By FREDERICK DOUGLASS

PREFACE

In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti- slavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with FREDERICK DOUGLASS, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a stranger to nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made his escape from the south- ern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his curiosity excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the abolitionists,--of whom he had heard a somewhat vague description while he was a slave,--he was in- duced to give his attendance, on the occasion al- luded to, though at that time a resident in New Bedford. Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!--fortunate for the millions of his manacled brethren, yet pant- ing for deliverance from their awful thraldom!--for- tunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of universal liberty!-- fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has already done so much to save and bless! --fortunate for a large circle of friends and acquaint- ances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits of character, by his ever- abiding remembrance of those who are in bonds, as being bound with them!--fortunate for the multitudes, in various parts of our republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the subject of slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or roused to virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against the enslavers of men!--fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into the field of public use- fulness, "gave the world assurance of a MAN," quick- ened the slumbering energies of his soul, and con- secrated him to the great work of breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the oppressed go free! I shall never forget his first speech at the conven- tion--the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind-- the powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory, completely taken by surprise--the applause which followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous remarks. I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment; certainly, my perception of the enormous outrage which is in- flicted by it, on the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered far more

clear than ever. There stood one, in physical proportion and stature commanding and exact--in intellect richly endowed--in natural elo- quence a prodigy--in soul manifestly "created but a little lower than the angels"-- yet a slave, ay, a fugi- tive slave,--trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the love of God and humanity! Ca- pable of high attainments as an intellectual and moral being--needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him an orna- ment to society and a blessing to his race--by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless! A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on Mr. DOUGLASS to address the convention: He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and embar- rassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a novel position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the audience that slav- ery was a poor school for the human intellect and heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble thoughts and thrilling reflections. As soon as he had taken his seat, filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared that PATRICK HENRY, of revolutionary fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to from the lips of that hunted fugitive. So I believed at that time--such is my belief now. I reminded the audience of the peril which surrounded this self- emancipated young man at the North,--even in Mas- sachusetts, on the soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary sires; and I ap- pealed to them, whether they would ever allow him to be carried back into slavery,-- law or no law, con- stitution or no constitution. The response was unani- mous and in thunder-tones--"NO!" "Will you succor and protect him as a brother-man--a resident of the old Bay State?" "YES!" shouted the whole mass, with an energy so startling, that the ruthless tyrants south of Mason and Dixon's line might almost have heard the mighty burst of feeling, and recognized it as the pledge of an invincible determination, on the part of those who gave it, never to betray him that wanders, but to hide

the outcast, and firmly to abide the consequences. It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr. DOUGLASS could be persuaded to conse- crate his time and talents to the promotion of the anti- slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be given to it, and a stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern prejudice against a colored complexion. I therefore endeavored to instil hope and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to engage in a vocation so anomalous and re- sponsible for a person in his situation; and I was seconded in this effort by warm-hearted friends, es- pecially by the late General Agent of the Massa- chusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. JOHN A. COLLINS, whose judgment in this instance entirely coincided with my own. At first, he could give no encourage- ment; with unfeigned diffidence, he expressed his conviction that he was not adequate to the perform- ance of so great a task; the path marked out was wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely appre- hensive that he should do more harm than good. After much deliberation, however, he consented to make a trial; and ever since that period, he has acted as a lecturing agent, under the auspices either of the American or the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In labors he has been most abundant; and his success in combating prejudice, in gaining proselytes, in agi- tating the public mind, has far surpassed the most sanguine expectations that were raised at the com- mencement of his brilliant career. He has borne him- self with gentleness and meekness, yet with true manliness of character. As a public speaker, he excels in pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency of language. There is in him that union of head and heart, which is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of the hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May he continue to "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God," that he may be increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity, whether at home or abroad! It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most efficient advocates of the slave population, now before the public, is a fugitive slave, in the person of FREDERICK DOUGLASS; and that the free colored population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their own number, in the per- son of CHARLES LENOX REMOND,

whose eloquent appeals have extorted the highest applause of multi- tudes on both sides of the Atlantic. Let the calum- niators of the colored race despise themselves for their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and hence- forth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point of human excellence. It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relation- ship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bond- age, under which they have been groaning for cen- turies! To illustrate the effect of slavery on the white man,--to show that he has no powers of endurance, in such a condition, superior to those of his black brother,-- DANIEL O'CONNELL, the distinguished advocate of universal emancipation, and the mighti- est champion of prostrate but not conquered Ireland, relates the following anecdote in a speech delivered by him in the Conciliation Hall, Dublin, before the Loyal National Repeal Association, March 31, 1845. "No matter," said Mr. O'CONNELL, "under what specious term it may disguise itself, slavery is still hideous. ~It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize every noble faculty of man.~ An American sailor, who was cast away on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three years, was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and stultified--he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his native language, could only ut- ter some savage gibberish between Arabic and Eng- lish, which nobody could understand, and which even he himself found difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the humanizing influence of THE DOMESTIC INSTITUTION!" Admitting this to have been an ex- traordinary case of mental deterioration, it proves at least that the white slave can sink as low in the scale of humanity as the black one. Mr. DOUGLASS has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in his own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to employ some one else. It is, therefore,

entirely his own produc- tion; and, considering how long and dark was the ca- reer he had to run as a slave,--how few have been his opportunities to improve his mind since he broke his iron fetters,--it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit,-- without being filled with an unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable system,--without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm is not shortened that it cannot save,--must have a flinty heart, and be qualified to act the part of a trafficker "in slaves and the souls of men." I am con- fident that it is essentially true in all its statements; that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather than over- states a single fact in regard to SLAVERY AS IT IS. The experience of FREDERICK DOUGLASS, as a slave, was not a peculiar one; his lot was not especially a hard one; his case may be regarded as a very fair specimen of the treatment of slaves in Maryland, in which State it is conceded that they are better fed and less cruelly treated than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana. Many have suffered incomparably more, while very few on the plantations have suf- fered less, than himself. Yet how deplorable was his situation! what terrible chastisements were inflicted upon his person! what still more shocking outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even by those professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest extremities! how heavy was the midnight of woe which shrouded in blackness the last ray of hope, and filled the future with terror and gloom! what longings after freedom took possession of his breast, and how his misery augmented, in proportion as he grew reflective and intelligent,--thus demonstrating that a happy slave is an extinct man! how he thought, reasoned, felt, under the lash of the driver, with the chains upon his limbs! what perils he en- countered in his endeavors to escape from his hor- rible

doom! and how signal have been his deliverance and preservation in the midst of a nation of pitiless enemies! This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of great eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them all is the de- scription DOUGLASS gives of his feelings, as he stood soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being a freeman, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay--viewing the receding vessels as they flew with their white wings before the breeze, and apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit of freedom. Who can read that passage, and be in- sensible to its pathos and sublimity? Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library of thought, feeling, and sentiment--all that can, all that need be urged, in the form of expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of crimes,-- making man the prop- erty of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system, which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image, reduces those who by crea- tion were crowned with glory and honor to a level with four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in hu- man flesh above all that is called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that continually? What does its pres- ence imply but the absence of all fear of God, all regard for man, on the part of the people of the United States? Heaven speed its eternal overthrow! So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that they are stubbornly incredu- lous whenever they read or listen to any recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They do not deny that the slaves are held as prop- erty; but that terrible fact seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure to outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them of cruel scourgings, of mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and blood, of the banishment of all light and knowl- edge, and they affect to be greatly indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstate- ments, such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! As if all these direful outrages were not the natural results of slavery! As if it were less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition of a thing, than to give him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him of necessary food and clothing! As if whips, chains, thumb-screws, paddles, blood- hounds, overseers, drivers, patrols,

were not all in- dispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give protection to their ruthless oppressors! As if, when the marriage institution is abolished, concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound; when all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any barrier remains to protect the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when absolute power is assumed over life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destruc- tive sway! Skeptics of this character abound in so- ciety. In some few instances, their incredulity arises from a want of reflection; but, generally, it indicates a hatred of the light, a desire to shield slavery from the assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored race, whether bond or free. Such will try to discredit the shocking tales of slaveholding cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative; but they will labor in vain. Mr. DOUGLASS has frankly disclosed the place of his birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and soul, and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has alleged against them. His statements, there- fore, may easily be disproved, if they are untrue. In the course of his Narrative, he relates two in- stances of murderous cruelty,--in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging to a neigh- boring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten within his lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer blew out the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape a bloody scourging. Mr. DOUGLASS states that in neither of these instances was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial investigation. The Baltimore Amer- ican, of March 17, 1845, relates a similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity--as fol- lows:--"~Shooting a slave.~-- We learn, upon the au- thority of a letter from Charles county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city, that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Mat- thews, and whose father, it is believed, holds an of- fice at Washington, killed one of the slaves upon his father's farm by shooting him. The letter states that young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm; that he gave an order to the servant, which was dis- obeyed, when he proceeded to the house, ~obtained a gun, and, returning, shot the servant.~ He immedi- ately, the letter continues, fled to his father's resi- dence, where he still remains unmolested."--Let it never be

forgotten, that no slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on the person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony of colored witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are adjudged to be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though they were indeed a part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal protection in fact, whatever there may be in form, for the slave population; and any amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them with impunity. Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more horrible state of society? The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters is vividly described in the fol- lowing Narrative, and shown to be any thing but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the highest degree pernicious. The testimony of Mr. DOUGLASS, on this point, is sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable. "A slave- holder's profession of Christianity is a palpable im- posture. He is a felon of the highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no importance what you put in the other scale." Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you pre- pared to do and dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what may --cost what it may--inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the breeze, as your religious and po- litical motto--"NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!" WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON, ~May~ 1, 1845. LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ. BOSTON, APRIL 22, 1845. My Dear Friend:

You remember the old fable of "The Man and the Lion," where the lion complained that he should not be so misrepresented "when the lions wrote his- tory." I am glad the time has come when the "lions write history." We have been left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the involuntary evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest sufficiently satisfied with what, it is evident, must be, in general, the results of such a relation, with- out seeking farther to find whether they have fol- lowed in every instance. Indeed, those who stare at the half-

peck of corn a week, and love to count the lashes on the slave's back, are seldom the "stuff" out of which reformers and abolitionists are to be made. I remember that, in 1838, many were waiting for the results of the West India experiment, before they could come into our ranks. Those "results" have come long ago; but, alas! few of that number have come with them, as converts. A man must be dis- posed to judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the produce of sugar,--and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it starves men and whips women,-- before he is ready to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life. I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of God's children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice done them. Ex- perience is a keen teacher; and long before you had mastered your A B C, or knew where the "white sails" of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul. In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what it is at its best estate--gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture, as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi sweeps along. Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel, persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No one-sided portrait, --no wholesale complaints,--but strict justice done, whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for a moment, the deadly system with which it was strangely allied. You have been with us, too, some years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights, which your race enjoy at the North, with that "noon of night" under which they labor south of Mason and Dixon's line. Tell us whether, after all, the half- free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than the pampered slave of the rice swamps!

In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out some rare specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which even you have drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no individual ills, but such as must mingle always and necessarily in the lot of every slave. They are the essential ingredients, not the occasional results, of the system. After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years ago, when you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace, you may remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of all. With the exception of a vague de- scription, so I continued, till the other day, when you read me your memoirs. I hardly knew, at the time, whether to thank you or not for the sight of them, when I reflected that it was still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for honest men to tell their names! They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the Declaration of Independence with the halter about their necks. You, too, publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you around. In all the broad lands which the Constitution of the United States over- shadows, there is no single spot,--however narrow or desolate,--where a fugitive slave can plant himself and say, "I am safe." The whole armory of North- ern Law has no shield for you. I am free to say that, in your place, I should throw the MS. into the fire. You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, en- deared as you are to so many warm hearts by rare gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to the service of others. But it will be owing only to your labors, and the fearless efforts of those who, trampling the laws and Constitution of the country under their feet, are determined that they will "hide the out- cast," and that their hearths shall be, spite of the law, an asylum for the oppressed, if, some time or other, the humblest may stand in our streets, and bear witness in safety against the cruelties of which he has been the victim. Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing hearts which welcome your story, and form your best safeguard in telling it, are all beating contrary to the "statute in such case made and provided." Go on, my dear friend, till you, and those who, like you, have been saved, so as by fire, from the dark prison- house, shall stereotype these free, illegal pulses into statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the house of refuge for

the oppressed,--till we no longer merely "~hide~ the outcast," or make a merit of standing idly by while he is hunted in our midst; but, consecrat- ing anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the oppressed, proclaim our WELCOME to the slave so loudly, that the tones shall reach every hut in the Carolinas, and make the broken-hearted bondman leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts. God speed the day! ~Till then, and ever,~

~Yours truly,~ ~WENDELL PHILLIPS~ FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Fred- erick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon there- after he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massa- chusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him as an agent. He was such an impres- sive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he wrote NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

During the Civil War he as- sisted in the recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and consistently argued for the emancipation of slaves. After the war he was active in securing and protecting the rights of the freemen. In his later years, at different times, he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshall and recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti. His other autobiographical works are MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM and LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS,

published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. He died in 1895.