Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave

by Frederick Douglass

  b

  “Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of 1845.” In Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction, edited by Dexter Fisher and Robert B. Stepto (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1929), pp. 178-191. It should be noted that this argument about Douglass’s authorial control is Robert Stepto‘s, from the article just mentioned.

  c

  The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1903).

  d

  “Teaching Afro-American Literature: Survey or Tradition.” In Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction, pp. 8-24. Here Stepto argues that this quest for freedom and literacy informs African-American literature as a coherent literary tradition and “pre-generic myth,” that is, a set of impulses and values antedating the creation of literary forms as such.

  e

  From Langston Hughes’s poem “To You,” Amsterdam News (January 30, 1965), p. 22; reprinted in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 546.

  f

  Down Home: Origins of the Afro-American Short Story, New York: Columbia University Press, 1975.

  g

  And eventually his owner named Mr. Freeland, of whom Douglass would write: “I began to want to live upon free land as well as with Freeland” (p. 76).

  h

  “Binary Oppositions in Chapter One of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Written by Himself.” In Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction, pp. 212-232.

  i

  In “Binary Oppositions,” Gates notes a pattern of oppositions in Douglass’s first chapter that has even more far-reaching implications, encompassing “the animal, the mother, the slave, the night, the earth, matrilinear succession, and nature opposed to relation of the human being, the father, the master, the daylight, the heavens, patri linear succession, and culture. Douglass, in short, opposes the absolute and the eternal to the mortal and the finite. Our list, certainly, could be expanded to include oppositions between spiritual/material, aristocratic/base, civilized/barbaric, sterile/ fertile, enterprise/sloth, force/principle, fact/imagination, linear/cyclical, thinking/ feeling, rational/irrational, chivalry/cowardice, grace/brutishness, pure/cursed, and human/beastly” (pp. 225-226).

  j

  Toni Morrison’s “Rootedness: The Ancestor in Afro-American Fiction,” in Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1984), pp. 343-378. And see Farah Jasmine Griffin’s excellent “Who Set You .Flowin‘?”: The African-American Migration Narrative (New York: lent “Who Set You Flowin’?”: The African-American Migration Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Griffin does not mention Douglass and the root, but her discussion of ancestors and “safe places” directly informs this discussion.

  k

  The author of the preface is William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), a well-known abolitionist. Garrison was a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 as well as the founder and publisher of The Liberator, the well-known antislavery newspaper published from 1831 to 1865.

  l

  Auditorium.

  m

  Reference to the Bible (Psalms 8:5 and Hebrews 2:7-9).

  n

  Legal term for movable personal property, such as a horse.

  o

  Massachusetts.

  p

  Boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania; symbolic dividing line between the slave South and the free North before the Civil War.

  q

  Frank uncertainty.

  r

  Converts.

  s

  Reference to the Bible, 2 Peter 3:18.

  t

  Maligners; slanderers.

  u

  Degraded to the state of a beast (imbruted) and rendered useless or ridiculous (stultified).

  v

  Meanng slavery (with its pretensions to domesticity or cultural usefulness).

  w

  Advocates.

  x

  Detestable.

  y

  Reference to the Bible, Revelation 18:13.

  z

  Addressing a personified abstraction or an absent or imaginary person in a rhetorical fashion.

  aa

  One of the most famous libraries of the Greco-Roman world (third century B.C.), thought to have contained more than 400,000 books.

  ab

  Cohabitation without legal marriage.

  ac

  Without doubt.

  ad

  A Harvard-trained attorney and leading abolitionist orator (1811-1884), he was a close friend of Douglass through the 1840s and served as president of the Anti Slavery Society from 1865 to 1870.

  ae

  Rope or strap for leading animals.

  af

  Encircling.

  ag

  The verb is used here in a positive sense, meaning “print or perpetuate in unchanging form.”

  ah

  Recerence to the Bible, Isaiah 16:3.

  ai

  A cowskin is a whip made of raw cowhide; a cudgel is a short, heavy club.

  aj

  One of the timbers on which the boards of a floor or ceiling are nailed.

  ak

  Single-masted sailing vessel.

  al

  Cheap cotton fabric, so named because it was designed to be worn by black sub servients.

  am

  Cartwrighting is the building or repairing of carts; coopering is the making or repairing of wooden tubs or barrels.

  an

  From The Task (1785), by English poet William Cowper (in book 2, “The TimePiece.”)

  ao

  Brushed with a metallic comb.

  ap

  Tolerate.

  aq

  In the Bible, Job is a wealthy patriarch tested by God.

  ar

  Separated.

  as

  Brought into court to answer a criminal charge.

  at

  Dry, scaly skin.

  au

  Those who drive pigs to market.

  av

  Scab or itch in pigs, dogs, and other animals.

  aw

  To the rear of the boat.

  ax

  Rounded sides at the forward end of a boat.

  ay

  Old unit of length, varying in different countries; the English ell was 45 inches.

  az

  Gypsy.

  ba

  Waste or by-products of slaughtered or dead animals.

  bb

  Large, flat-bottomed boat designed for moving heavy cargo.

  bc

  Looking forward on a ship, the larboard, or port, side is to the left and the starboard side is to the right.

  bd

  The Elementary Spelling Book (1783) by American lexicographer Noah Webster.

  be

  Church.

  bf

  Offensive; harmful.

  bg

  From “The Farewell,” by American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892).

  bh

  Reference to the Bible, Jeremiah 5:29.

  bi

  Cooled compartment for storing perishable food.

  bj

  Religious service, usually held outdoors.

  bk

  Methodist congregations were divided into “classes” that met under a “class-leader.”

  bl

  Reference to the Bible, Luke 12:47.

  bm

  Actually it was January 1834, when Douglass was sixteen years old.

  bn

  In a pair of oxen hitched to a wagon, the “in-hand” ox is on the left and the “off-hand” ox is on the right.

  bo

  The harvesting of the crops.

  bp

  In the context of Covey’s ruthless trickery and treachery, this nick
name gives the story a mythical, evil twist.

  bq

  “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (see the Bible, Psalm 137:4, New American Standard version).

  br

  Released from confining anchors and chains.

  bs

  Fever (as with malaria) characterized by periods of chills and sweating that come and go.

  bt

  Using a machine to separate the wheat from the worthless husk, called chaff.

  bu

  Wooden board.

  bv

  Overtaken.

  bw

  Property of William Groome, a merchant in Easton, Maryland; Jenkins was hired out to Mrs. Covey’s father, Mr. Caulk.

  bx

  That is, she was not legally a slave; further, she owned her own cabin.

  by

  Openly whipped, without interruption or protest.

  bz

  Brooms made from the long stems of corn plants.

  ca

  Author’s note: This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my being whipped by Mr. Covey. He was “a clever soul.” We used frequently to talk about the fight with Covey, and as often as we did so, he would claim my success as the result of the roots which he gave me. This superstition is very common among the more ignorant slaves. A slave seldom dies but that his death is attributed to trickery.

  cb

  A near-quotation from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (act 3, scene 1).

  cc

  Toss or turn over a piece of timber.

  cd

  Pull, haul.

  ce

  Tools of the blacksmith.

  cf

  Prove myself blameless.

  cg

  Author’s note: I had changed my name from Frederick Bailey to that of Johnson.

  ch

  Reference to the Bible, Matthew 25:35.

  ci

  Author’s note: I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New Bedford—a result of anti-slavery effort.

  cj

  Clothes.

  ck

  Receptacle for carrying coal, bricks, or the like.

  cl

  Widely influential abolitionist newspaper (1831-1865), edited by William Lloyd Garrison.

  cm

  The Holy Ark, which contains the Torah; implicitly, the whole body of law con

  tained in the Old Testament.

  cn

  From John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1836 poem “Clerical Oppressors.”

  co

  Devout worshipers.

  cp

  From the Bible, Matthew 23:4-28 (King James Version).

  cq

  This is a parody of “Heavenly Union,” a hymn popular in the South.

  cr

  Wealth regarded as an evil influence.

  Table of Contents

  FROM THE PAGES OF NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  FREDERICK DOUGLASS

  THE WORLD OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK ...

  Introduction

  PREFACE

  LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  APPENDIX

  INSPIRED BY NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  FOR FURTHER READING