Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Frederick’s grandmother Betsey served as a kind of surrogate mother. Betsey and her husband, Isaac Bailey, Frederick’s grandfather, lived in a cabin approximately 12 miles from the enormous Lloyd plantation. Frederick lived in the cabin with his grandparents until he was seven years old. When the time comes for Frederick to leave the cabin and go to the plantation, Betsey walks the 12 miles with her grandson, carrying him part of the way on her shoulders.

Captain Anthony, “Old Master,” was Frederick’s first legal owner. When Frederick first arrives on the Lloyd plantation, where Captain Anthony resides, “Old Master” takes no notice of the boy. In time, Frederick sees Captain Anthony commit shocking acts of cruelty. One of the book’s main themes, however, is that slavery destroyed the lives and characters of slaves and slaveholders alike. Captain Anthony serves as the first illustration of this theme. Frederick thinks “Old Master” a deeply unhappy man but not a monstrous one; by nature, in fact, he was no better or worse than many men of the North. Slavery brought out the monster.

Daughter of “Old Master” Captain Anthony, Lucretia occupies an exalted place in Douglass’s memory for she somehow transcended her surroundings and showed young Frederick as much kindness as was possible under the slave system. On nights when Frederick is hungry, he sings outside her bedroom window, and she responds with bread. When he gets into a fight, she bandages his wounds. When her father dies, Lucretia inherits Frederick, but her death a short time later leaves her husband, Captain Thomas Auld, as Frederick’s legal owner.

Upon the death of his wife Lucretia, Captain Thomas Auld took legal possession of Frederick. At first, Frederick thinks his new master “incapable of a noble action” (83). Fresh from Baltimore, where he lived for seven years and developed aspirations toward freedom, teenaged Frederick strikes Auld as defiant and in need of breaking. Auld sends Frederick to live and work on the farm of Edward Covey, a notorious “negro-breaker.” When Covey bludgeons Frederick with a piece of wood, Auld shows his young slave neither compassion nor mercy. Time, however, might have softened Auld’s disposition. After Frederick is thrown in jail for plotting an escape from slavery, Auld chooses not to sell him to the Deep South as other angry, frightened, and vengeful masters often did to such troublemakers, but instead sends him back to Baltimore to learn a trade. Finally, and remarkably, in 1877, nearly 40 years after Douglass’s successful escape, the two men meet at Auld’s home in St. Michaels, Maryland. They converse for 20 minutes. There is rehashing of old grievances. Auld tells Douglass that he was too smart for slavery and was right to have run away. Douglass thanks Auld and assures his former master that he ran away from slavery itself, not from Auld personally. The two part, and Auld dies shortly thereafter.

The cruelest overseer the Lloyd plantation’s slaves have ever known, Gore commits shocking acts of violence, including the cold-blooded murder of Bill Denby. Gore appears in only one chapter, and in that chapter he occupies but two paragraphs, yet he emerges as one of the book’s most unforgettable figures, in part because of Douglass’s description—e.g., “There was a stern will, an iron-like reality about him, which would easily have made him chief of a band of pirates” (46)—and in part because Gore appears to represent the distilled essence of slavery’s evil.

Wife of Hugh Auld, brother-in-law to Thomas Auld, Sophia treats Frederick with such kindness upon his arrival in Baltimore that the boy “came to regard her as something more akin to a mother than a slaveholding mistress” (57). When he learns that Sophia has been teaching a slave to read, however, Hugh Auld erupts in anger and forbids her from continuing the lessons. Henceforth, Sophia’s once-kindly disposition toward Frederick changes. From this incident, Frederick learns the connection between knowledge and freedom. He also begins to understand slavery’s corrosive effect on even the best of souls.

A Black man who lives in Baltimore, Lawson introduces Frederick to the true, benevolent spirit of Christianity. Lawson tells Frederick “to pray, and to ‘cast all my care upon God,’” after which “I finally found my burden lightened, and my heart relieved” (69). In addition to religious instruction, Lawson gives Frederick the older male role model the boy desperately needs.

The “negro-breaker,” Edward Covey has a reputation for transforming recalcitrant young slaves into obedient field hands. Frederick spends the calendar year 1834 working long hours and suffering inhumane treatment on Covey’s farm. Everything in Covey’s character, from his violent outbursts to his hypocritical affectations of piety, renders him the book’s most repellent figure. He is also noteworthy as the first tyrant Frederick openly resists. Following an epic fight in which Frederick gets the best of Covey, the “negro-breaker” never again tries to whip the boy. From this life-changing act of defiance, Frederick learns the importance of courage and a willingness to fight—two qualities he cultivates in himself and most admires in others.

Sandy first appears as a good Samaritan who gives food and shelter to a battered, bloodied, exhausted Frederick, fresh from a bludgeoning at the hands of the merciless Covey. Later, Sandy is one of five close friends whom Frederick recruits for his runaway plot. When the plot is foiled, and when all conspirators except Sandy are thrown in jail, Frederick cannot help but wonder if Sandy betrayed them. Curiously, Douglass does not dwell on Sandy’s possible betrayal, perhaps because Douglass understands that Sandy embodied the fear and subservience that often turned slaves into informants for their masters. After all, an escape attempt, successful or otherwise, always threatened to bring retribution upon those left behind in slavery.

The unnamed “German blacksmith” appears only once in the entire book, yet he rates as an important and memorable figure. A fellow passenger on the train from Baltimore to Philadelphia, the blacksmith, whom Frederick “knew well,” almost certainly recognizes the fugitive as he is making his escape from slavery, but the blacksmith says nothing: “I really believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray me” (166). Considering the long train of events yet to unfold in Douglass’s future career as an abolitionist and civil-rights advocate, the blacksmith’s decision to remain silent certainly had world-changing consequences for the better. It also proves that there are no “small” acts of courage.

Architect of the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, Brown emerges as a hero of Douglass’s narrative. Douglass meets Brown in 1847 and comes away from the meeting with severe doubts that slavery can be abolished without violence. Brown shares his plan to raise an “armed force” that will use the mountains as a base of operations from which to harass slaveholders and eventually destroy slavery itself (230). In the mid-1850s, Brown fought slaveholding ruffians in “Bleeding Kansas” and even committed acts of terror on behalf of the slave’s freedom. The ill-fated assault on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859, brought the nation closer to civil war, made Brown a martyr in anti-slavery circles, and temporarily sent Douglass into exile. The Appendix to the book’s third part includes the full text of a speech honoring John Brown that Douglass delivered at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, on May 30, 1881.

The 16th president of the United States, Lincoln joins John Brown in Douglass’s pantheon of American heroes. Early in the Civil War, beset by problems hitherto unimaginable, Lincoln did not immediately make slavery’s abolition a Union war aim. On January 1, 1863, however, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in rebel areas, instantly transforming a war for union into a war for abolition. Douglass describes several visits to the White House, once to meet Lincoln and express concerns over the treatment of Black troops, and again at the president’s invitation to discuss ways that the Emancipation Proclamation might be made more effective in rescuing slaves. Douglass also attended the 1865 inauguration and heard the president’s breathtaking Second Inaugural Address. The Appendix to the book’s second part includes the full text of Douglass’s Oration on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument, in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, delivered in Washington, DC, on April 14, 1876.