Chapter 3: Early Nineteenth Century: Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

  Achievements

1. Douglass, without any formal education, gained a reputation for his speaking skills and lectured extensively for the anti-slavery forces.

2. He used his recall of details and his speaking style to write the important Narrative.

3. He enlisted black troops for the Union cause and spoke on behalf of women's rights. He was present, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, at the first national women's congress held at Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848.

4. He led a distinguished life as a newspaper publisher, a United States marshal and recorder of deeds, and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti.

| Top | Primary Works

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845); The Heroic Slave, 1853; My Bondage and My Freedom (1855); Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: Written by Himself (1881). (He was a prolific writer - his speeches, editorials, articles, and autobiographies fill five volumes).

SELECTED MAJOR SPEECHES AND LETTERS

-"Address by Frederick Douglass, Formerly a Slave to the People of the United States of America", 1852, Edinburgh, Scotland

-"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July", 1852, Rochester, New York

-"Capital Punishment is a Mockery of Justice", 1858, Rochester New York

-"Is the plan of the American Union under the Constitution, Anti-Slavery or not", 1857, New York

-"John Brown and the Slaveholders' Insurrection", 1860, Edinburgh, Scotland

-"The American Constitution and the Slave", 1860, Glasgow, Scotland

-"Fighting the Rebels with One Hand", 1862, Philadelphia

-"What I found at the Northampton Association", 1895, Florence Massachusetts

| Top | Selected Bibliography: Books

Andrews, William L. ed. Critical Essays on FD. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1991. E449 .D75 C75

- - -. The Oxford Frederick Douglas Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Davis, Ossie. Escape to Freedom : a Play About Young FD. NY: Viking P, 1978. 812.5 DAV

Du Bois, Shirley Graham. There was once a Slave... The Heroic Story of FD. NY: J. Messner, 1947. E449 .D754

Foner, Philip S, ed. FD on Women's Rights. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood P, 1976. HQ1426 .D82

Gregory, James M. Frederick Douglas the Orator. New York: Thomas Crowell Co., 1971.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Slave and Citizen: The Life of FD. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980. E449.D75 H83

Martin, Waldo E., Jr. The Mind of FD (microform). 1984. E449 .D75

McFeely, William S. FD. NY: Norton, 1991. E449 .D75 M374

Quarles, Benjamin. FD. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1968. E449 Q18

Preston, Dickson. Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980.

Sundquist, Eric J. FD: New Literary and Historical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991.

Weiner, Eric. The Story of Frederick Douglass: Voice of Freedom. New York: Dell, 1992.

| Top | Selected Bibliography: Articles

Alford, Terry. "`Formerly a Slave': FD Comes to Lanesborough." New England Quarterly 60.1 (Mar. 1987): 86-88.*

Andrews, William L. "Reunion in the Postbellum Slave Narrative: FD and Elizabeth Keckley." Black American Literature Forum 23.1 (Spring 1989): 5-16.*

Awkward, Michael. "Negotiations of Power: White Critics, Black Texts, and the Self-Referential Impulse." American Literary History 2.4 (Winter 1990): 581-606.

Ballard, Barbara J. "Nineteenth-Century Theory of Race, the Concept of Correspondences, and Images of Blacks in Antislavery Writings of Douglass, Stowe, and Browne." DIA 53.11 (May 1993): 3959A.

Bell, Bernard W. "The African-American Jeremiad and FD' Fourth of July 1852 Speech." In The Fourth of July: Political Oratory and Literary Reactions,1776-1876, eds. Paul Goetsch and Gerd Hurm. Tubingen : Narr, 1992. 307

Blight, David W. "`For Something beyond the Battlefield': FD and the Struggle for the Memory of the Civil War." Journal of American History 75.4 (Mar. 1989): 1156-1178.

---. "Up from `Twoness': FD and the Meaning of W.E.B. Dubois' Concept of Double Consciousness." Canadian Review of American Studies 21.3 (Wint 1990): 301.

---. "The Private Worlds of FD." Transition 61 (1993): 161-68.

Burt, John. "Learning to Write: The Narrative of FD." Western Humanities Review 42.4 (Winter 1988): 330-344.*

Butler, Robert. "The City as Liberating Space in Life and Times of FD." In The City in African-American Literature, eds. Yoshinobu Hakutani and Robert Butler. NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1995.

Carson, Sharon. "Shaking the Foundation: Liberation Theology in Narrative of the Life of FD." Religion & Literature. 24.2 (Sumr 1992): 19-.

Castronovo, Russ. "`As to Nation, I Belong to None': Ambivalence, Disapora, and FD." ATQ 9.3 (Sept. 1995): 245-60.

Cox, James M. "Trial for a Southern Life." Sewanee Review 97.2 (Spring 1989): 238-252.*

Davis, David Brion. "The White World of FD." New York Review of Books 38.9 (May 16, 1991): 12-15.*

Davis, Mary K. "The Historical Slave Revolt and the Literary Imagination." DIA 45.4 (Oct 1984): 1114A-1115A.

Dorsey, Peter A. "Becoming the Other: The Mimesis of Metaphor in Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom." PMLA 11.3 (May 1996): 435-451.

Dunbar-Odom, Donna. "`Mastering' Representation: Rhetorical Constructions of the Life of FD." CCTEP 55 (1995): 26-32.

Dupuy, Edward J. "Linguistic Mastery and the Garden of the Chattel in FD' Narrative." MissQ 44.1 (Winter 1990-1991): 23-33.

Fichtelberg, Joseph. "The Writer against Himself: Child and Man in the Autobiographies of FD." MHLS 12.1 (1989): 72-80.

| Top | Garvey, T. Gregory. "FD's Change of Opinion on the U.S. Constitution: Abolitionism and the `Elements of Moral Power.'" ATQ 9.3 (Sept. 1995): 229-43.

Gallego-Duran, Maria del Mar. "Writing as Self-Creation: Narrative of the Life of FD." AtlantisR 16.2 (May-Nov. 1994): 119-32.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "Binary Opposition in Chapter One of Narrative of the Life of FD, An American Slave, Written by Himself." In Afro-American Literature: the Reconstruction of Instruction, eds. Robert B. Stepto and Dexter Fisher. 1978.

Gibson, Donald B. "Christianity and Individualism: (Re-)Creation in FD's Representation of Self." African American Review 26 (Wint 1992): 591-603.

---. "Reconciling Public and Private in FD' Narrative." American Literature 57 (Dec. 1985): 549-69.

Goddu, Teresa A.; Smith, Craig V. "Scenes of Writing in FD's Narrative: Autobiography and the Creation of Self." Southern Review 25.4 (Autumn 1989): 822-840.*

Gray, James L. "Culture, Gender, and the Slave Narrative." Proteus 7.1 (Spring 1990) 37-42.

Gruesser, John C. "Nineteenth Century Theory of Race, the Concept of Correspondences, and Images of Blacks Taking Liberties: Pauline Hopkins's Recasting of the Creole Rebellion." The Unruly Voice: Rediscovering Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Ed. John C. Gruesser. Urbana : U of Illinois P, 1996. 98-118.

Hill-Lubin, Mildred A. "The African-American Grandmother in Autobiographical Works by FD, Langston Hughes, and Maya Angelou." International Journal of Aging & Human Development 33.3 (Oct 1991): 173(13).

Hubbard, Dolan. "`Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around': Reading the Narrative of FD." In The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism, eds. Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, and Frances Murphy Zauhar. NC : Duke UP, 1993. viii, pp. 311.

Jay, Gregory S. "American Literature and the New Historicism: The Example of FD." BoundaryII 17.1 (Spring 1990): 211-242.

| Top | Jimenez, Luis A. "Nineteenth Century Autobiography in the Afro-Americas: FD and Juan Francisco Manzano." Afro-Hispanic Review 14.2 (Fall 1995): 47-52.

Kibbey, Ann. "Language in Slavery: FD' Narrative." Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies 8 (1985): 163-82.

Lee, Lisa Yun. "The Politics of Language in FD's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave." Melus 17.2 (Sumr 1991): 51(9).

Levine, Robert S. "Uncle Tom's Cabin in FD' Paper: An Analysis of Reception." American Literature 64.1 (Mar 1992): 71-.

Leroux, Neil. "FD and the Attention Shift." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 21.2 (Spring 1991): 36-46.

Leverenz, David. "FD' Self-Refashioning." Criticism 29.3 (Summer 1987): 341-370.

MacKethan, Lucinda H. "From Fugitive Slave to Man of Letters: The Conversion of FD." Journal of Narrative Technique 16.1 (Winter 1986): 55-71.

Mailloux, Steven. "Misreading as a Historical Act: Cultural Rhetoric, Bible Politics, and Fuller's 1845 Review of Douglass's Narrative." In Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response, ed. James L. Machor. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. xxix, pp. 285.

Maxwell, Barry. "FD's Haven-Finding Art." Arizona Quarterly 48.4 (Winter 1992): 47-73.

McDowell, Deborah E. "In the First Place: Making FD and the Afro-American Narrative Tradition." In African American Autobiography: A collection of Critical Essays, ed. William L. Andrews. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. viii, 231.

Morgan, Winifred. "Gender-Related Difference in the Slave Narratives of Harriet Jacobs and FD." AmerS 35.2 (Fall 1994): 73-94.

Moses, Wilson J. "Dark Forests and Barbarian Vigor: Paradox, Conflict, and Africanity in Black Writing before 1914." American Literary History 1.3 (Fall 1989): 637-655.

---. "Where Honor is Due: FD as Representative Black Man." Prospects 17 (1992): 177-.

| Top | Nimmo, Kristi K. "A Preface towards a Reading of the Douglass Narrative" West Virginia University Philological Papers 38 (1992): 38-48.*

Olney, James. "The Founding Fathers - FD and Booker T. Washington; Sel. Papers from Eng. Inst., 1987." In Slavery and the Literary Imagination, eds. Deborah E. McDowell and Arnold Rampersad. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins UP, 1989. xvi, pp. 172.*

Rowe, John Carlos. "Between Politics and Poetics: FD and Postmodernity." In Reconstructing American Literary and Historical Studies, eds. Gunter H. Lenz, Hartmut Keil, and Sallah Sabine Brock. Frankfurt : Campus, 1990. pp. 435.

Royer, Daniel J. "The Process of Literacy as Communal Involvement in the Narratives of FD." African American Review 28.3 (Fall 1994): 363-74.*

Sale, Maggie. "Critiques from Within: Antebellum Projects of Resistance." American Literature 64.4 (Dec. 1992): 695-718.*

---. "The Legacy of FD." African American Review 28.3 (Fall 1994): 473-79.*

---. "To Make the Past Useful: FD' Politics of Solidarity." Arizona Quarterly 51.3 (Autumn 1995): 25-60.

Sekora, John. "Comprehending Slavery: Language and Personal History in Douglass' Narrative of 1845." College Language Association Journal 29 (1985): 157-70.

---. "`Mr. Editor, If You Please': FD, My Bondage and My Freedom and the End of the Abolitionist Imprint." Callaloo 17.2 (Summer 1994): 608-26.

Simson, Rennie. "Christianity: Hypocrisy and Honesty in the Afro American Novel of the Mid 19th Century." University of Dayton Review 15.3 (Sprg 1982): 11-16.

Sisco, Lisa. "`Writing in the Spaces Left': Literacy as a Process of Becoming in the Narratives of FD." ATQ 9.3 (Sept. 1995): 195-227.

Smith, Sidonie. "Performativity, Autobiographical Practice, Resistance." Auto/Biography Studies 10.1 (Spring 1995): 17-33.

| Top | Smith, Stephanie A. "Heart Attack: FD's Strategic Sentimentality." Criticism 34 (Sprg 1992): 193-216.

Smyth, William D. "Water: A Recurring Image In FD' Narrative." CLA Journal 34.2 (Dec 1990): 174-.

Stepto, Robert B. "Narration, Authentication and Authorial Control in FD' Narrative of 1845." Afro-American Literature: the Reconstruction of Instruction, eds. Robert B. Stepto and Dexter Fisher. NY: Modern Language Association, 1978.

- - - "Sharing the Thunder: The Literary Exchanges of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Bibb, and FD." New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin, ed. Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1986. 135-53.

Stone, Albert C. "Identity and Art in FD' Narrative." College Language Association Journal 17 (1973): 192-213.

Sundquist, Eric J. "Slavery, revolution and the American Renaissance." in American Renaissance Reconsidered. Ed. W. B. Michaels and Donald E. Pease.

Thomas, Lorenzo. "Knowledge is Power: Frederick Douglass and the Roots of Literacy." Teachers & Writers 27. (Jan-Feb. 1996): 9-11.

Tuttleton, James W. "The Many Lives of FD." New Criterion 12.6 (Feb. 1994):16-26.

Wallace, Maurice. "Constructing the Black Masculine: FD, Booker T. Washington, and the Sublimits of African American Autobiography." In Subjects and Citizens: Nation, Race, and Gender from Oroonoko to Anita Hill, eds. Michael Moon and Cathy N. Davidson. Durham, NC : Duke UP, 1995.

Walter, Krista L. "Loopholes in History: The Literature of American Slavery as Cultural Critique." DIA 52.12 (Jun 1992): 4335A DAI No.: DA9212459.

Wohlpart, A. James. "Privatized Sentiment and the Institution of Christianity: Douglass's Ethical Stance in the Narrative." ATQ 9.3 (Sept. 1995): 181-94.

Wortham, Thomas. "Did Emerson Blackball FD from Membership in the Town and Country Club?." New England Quarterly 65.2 (Jun 1992): 295-.

| Top | The Heroic Slave (1853)

Ballard, Barbara J. "Nineteenth Century Theory of Race, the Concept of Correspondences, and Images of Blacks in Antislavery Writings of Douglass, Stowe, and Browne." DAI 53.11 (May 1993): 3959A DAI No.: DA9308964.

Davis, Mary K. "The Historical Slave Revolt and the Literary Imagination." DAI 45.4 (Oct 1984):1114A 1115A.

Gruesser, John C. "Taking Liberties: Pauline Hopkins's Recasting of the Creole Rebellion." The Unruly Voice: Rediscovering Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Ed. John C. Gruesser. Urbana : U of Illinois P, 1996. 98-118.

Sale, Maggie. "Critiques from Within: Antebellum Projects of Resistance." American Literature 64.4 (Dec 1992): 695-718.

- - -. "To Make the Past Useful: Frederick Douglass' Politics of Solidarity." Arizona Quarterly 51.3 (Autm 1995): 25-60.

Simson, Rennie. "Christianity: Hypocrisy and Honesty in the Afro-American Novel of the Mid 19th Century." University of Dayton Review 15.3 (Sprg 1982): 11-16.

Stepto, Robert B. "Sharing the Thunder: The Literary Exchanges of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Bibb, and Frederick Douglass." New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1986. 135-53.

- - -. "Storytelling in Early Afro American Fiction: Frederick Douglass' 'The Heroic Slave'." Georgia Review 36.2 (Sumr 1982): 355-68.

Walter, Krista L. "Loopholes in History: The Literature of American Slavery as Cultural Critique." DAI 52.12 (Jun 1992): 4335A DAI No.: DA9212459.

Wortham, Thomas. "Storytelling in Early Afro-American Fiction: FD' The Heroic Slave." Georgia Review 36 (1982): 355-68.

Yarborough, Richard. "Race, Violence, and Manhood: The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass's 'The Heroic Slave'." Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 1991. 166-88.

| Top | Study Questions

1. What is the function of the prefatory material? Why does Douglass add an appendix?

2. What is the relationship of literacy to Douglass's quest for freedom? Of violence?

3. What idea of God animates Douglass?

4. How does Douglass attempt to engage the sympathies of his audience?

5. Discuss the extent to which Douglass may be considered a transcendentalist.

6. Compare and contrast the way Douglass sets himself up as a model with the way Benjamin Franklin does it in The Autobiography.

7. Douglass writes his slave narrative as a series of incidents or adventures. Discuss the picaresque elements of the Narrative of the Life.

8. Compare Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, with Douglass's Narrative. Was the model of "heroic fugitive" possible for female slaves? Jacobs's Incidents depicts the network of relationships within the slave community and between black and white communities. Look for evidence of such a network in Douglass's Narrative. What explains Douglass's lack of attention to emotional connections?

9. In his prefatory letter to the Narrative, abolitionist Wendell Phillips compares Douglass with the signers of The Declaration of Independence: "You, too, publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you around." Does the Narrative share formal similarities with The Declaration of Independence as well as rhetorical ones? Compare Jefferson's characterization of the British king and his itemizing of grievances with the design and structure of Douglass's Narrative.

10. Compare and contrast A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. What formal, thematic, and historical continuities exist between these indigenous genres?

11. In The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, Douglass writes that the reformer's heart "may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young," and that "were the nation older," its "great streams" may dry up, leaving "the sad tale of departed glory." Explain why Douglass takes hope from America's youth, and contrast this expression with the twentieth-century poet Robinson Jeffers's sentiments in Shine, Perishing Republic.

12. Trace Douglass's views concerning the role of reform and dissent in the American republic in The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.

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Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 3: Early Nineteenth Century - Frederick Douglass. " PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap3/douglass.html (provide page date or date of your login).