Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

On New Year’s Day 1834, Frederick makes the seven-mile trek from St. Michaels to the home of Edward Covey, a man notorious on the Eastern Shore for his ability to transform recalcitrant slaves into obedient field hands. Here Frederick will “sound profounder depths in slave life” (90). An ox-cart accident on his third day with Covey brings on the first of many whippings. Hard labor from dawn to dusk and often beyond, unlike anything he experienced in Baltimore, makes Frederick’s life a living hell.

Much like Master Thomas Auld, Covey is a hypocrite in piety, a Christian for the sake of appearances only. Covey’s “religion was a thing altogether apart from his worldly concerns. He knew nothing of it as a holy principle directing and controlling his daily life and making the latter conform to the requirements of the gospel” (97). For instance, Covey keeps a female slave named Caroline, whom he deliberately quarters in the same room as one of his hired field hands in hopes that she will become pregnant and thereby add to his stock of enslaved humans. On Sundays, Frederick watches with mournful jealousy as passing ships sail out toward Chesapeake Bay.

On a sweltering day in August 1834, in the midst of grueling labor, Frederick collapses with dizziness and a pounding headache. Convinced that the boy is faking illness, Covey kicks him and then strikes him on the head with a piece of wood, causing a gash and eventually a scar that is visible into Douglass’s old age. Frederick flees into the woods and once again collapses. As he lies there, hiding from Covey, bleeding profusely, his mind oscillates along “the whole scale or circle of belief or unbelief, from faith in the overruling Providence of God, to the blackest atheism” (103).

Desperate for relief and protection, Frederick staggers for seven miles on the road back to St. Michaels, where he appears before Master Thomas Auld and begs him not to return him to the monster Covey. Auld accuses Frederick of laziness and orders him back to Covey’s immediately, though the master does relent a bit in allowing Frederick to stay the night.

The next morning, Frederick sets out, battered and sleep-deprived, for Covey’s. Catching sight of the returning fugitive, Covey charges him, apparently hell-bent on whipping the boy, but Frederick evades the “negro-breaker” and hides in the woods, where he spends much of the day praying. It seems his prayers are answered, for a fellow slave named Sandy, who is on his way to visit his wife, happens upon Frederick and offers him both food and shelter for the night.

The next day, Frederick has no choice but to return to Covey. It is Sunday, which means the putting on of pious airs, so Covey keeps his wrath in check for 24 hours. On Monday, the monster returns, determined to give Frederick the flogging of his life, only this time Frederick physically resists. In an epic fight that lasts much of the morning, Frederick matches Covey blow for blow and even gets the better of him at times. It was, Douglass reflects, “the turning point in my ‘life as a slave.’ It rekindled in my breast the smoldering embers of liberty. It brought up my Baltimore dreams and revived a sense of my own manhood” (115). He never forgets the lesson his own courage taught him. Neither, apparently, does Covey, who never again attempts to whip Frederick.