Running head: Frederick Douglas 1

Frederick Douglas

Krista Kyker

Shepherd University

Author Note

Dr. Bankhurst History 201 Monday Wednesday Friday Class 9:10-10:00am

Frederick Douglas 2

Abstract

Frederick Douglas wrote a narrative autobiography describing the institution of slavery from the

slave’s standpoint in order to incite change by creating opponents of slavery. Previously, people

had argued that the institution of slavery helped to expand the economy while moving the

African Americans up toward a more civilized way of living and that the slave owner’s role as a

patriarchal figure in their lives instilled civility in a racial group of people that were otherwise a

substandard breed of the human race. Frederick Douglas sheds light on the African Americans

struggle to understand their place in society as a less than human subordinate being and showed

his readers why educating his people was the key element that led to their eventual emancipation

from the inhumane bondage of slavery in the United States of America.

Keywords: Douglas, Autobiography, Slavery

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Frederick Douglas Extra Credit

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas is an autobiographical account of his own life and

the impact that slavery had on his psyche. The book illustrate how education was the key

element that prompted his escape to freedom and how knowledge enabled him to form his own

opinion of his life and gave him the strength to lift himself up from the bondage of slavery.

Education and Knowledge

Education was a source of power for Frederick Douglas that led to his personal

understanding of his own station in life. As a young slave, when his master’s wife began

teaching him the alphabet, he felt a warmth in the human connection that the instruction offered

him. When his master forbade his wife from teaching Frederick he let it slip that knowledge

breeds unhappy slaves which leads to insurrections and revolt. This was a pivotal moment in

Frederick’s life as he realized that the more he learned the more he would understand about his

own circumstances and be able to control the outcome of his own future. Master Auld made a

fateful mistake that day which sent a wave of truths and understanding through Frederick’s mind.

It was at that moment he realized that it was “to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black

man.”1 Frederick said “from that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom,”2

was knowledge. The atrocities of his circumstances were not able to break his spirit due to the

strength and comradery that education offered his heart. The young boys from the streets of

Baltimore whom Frederick traded food for knowledge became a tool for his intellectual growth

but also offered his soul the support and companionship that the lonely life of a slave was

1 Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas page 202 Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas page 20

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lacking. Frederick’s own determination and ingenuity only strengthened his resolve to learn as

much information as quickly as he was able to do within the bounds of his situation.

Strengths of the Narrative

Frederick Douglass wrote his autobiography in a narrative style that was inclusive of

other slave’s situations and experiences in order to illuminate that slavery was an institution with

many different layers. He successfully argued that a majority of plantation slaves and those

slaves being held in the Deep South had a worse station in life than he did. Although slavery in

itself was a miserable, degrading, and painful circumstance which led to the physical, sexual, and

psychological abuse of many of the slaves trapped within its grasp, plantation slavery proved to

have some of the worst conditions that existed. Frederick Douglas chose to expose these

experiences through his own eye witness accounts in order to shed light on the abuses of slavery.

Douglas used his yearlong experience with the “Nigger breaker”3 to illustrate his

experience as a slave in order to draw a parallel to the experiences of other slaves who lived their

entire lives in a similar situation. By doing so he was able to highlight the immorality, injustice,

and unlawfulness of the entire institution of slavery. If he had simply told his own life story

without describing the abuses of others, then his message would not have seemed as pressing and

it would not have enlightened others toward the abolition of slavery. Singularly, Douglas’s

experience could have been swept aside and forgotten but together alongside other stories of

injustice and abuse, the narrative became a powerful message of hope and righteousness.

Frederick Douglas’s message made the reader/listener envision starving naked children being

beaten to death if they took one piece of fruit from a forbidden tree and to visualize the female

slave forced to spend her life as a vessel forced to produce and carry her master’s children in

order to increase his wealth in human ownership. Douglas’s stories added more than the

3 Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas page 34

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descriptions of the daily beatings of slaves in his autobiography, it humanized the lives of those

slaves that were dehumanized in their situation which exposed the institution of slavery for what

it really was, the exploitation of an entire race of human beings.

At the heart of Frederick Douglas’s story was a plea to civilians to recognize the

atrocities and immorality of slavery and to stand up and help those that are still being hurt by the

institution. He says that he “would keep the merciless slave holder profoundly ignorant of the

means of flight adopted by the slave…Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let darkness

commensurate with his crime…”4 Douglas points out that there are still millions of people that

are being abused and hurt by evil masters on the plantations of the Deep South. He does not

condone the Underground Railroad but is asking his readers to find ways to help the slaves that

are still being held to escape. In my opinion Douglas chose to tell the story of other slaves in

order to encourage people who would listen to help emancipate these slaves. His autobiography

was not only his own story but the story of his fellow man - that were unable to read, write or ask

for help. Through his book he was asking for help for them. He was able to use his education to

free himself and then turn around and use his articulation to advocate for the abolition of slavery

everywhere. In a sense his own education was the beginning of his inner freedom which

eventually led to his physical freedom and his calling to free all mankind.

4 Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas page 60

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Bibliography

Douglas, F. (1845). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Vol. 1). (P. S. Stanely

Appelbaum, Ed.) Boston: The Anti-Slavery Office. Retrieved 1995