Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Reviews

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
By Frederick Douglass, Introduction by Scott C. Williamson
Mercer University Press, 2021, $sixteen.00 paperback
Reviewed by David T. Dixon

Frederick Douglass hardly needs an introduction to students of the American Civil State of war. David Blight'southward 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of one of the most famous nineteenth century persons of color stands alone as the definitive treatment of his life. But in 1845, Douglass was non yet a world-renowned orator and civil rights champion. His autobiography was his first appearance to a broad public audience on a national stage and featured a human being of superior intelligence, incisive analytical skills, and a remarkable facility for language. Many gimmicky white readers but familiar with racist tropes and stereotypes were taken aback by Douglass'southward intellect and eloquence and shocked by his candor.

"I often plant myself regretting my ain beingness and wishing myself dead," recalled Douglass in 1845, less than seven years after he escaped from bondage. "I accept no doubt that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed." The depths of ache and despair in this get-go of Douglass's 3 autobiographies offered readers a stark, intimate glimpse of the insidious evils of chattel slavery. First-mitt accounts of formerly enslaved people exposed the hypocrisy of slaveholders' assertions that this savage institution was divinely ordained. "Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ," Douglass contended, "I recognize the widest possible difference."

Douglass's compelling narrative remains relevant today as Americans grapple with realizing the elusive ideal of equality promised in the Declaration of Independence, envisioned by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, and fought for by civil rights activists like Martin Luther King and John 50. Lewis. In the 21^st century, the boxing over Civil State of war memory continues in earnest amid renewed racial tensions. Reading Douglass's autobiography aslope state secession ordinances does much to dispel the final, futile whimpers of present-twenty-four hours Confederate apologists and the Lost Crusade lies of happy, contented enslaved people.

Douglass himself anticipated and exposed the sham of future Lost Cause mythology when he recalled traditional Christmas vacation celebrations wherein ostensibly benevolent masters granted enslaved workers a weeklong furlough from their labors. This custom, according to Douglass, was a "gross fraud" designed to "cloy their slaves with freedom" by plying them with liquor, thereby "plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation." Feeling as if they might as well be "slaves to men as to rum," this cunning cant was designed to manipulate enslaved people into contemplating a scant departure between prospective liberty and their present condition. Why run away if liberty consists of depravity and debauchery?

Douglass finally found promise, redemption, and the courage to escape his fate non in organized religion, just through literacy. His arduous and secretive efforts to teach himself and others to read and write exposed him to the writings of abolitionists and future white allies similar William Lloyd Garrison while arming himself with the rhetorical weapons and confidence he would need to survive as a complimentary man in a North dominated past white supremacists. Douglass dared not reveal intimate details of his escape, lest he endanger those who helped him forth his path to freedom. One time the volume had been published, Douglass himself was forced to flee to England for his own personal condom.

Mercer University Press'south reprint of Douglass'southward archetype bestseller (it went through nine editions and had sold more than than 30,000 copies by 1860) features an unusual forty-eight-page introduction by Scott C. Williamson, Professor of Theological Ethics at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Mercer published Williamson's biography of Douglass in 2002, focusing on his moral and religious thought.

Williamson begins his lengthy introduction by comparing Douglass's escape to freedom with Henry David Thoreau'south escape to Walden Pond in a quest to live a simpler life. Information technology is a novel and jarring comparison that may strike a discordant note with some readers accustomed to more traditional approaches to the editing of slave narratives. Is Williamson trying too difficult to impose the interdisciplinary approach of Mercer's "Voices of the American Diaspora Series" by inventing this unusual juxtaposition? Thoreau's longings for solitude certainly appears every bit a rich white human's trouble when contrasted with an enslaved person'south dire dilemma and burning desire for liberty; yet Williamson argues that past comparing these two seekers, 1 may discern similarities in their experiences as each yearned for different kinds of freedom. The dissimilarity between their relative stations in life holds more than hope for understanding the immense gap between the black and white experiences in the mid-nineteenth century; a yawning chasm of racial intolerance and injustice that vexes us to this solar day.

No understanding of the Civil State of war period is consummate without some knowledge of Frederick Douglass. To read him tell of his experiences as an enslaved person and share his hardship, hopes, and setbacks is a moving exercise in fathoming what the publisher calls "the waking nightmare of American slavery."

David T. Dixon is the writer of Radical Warrior: August Willich's Journey from German Revolutionary to Union General (Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2020).

johnstonsompere.blogspot.com

Source: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2021/10/12/book-review-narrative-of-the-life-of-frederick-douglass/