, 166, 168, 175, 176, 182, 183, 194, 229, 230, 231 Autobiography x, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 151, 152, 153, 154, 160, 166 Autobiography: Life and Times 173 Autographs for Freedom 90, 124 autonomy 129, 137, 144, 147 Bacon, Nathaniel 229 Bailey, Betsey 231 Bailey, Fred 25 Bailey, Harriet 231 Baker, Houston 19 Baldwin, James 187, 188, 222 Banneker, Benjamin 140 Barnes, L. Diane 226 “Battle with Mr. Covey, The” 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 74 Bayley, Solomon 47 Beloved vii, xxvi Benito Cereno xix, xx Bercovitch, Sacvan 29 Bernier, Celeste Marie 170 Bertrand, Steve 200, 217 Critical Insights

Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church 72 Bibb, Henry 127 Biblical justification 11 Bingham, Caleb 20 biography viii, 3, 17, 28, 175, 220, 227 Bitzer, Lloyd 19 black abolitionism 125, 133 Black Americans 34, 42, 43, 119 Black Atlantic 57, 120, 132, 134 black audience 140, 231 black bourgeoisie 211 black citizenship x black community 63, 66, 70, 72, 73, 74, 146 black diaspora 130, 131 black enslavement 39 black freedom 121, 127 black friendship 70, 71 Black History Month xxix, 219 black identity 86, 89, 90, 120, 230 Black Lives Matter movement 220 Black National Anthem 222, 234 black nationalism 124 blackness xxi, 79, 120, 126, 141, 226, 229 black readership 162, 163 black religious community 72 black soldiers 130, 163, 219 black spiritual temperament 72 black uplift 73 Blassingame, John 28, 170 Blight, David 21, 27, 67, 106, 118, 136, 141, 226 bloodline xxxi Bloss, William C. 112

Index

body xxxii, 14, 22, 27, 36, 39, 40, 67, 93, 96, 120, 139, 206 bondage xxxi, 9, 56, 63, 69, 123, 128, 168, 185 book of Exodus 10 Book of Isaiah 50 Boston 22, 65, 91, 151 Bradford, William 160 British Bahamian law 129 British colonialism 127 Brown, Cecil 186 Brown, Jeffrey 201, 217 Brown, John 74, 200, 201, 205, 216, 231 Brown, William Hill 12 Brown, William Wells 47 brutality xxxi, 79, 80 Buccola, Nicholas 34, 144, 170 Bumppo, Natty xxi Burrit, Elihu 140 Butterfield, Stephen 28 Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, The xxvii, xxxiii, xxxiv, 119 canonical literature viii canon (or canonization) viii, ix, xiv, 17, 18, 19, 61 Canons and Contexts 28, 30 Captain Anthony 32, 36 “Capt. John Brown Is Not Insane” 74 Carlyle, Thomas 92, 103 “Carp Poem” 192, 193 Castiglia, Chris 139 “Celebration at Corinthian Hall, The” 112, 118 “Celebration of the National Anniversary” 109, 118 259

Channing, William Ellery 142 Chesnutt, Charles 28 Chicago Tribune, The 203, 217 childhood 4, 5, 54, 55, 192 Child, Lydia Maria 145 Chomsky, Noam 220 Christian doctrines 102 Christianity 10, 11, 39, 40, 43, 101 Cinque, Joseph 133 civil rights xxv, 42, 43, 146, 188, 220, 221, 223 civil rights activism 42 Civil Rights Era vii, xxii civil rights movement 188, 220 Civil War xiv, xv, xxxii, 7, 28, 46, 68, 122, 139, 147, 148, 151, 157, 165, 175, 182, 197, 225, 226, 227, 229, 232 classical liberalism 40 Cline-Ransome, Lesa 224 Coffin, William C. 82 Collier, Bryan 224 Collins, John 5 Colonel Lloyd 12, 25, 51, 52 colonization 109, 110, 130 Colored American 68, 69, 75, 122 Colored Citizens Convention 138 “Color Line, The” 74 color prejudice 164 Columbian Orator, The 20, 87, 88, 158, 159, 183 Comet, The 123 commitment 49, 70, 74, 121, 144, 171, 190, 216 communion 40, 101 complexity xi, xx, 34, 43, 70 Conde, Camila 177

260

Conde, Florencio x, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 178, 179, 181 Conde, Rosa 177 Conde, Segundo x, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178 consequences xiii, xxx, 83, 84, 98 constraint 20 consumerism xxiii conviction 80, 92, 100, 102 Cooper, Floyd 224 Cooper, James Fenimore xx, xxi, xxvii Coquette, The 13 Corinthian Hall audience 111 Covey, Mr. 15, 38, 52, 53, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 85, 94, 95, 96, 99, 102 Crane, Jacob 53 Creole (slave ship) xx, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 130, 132 crime 12, 74, 89, 168, 171, 179, 193 Cullors, Patrisse 220 Cultural Front 191, 197 Curp, David T. 10 Curse of Ham 10, 101 Cutter, Martha J. 137 Davis, Charles 19 Davis, David Brion 169 Declaration of Independence, The xxxii decolonial revolution 121 dehumanization 94, 101 Delaware Republican 25 Denham, Mr. 5

Critical Insights

desire ix, xxiv, 15, 36, 43, 46, 49, 50, 52, 70, 72, 78, 79, 81, 90, 109, 114, 121, 126, 156, 161 desperation 94, 99 destiny xi, 14, 68, 69, 136 detachment xxxi Dietz, William C. 140 Diggs, Daveed 140 dignity 22, 34, 172, 179, 184, 190, 214 discipline 18, 77, 141 discrimination 86, 139, 145, 146, 195 divine intervention xxxii divinity 102 Douglass, Anna Murray 16, 174, 181 Douglass, Annie 175 Douglass, Charles 231 Douglass, Frederick and photography 230 Douglass, Frederick and visual art 230 Douglass, Frederick Jr. 231 Douglass, Helen Pitts 28 Douglass, Lewis 231 Douglass, Rosetta 177, 181, 231 Douglass’s legacy 182, 184, 185, 190, 191, 195, 196, 230, 231 Dreisinger, Baz 203 Drexler, Mike 61 Du Bois, W. E. B. 222 Dumas, Alexandre 25 Dunbar, Paul Laurence 182, 184, 197

Index

East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society 72, 175 economic development 28 economic mobility 138 education ix, xvii, 4, 5, 6, 34, 71, 92, 96, 98, 102, 140, 141, 143, 146, 152, 153, 156, 158, 161, 169, 171, 178, 187, 188, 193, 226 egalitarianism 127 Egan, Huge 100 Eggertson, Laura 202 election day 146 Eliot, T.S. 184 Emancipation Act 122, 129 Emerson, Ralph Waldo viii, ix, xiv, xvi, xxiii, xxvii, 92, 104, 137, 142, 149 empathy 54, 79 Encomium 123, 129 Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies, The 132, 134 Enterprise 129 environmental rights 186, 187 equal rights 41, 138, 187 equity 191, 219 Ernest, John xxi, 116 errata 163, 165 escape xiii, xxii, xxiv, 14, 15, 20, 22, 52, 53, 69, 71, 81, 82, 126, 151, 157, 167, 172, 174, 175, 183, 228, 232 Espada, Martin 188 ethics vii, 138 Ethiopia 184, 185 ethnic lines 195 Evangeline 97 evolution 152 261

exclusion xviii, 61, 131 exigence 19, 22 exile 32, 33, 35, 131, 132, 140 existence xxxi, 13, 19, 20, 33, 36, 38, 42, 64, 67, 81, 108, 109, 213 fair-play 144, 146, 147 “fake news” 8 Fanon, Frantz 33 federal government 146 federal legislation 108 female suffering 56 Finn, Huck 209 Flint, Dr. 55 Florencio Conde x, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 178, 179, 181 Folger, Peter 155 Foner, Philip S. 17, 44, 180 Foster, Friend George 65 Foster, Hannah Webster 12 Fought, Leigh 170 Franklin, Benjamin viii, x, 3, 6, 8, 16, 137, 151, 153, 156, 167, 225 Frazier, Franklin 191 Frederick Douglas: Prophet of Freedom 21 Frederick Douglass 200, The 233 Frederick Douglass: A Biography, The 28, 30, 44, 118, 119, 149, 180, 233 Frederick Douglass and the Black Liberation Movement 28, 91 Frederick Douglass: A Noble Life 179, 225, 233

262

Frederick Douglass’ Paper 106, 107, 109, 111, 112, 115, 118, 160 Frederick Douglass Papers, The 28, 30, 44, 118, 119, 149, 180 Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom xxvi, 30, 75, 118, 179, 217, 220 Frederick Douglass’s Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee 28 Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator 17 Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History 223 Frederick Douglass: The Orator 28 free blacks 109, 138 Freedman, Russell 225 Freedmen’s Saving Bank 164 freedom xvii, xviii, xx, xxiv, xxxiv, 14, 20, 29, 34, 42, 43, 49, 55, 56, 61, 69, 78, 81, 89, 94, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102, 105, 106, 108, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 138, 151, 154, 157, 159, 161, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 178, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195, 197, 209, 212, 214, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 227 Freedom’s Journal 121 free labor doctrine 142 French and Indian Wars 166 friendship 66, 70, 71, 225

Critical Insights

From Totem to Hip-Hope: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2002 185 Fuenmayor, Rosa 178 Fugitive Slave Act (1850) 108 Fugitive Slave Bill 103 Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1850 121 futuristic utterances 196

graphic novel xi, 228, 229 gratitude 89, 175, 178 Greeley, Horace 190 Greeson, Jennifer Rae 138 Gregory, James 28 Griffiths, Julia 90, 110, 124, 204, 209 griots 51 Gronniosaw, Ukawsaw 47 Guardian, The 188, 198, 233

Garnet, Henry Highland 120, 133 Garrison, William Lloyd 8, 21, 41, 49, 65, 81, 82, 120, 125, 160, 161, 176, 231 Garza, Alicia 220 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 195 Gather Together 182 gender ix, 47, 48, 54, 211, 212 Genesis of Canaan 10 Genette, Gérard 113 Gherardi, Bancroft 164 ghostwriting 231 Giles, Paul 19 Gilroy, Paul 120 Giovanni, Nikki 224 Glidden, George 168 Goldenberg, Judi 201, 217 good and evil 102 Good Lord Bird, The xi, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218 Gopnik, Adam 144 Gore, Austin 84 Gougeon, Len 99 Grant, Tom 128 Graphic Narrative xi, 219, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234

Haitian Revolution 121, 130, 133, 134 Halifax speech 141 happiness 40, 61, 68, 94, 169, 176, 192 hardships 226 Harlem 224 Harris, George 25 Harrison, Benjamin 122, 140 Harris, Trudier 185 Hartman, Saidiya 34, 42, 128 Hawthorne, Nathaniel xiv, xix, xx, 137 Hayden, Robert 192, 195, 220, 234 Hayes, Rutherford B. 140 Hayes, Terrence 182, 196 helplessness 68, 98 hemispheric Americas 121 Henry, Patrick 82, 125 Henson, Josiah 127 heritage xxxi, 137, 183, 222 Hermosa (slave ship) 123, 129 Heroic Slave, The ix, x, xix, xx, xxi, xxvi, xxvii, 77, 86, 87, 89, 90, 120, 121, 124, 126, 132, 134, 135 heroism xxi, 125

Index

263

Hewitt, Nancy 109 hierarchical differences 42 historical reality xvii, 64, 115 Hobsbawm, Eric 133 Holland, Frederic May 17 Holy Bible, The 104 hope xvii, 29, 43, 74, 81, 82, 98, 100, 110, 116, 117, 124, 190, 191, 195, 204, 222 Horn Book Magazine 219 House of the Seven Gables, The 137 “How the Right Co-opts Frederick Douglass” 226 Hughes, Langston 221, 234 human rights xxiv, 20, 169, 186, 187 human trafficking 168 Hurston, Zora Neale vii Hyde, Carrie 126 hypocrisy xxxii, xxxiii, 106, 183, 205, 209 Hyppolite, Louis Mondestin Florvil 164 identification 47, 187 ideology 34, 39, 65, 84, 88, 169, 182, 227 ignorance xxx, 67, 155 illegal xxx illegality of slavery 130 illusions 98, 215 imagery 23, 195, 222, 230 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl ix, xiii, 12, 46, 48, 50, 57 indenture 156, 157, 163 independence xxiii, 15, 27, 49, 94, 97, 100, 105, 108, 109, 139,

264

141, 143, 147, 148, 153, 156, 168, 178, 183 independence war 178 individualism 92, 95, 97, 143, 227 Industrial Revolution 133 inequality 48, 188 inhumanity 11, 82, 94, 189 In Memoriam: Frederick Douglass 28 inspiration 82, 83, 182, 195, 221, 232 intellectual freedom 99 Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, The 51 interiority 139, 143 International Labor Organization (ILO) 168, 180 interracial marriage 169, 177 Intimacies of Four Continents, The 131, 134 “Introduction to The Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbia Exposition” 68, 69, 75 irony xxxii, 139, 186 Jacobs, Harriet ix, xiii, 12, 46, 48, 56, 57, 58, 145 James, Abel 153 James, Henry xv Jay, John 229 jealousy 12, 164 Jefferson, Thomas 125, 130, 131, 169 Jenkins, Sandy 49, 70, 71, 73 Jeremiah tradition 23 Jim Crow policies 139 Critical Insights

Jin-Ping, Wu 80 John Lea 47 Johnson, Charles 72 Johnson, Georgia Douglass 191 Johnson, James Weldon 222 Johnson, Nathan 175 José María Samper x, 168, 180, 181 journalism 227 July Fourth commemoration 109 Jurado, Juan 169 justice x, 18, 41, 42, 77, 86, 90, 128, 137, 146, 170, 171, 174, 178, 179, 183, 186, 187 Kazanjian, David 129 Keimer, Samuel 5, 160 Kennedy, Liam 109 Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, A 26 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 188 Kirkland, Frank M. 44, 82 Kossuth, Louis 140 Ku Klux Klan 145, 222 Lamar, Kendrick 220 Latino heritage 183 Lauter, Paul 16, 28 law xx, xxiii, xxx, 11, 37, 38, 39, 77, 78, 83, 85, 108, 123, 125, 126, 129, 171, 177, 178 Lawson, Bill E. xx, 44, 180 Lawson, Charles 72 leadership xxv, 128, 129 Leatherstocking Tales, The xxi legacy 34, 147, 182, 184, 185, 190, 191, 195, 196, 197, 219, 222, 227, 230, 231 legal reform 170 Levander, Caroline F. 137, 149 Index

Levine, Robert S. xx, xxvii, xxxi, 118, 134 liberalism 40, 41, 42, 144, 170 liberation 14, 34, 174, 190 Liberator, The 81, 91, 125, 161, 176 liberty 11, 16, 40, 41, 83, 99, 102, 128, 139, 148, 162, 169, 170, 176, 183, 184, 190, 227 “Liberty” 182 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, The x, 27, 133, 151, 152, 153, 155, 157, 163, 166, 167, 228 Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass 17 Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Lea, the African Preacher, The 47 Life of Frederick Douglass: A Graphic Narrative of a Slave’s Journey from Bondage to Freedom, The xi, 219, 227, 234 Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing 222 Lincoln, Abraham xiii, 168, 198, 225, 229 Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship 224, 234 Lincoln: A Photobiography 225 “Lincoln’s Black History” 225 lineage xxxi, 155 Lion 223, 224 listening studies 77 listening (subjectivity of ) ix, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 97, 107, 112, 114, 115, 117 265

listening (trope of) ix, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 97, 107, 112, 114, 115, 117 Listwell, Mr. 86, 87, 88, 89, 126 literacy xxx, 7, 14, 29, 74, 158, 159, 162, 197, 224 literary art 19 literary criticism 169 literary renaissance xiii literary soundscape 80 literary tradition 46, 195, 224, 231 livelihood 68 Lloyd, Edward 25 Locke, Alain 151, 166, 191 Logan, Rayford W. 151 Loggins, Vernon 18 London Telegraph 202 Los Angeles Times 202, 218 “Lost Letters of Frederick Douglass, The” 191, 198 Louise, Marissa 227 Louisiana Purchase 121 Louverture, Toussaint 133 Lowe, Lisa 131 Lowther, George W. 50 Lyceum, The 147 lynching 146 Mafi, Tahereh 220 manhood 15, 55, 69, 70, 94, 95, 97, 136, 141 maritime literature 120, 122, 128, 129 maritime mutiny 129 Martin, Waldo E. 28 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society 21, 133, 176 Master Andrew 32 266

Master Anthony 79, 80, 84 material culture xvii, xxv, 3, 4, 6, 63, 107, 108, 156, 159 materialism xvii, xxiii Mather, Cotton 155 Matthiessen, F.O. xiv May We Forever Stand 222, 234 McBride, James xi, 199, 201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 218 McDowell, Deborah E. 61 McFeely, William S. 29, 75, 104 McGary, Howard 170 McGavin, Maureen 182 “Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, The” 42, 44 Melville, Herman viii, xiv, xix Memmott, Carol 203 memorialization 120, 223 “Men of Color, To Arms!” 74 mental freedom 188 “Mental Tyranny is Keeping Black Writers from Greatness, A” 188 Meredith, Hugh 5 metaphysical hierarchy 41 metaphysical violence 34, 35, 38, 40, 42 metaphysics 42 Miller, Hugh 140 Mind of Frederick Douglass, The 28 mixed-race 10, 170 Moby-Dick xix, xx Monroe, James 130 “Monuments” 190 Moore, Lindley Murrey 112 moral authority 145 morality 10, 11, 82, 139, 145, 176 Critical Insights

Morrison, Toni vii, xv, xxvi, 231, 234 Murillo, Alejandra Toro 170 mutiny 120, 124, 125, 129 mutual responsibility 172, 233 My Bondage and My Freedom xiv, xv, xxvi, xxxiii, 17, 19, 26, 30, 35, 36, 44, 62, 65, 70, 72, 75, 77, 90, 133, 152, 154, 157, 167, 180, 194, 219, 228 Myers, Walter Dean 223 “My Mother, As I Recall Her” 177 mystery xxi, 228 Narrative of Some Remarkable Incidents in the Life of Solomon Bayley, Formerly a Slave in the State of Delaware, North America 47 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself xxxii, 7, 75 Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert “Ukawsaw Gronniosaw,” an African Prince, A 47 Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself 47 Nassau xx, 122, 123, 124, 129, 130 national capacity x National Colored Convention 72 National Council of Women 232 Index

nationalism 124, 138, 222 National Loyalist’s Convention 155 National Museum of African American History and Culture 222 National Negro Convention, The 133, 143 National Public Radio 203, 217 Native Americans 51, 139 ‘Native Guard’ 182 natural law 126 natural rights 126, 144, 148 “Nature” 93 Negro 18, 30, 42, 44, 119, 133, 143, 151, 166, 206, 211, 212, 215 Negro Author: His Development in America to 1900, The 18 New England xxiv, xxv, 22, 104, 155 New National Era 163 New Testament 10 New York antislavery organizations 111 New York Herald 144 New York Review of Books 225 New York Times 196, 197, 203, 217, 222, 223, 233, 234 New York Times Book Review 203 New York Tribune, The 24, 190 New York Vigilance Committee 175 Nielsen, Cynthia R. 49 nineteenth century xiii, xvi, xxvi, 6, 47, 50, 56, 75, 80, 101, 110, 121, 122, 127, 133, 136, 139, 144, 146, 168, 179, 183 267

Nnamdi, R. Kojo 201, 217 non-fiction 78 non-violence 74 Northrup, Solomon 47 North Star, The xxix, 72, 73, 76, 91, 110, 119, 160, 161, 176 Norton Anthology of African American Literature 222 Notes on the State of Virginia 131 Nott, Josiah Clark 168 Obama, Barack 188, 222 occasional poetry 183 Ochieng, Omedi 43 offspring xxxi, 80 Okri, Ben 188 Old Testament 10, 39 Old World 137 Olney, James 64 Onion 199, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216 Ontological Terror 39, 45 opportunities xvii, xxxii, 3, 220 oppression xix, 72, 89, 99, 144, 184, 230 Oral cultures 51 oratory xvi, 82, 83, 88, 107, 148 Ottawa Star 202 Ottman, Rev. S. 112 pamphlet 62, 107, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 160 paratexts 113, 114, 115, 117 paternalism x, 162, 166 Pathos 9, 13 Patterson, Orlando 33, 133 Pennsylvania Gazette, The 160 Perry, Imani 222, 233 268

persecution xix, 168 personhood 42, 80, 136, 141, 146, 151 persuasion viii, 3, 7, 13, 16, 111 Philemon 10 Phillips, Wendell 24, 49 photography 230 physical confrontation ix, 92 physical freedom 123 Piazza Tales, The xix Picturing Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American 230 Pierre xix piracy 129 Pittman, John 40 Pitts, Helen 28, 172, 177 Plummer, Mr. 93 poetic treatment 191, 193 political alliances 123 political equality 120 political freedom xvii, 120 political influence 160 “Political Revolutions” 171 political science vii, xiii, 77 Portable Frederick Douglass, The xxxiii, xxxiv, 75 Porter, Susan F. 114 Post, Amy 50 postbellum era 121 Post-Reconstruction, the 165 post-war period 28 Power of Sympathy, The 12 Pratt, Lloyd 107 “Prejudice against Color” 74 press 24, 51, 72, 161, 162, 166, 177, 191 Critical Insights

Preston, Dickson J. 28 pride xxix, 141, 206 Prince, Mary 47 print culture 107, 116, 121 printer 156, 158, 160 pro-slavery 8, 108, 128 prosperity xvii, 39, 122, 173, 176, 183 Prosser, Gabriel 130 protest poetry 185 psychology 77 public intellectualism xvi public speaking vii, xiii, xvi, 107, 108, 161, 183 Publishers Weekly 201, 203, 217 Purdy, Michael 77, 91 Puritan era xix purity 131, 145 Quakers, the 229 Quarles, Benjamin 17 race difference 139, 141 Race, Slavery, and Liberalism 41, 44 racial blackness 120, 126 racial discrimination 146 racial identity 226 racial ideology 34 racist imagery 222 Rael, Patrick 110 rage 10, 74, 98, 208 Ragged Dick 137 Ralph, James 5 Ransome, James E. 224 rational liberty 139 Raymond, Reverend Robert R. 112 Read, Deborah 5 Index

readership 24, 162, 163, 191 rebellion xix, xxix, 85, 120, 123, 125, 128, 132 Reconstruction 42, 138, 144, 145, 148, 165, 222, 227, 230, 234 Reed, Ishmael 185 reform 34, 41, 86, 107, 118, 170 Refugee Home Society 127 religion 39, 40, 43, 99, 101, 102, 103, 131 Renaissance Man xiii, xv, xvii, xix, xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, xxvii reprinting 27, 115, 117, 226 Republican party 140 Republic of Colombia 178 resources xi, xxxii, 37, 137, 161, 184 reviewer 219 revolution 41, 86, 102, 121, 165, 222 Revolutionary War 151, 153 Reynolds, Jason 220 rhetoric viii, xxvi, 18, 19, 24, 27, 82, 125, 159, 182, 183, 192, 195, 220, 230 Richardson, Anna 176 Richardson, Ellen 176 right and wrong 102 Riss, Arthur 41 Roberts, Ned 12 Roberts, Neil 170 Rochester 23, 106, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 118, 140, 145, 146, 149, 162, 175, 176, 189, 202, 205, 207, 210, 211 Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society 106, 109, 111, 112 269

Rogers, Nathaniel 22 Romanticism xx Ruggles, David 175 runaway slaves xx, 157, 175 Samper, José María x, 168, 180, 181 Sandefur, Timothy 227 Sands, Mr. 55 Scarlet Letter, The xix, xxi Scenes of Colombian Life 168 Scenes of Subjection 42, 44, 128, 134 Scott, Sir Walter xx Sears, Amanda (née Auld) 155, 156 Sears, Thomas 156 Seavey, Ormond 6 Second Continental Congress 127 Sedgwick, Catharine xx Sekora, John 19, 29, 64 self-confidence 95, 195 self-creation 142, 196 self-determination 68, 166 self-education ix, 4, 92, 153 self-elevation 154 self-governance 139 self-growth 100 “Self-Help” 144, 149 self-improvement 158, 159, 161 selfishness 93, 94, 97, 98, 102 self-made man xiii, 6, 14, 15, 69, 137, 138, 139, 152, 153, 154, 166, 225, 232 “Self-Made Men” 136, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 147, 148, 152, 153 self-realization 95, 171

270

self-reliance ix, x, xxiii, 6, 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 136, 137, 142, 144, 145, 146 “Self-Reliance” 92, 95, 96, 100, 102, 137 self-respect 141, 145 self-sufficiency 174, 225 sentimentalism 145 Sever, Mr. 83 sexual interest 55, 206 sexual relationship 55 sexual slavery 168 shamans 51 Shannon, Cynthia 203, 217 Shockley, Evie 191, 196, 197 Signifying Monkey, The 7, 16 Simon, Scott 203, 217 Sklarew, Myra 190 slave communities 49 slave culture 84 slave labor xvi slave master xxxi, 84 Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History, The 18 slave narratives ix, 19, 24, 26, 27, 47, 50, 51, 56, 63, 64, 65 slave revolts xx, 120, 122, 123, 128 slavery ix, x, xiii, xvi, xviii, xix, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxx, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiv, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 46, 48, 49, 51, 56, 62, 64, 65, 68, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, Critical Insights

88, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 108, 109, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 138, 139, 147, 148, 154, 157, 159, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179, 183, 190, 192, 203, 204, 210, 222, 224, 227, 228, 229, 232 Slavery and Social Death 33, 44, 133, 135 slavery era 17 Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball 62 slave system 40, 41, 42, 80 slave trade 42, 121, 122 Slave Trade Act of 1807 122 slave violence 36 slave women 50, 52 Smith, Gerrit 110 Smith, James McCune 148, 154, 160 Smyth, Damon 227 social change 18 social conformity 102 social death 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43 social environment 116 social justice x, 18, 137, 170, 178, 179 social mobility 165, 172 social order 78, 90 social progress xiii solidarity 70, 129, 172 Index

soliloquy 87, 88, 126 sonic color line 79, 80, 84, 87 “Sonny’s Blues” 222, 223 Soulié, Frédéric 25 Southern Poverty Law Center 226 sovereignty 36 Spectator 158, 159 Spillers, Hortense 33 stability 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 174 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy xxxi, xxxiv Stanton, Elizabeth Cady 22 Starling, Marion 18 statesman 141, 146, 154, 168, 182 Stearns, George Luther 163 Stepto, Robert 28 Stoever, Jennifer Lynn 79 Stony Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, The 222 Stowe, Harriet Beecher xiv, xix, xxi, 25, 31, 97, 145, 229 strategy xxxiii, 6, 10, 13, 16, 22, 25, 107, 138, 145 struggle xxix, 29, 63, 196, 220, 223 suffering 13, 52, 56, 99 Suleiman, Susan 169 Sundquist, Eric 23, 29 symbol 50, 121, 127, 128, 174 sympathy 65, 144, 145 “Tafetta” 193, 194 Taylor, Andrew 170, 179 Taylor, Catherine 202 Teaching Tolerance Initiative, The 226 Their Eyes Were Watching God vii 271

They Were Strong and Good 231 Thompson, A. C. C. 25 Thoreau, Henry David viii, xiv, xxiii Tobar, Hector 202 Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am 231 “To Our Oppressed Countrymen” 73, 76 tradition xvi, xx, 23, 46, 55, 110, 139, 148, 184, 191, 192, 193, 195, 224, 231 tragedy xxxi transatlantic 124, 131, 140 Transcendentalism 102 transnational abolitionism 121 trauma 35, 132, 226 Treaty of Paris 151 Trethewey, Natasha 182, 196 “Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men, The” 67, 75, 149 tribute poems 188 triumph xxix, 38, 92, 95, 97, 193 Trump, Donald 219, 234 Truth, Sojourner 47 Tubman, Harriet 229 Turner, Darwin 19 Turner, Nat 125, 133, 229 turning point 69 Twain, Mark xv Types of Mankind 168, 180 Uncle Tom’s Cabin xiv, xix, xx, xxi, 26, 97, 145 Underground Railroad xxiv, 74, 175 Union Army 162, 166 United Nations (UN) 168, 181 unity 73, 95, 172 272

Updike, John xv urban alienation xix U.S. citizenship 133 U.S. Constitution 41, 148 U.S. empire 121 Vaughan, Benjamin 153 Vesey, Denmark 133, 229 vindication 143, 163 violation 43 violence ix, xxv, 12, 22, 26, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 56, 74, 99, 145, 146, 150, 171 Virginia slaveholders 125 voting rights 146 Waite Court 146 Walden xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxviii, 24 Walker, David F. xi, 219, 227 war 17, 24, 27, 28, 90, 133, 151, 166, 178, 182, 190, 216, 229 Warren, Calvin L. 37, 39 Washington, Booker T. 27, 28 Washington, George 225 Washington, Madison xx, xxi, xxii, 87, 88, 120, 123, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133 Washington Post, The 203, 216, 233 Webster, Daniel 103 Weheliye, Alexander 42 Wells, Ida B. 186 Western Civilization 77 “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” xvi, xvii, xviii, 23, 105, 106, 108, 110, 118, 119 white abolitionists 47, 65, 100, 161, 162 Critical Insights

White, Ed 61, 75 white nationalism 222 whiteness 79, 139 white race 172 white racism 178 white superiority 93 white supremacist culture 19 white supremacy 20, 28, 69, 74, 139, 222, 229 white terrorists 146 Whitman, Walt xiv, 148 Wilderson III, Frank B. 45 Williams, Jack 128 Williams, Raymond Lee 170 Wills, Garry 225 Wilson, Ivy 131 womanhood 55, 94 women’s rights xiii, 75, 177, 209 “Women’s Suffrage Movement, The” 75 Woodson, Jacqueline 220 Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass 224

Index

work viii, ix, x, xiv, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, xxii, xxiii, xxvi, xxix, xxxi, xxxiii, 5, 9, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34, 36, 38, 41, 42, 43, 63, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 77, 78, 86, 87, 90, 94, 101, 102, 108, 113, 115, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 138, 139, 142, 143, 148, 153, 156, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 176, 182, 184, 186, 194, 195, 203, 205, 207, 209, 220, 223, 225, 226, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233 YA (young adult) literature xi, 219, 223, 231, 232 Yellin, Jean 28 Yothers, Brian 18 Young Frederick Douglass: The Early Years 28

273