The book “My Bondage and My Freedom” was published in 1855, recounting the life of Fredrick Douglass. It chronicles his time as a slave, his escape to freedom, and his efforts to emancipate other slaves in the South. This memoir, penned by an ex-slave, is considered a profoundly influential text in the abolitionist movement, providing a compelling case against the cruel institution of slavery in America’s past. In this essay, I will examine key events from the book and explore the political atmosphere of that era.
Frederick Douglass showcases his impressive education and writing abilities in his book, My Bondage, My Freedom. Through captivating stories of his own life struggles, he vividly portrays the harsh experiences faced by slaves and the unjust actions of their owners. Moreover, Douglass challenges the prevailing belief held by white individuals that Black people are incapable. Consequently, Frederick Douglass is revered as one of America’s most brilliant intellectual figures. Importantly, unlike other scholars, Douglass opts not to utilize reason or philosophy to convey the immorality of slavery.
Despite his education and intelligence, along with a keen understanding of public sentiment, he chose not to criticize the individuals who used slaves or supported the institution. Instead, he acknowledged the limitations of his era and the prevailing social norms, opting to appeal to his readers’ emotions to depict the harshness of slavery. In his autobiography “My Bondage My Freedom,” Douglass shares how he was separated from his mother, Harriet Bailey, shortly after birth and brought up by his grandparents.
Much like Harriet Jacobs, the author of Life As A Slave Girl, Frederick Douglass also experiences a less harsh life during his early childhood on the plantation. He grows up on one of Colonel Lloyd’s heartless plantations, where life is brutal for slaves, as it is on many similar Southern plantations. The slaves are overworked, exhausted, and poorly treated – they receive little food, few clothes, and no beds. The plantation overseers, particularly Mr. Severe and Mr. Austin Gore, are extremely cruel and punish slaves through beatings, whippings, and sometimes even shooting them. At the age of seven, Douglass is given to Hugh Auld, who is the brother of Captain Anthony’s son-in-law and lives in Baltimore. Living in the city provides Douglass with a relatively freer life. Generally, slave owners in the city are more mindful of their treatment of slaves in front of non-slave-owning neighbors. Douglass is initially surprised by the kindness of Sophia Auld, Douglass’ master’s wife since she has never owned slaves before. She even starts to teach Douglass how to read until her husband orders her to stop as he believes education makes slaves difficult to control.
Sophia ultimately gives in to the mindset of slave ownership and loses her innate kindness. In spite of Sophia and Hugh Auld becoming harsher towards him, Douglass still takes advantage of the opportunities he now has. He manages to teach himself how to read with assistance from local boys. This process of self-education enlightens Douglass about the atrocities of slavery and the presence of the abolitionist movement. Just as Douglass attains a level of clarity, his master dies, and he is sent back to serve Thomas Auld, who happens to be Captain Anthony’s son-in-law. Auld proves to possess a cruel and heartless nature.
Auld views Douglass as uncontrollable, so Auld leases him to Edward Covey for a year, who is notorious for “breaking” slaves. Within the first six months, Covey succeeds in draining all of Douglass’ spirit through work and whipping. Douglass transforms into a savage man, losing interest in reading or freedom, only capable of finding solace from his injuries and exhaustion. During a crucial moment in the narrative, Douglass engages in a life-defining battle with his new temporary master – a battle that Douglass emerges victorious from. This fight symbolizes Douglass’ struggle against mental enslavement after enduring daily brutal beatings and objectification (Spark Notes, 2002). It is during this part of Douglass’ story that my empathy for his hardship reaches its peak. Despite being beaten and debased day after day, he takes an unimaginable course of action – he stands up and fights back. Following his time at Covey’s plantation, Douglass is leased to William Freeland for two years, where he teaches other slaves to read while yearning for his own freedom. Douglass and a few fellow slaves devise a plan to escape to the North in search of freedom. Their aspirations are shattered when an informant thwarts their plans, resulting in all of them being imprisoned.
Eventually, Douglass is released and becomes a ship caulker, where he becomes aware of white individuals feeling threatened by freed slaves taking their employment. Douglass discusses strained race relations in the workplace at the shipyard. Despite being an apprentice and still enslaved, Douglass experiences aggressive intimidation tactics from his white colleagues and is compelled to change shipyards. In his new apprenticeship, Douglass promptly learns caulking and rapidly earns the maximum wages achievable, consistently handing over his earnings to his owner Hugh Auld.
Douglas obtains permission from Hugh Auld to hire out his spare time and saves money gradually. Eventually, he escapes to New York but refrains from providing details about his escape for the safety of future slaves attempting the same journey. In New York, he changes his name from Bailey to Douglas in fear of being recaptured. After marrying Anna Murray, a free woman he met in Baltimore, they move to Massachusetts where Douglas becomes deeply involved in the abolitionist movement as both a writer and speaker. (Source: Spark Notes, 2002) It is important to discuss Frederick Douglass’ autobiography within its historical context. In the early 1840s, the abolitionist movement was gaining strength in the far Northeast. Upon arriving in Massachusetts, Douglas begins reading the Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper edited by William Lloyd Garrison. Attending an abolitionist meeting in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1841 introduces him to Garrison and encourages him to share his experiences of slavery with the audience.
Douglass’s spoken account received such positive reception that Garrison offered him a job as an abolitionist speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society. From 1841 to 1845, Douglass traveled extensively with Garrison and other members, delivering speeches daily about the injustice and cruelty of slavery. Despite facing hostile opposition and being accused of lying, Douglass defied people’s disbelief that a formerly enslaved person could possess such eloquence and intelligence. Additionally, Douglass encountered a different form of opposition within the Anti-Slavery Society itself.
Among a mostly white society, Frederick Douglass stood out as one of the few black men employed. The society’s leaders, including Garrison, would patronizingly urge Douglass to limit his storytelling to the “facts” of his experience, leaving philosophy, rhetoric, and persuasive argument to others. Douglass’s 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself serves as a direct response to both types of opposition. The Narrative explicitly declares Douglass as its sole author and features two prefaces from Garrison and another abolitionist, Wendell Phillips, as proof of this fact (Spark Notes, 2002).
During the abolitionist movement, black writers had to provide evidence or authentication for their works. This demonstrated the prevailing disbelief in the intelligence and capability of African Americans at that time. The genre of the “slave memoir” was not a new concept during this period. Numerous narratives existed about the experiences of freed or escaped slaves. Although these accounts gained popularity among readers, particularly within anti-slavery circles, they were often received with skepticism.
The stories told by former slaves were often criticized for being biased or untrue, created by white abolitionists with ulterior motives. Despite this, educated former slaves struggled to find a way to express their heartfelt opinions about the cruelty of slavery. Even in the North, where white culture was dominant, it was not receptive to any form of criticism towards slave owners as a whole.
Fredrick Douglass, an ex-slave abolitionist, utilized emotional appeals in his writing, notably in his work titled “My Bondage and My Freedom”. The shocking and graphic descriptions of the brutal treatment and torture experienced by slaves evoke a visceral reaction from the readers. Additionally, these descriptions are juxtaposed with biblical references made by the slave owners, creating a jarring contrast. For instance, the master would subject a lacerated young woman to hours of horrifying bondage.
According to Douglass, he has witnessed a man tying up a woman early in the morning, whipping her before breakfast, leaving her, going to his store, returning at dinner, and whipping her again, cutting her in the places already injured by his cruel lash (Douglass, 33). Additionally, he even recounted the horrifying murder of a young slave girl by the wife of Mr. Giles Hick, who lived near Douglass. The girl was between fifteen and sixteen years old and her body was terribly mutilated (Douglass, 15). Douglass recognized the effectiveness of using such graphic descriptions as a means of conveying his message. He believed that employing realism as a rhetorical technique was unparalleled, particularly when aiming to reach a wide audience. Instead of trying to explain to someone that causing suffering is wrong, Douglass understood that it was more impactful to show them the suffering itself and allow their own psyche to draw that conclusion.
Frederick Douglass effectively used the most powerful tool available to him to emphasize the cruelty of slavery to his audience. He did not simply condemn slavery, but instead aimed to convey its inhumane nature through emotional means. It is important to recognize that Douglass was a product of his era and understood the constraints of his ability to persuade others. Regardless of his abolitionist beliefs, he realized that many white individuals would find any criticism of their race as a whole to be offensive to some degree.
Douglass successfully avoids falling into the trap of losing his persuasive message. He addresses the issue of broken families in his book, which is a common theme in slave memoirs. Douglass candidly and bitterly recalls his first realization that he and his family were enslaved. He emphasizes that slavery eradicates fathers and families, and its laws do not acknowledge their presence on the plantation (Douglass 52).
The text recounts the author’s ordeals of being separated from his family, enduring physical abuse, and facing punishment. It also highlights how he was not allowed to see his mother during her illness and near demise. The problem of a fractured black family remains prominent within the African American community, with many specialists attributing its origins to slavery. In one of Douglass’ writings, he depicts his first experience of freedom by sharing that upon leaving Baltimore, he found himself leisurely walking amidst the bustling crowd, marveling at the grandeur of Broadway.
The quote “The dreams of my childhood and the purposes of my manhood were now fulfilled” (Douglass 336) deeply affected me. Douglass, who endured the atrocities of slavery, witnessed the brutal treatment and suffering of Black individuals on a daily basis. Finally, he had achieved freedom, along with his sense of manhood and pride.
Below is the bibliography:
Douglass, Frederick, Smith, John David. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Penguin. (2003). SparkNotes Editors. (2002). SparkNote on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/narrative/
