Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
all the enslaved children at Holme Hill Farm. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was hired
out to labor o the plantation along with her four sisters. Douglass later expressed
the importance of these women—especially his grandmother—to his life and sense
of self. At the age of seven, Anthony moved Douglass to the main residence, thus
permanently separating him from his grandmother.
After Anthony died, Douglass became the property of Thomas Auld (d. 1880).
Auld sent him to Baltimore to live with his brother, Hugh. Hugh’s wife, unbeknownst
to herself, made the rst step leading to Douglass’s life’s vocation in freedom by
teaching him to read. She was soon stopped by her husband, who understood the
power of knowledge. Douglass nevertheless worked at teaching himself to read and
write. He learned humanist principles from such texts as The Columbian Orator
(1797), learned of Abolitionist eorts from the Baltimore American, and learned
through Charles Lawson, a free black preacher, to take up the “great work” for
which Douglass was destined.
In 1833, Douglass was returned to Thomas Auld to work on the plantation;
Auld hired Douglass out to Edward Covey (1805–1875), a notorious slavebreaker,
to t Douglass for his enforced work. From Covey, Douglass learned
violence; for months, Douglass was whipped daily. He then defended himself in
a two-hour combat with Covey. The beatings ceased. Douglass’s work to escape
slavery began. A failed escape attempt with ve other slaves caused Douglass to
be arrested and jailed in Easton. He then was returned to Hugh Auld, who hired
Douglass out to the Baltimore shipyards where he learned the caulking trade.
Douglass managed to save for himself some money from what he earned for
Hugh Auld. With it, and with the aid of the free black Anna Murray (1813–1882),
Douglass boarded a train for New York, wearing the clothes and bearing the legal
papers of a free black sailor.
Murray joined him in New York, and the two married. They moved to New
Bedford to avoid Douglass’s being recaptured as a fugitive slave. He also changed
his last name and dropped his middle names, henceforth becoming known as
Frederick Douglass. At New Bedford, he encountered a racism that prevented his
earning a fair living through his trade. Despite his poverty, and the demands of
his growing family, Douglass subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist
newspaper The Liberator. After hearing Douglass give an antislavery speech,
Garrison hired him as an abolitionist lecturer.
Despite the dangers he faced as an escaped slave and from anti-abolitionists,
Douglass lectured throughout the North. He also wrote his Narrative of the Life
of Frederick Douglass which was published by Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery
Society in Boston. Through its use of his own voice and words to give a rst-hand
description of slavery’s brutality and the hypocrisy of self-degrading, immoral
white slave-holders, Douglass’s Narrative achieved remarkable success, selling
around 30,000 copies in ve years. He continued lecturing as a recognized leader
of the Abolitionist movement. In 1845 and 1846, he traveled to Great Britain on a
speaking tour. Anti-slavery British friends purchased Douglass’s freedom in 1846.
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