My Bondage and My Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom

F >> Frederick Douglass >> My Bondage and My Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom

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CONTENTS

EDITORS PREFACE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

LIFE AS A SLAVE?

I--CHILDHOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
II--REMOVED FROM MY FIRST HOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
III--PARENTAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
IV--A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SLAVE PLANTATION . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
V--GRADUAL INITIATION INTO THE MYSTERIES OF SLAVERY. . . . . . . . . 61
VI--TREATMENT OF SLAVES ON LLOYDS PLANTATION . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
VII--LIFE IN THE GREAT HOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
VIII--A CHAPTER OF HORRORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
IX--PERSONAL TREATMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101
X--LIFE IN BALTIMORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111
XI--"A CHANGE CAME O'ER THE SPIRIT OF MY DREAM". . . . . . . . . . .118
XII--RELIGIOUS NATURE AWAKENED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127
XIII--THE VICISSITUDES OF SLAVE LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135
XIV--EXPERIENCE IN ST. MICHAEL'S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .144
XV--COVEY, THE NEGRO BREAKER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159
XVI--ANOTHER PRESSURE OF THE TYRANTS VICE. . . . . . . . . . . . . .172

CONTENTS

XVII--THE LAST FLOCCING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180
XVIII--NEW RELATIONS AND DUTIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .194
XIX--THE RUN-AWAY PLOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209
XX--APPRENTICESHIP LIFE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235
XXI--MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .248

LIFE AS A FREEMAN
XXII--LIBERTY ATTAINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .261
XXIII--INTRODUCED TO THE ABOLITIONISTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278
XXIV--TWENTY-ONE MONTHS IN GREAT BRITAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . .284
XXV--VARIOUS INCIDENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .304

APPENDIX
RECEPTION SPEECH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .318
LETTER TO HIS OLD MASTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .330
THE NATURE OF SLAVERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .337
INHUMANITY OF SLAVERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .343
WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .349
THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .354
THE SLAVERY PARTY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .358
THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .363

MY BONDAGE
_and_
MY FREEDOM

EDITOR'S PREFACE

If the volume now presented to the public were a mere work of
ART, the history of its misfortune might be written in two very
simple words--TOO LATE. The nature and character of slavery have
been subjects of an almost endless variety of artistic
representation; and after the brilliant achievements in that
field, and while those achievements are yet fresh in the memory
of the million, he who would add another to the legion, must
possess the charm of transcendent excellence, or apologize for
something worse than rashness. The reader is, therefore,
assured, with all due promptitude, that his attention is not
invited to a work of ART, but to a work of FACTS--Facts, terrible
and almost incredible, it may be yet FACTS, nevertheless.

I am authorized to say that there is not a fictitious name nor
place in the whole volume; but that names and places are
literally given, and that every transaction therein described
actually transpired.

Perhaps the best Preface to this volume is furnished in the
following letter of Mr. Douglass, written in answer to my urgent
solicitation for such a work:

ROCHESTER, N. Y. _July_ 2, 1855.

DEAR FRIEND: I have long entertained, as you very well know, a
somewhat positive repugnance to writing or speaking anything for
the public, which could, with any degree of plausibilty, make me
liable to the imputation of seeking personal notoriety, for its
own sake. Entertaining that feeling very sincerely, and
permitting its control, perhaps, quite unreasonably, I have often
<2>refused to narrate my personal experience in public anti-
slavery meetings, and in sympathizing circles, when urged to do
so by friends, with whose views and wishes, ordinarily, it were a
pleasure to comply. In my letters and speeches, I have generally
aimed to discuss the question of Slavery in the light of
fundamental principles, and upon facts, notorious and open to
all; making, I trust, no more of the fact of my own former
enslavement, than circumstances seemed absolutely to require. I
have never placed my opposition to slavery on a basis so narrow
as my own enslavement, but rather upon the indestructible and
unchangeable laws of human nature, every one of which is
perpetually and flagrantly violated by the slave system. I have
also felt that it was best for those having histories worth the
writing--or supposed to be so--to commit such work to hands other
than their own. To write of one's self, in such a manner as not
to incur the imputation of weakness, vanity, and egotism, is a
work within the ability of but few; and I have little reason to
believe that I belong to that fortunate few.

These considerations caused me to hesitate, when first you kindly
urged me to prepare for publication a full account of my life as
a slave, and my life as a freeman.

Nevertheless, I see, with you, many reasons for regarding my
autobiography as exceptional in its character, and as being, in
some sense, naturally beyond the reach of those reproaches which
honorable and sensitive minds dislike to incur. It is not to
illustrate any heroic achievements of a man, but to vindicate a
just and beneficent principle, in its application to the whole
human family, by letting in the light of truth upon a system,
esteemed by some as a blessing, and by others as a curse and a
crime. I agree with you, that this system is now at the bar of
public opinion--not only of this country, but of the whole
civilized world--for judgment. Its friends have made for it the
usual plea--"not guilty;" the case must, therefore, proceed. Any
facts, either from slaves, slaveholders, or by-standers,
calculated to enlighten the public mind, by revealing the true
nature, character, and tendency of the slave system, are in
order, and can scarcely be innocently withheld.

I see, too, that there are special reasons why I should write my
own biography, in preference to employing another to do it. Not
only is slavery on trial, but unfortunately, the enslaved people
are also on trial. It is alleged, that they are, naturally,
inferior; that they are _so low_ in the scale of humanity, and so
utterly stupid, that they are unconscious of their wrongs, and do
not apprehend their rights. Looking, then, at your request, from
this stand-point, and wishing everything of which you think me
capable to go to the benefit of my afflicted people, I part with
my doubts and hesitation, and proceed to furnish you the desired
manuscript; hoping that you may be able to make such arrangements
for its publication as shall be best adapted to accomplish that
good which you so enthusiastically anticipate.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS

<3>

There was little necessity for doubt and hesitation on the part
of Mr. Douglass, as to the propriety of his giving to the world a
full account of himself. A man who was born and brought up in
slavery, a living witness of its horrors; who often himself
experienced its cruelties; and who, despite the depressing
influences surrounding his birth, youth and manhood, has risen,
from a dark and almost absolute obscurity, to the distinguished
position which he now occupies, might very well assume the
existence of a commendable curiosity, on the part of the public,
to know the facts of his remarkable history.
EDITOR

INTRODUCTION

When a man raises himself from the lowest condition in society to
the highest, mankind pay him the tribute of their admiration;
when he accomplishes this elevation by native energy, guided by
prudence and wisdom, their admiration is increased; but when his
course, onward and upward, excellent in itself, furthermore
proves a possible, what had hitherto been regarded as an
impossible, reform, then he becomes a burning and a shining
light, on which the aged may look with gladness, the young with
hope, and the down-trodden, as a representative of what they may
themselves become. To such a man, dear reader, it is my
privilege to introduce you.

The life of Frederick Douglass, recorded in the pages which
follow, is not merely an example of self-elevation under the most
adverse circumstances; it is, moreover, a noble vindication of
the highest aims of the American anti-slavery movement. The real
object of that movement is not only to disenthrall, it is, also,
to bestow upon the Negro the exercise of all those rights, from
the possession of which he has been so long debarred.

But this full recognition of the colored man to the right, and
the entire admission of the same to the full privileges,
political, religious and social, of manhood, requires powerful
effort on the part of the enthralled, as well as on the part of
those who would disenthrall them. The people at large must feel
the conviction, as well as admit the abstract logic, of human
equality; <5>the Negro, for the first time in the world's
history, brought in full contact with high civilization, must
prove his title first to all that is demanded for him; in the
teeth of unequal chances, he must prove himself equal to the mass
of those who oppress him--therefore, absolutely superior to his
apparent fate, and to their relative ability. And it is most
cheering to the friends of freedom, today, that evidence of this
equality is rapidly accumulating, not from the ranks of the half-
freed colored people of the free states, but from the very depths
of slavery itself; the indestructible equality of man to man is
demonstrated by the ease with which black men, scarce one remove
from barbarism--if slavery can be honored with such a
distinction--vault into the high places of the most advanced and
painfully acquired civilization. Ward and Garnett, Wells Brown
and Pennington, Loguen and Douglass, are banners on the outer
wall, under which abolition is fighting its most successful
battles, because they are living exemplars of the practicability
of the most radical abolitionism; for, they were all of them born
to the doom of slavery, some of them remained slaves until adult
age, yet they all have not only won equality to their white
fellow citizens, in civil, religious, political and social rank,
but they have also illustrated and adorned our common country by
their genius, learning and eloquence.

The characteristics whereby Mr. Douglass has won first rank among
these remarkable men, and is still rising toward highest rank
among living Americans, are abundantly laid bare in the book
before us. Like the autobiography of Hugh Miller, it carries us
so far back into early childhood, as to throw light upon the
question, "when positive and persistent memory begins in the
human being." And, like Hugh Miller, he must have been a shy
old-fashioned child, occasionally oppressed by what he could not
well account for, peering and poking about among the layers of
right and wrong, of tyrant and thrall, and the wonderfulness of
that hopeless tide of things which brought power to one race, and
unrequited toil to another, until, finally, he stumbled upon
<6>his "first-found Ammonite," hidden away down in the depths of
his own nature, and which revealed to him the fact that liberty
and right, for all men, were anterior to slavery and wrong. When
his knowledge of the world was bounded by the visible horizon on
Col. Lloyd's plantation, and while every thing around him bore a
fixed, iron stamp, as if it had always been so, this was, for one
so young, a notable discovery.

To his uncommon memory, then, we must add a keen and accurate
insight into men and things; an original breadth of common sense
which enabled him to see, and weigh, and compare whatever passed
before him, and which kindled a desire to search out and define
their relations to other things not so patent, but which never
succumbed to the marvelous nor the supernatural; a sacred thirst
for liberty and for learning, first as a means of attaining
liberty, then as an end in itself most desirable; a will; an
unfaltering energy and determination to obtain what his soul
pronounced desirable; a majestic self-hood; determined courage; a
deep and agonizing sympathy with his embruted, crushed and
bleeding fellow slaves, and an extraordinary depth of passion,
together with that rare alliance between passion and intellect,
which enables the former, when deeply roused, to excite, develop
and sustain the latter.

With these original gifts in view, let us look at his schooling;
the fearful discipline through which it pleased God to prepare
him for the high calling on which he has since entered--the
advocacy of emancipation by the people who are not slaves. And
for this special mission, his plantation education was better
than any he could have acquired in any lettered school. What he
needed, was facts and experiences, welded to acutely wrought up
sympathies, and these he could not elsewhere have obtained, in a
manner so peculiarly adapted to his nature. His physical being
was well trained, also, running wild until advanced into boyhood;
hard work and light diet, thereafter, and a skill in handicraft
in youth.
<7>

For his special mission, then, this was, considered in connection
with his natural gifts, a good schooling; and, for his special
mission, he doubtless "left school" just at the proper moment.
Had he remained longer in slavery--had he fretted under bonds
until the ripening of manhood and its passions, until the drear
agony of slave-wife and slave-children had been piled upon his
already bitter experiences--then, not only would his own history
have had another termination, but the drama of American slavery
would have been essentially varied; for I cannot resist the
belief, that the boy who learned to read and write as he did, who
taught his fellow slaves these precious acquirements as he did,
who plotted for their mutual escape as he did, would, when a man
at bay, strike a blow which would make slavery reel and stagger.
Furthermore, blows and insults he bore, at the moment, without
resentment; deep but suppressed emotion rendered him insensible
to their sting; but it was afterward, when the memory of them
went seething through his brain, breeding a fiery indignation at
his injured self-hood, that the resolve came to resist, and the
time fixed when to resist, and the plot laid, how to resist; and
he always kept his self-pledged word. In what he undertook, in
this line, he looked fate in the face, and had a cool, keen look
at the relation of means to ends. Henry Bibb, to avoid
chastisement, strewed his master's bed with charmed leaves and
_was whipped_. Frederick Douglass quietly pocketed a like
_fetiche_, compared his muscles with those of Covey--and _whipped
him_.

In the history of his life in bondage, we find, well developed,
that inherent and continuous energy of character which will ever
render him distinguished. What his hand found to do, he did with
his might; even while conscious that he was wronged out of his
daily earnings, he worked, and worked hard. At his daily labor
he went with a will; with keen, well set eye, brawny chest, lithe
figure, and fair sweep of arm, he would have been king among
calkers, had that been his mission.

It must not be overlooked, in this glance at his education, that
<8>Mr. Douglass lacked one aid to which so many men of mark have
been deeply indebted--he had neither a mother's care, nor a
mother's culture, save that which slavery grudgingly meted out to
him. Bitter nurse! may not even her features relax with human
feeling, when she gazes at such offspring! How susceptible he
was to the kindly influences of mother-culture, may be gathered
from his own words, on page 57: "It has been a life-long
standing grief to me, that I know so little of my mother, and
that I was so early separated from her. The counsels of her love
must have been beneficial to me. The side view of her face is
imaged on my memory, and I take few steps in life, without
feeling her presence; but the image is mute, and I have no
striking words of hers treasured up."

From the depths of chattel slavery in Maryland, our author
escaped into the caste-slavery of the north, in New Bedford,
Massachusetts. Here he found oppression assuming another, and
hardly less bitter, form; of that very handicraft which the greed
of slavery had taught him, his half-freedom denied him the
exercise for an honest living; he found himself one of a class--
free colored men--whose position he has described in the
following words:

"Aliens are we in our native land. The fundamental principles of
the republic, to which the humblest white man, whether born here
or elsewhere, may appeal with confidence, in the hope of
awakening a favorable response, are held to be inapplicable to
us. The glorious doctrines of your revolutionary fathers, and
the more glorious teachings of the Son of God, are construed and
applied against us. We are literally scourged beyond the
beneficent range of both authorities, human and divine. * * * *
American humanity hates us, scorns us, disowns and denies, in a
thousand ways, our very personality. The outspread wing of
American christianity, apparently broad enough to give shelter to
a perishing world, refuses to cover us. To us, its bones are
brass, and its features iron. In running thither for shelter and
<9>succor, we have only fled from the hungry blood-hound to the
devouring wolf--from a corrupt and selfish world, to a hollow and
hypocritical church."--_Speech before American and Foreign Anti-
Slavery Society, May_, 1854.

Four years or more, from 1837 to 1841, he struggled on, in New
Bedford, sawing wood, rolling casks, or doing what labor he
might, to support himself and young family; four years he brooded
over the scars which slavery and semi-slavery had inflicted upon
his body and soul; and then, with his wounds yet unhealed, he
fell among the Garrisonians--a glorious waif to those most ardent
reformers. It happened one day, at Nantucket, that he,
diffidently and reluctantly, was led to address an anti-slavery
meeting. He was about the age when the younger Pitt entered the
House of Commons; like Pitt, too, he stood up a born orator.

William Lloyd Garrison, who was happily present, writes thus of
Mr. Douglass' maiden effort; "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. * * * 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 proportions and stature
commanding and exact--in intellect richly endowed--in natural
eloquence a prodigy."[1]

It is of interest to compare Mr. Douglass's account of this
meeting with Mr. Garrison's. Of the two, I think the latter the
most correct. It must have been a grand burst of eloquence! The
pent up agony, indignation and pathos of an abused and harrowed
boyhood and youth, bursting out in all their freshness and
overwhelming earnestness!

This unique introduction to its great leader, led immediately

[1] Letter, Introduction to _Life of Frederick Douglass_, Boston,
1841.

<10>to the employment of Mr. Douglass as an agent by the American
Anti-Slavery Society. So far as his self-relying and independent
character would permit, he became, after the strictest sect, a
Garrisonian. It is not too much to say, that he formed a
complement which they needed, and they were a complement equally
necessary to his "make-up." With his deep and keen sensitiveness
to wrong, and his wonderful memory, he came from the land of
bondage full of its woes and its evils, and painting them in
characters of living light; and, on his part, he found, told out
in sound Saxon phrase, all those principles of justice and right
and liberty, which had dimly brooded over the dreams of his
youth, seeking definite forms and verbal expression. It must
have been an electric flashing of thought, and a knitting of
soul, granted to but few in this life, and will be a life-long
memory to those who participated in it. In the society,
moreover, of Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, William Lloyd
Garrison, and other men of earnest faith and refined culture, Mr.
Douglass enjoyed the high advantage of their assistance and
counsel in the labor of self-culture, to which he now addressed
himself with wonted energy. Yet, these gentlemen, although proud
of Frederick Douglass, failed to fathom, and bring out to the
light of day, the highest qualities of his mind; the force of
their own education stood in their own way: they did not delve
into the mind of a colored man for capacities which the pride of
race led them to believe to be restricted to their own Saxon
blood. Bitter and vindictive sarcasm, irresistible mimicry, and
a pathetic narrative of his own experiences of slavery, were the
intellectual manifestations which they encouraged him to exhibit
on the platform or in the lecture desk.

A visit to England, in 1845, threw Mr. Douglass among men and
women of earnest souls and high culture, and who, moreover, had
never drank of the bitter waters of American caste. For the
first time in his life, he breathed an atmosphere congenial to
the longings of his spirit, and felt his manhood free and
<11>unrestricted. The cordial and manly greetings of the British
and Irish audiences in public, and the refinement and elegance of
the social circles in which he mingled, not only as an equal, but
as a recognized man of genius, were, doubtless, genial and
pleasant resting places in his hitherto thorny and troubled
journey through life. There are joys on the earth, and, to the
wayfaring fugitive from American slavery or American caste, this
is one of them.

But his sojourn in England was more than a joy to Mr. Douglass.
Like the platform at Nantucket, it awakened him to the
consciousness of new powers that lay in him. From the pupilage
of Garrisonism he rose to the dignity of a teacher and a thinker;
his opinions on the broader aspects of the great American
question were earnestly and incessantly sought, from various
points of view, and he must, perforce, bestir himself to give
suitable answer. With that prompt and truthful perception which
has led their sisters in all ages of the world to gather at the
feet and support the hands of reformers, the gentlewomen of
England[2] were foremost to encourage and strengthen him to carve
out for himself a path fitted to his powers and energies, in the
life-battle against slavery and caste to which he was pledged.
And one stirring thought, inseparable from the British idea of
the evangel of freedom, must have smote his ear from every side--

_ Hereditary bondmen! know ye not
Who would be free, themselves mast strike the blow?_

The result of this visit was, that on his return to the United
States, he established a newspaper. This proceeding was sorely
against the wishes and the advice of the leaders of the American
Anti-Slavery Society, but our author had fully grown up to the
conviction of a truth which they had once promulged, but now

[2] One of these ladies, impelled by the same noble spirit which
carried Miss Nightingale to Scutari, has devoted her time, her
untiring energies, to a great extent her means, and her high
literary abilities, to the advancement and support of Frederick
Douglass' Paper, the only organ of the downtrodden, edited and
published by one of themselves, in the United States.

<12>forgotten, to wit: that in their own elevation--self-
elevation--colored men have a blow to strike "on their own hook,"
against slavery and caste. Differing from his Boston friends in
this matter, diffident in his own abilities, reluctant at their
dissuadings, how beautiful is the loyalty with which he still
clung to their principles in all things else, and even in this.

Now came the trial hour. Without cordial support from any large
body of men or party on this side the Atlantic, and too far
distant in space and immediate interest to expect much more,
after the much already done, on the other side, he stood up,
almost alone, to the arduous labor and heavy expenditure of
editor and lecturer. The Garrison party, to which he still
adhered, did not want a _colored_ newspaper--there was an odor of
_caste_ about it; the Liberty party could hardly be expected to
give warm support to a man who smote their principles as with a
hammer; and the wide gulf which separated the free colored people
from the Garrisonians, also separated them from their brother,
Frederick Douglass.

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