My Bondage and My Freedom

426 Pages·2014·1.46 MB·English

by  Frederick Douglass

MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM
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FREDERICK DOUGLASS
My Bondage
and
My Freedom
Introduction and Notes by
DAVID W. BLIGHT
New Haven & London
First published in the United States of America by
Miller, Orton & Mulligan 1855.
This edition published by Yale University Press 2014.
Introduction and notes copyright ∫ 2014 by David W. Blight.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustra-
tions, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of
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Designed by James J. Johnson.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Douglass, Frederick, 1818–1895.
My bondage and my freedom / Frederick Douglass ; introduction and notes
by David W. Blight.
pages cm
‘‘First published in the United States of America by Miller, Orton &
Mulligan 1855. This edition published by Yale University Press 2014.
Introduction and notes copyright 2014 by David W. Blight.’’
ISBN 978-0-300-19059-5 (pbk.)
1. Douglass, Frederick, 1818–1895. 2. African American abolitionists—
Biography. 3. Abolitionists—United States—Biography. 4. Antislavery
movements—United States—History—19th century. 5. Fugitive slaves—
Maryland—Biography. 6. Slaves—Maryland—Social conditions—19th
century. 7. Plantation life—Maryland—History—19th century. I. Blight,
David W. II. Title.
E449.D738 2014
973.8092—dc23
[B]
2013018803
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction by David W. Blight ix
my bondage and my freedom
Editor’s Preface. 5
Introduction. 9
life as a slave.
Chapter I. The Author’s Childhood. 29
Chapter II. The Author Removed from His First Home. 37
Chapter III. The Author’s Parentage. 43
Chapter IV. A General Survey of the Slave Plantation. 51
Chapter V. Gradual Initiation Into the Mysteries of Slavery. 65
Chapter VI. Treatment of Slaves on Lloyd’s Plantation. 73
Chapter VII. Life in the Great House. 87
Chapter VIII. A Chapter of Horrors. 97
Chapter IX. Personal Treatment of the Author. 105
Chapter X. Life in Baltimore. 114
Chapter XI. ‘‘A Change Came O’er the Spirit of My Dream.’’ 122
vi contents
Chapter XII. Religious Nature Awakened. 132
Chapter XIII. The Vicissitudes of Slave Life. 140
Chapter XIV. Experience in St. Michael’s. 150
Chapter XV. Covey, the Negro Breaker. 165
Chapter XVI. Another Pressure of the Tyrant’s Vice. 179
Chapter XVII. The Last Flogging. 187
Chapter XVIII. New Relations and Duties. 200
Chapter XIX. The Run-away Plot. 216
Chapter XX. Apprenticeship Life. 242
Chapter XXI. My Escape from Slavery. 255
life as a freeman.
Chapter XXII. Liberty Attained. 269
Chapter XXIII. Introduced to the Abolitionists. 286
Chapter XXIV. Twenty-one Months in Great Britain. 292
Chapter XXV. Various Incidents. 314
appendix,
containing extracts from speeches, etc.
Reception Speech at Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England,
May 12, 1846. 329
Letter to His Old Master. 345
The Nature of Slavery. 354
Inhumanity of Slavery. 361
What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 368
The Internal Slave Trade. 374
The Slavery Party. 379
The Anti-Slavery Movement. 386
Acknowledgments
For the idea and for the graceful guidance of this new edition of
Frederick Douglass’s second autobiography into print, I am grateful
to the editorial team at Yale University Press. Under Chris Rogers’s
leadership, Sarah Miller invited me to work on this edition; her
conversations, patience, and good sense have been indispensable.
Heather Gold managed the details of illustrations, copyediting, and
readers’ reports.
Long ago, I edited and introduced a new edition of Douglass’s
first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An
American Slave. Introducing and preparing notes for My Bondage
and My Freedom, a much longer and more complex work, is a special
privilege and, for those of us who study this former slave’s life and
work, an intellectual feast as well. For various kinds of inspiration, as
well as intellectual and scholarly help in bringing this volume to fru-
ition, I wish to thank Peter Almond, Marsha Andrews, Robin Con-
don, Jeannine DeLombard, Walter and Linda Evans, Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., Philip Kunhardt, Rudy Langlais, Jack McKivigan, Ken
Morris, Priscilla Morris, Caryl Phillips, Dana Schaffer, David Spatz,
James Stewart, and Tom Thurston. I am especially grateful to several
vii
viii acknowledgments
scholars of Douglass, of James McCune Smith, and of the slave nar-
ratives generally: William Andrews, the late Dickson Preston, John
David Smith, John Stauffer, and Robert Stepto. Zoe Trodd provided
timely aid and expertise on the textual and visual Douglass and espe-
cially on the means of locating the photograph for the cover. I am
particularly thankful to Richard Newman for his reading of the intro-
duction and notes. His assessment was brilliantly critical and his sug-
gestions invaluable. My agent, Wendy Strothman, was, as always, a
source of guidance through the thickets of publishing.
Above all, I am fortunate that Douglass still insists on being my
problem and my muse.
David W. Blight
New Haven, Connecticut
Introduction
david w. blight
‘‘His Wonderful Memory’’
In 1818, in Talbot County on Maryland’s eastern shore, one of
the greatest stories in American history began at the north-
west corner of a horseshoe bend in the Tuckahoe River, just
above its muddy banks and layers of lush reeds, around a
humble cabin managed by Betsy Bailey (a slave) and her husband,
Isaac Bailey (a free black man). There, in the cabin on the Holme Hill
farm, or perhaps in a slave quarter some few hundred yards away,
Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
(so named by his mother). He was the son of Harriet Bailey, one of
five daughters of Betsy Bailey, and in all likelihood his mother’s white
master. He saw his mother for the last time in 1825, at age seven; she
died the following year. Douglass never knew the accurate identity of
his father, although some circumstantial evidence indicates that it
was probably either his first owner, Aaron Anthony, or his second
owner, Thomas Auld, to whom he was bequeathed on Anthony’s
death. Douglass was, therefore, in the fullest sense an orphan long in
search of father and mother figures as well as any semblance of a
secure sense of home.
ix