The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

F >> Frederick Douglass >> The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Note from the original file: This electronic book is being released at
this time to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. [Born January
15, 1929] [Officially celebrated January 20, 1992]





NARRATIVE

OF THE

LIFE

OF

FREDERICK DOUGLASS,

AN

AMERICAN SLAVE.


---------------
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
---------------


Boston
Published At The Anti-Slavery Office,
No. 25 Cornhill
1845


Entered, According To Act Of Congress,
In The Year 1845
By Frederick Douglass,
In The Clerk's Office Of The District Court
Of Massachusetts.




PREFACE


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

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

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

A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on Mr. DOUGLASS to address
the convention: He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and
embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a
novel position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the
audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and
heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as
a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble
thoughts and thrilling reflections. As soon as he had taken his seat,
filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared that PATRICK
HENRY, of revolutionary fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the
cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to from the lips of
that hunted fugitive. So I believed at that time--such is my belief
now. I reminded the audience of the peril which surrounded this
self-emancipated young man at the North,--even in Massachusetts, on
the soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary
sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow him to
be carried back into slavery,--law or no law, constitution or no
constitution. The response was unanimous and in thunder-tones--"NO!"
"Will you succor and protect him as a brother-man--a resident of the old
Bay State?" "YES!" shouted the whole mass, 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.

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

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

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

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

This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of great
eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them all
is the description DOUGLASS gives of his feelings, as he stood
soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being
a freeman, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay--viewing the receding
vessels as they flew with their white wings before the breeze, and
apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit of freedom. Who
can read that passage, and be insensible to its pathos and sublimity?
Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library of thought, feeling,
and sentiment--all that can, all that need be urged, in the form of
expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of crimes,--making
man the property of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system,
which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image, reduces
those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a level with
four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in human flesh above all that
is called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not
evil, only evil, and that continually? What does its presence imply but
the absence of all fear of God, all regard for man, on the part of the
people of the United States? Heaven speed its eternal overthrow!

So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that
they are stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any
recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They
do not deny that the slaves are held as property; but that terrible
fact seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure
to outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them of cruel scourgings, of
mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and blood, of the
banishment of all light and knowledge, and they affect to be greatly
indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements,
such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! As if
all these direful outrages were not the natural results of slavery!
As if it were less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition of
a thing, than to give him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him of
necessary food and clothing! As if whips, chains, thumb-screws, paddles,
blood-hounds, overseers, drivers, patrols, were not all indispensable
to keep the slaves down, and to give protection to their ruthless
oppressors! As if, when the marriage institution is abolished,
concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound; when all
the rights of humanity are annihilated, any barrier remains to protect
the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when absolute power is assumed
over life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destructive sway!
Skeptics of this character abound in society. In some few instances,
their incredulity arises from a want of reflection; but, generally, it
indicates a hatred of the light, a desire to shield slavery from the
assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored race, whether bond or
free. Such will try to discredit the shocking tales of slaveholding
cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative; but they will
labor in vain. Mr. DOUGLASS has frankly disclosed the place of his
birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and soul,
and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has
alleged against them. His statements, therefore, may easily be
disproved, if they are untrue.

In the course of his Narrative, he relates two instances of murderous
cruelty,--in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging
to a neighboring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten within his
lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer blew out
the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape a
bloody scourging. Mr. DOUGLASS states that in neither of these instances
was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial investigation.
The Baltimore American, of March 17, 1845, relates a similar case of
atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity--as follows:--"_Shooting a
slave._--We learn, upon the authority of a letter from Charles county,
Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city, that a young man,
named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, and whose father, it is
believed, holds an office at Washington, killed one of the slaves upon
his father's farm by shooting him. The letter states that young Matthews
had been left in charge of the farm; that he gave an order to the
servant, which was disobeyed, when he proceeded to the house, _obtained
a gun, and, returning, shot the servant._ He immediately, the letter
continues, fled to his father's residence, where he still remains
unmolested."--Let it never be forgotten, that no slaveholder or overseer
can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on the person of a slave,
however diabolical it may be, on the testimony of colored witnesses,
whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are adjudged to be as
incompetent to testify against a white man, as though they were indeed a
part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal protection in fact,
whatever there may be in form, for the slave population; and any amount
of cruelty may be inflicted on them with impunity. Is it possible for
the human mind to conceive of a more horrible state of society?

The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters
is vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any
thing but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the highest
degree pernicious. The testimony of Mr. DOUGLASS, on this point, is
sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable. "A
slaveholder's profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture. He
is a felon of the highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no
importance what you put in the other scale."

Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the
side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the
foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared to do
and dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your
efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what
may--cost what it may--inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the
breeze, as your religious and political motto--"NO COMPROMISE WITH
SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!"

WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON, _May_ 1, 1845.




LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.

BOSTON, APRIL 22, 1845.

My Dear Friend:

You remember the old fable of "The Man and the Lion," where the lion
complained that he should not be so misrepresented "when the lions wrote
history."

I am glad the time has come when the "lions write history." We have been
left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the involuntary
evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest sufficiently satisfied
with what, it is evident, must be, in general, the results of such a
relation, without seeking farther to find whether they have followed in
every instance. Indeed, those who stare at the half-peck of corn a week,
and love to count the lashes on the slave's back, are seldom the "stuff"
out of which reformers and abolitionists are to be made. I remember
that, in 1838, many were waiting for the results of the West India
experiment, before they could come into our ranks. Those "results" have
come long ago; but, alas! few of that number have come with them, as
converts. A man must be disposed to judge of emancipation by other tests
than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,--and to hate slavery
for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,--before
he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life.

I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of
God's children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice
done them. Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had
mastered your A B C, or knew where the "white sails" of the Chesapeake
were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave,
not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel
and blighting death which gathers over his soul.

In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your
recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the
more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are
told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what
it is at its best estate--gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and
then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture,
as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the
Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi sweeps along.

Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in
your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak
has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel,
persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No
one-sided portrait,--no wholesale complaints,--but strict justice done,
whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for a moment, the deadly
system with which it was strangely allied. You have been with us, too,
some years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights, which your
race enjoy at the North, with that "noon of night" under which they
labor south of Mason and Dixon's line. Tell us whether, after all, the
half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than the pampered
slave of the rice swamps!

In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out
some rare specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which
even you have drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no
individual ills, but such as must mingle always and necessarily in
the lot of every slave. They are the essential ingredients, not the
occasional results, of the system.

After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years
ago, when you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace,
you may remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of
all. With the exception of a vague description, so I continued, till the
other day, when you read me your memoirs. I hardly knew, at the time,
whether to thank you or not for the sight of them, when I reflected that
it was still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for honest men to tell
their names! They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the Declaration of
Independence with the halter about their necks. You, too, publish your
declaration of freedom with danger compassing you around. In all the
broad lands which the Constitution of the United States overshadows,
there is no single spot,--however narrow or desolate,--where a fugitive
slave can plant himself and say, "I am safe." The whole armory of
Northern Law has no shield for you. I am free to say that, in your
place, I should throw the MS. into the fire.

You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, endeared as you are to so
many warm hearts by rare gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to
the service of others. But it will be owing only to your labors, and the
fearless efforts of those who, trampling the laws and Constitution of
the country under their feet, are determined that they will "hide the
outcast," and that their hearths shall be, spite of the law, an asylum
for the oppressed, if, some time or other, the humblest may stand in our
streets, and bear witness in safety against the cruelties of which he
has been the victim.

Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing hearts which welcome
your story, and form your best safeguard in telling it, are all beating
contrary to the "statute in such case made and provided." Go on, my dear
friend, till you, and those who, like you, have been saved, so as by
fire, from the dark prison-house, shall stereotype these free,
illegal pulses into statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a
blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the house of refuge for the
oppressed,--till we no longer merely "_hide_ the outcast," or make
a merit of standing idly by while he is hunted in our midst; but,
consecrating anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the
oppressed, proclaim our WELCOME to the slave so loudly, that the tones
shall reach every hut in the Carolinas, and make the broken-hearted
bondman leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts.