Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1881

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Part 2, Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Second Part”

Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Impressions Abroad”

Following the 1845 publication of his narrative, Douglass “was led to seek a refuge in monarchical England from the dangers of republican slavery” (194). In and out of Parliament, he observes some of the mid-19th century’s leading statesmen, such as Sir Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli, who face off in debates over repeal of the corn laws. Daniel O’Connell, who “would shake the hand of no slaveholder,” welcomes Douglass to Ireland (199). In what he calls “the meeting of two centuries,” Douglass and several of his abolitionist compatriots are introduced to Thomas Clarkson, anti-slavery activist of 60 years and a one-time colleague of William Wilberforce.

While touring the British Isles, Douglass experiences none of the color prejudice that prevails in the United States. When traveling abroad, national pride can serve as a check upon excessive criticisms of one’s own homeland, but in Douglass’s case that does not hold true, for “America will not allow her children to love her” (203). On several occasions, in public settings, Douglass calls attention to the slaveholding republic’s injustices and hypocrisies. Fear of capture and re-enslavement constitute one of the grossest of slavery’s many injustices. Happily, thanks to prominent English friends such as Miss Ellen Richardson and Mrs. Anna Richardson, Douglass raises enough money to purchase his freedom from Thomas Auld and thereby lift the standing bounty on his head.

Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Triumphs and Trials”

Upon his return from Europe, Douglass settles in Rochester and begins publishing an anti-slavery newspaper, The North Star. Although he neither competes with William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator nor splits with Garrison himself, Douglass does depart from Garrisonian orthodoxy in one important way. While Garrison and his most ardent supporters condemn the American Union as an unholy alliance with slaveholding sinners, Douglass comes to regard the US Constitution as a pro-liberty document, in part because the words “slave” or “slavery” never appear in the Constitution, and in part because of what he takes to be the Framers’ clear intent.

Meanwhile, life in Rochester presents constant reminders of that oppressive system. In addition to publishing his newspaper, Douglass serves as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, a dangerous task that involves, among other things, housing fugitive slaves so as to shield them from the law while at the same time quietly raising money to help fund their safe passage to Canada. Likewise, when his daughter faces segregation and mistreatment at the Tracy Seminary for young girls, Douglass fights the headmistress, the board of education, and popular prejudice in a successful crusade against all such barriers in Rochester.

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “John Brown and Mrs. Stowe”

In 1847, Douglass meets John Brown, “whose name has now passed into history, as that of one of the most marked characters and greatest heroes known to American fame” (229). Brown’s history-making exploits were a decade or more in the future, but on this night, as he explains to Douglass his plan for one day arming and liberating the slaves, Brown impresses Douglass as a fervent and genuine friend to the oppressed:

Had some men made such a display of rigid virtue, I should have rejected it, as affected, false, and hypocritical, but in John Brown, I felt it to be real as iron or granite. From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass., 1847, while I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful of its peaceful abolition (231).

Events accelerate. The 1848 Free-Soil Convention proved an important step in the eventual supplanting of the Whig Party with the avowedly anti-slavery Republican Party. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which put the full power of the federal government at the disposal of slaveholders and slavecatchers, made the work of the Underground Railroad infinitely more dangerous and urgent. In Andover, Massachusetts, Douglass meets with Harriet Beecher Stowe, celebrated author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an anti-slavery novel of “marvelous depth and power” as well as “amazing, instantaneous, and universal” influence (237).

Part 2, Chapters 6-8 Analysis

On a visit to Great Britain, Douglass discovers that color prejudice does not infect all parts of the world—that it is, in fact, an American phenomenon. Americans might respond that the British Empire in the 18th century had been the Atlantic world’s largest slave trader, imposing on its colonies what it would not tolerate at home. Furthermore, aristocratic attitudes of a different kind most certainly prevailed throughout Europe. Understandably, though, neither Britain’s past transgressions nor Europe’s current prejudices concerned Douglass. They might even have reinforced his convictions. After all, if monarchical Europe, with all its haughtiness and tribalism, could welcome him, why did the sprawling American republic, boasting of man’s equality and natural rights, insist on persecuting him?

Douglass also concludes that the persistence of slavery and color prejudice stems from defects not in the nation’s founding but in the character of its present inhabitants. For Douglass, this is a critical discovery. It means, for one thing, that the US Constitution, in which the word slave never appears, cannot be read as a pro-slavery document. The fact that some of the men who signed the Constitution were themselves slaveholders does not alter the document’s fundamental nature. Modern students might scoff, but Douglass is correct. We know that the Constitution did not endorse slavery because we know exactly what a slavery-endorsing constitution looks like. A glance at the 1861 Confederate Constitution, with its new and myriad protections for slavery, shows what slaveholders themselves knew to have been missing from the original US version. In any case, Douglass’s constitutional reasoning preserves in his mind the moral integrity of the American founding. In so doing, it cast the apostates of his own era in an even darker light.

Readers might well conclude that of all the people Douglass ever encountered, from dignitaries to common laborers, no one made a stronger impression on him than did John Brown. Although Brown’s exploits at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, are 12 years in the future when Douglass meets him, the mental and moral qualities that led him to undertake that raid are very much apparent. This meeting complicates Douglass’s outlook. At the same time that he is learning to believe in the US Constitution and political system, he is also developing grave doubts about the prospect of peaceful emancipation.