Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892) is an autobiographical account written by one of the 19th century’s most famous Americans. Born a slave in Talbot County, Maryland, probably in the year 1817, young Frederick, later known as Frederick Douglass, escaped from slavery, joining the abolitionists, traveled abroad, met and counseled some of the era’s greatest statesmen, and fought a lifelong battle against color prejudice and injustice.

Summary

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is essentially a history of Frederick Douglass’s public life—that is, the points at which his life converged with the 19th century’s most momentous events and developments. As such, after the opening chapters, in which Douglass describes his grandparents and the mother he barely knew, readers will find few details about Douglass’s private life apart from very brief references to his two marriages and the death of his young daughter. This is the story of both Douglass’s life and the times in which he lived.

Douglass divides the book into three parts. The first two were published in 1881; 10 years later, Douglass added the third. Douglass died in 1895, so this three-part autobiography, published in 1892, represents his most complete account of his life.

In the first section, “Life as a Slave,” Douglass establishes one of the book’s key themes: Slavery victimized everyone, from slaves to slaveholders. This point is not simply a magnanimous expression of forgiveness toward an unworthy class of tyrants; it is an insight into human nature. This first section tells the story of how Frederick came to understand the true nature of the slave system. In Baltimore, he learns to read and to pray. Armed with knowledge, and filled with Christ’s peace, he begins to think about the doctrine of natural rights and to question why he or anyone must be a slave for life. In an epic fight with the “negro-breaker” Edward Covey, Frederick learns the value of courage—another of the book’s main themes. Most important, he comes to regard slavery itself as the enemy.

The second part describes Douglass’s life as a free man, from his escape to the North in 1838 to the early months of 1881, when the book was first published. This second section covers the abolitionists’ moral crusade against slavery, the escalating sectional conflict of the 1850s, the Civil War, and the post-war struggle for civil rights. Scattered anecdotes reveal Douglass’s painful experiences with racial segregation and proscription in the North. A visit to Great Britain, where he feels no such ill treatment on account of his skin, convinces Douglass that color prejudice must be a uniquely American phenomenon—another of the book’s major themes. In all, more than 40 years of history appear in this section, which is a confluence of Douglass’s own history with that of the era. From these parallel histories, heroes emerge, including John Brown, Ulysses S. Grant, and Abraham Lincoln.

The third part, written in the early 1890s, picks up the story where Douglass left off in 1881. The events of the 1880s are far less dramatic than those described in earlier sections, but in some ways they are melancholier and more ominous. In 1881, Douglass has reason to look to the future with optimism. Emancipation and enfranchisement of the former slaves, once unthinkable, have been achieved. An unfavorable 1883 Supreme Court decision, however, made federal civil rights for Freedmen virtually unenforceable. Meanwhile, as former slaves struggle to find their way in a hostile world, and as “Lost Cause” mythologists retroactively ennoble the vanquished Confederates, the nation has become more race-obsessed than ever. Instead of justice and equality, Douglass sees Black people increasingly relegated to second-class citizenship.