Frederick Douglass - Charles Waddell Chesnutt
[Illustration]
FREDERICK DOUGLASS 1899
Charles Chesnutt
The Beacon biographies of eminent Americans. Includes bibliographical
references (p.).
Preface
Frederick Douglass lived so long, and played so conspicuous a part on
the world's stage, that it would be impossible, in a work of the
size of this, to do more than touch upon the salient features of his
career, to suggest the respects in which he influenced the course of
events in his lifetime, and to epitomize for the readers of another
generation the judgment of his contemporaries as to his genius and his
character.
Douglass's fame as an orator has long been secure. His position as the
champion of an oppressed race, and at the same time an example of its
possibilities, was, in his own generation, as picturesque as it
was unique; and his life may serve for all time as an incentive
to aspiring souls who would fight the battles and win the love of
mankind. The average American of to-day who sees, when his attention
is called to it, and deplores, if he be a thoughtful and just man,
the deep undertow of race prejudice that retards the progress of the
colored people of our own generation, cannot, except by reading the
painful records of the past, conceive of the mental and spiritual
darkness to which slavery, as the inexorable condition of its
existence, condemned its victims and, in a less measure, their
oppressors, or of the blank wall of proscription and scorn by which
free people of color were shut up in a moral and social Ghetto, the
gates of which have yet not been entirely torn down.
From this night of slavery Douglass emerged, passed through the limbo
of prejudice which he encountered as a freeman, and took his place in
history. "As few of the world's great men have ever had so checkered
and diversified a career," says Henry Wilson, "so it may at least be
plausibly claimed that no man represents in himself more conflicting
ideas and interests. His life is, in itself, an epic which finds few
to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality." It was, after
all, no misfortune for humanity that Frederick Douglass felt the iron
hand of slavery; for his genius changed the drawbacks of color and
condition into levers by which he raised himself and his people.
The materials for this work have been near at hand, though there is
a vast amount of which lack of space must prevent the use.
Acknowledgment is here made to members of the Douglass family for aid
in securing the photograph from which the frontispiece is reproduced.
The more the writer has studied the records of Douglass's life, the
more it has appealed to his imagination and his heart. He can claim no
special qualification for this task, unless perhaps it be a profound
and in some degree a personal sympathy with every step of Douglass's
upward career. Belonging to a later generation, he was only
privileged to see the man and hear the orator after his life-work was
substantially completed, but often enough then to appreciate
something of the strength and eloquence by which he impressed his
contemporaries. If by this brief sketch the writer can revive among
the readers of another generation a tithe of the interest that
Douglass created for himself when he led the forlorn hope of his race
for freedom and opportunity, his labor will be amply repaid.
Charles W. Chesnutt
Cleveland, October, 1899
CHRONOLOGY
1817
Frederick Douglass was born at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Talbot County,
Maryland.
1825
Was sent to Baltimore to live with a relative of his master.
1833
_March._ Was taken to St. Michaels, Maryland, to live again with his
master.
1834
_January._ Was sent to live with Edward Covey, slave-breaker, with
whom he spent the year.
1835-36
Hired to William Freeland. Made an unsuccessful attempt to escape from
slavery, Was sent to Baltimore to learn the ship-calkers trade.
1838
_May_. Hired his own time and worked at his trade.
_September 3_. Escaped from slavery and went to New York City. Married
Miss Anna Murray. Went to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Assumed the name
of "Douglass."
1841
Attended anti-slavery convention at New Bedford and addressed the
meeting. Was employed as agent of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery
Society.
1842
Took part in Rhode Island campaign against the Dorr constitution.
Lectured on slavery. Moved to Lynn, Massachusetts.
1843
Took part in the famous "One Hundred Conventions" of the New England
Anti-slavery Society.
1844
Lectured with Pillsbury, Foster, and others.
1845
Published _Frederick Douglass's Narrative_.
1845-46
Visited Great Britain and Ireland. Remained in Europe two years,
lecturing on slavery and other subjects. Was presented by English
friends with money to purchase his freedom and to establish a
newspaper.
1847
Returned to the United States. Moved with his family to Rochester, New
York. Established the _North Star_, subsequently renamed _Frederick
Douglass's Paper_. Visited John Brown at Springfield, Massachusetts.
1848
Lectured on slavery and woman suffrage.
1849
Edited newspaper. Lectured against slavery. Assisted the escape of
fugitive slaves.
1850
_May 7._ Attended meeting of Anti-slavery Society at New York City.
Running debate with Captain Rynders.
1852
Supported the Free Soil party. Elected delegate from Rochester to Free
Soil convention at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Supported John P. Hale for
the Presidency.
1853
Visited Harriet Beecher Stowe at Andover, Massachusetts, with
reference to industrial school for colored youth.
1854
Opposed repeal of Missouri Compromise.
_June 12._ Delivered commencement address at Western Reserve College,
Hudson, Ohio.
1855
Published _My Bondage and My Freedom_. _March_. Addressed the New York
legislature.
1856
Supported Fremont, candidate of the Republican party.
1858
Established _Douglass's Monthly_. Entertained John Brown at Rochester.
1859
_August 20_. Visited John Brown at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
_May 12 [October]._ Went to Canada to avoid arrest for alleged
complicity in the John Brown raid.
_November 12._ Sailed from Quebec for England.
Lectured and spoke in England and Scotland for six months.
1860
Returned to the United States. Supported Lincoln for the Presidency.
1862
Lectured and spoke in favor of the war and against slavery.
1863
Assisted in recruiting Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts
colored regiments. Invited to visit President Lincoln.
1864
Supported Lincoln for re-election.
1866
Was active in procuring the franchise for the freedmen.
_September._ Elected delegate from Rochester to National Loyalists'
Convention at Philadelphia.
1869 [1870]
Moved to Washington, District of Columbia. Established [Edited and
then bought] the _New National Era_.
1870
Appointed secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission by President
Grant.
1872
Appointed councillor of the District of Columbia. [Moved family there
after a fire (probably arson) destroyed their Rochester home and
Douglass's newspaper files.] Elected presidential elector of the State
of New York, and chosen by the electoral college to take the vote to
Washington.
1876
Delivered address at unveiling of Lincoln statue at Washington.
1877
Appointed Marshal of the District of Columbia by President Hayes.
1878
Visited his old home in Maryland and met his old master.
1879
Bust of Douglass placed in Sibley Hall, of Rochester University. Spoke
against the proposed negro exodus from the South.
1881
Appointed recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia.
1882
_January._ Published _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_, the third
and last of his autobiographies. _August 4._ Mrs. Frederick Douglass
died.
1884
_February 6._ Attended funeral of Wendell Phillips. _February 9._
Attended memorial meeting and delivered eulogy on Phillips. Married
Miss Helen Pitts.
1886
_May 20._ Lectured on John Brown at Music Hall, Boston.
_September 11._ Attended a dinner given in his honor by the Wendell
Phillips Club, Boston.
_September._ Sailed for Europe.
Visited Great Britain, France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt, 1886-87.
1888
Made a tour of the Southern States.
1889
Appointed United States minister resident and consul-general to the
Republic of Hayti and _charge d'affaires_ to Santo Domingo.
1890
_September 22._ Addressed abolition reunion at Boston.
1891
Resigned the office of minister to Hayti.
1893
Acted as commissioner for Hayti at World's Columbian Exposition.
1895
_February 20._ Frederick Douglass died at his home on Anacostia
Heights, near Washington, District of Columbia.
In a few places in the text of _Frederick Douglass_, bracketed words
have been inserted to indicate possible typographical errors, other
unclear or misleading passages in the 1899 original edition, and
identifications that were not needed in 1899 but may be needed in the
twenty-first century.
I.
If it be no small task for a man of the most favored antecedents and
the most fortunate surroundings to rise above mediocrity in a great
nation, it is surely a more remarkable achievement for a man of the
very humblest origin possible to humanity in any country in any age of
the world, in the face of obstacles seemingly insurmountable, to win
high honors and rewards, to retain for more than a generation the
respect of good men in many lands, and to be deemed worthy of
enrolment among his country's great men. Such a man was Frederick
Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer
force of character and talents that neither slavery nor caste
proscription could crush must ever remain as a shining illustration
of the essential superiority of manhood to environment. Circumstances
made Frederick Douglass a slave, but they could not prevent him from
becoming a freeman and a leader among mankind.
The early life of Douglass, as detailed by himself from the platform
in vigorous and eloquent speech, and as recorded in the three volumes
written by himself at different periods of his career, is perhaps the
completest indictment of the slave system ever presented at the bar of
public opinion. Fanny Kemble's _Journal of a Residence on a Georgian
Plantation_, kept by her in the very year of Douglass's escape from
bondage, but not published until 1863, too late to contribute anything
to the downfall of slavery, is a singularly clear revelation of
plantation life from the standpoint of an outsider entirely unbiased
by American prejudice. _Frederick Douglass's Narrative_ is the same
story told from the inside. They coincide in the main facts; and in
the matter of detail, like the two slightly differing views of a
stereoscopic picture, they bring out into bold relief the real
character of the peculiar institution. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ lent to
the structure of fact the decorations of humor, a dramatic plot, and
characters to whose fate the touch of creative genius gave a living
interest. But, after all, it was not Uncle Tom, nor Topsy, nor Miss
Ophelia, nor Eliza, nor little Eva that made the book the power it
proved to stir the hearts of men, but the great underlying tragedy
then already rapidly approaching a bloody climax.
Frederick Douglass was born in February, l8l7,--as nearly as the date
could be determined in after years, when it became a matter of public
interest,--at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Talbot County, on the eastern
shore of Maryland, a barren and poverty-stricken district, which
possesses in the birth of Douglass its sole title to distinction. His
mother was a negro slave, tall, erect, and well-proportioned, of a
deep black and glossy complexion, with regular features, and manners
of a natural dignity and sedateness. Though a field hand and compelled
to toil many hours a day, she had in some mysterious way learned to
read, being the only person of color in Tuckahoe, slave or free, who
possessed that accomplishment. His father was a white man. It was in
the nature of things that in after years attempts should be made to
analyze the sources of Douglass's talent, and that the question should
be raised whether he owed it to the black or the white half of his
mixed ancestry. But Douglass himself, who knew his own mother and
grandmother, ascribed such powers as he possessed to the negro half of
his blood; and, as to it certainly he owed the experience which gave
his anti-slavery work its peculiar distinction and value, he doubtless
believed it only fair that the credit for what he accomplished should
go to those who needed it most and could justly be proud of it. He
never knew with certainty who his white father was, for the exigencies
of slavery separated the boy from his mother before the subject of
his paternity became of interest to him; and in after years his white
father never claimed the honor, which might have given him a place in
history.
Douglass's earliest recollections centered around the cabin of his
grandmother, Betsey Bailey, who seems to have been something of a
privileged character on the plantation, being permitted to live with
her husband, Isaac, in a cabin of their own, charged with only the
relatively light duty of looking after a number of young children,
mostly the offspring of her own five daughters, and providing for her
own support.
It is impossible in a work of the scope of this to go into very
elaborate detail with reference to this period of Douglass's life,
however interesting it might be. The real importance of his life to us
of another generation lies in what he accomplished toward the world's
progress, which he only began to influence several years after his
escape from slavery. Enough ought to be stated, however, to trace
his development from slave to freeman, and his preparation for the
platform where he secured his hearing and earned his fame.
Douglass was born the slave of one Captain Aaron Anthony, a man of
some consequence in eastern Maryland, the manager or chief clerk of
one Colonel Lloyd, the head for that generation of an old, exceedingly
wealthy, and highly honored family in Maryland, the possessor of a
stately mansion and one of the largest and most fertile plantations in
the State. Captain Anthony, though only the satellite of this great
man, himself owned several farms and a number of slaves. At the age of
seven Douglass was taken from the cabin of his grandmother at Tuckahoe
to his masters residence on Colonel Lloyd's plantation.
Up to this time he had never, to his recollection, seen his mother.
All his impressions of her were derived from a few brief visits made
to him at Colonel Lloyd's plantation, most of them at night. These
fleeting visits of the mother were important events in the life of the
child, now no longer under the care of his grandmother, but turned
over to the tender mercies of his master's cook, with whom he does not
seem to have been a favorite. His mother died when he was eight or
nine years old. Her son did not see her during her illness, nor learn
of it until after her death. It was always a matter of grief to him
that he did not know her better, and that he could not was one of the
sins of slavery that he never forgave.
On Colonel Lloyd's plantation Douglass spent four years of the slave
life of which his graphic description on the platform stirred humane
hearts to righteous judgment of an unrighteous institution. It is
enough to say that this lad, with keen eyes and susceptible feelings,
was an eye-witness of all the evils to which slavery gave birth. Its
extremes of luxury and misery could be found within the limits of one
estate. He saw the field hand driven forth at dawn to labor until
dark. He beheld every natural affection crushed when inconsistent with
slavery, or warped and distorted to fit the necessities and promote
the interests of the institution. He heard the unmerited strokes of
the lash on the backs of others, and felt them on his own. In the wild
songs of the slaves he read, beneath their senseless jargon or their
fulsome praise of "old master," the often unconscious note of grief
and despair. He perceived, too, the debasing effects of slavery upon
master and slave alike, crushing all semblance of manhood in the
one, and in the other substituting passion for judgment, caprice for
justice, and indolence and effeminacy for the more virile virtues of
freemen. Doubtless the gentle hand of time will some time spread
the veil of silence over this painful past; but, while we are still
gathering its evil aftermath, it is well enough that we do not forget
the origin of so many of our civic problems.
When Douglass was ten years old, he was sent from the Lloyd plantation
to Baltimore, to live with one Hugh Auld, a relative of his master.
Here he enjoyed the high privilege, for a slave, of living in the
house with his master's family. In the capacity of house boy it was
his duty to run errands and take care of a little white boy, Tommy
Auld, the son of his mistress for the time being, Mrs. Sophia Auld.
Mrs. Auld was of a religious turn of mind; and, from hearing her
reading the Bible aloud frequently, curiosity prompted the boy to ask
her to teach him to read. She complied, and found him an apt pupil,
until her husband learned of her unlawful and dangerous conduct, and
put an end to the instruction. But the evil was already done, and the
seed thus sown brought forth fruit in the after career of the orator
and leader of men. The mere fact that his master wished to prevent his
learning made him all the more eager to acquire knowledge. In after
years, even when most bitter in his denunciation of the palpable evils
of slavery, Douglass always acknowledged the debt he owed to this good
lady who innocently broke the laws and at the same time broke the
chains that held a mind in bondage.
Douglass lived in the family of Hugh Auld at Baltimore for seven
years. During this time the achievement that had the greatest
influence upon his future was his learning to read and write. His
mistress had given him a start. His own efforts gained the rest. He
carried in his pocket a blue-backed _Webster's Spelling Book_, and, as
occasion offered, induced his young white playmates, by the bribes
of childhood, to give him lessons in spelling. When he was about
thirteen, he began to feel deeply the moral yoke of slavery and to
seek for knowledge of the means to escape it. One book seems to have
had a marked influence upon his life at this epoch. He obtained,
somehow, a copy of _The Columbian Orator_, containing some of the
choicest masterpieces of English oratory, in which he saw liberty
praised and oppression condemned; and the glowing periods of Pitt and
Fox and Sheridan and our own Patrick Henry stirred to life in the
heart of this slave boy the genius for oratory which did not burst
forth until years afterward. The worldly wisdom of denying to slaves
the key to knowledge is apparent when it is said that Douglass first
learned from a newspaper that there were such people as abolitionists,
who were opposed to human bondage and sought to make all men free.
At about this same period Douglass's mind fell under religious
influences. He was converted, professed faith in Jesus Christ, and
began to read the Bible. He had dreamed of liberty before; he now
prayed for it, and trusted in God. But, with the shrewd common sense
which marked his whole life and saved it from shipwreck in more
than one instance, he never forgot that God helps them that help
themselves, and so never missed an opportunity to acquire the
knowledge that would prepare him for freedom and give him the means of
escape from slavery.
Douglass had learned to read, partly from childish curiosity and the
desire to be able to do what others around him did; but it was with a
definite end in view that he learned to write. By the slave code
it was unlawful for a slave to go beyond the limits of his own
neighborhood without the written permission of his master. Douglass's
desire to write grew mainly out of the fact that in order to escape
from bondage, which he had early determined to do, he would probably
need such a "pass," as this written permission was termed, and could
write it himself if he but knew how. His master for the time being
kept a ship-yard, and in this and neighboring establishments of
the same kind the boy spent much of his time. He noticed that the
carpenters, after dressing pieces of timber, marked them with certain
letters to indicate their positions in the vessel. By asking questions
of the workmen he learned the names of these letters and their
significance. He got up writing matches with sticks upon the ground
with the little white boys, copied the italics in his spelling-book,
and in the secrecy of the attic filled up all the blank spaces of his
young master's old copy-books. In time he learned to write, and thus
again demonstrated the power of the mind to overleap the bounds that
men set for it and work out the destiny to which God designs it.
II.
It was the curious fate of Douglass to pass through almost every phase
of slavery, as though to prepare him the more thoroughly for his
future career. Shortly after he went to Baltimore, his master, Captain
Anthony, died intestate, and his property was divided between his two
children. Douglass, with the other slaves, was part of the personal
estate, and was sent for to be appraised and disposed of in the
division. He fell to the share of Mrs. Lucretia Auld, his masters
daughter, who sent him back to Baltimore, where, after a month's
absence, he resumed his life in the household of Mrs. Hugh Auld,
the sister-in-law of his legal mistress. Owing to a family
misunderstanding, he was taken, in March, 1833, from Baltimore back to
St. Michaels.
His mistress, Lucretia Auld, had died in the mean time; and the new
household in which he found himself, with Thomas Auld and his second
wife, Rowena, at its head, was distinctly less favorable to the slave
boy's comfort than the home where he had lived in Baltimore. Here he
saw hardships of the life in bondage that had been less apparent in a
large city. It is to be feared that Douglass was not the ideal slave,
governed by the meek and lowly spirit of Uncle Tom. He seems, by his
own showing, to have manifested but little appreciation of the wise
oversight, the thoughtful care, and the freedom from responsibility
with which slavery claimed to hedge round its victims, and he was
inclined to spurn the rod rather than to kiss it. A tendency to
insubordination, due partly to the freer life he had led in Baltimore,
got him into disfavor with a master easily displeased; and, not
proving sufficiently amenable to the discipline of the home
plantation, he was sent to a certain celebrated negro-breaker by the
name of Edward Covey, one of the poorer whites who, as overseers and
slave-catchers, and in similar unsavory capacities, earned a living as
parasites on the system of slavery. Douglass spent a year under Coveys
ministrations, and his life there may be summed up in his own words:
"I had neither sufficient time in which to eat nor to sleep, except on
Sundays. The overwork and the brutal chastisements of which I was the
victim, combined with that ever-gnawing and soul-destroying thought,
'I am a slave,--a slave for life,' rendered me a living embodiment of
mental and physical wretchedness."
But even all this did not entirely crush the indomitable spirit of a
man destined to achieve his own freedom and thereafter to help win
freedom for a race. In August, 1834, after a particularly atrocious
beating, which left him wounded and weak from loss of blood, Douglass
escaped the vigilance of the slave-breaker and made his way back to
his own master to seek protection. The master, who would have lost
his slave's wages for a year if he had broken the contract with
Covey before the year's end, sent Douglass back to his taskmaster.
Anticipating the most direful consequences, Douglass made the
desperate resolution to resist any further punishment at Covey's
hands. After a fight of two hours Covey gave up his attempt to whip
Frederick, and thenceforth laid hands on him no more. That Covey did
not invoke the law, which made death the punishment of the slave who
resisted his master, was probably due to shame at having been worsted
by a negro boy, or to the prudent consideration that there was no
profit to be derived from a dead negro. Strength of character,
re-enforced by strength of muscle, thus won a victory over brute force
that secured for Douglass comparative immunity from abuse during the
remaining months of his year's service with Covey.
The next year, 1835, Douglass was hired out to a Mr. William Freeland,
who lived near St. Michael's, a gentleman who did not forget justice
or humanity, so far as they were consistent with slavery, even
in dealing with bond-servants. Here Douglass led a comparatively
comfortable life. He had enough to eat, was not overworked, and found
the time to conduct a surreptitious Sunday-school, where he tried to
help others by teaching his fellow-slaves to read the Bible.
III.