April 7, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, he was separated from his mother, never knew his father, and was forced to compete with dogs for food—but through illicit education and sheer determination, Frederick Douglass broke the mental bonds of slavery before breaking free from his physical chains and forging a path that would change American history forever. Douglass interpreter and poet Nathan Richardson, along with Dr. Joey Baretta of the Civitas Institute at UT Austin, tell the story of this remarkable man—and explain how he became his own man.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, the story of the most photographed man of
the nineteenth century, not Abraham Lincoln, but Frederick Douglas. Here
to tell the story of Douglas's life is Nathan Richardson,
an interpreter of the man himself and playing the man
(00:33):
himself for us in this story. Also Joey Barretta, an
expert on Douglas, and a Civitas Institute postdoctoral fellow at
U T. Austin. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Good morning, fellow citizens. It is indeed, and I'm here
with unusual diffidence to talk to you about the peculiar
topic of my life as a slave. I assure you
that the platform which I I stand now and the
place where I was born in Talbot County, near Saint
Michael's along the Tuckahoa River is considerable, and the difficulty
(01:10):
in getting from the former to the latter is by
no means light.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
The circumstances into which he was born really give you
some understanding of what it must have been like to
be a slave. It's a very demoralizing institution.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I was born in Talbot County, near Saint Michael's around
the year eighteen eighteen.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
He doesn't even know his date of birth for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
The closest we could come would be planting time or
harvest time.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
That itself was a part of the feature of slavery.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
The slave master did not want you to have any
knowledge whatsoever. An educated slave is a worthless slave, would
be the mantra of the slave master.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
The enslaved person could not think of himself as someone
belonging to something greater than his master's domain.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I was taken away from my mother before I haven't
finished nursing. She was sold to another plantation about twelve
miles away. I never saw my mother doing the light
of day. She would occasionally walk twelve miles twenty four
miles round trip just to rock me to sleep at night,
and by the time I woke the next morning, she
(02:25):
would be gone back to her plantation to answer the
bell for hard labor.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
His father may have been a slave master, so Douglas
could have been conceived in a rape, and there's nothing
that could have been done about that.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I was raised by my grandmother, Betsey Bailey, who had
already given all the best years of her life to
Colonel Lloyd and Captain Anthony. She had already labored and
broke her back for him, and then now relegated to
a hut outside the farm to raise small children like
myself and my cousins and other children. And so there
(03:04):
I was with my grandmother, and she corralled all the
children and kept us until that day came when she
would eventually have to walk us to the Great House.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
He didn't think of himself as a slave, because he
lived with his grandmother in a simple cabin in which
there was someone who loved and cared for him. But
he sort of began to understand he was a slave
because she would refer to somebody called old Master. He
didn't know who that was or fully what that meant,
but she spoke of him in such a tone that
Douglas took special notice of it. He begins to think,
(03:37):
who is this person? The problem comes when he is
of sufficient age to be productive at the master's house.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I remember the day my grandmother walked me, and I
knew that I probably would not come back with her
to her hut. We got to the Great House and
I was immediately struck by seeing cousins and other children
running around on the plantation. She said, go play with
your cousins. They're happy to see you. I was clinging
(04:04):
to her dress because I knew if I lost sight
of her, I might never see her again. But I
went over to the side of the building and I
just sit there and I cried because I knew this
was going to be something new that I've never seen before.
My cousins came to me, my brother Perry, my sister Eliza.
They came to me and tried to console me. Nothing
(04:26):
could console losing first your mother, then your grandmother. Now
for the first time, I'm seeing the absolute brutality of slavery.
That my master would take a young woman who had
interest in another young colored boy on another plantation. He
(04:46):
found out that she had gone out in the middle
of the night to see him, brought her into the kitchen,
put her on a stool, tied her hands to a joist,
and commenced to whip her on her back until the
blood ran down her back. Witnessing this sit me into
a terror, and so I started learning what this institution
(05:08):
of bondage is all about. That the master would whip
a slave for no other reason than to intimidate other
slaves not to disobey the rules of the day.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
People are bought and sold, and you can acquire more
of them to do the work that you deem necessary.
So it's really treating them akin to the cattle you
have on the farm. You breed them, you make them work,
you get rid of them whenever you will, and you
care for them enough that they don't die. But you're
treating them as an animal who don't have maybe clothing
(05:46):
and shoes and a bed, the things that most people
take for granted.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
My position as a young born on the plantation was
to two occasionally if a horse or a cow or
a hog got out of the gate, that I would
go and fetch that horse or cow and bring them back.
There was at once this particular horse that would always
run away to the next plantation, and I'd find them
every time in the same exact spot with a big
(06:12):
pile of hay eating his field. And for bringing him back,
I would get a reward of a biscuit or a
slipper of bacon. Let's just say. I occasionally would leave
the gate over. I had to do that because food
was rationing and clothing was rationing to the slaves two
linen shirts, one pair of pants, one pair of shoes,
(06:37):
one jacket, the whole of which could have cost no
more than seven dollars. The children too young to work
in the field would have received neither shoes, nor trousers,
nor jackets. Two linen shirts per year, and when those
fail you you to win naked for the rest of
the year, regardless of the weather. I can remember sleeping
(07:00):
on the cold, hard ground with a burlout bag over
my head, and in the winter, the frost biting my
fingers and toes, and the gash white enough to put
up penciling. This was my plight on that plantation until
I became such a news that I could get more
tasks when we come back.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
More of the remarkable story of Frederick Douglas here on
Our American Stories. Leehabeb here host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we bring you stories of America,
stories of us, and it's because of listeners like you
that we're able to tell the story of its great
and beautiful country every day. Our stories will always be
(07:44):
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American stories. Is it our American
stories dot com to give, give a little, give a lot,
anymount helps to our American Stories dot Com. And we
(08:09):
returned to our American Stories and the story of Frederick
Douglas telling it is Douglas interpreter Nathan Richardson playing the
part of Douglas himself and an expert on all things Douglas.
Joey BURRETTA. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
So, just as the family was destroyed because it made
a slave think of himself as something beyond the master's property,
education did the same thing.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well, my master's mistress called me and she said, Frederick,
we're going to send you to Baltimore to live with
our cousins, Q and Sophia All. Now, they are city
people and we don't want them laughing at you, So
we want you to go down to the creek and
(08:55):
wash yourself up. We're gonna give you your first pair
of parents. Can you imagine getting your first pair of
pants when you're eight years old. I ran down to
the creek, I spent half the day washing myself up.
I came back, I got my first pair of pants,
and they put me on a sloop sailing up the
Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore. Miss Sophia opened the door and
(09:23):
she said, Freddie, we've been waiting for you. Are you hungry?
Are you tired? Well? I was quite surprised a white
woman smiling, beaming at me, inviting me in. If even
if I had looked in the face of my slave
master on the plantation, I would have gotten knocked down
on chitute. She said, hold your head up, young man,
there's no need to be a shame here. I went
(09:45):
on in. You see, I was sent there to be
the helpmate for their young son, Master Thomas. He of
course was around my age, and I was to be
his butler, so to speak. In the mornings I would
walk him to school, and while he was at school,
I'd be at home doing his chores. Missus all miss Sophia,
(10:07):
she was an avid reader, a kind person.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
She had no slaves before she was married, so the
way she treated Douglas when he was a kid was
different than how a slave master would have. She treated
him like a child.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
She would occasionally, as she was reading the Bible of
the newspaper, share an ab or She with me. That
was until her husband, mister hugh came and he said, Sophia,
I understand you're teaching that boy how to read. She said, yes,
what harm could that do? If you give him an inch,
(10:40):
he'll take an l You'll make him good for nothing.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Master hugh Ald comes into the picture and says, it
would spoil the best slave in the world. It would
spoil him. It would make him unfit for his servile
menial task positions. In my household, slaves were to be
on edge and generally illiterate. Douglas will learn on his own.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
She stopped teaching me how to read. As a matter
of fact, anytime that I might be in a corner quiet,
trying to learn a letter or a word, she would
come and snatch the paper right out of my hand.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
And he says that from this moment where he wall
tells his wife she can no longer educate Douglas that
he first understood the pathway from slavery to freedom, and
the pathway from slavery to freedom then was knowledge.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
And once I had a few words to describe my
misery as a slave, my mind started to free. You know,
you cannot enslave a freed mind. Once your mind is free,
your body has to follow. And so I would have
to devise various methods to teach myself how to read
and write. As I was walking the boys to school
(11:51):
in the morning, they would always on the way to
school be talking about the lesson, reciting the ABC's, or
talking about some words. And I would say to Master Thomas,
I said, Master Thomas, do you believe that I can
make a W? And of course you would say, how
can you make a W? Who taught you how to
(12:11):
read and write? And I would say, never mind, never
mind who taught me how to make the W? But
I can make this W. And if I make a
W in this sand, you show me how to make
a queue. And then I would make the W in
the sand, and then he would be obliged to show
me how to make the Q, and then I would
have a que. Or we might be walking along and
(12:32):
I might say to young master Tom, Master Tom, the
biscuits on this morning's table were very good. I have
one in my pocket. Now, if you have a word
in your notebook, it would be food for my brain.
This biscuit in my pocket would be food for your stomach,
and we wouldn't make a trade. He would give me
(12:54):
the word, I would give him the biscuit, and we
would both be fed. This is how I taught myself
how to read and write. Well. Of course, the elementary
words and letters were not enough. As a matter of fact,
one of the books that I saw the young boys
carrying on their way back and forth to school was
(13:17):
a book called The Colombian Orator, full of great speeches and.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Poems, basically a collection of abolitionist writings.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I decided I would make the money to buy one myself.
I saw this Columbian Orator in a book shop down
on the streets of Baltimore. And so what I did.
I sat up my shoe stand on the streets of Baltimore.
I found myself a stump, some shoe polish, and a brush,
And as the men would pass by, I would yell
(13:48):
out to them, five cents to shine your shoes, sir,
one sense to dust you're off. And with seventy five
cents I purchased The Colombian Ortor.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
He began to see himself as a human being deserving
a better life than slavery had given to him, and
he questions Why am I in this position? What have
I done to deserve this? And he would say nothing.
And he begins to desire freedom when he learns that
something that was good for him, education was being taken away.
(14:22):
That is what education really did to shape his understanding
of why he wanted to be free.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in
public on the stage. And if I chanced to fall
below Desmophenes or Cicero, don't view me with a critic's
I but pass my imperfections by large streams from little
fountains flow, tall oaks from little acorns grow. And though
(14:53):
I am now small and young of judgment, weak and
feeble tongue, yet all no great learned men like me
once learned to read their ABC. And so.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I was studying, and that was a real problem.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
I had no desire to go back to the plantation.
But as the slave master said, and mister Hugh told
his wife, an educated slave is a worthless slave. And
of course they decided to send me back to Talbot County.
They put me under the servitude of an notorious slave
breaker by the name of mister Kobe. And so, for
(15:34):
the first time in my life. I found myself under
the lash.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Douglas is sent to the slave breaker around age sixteen,
and the goal of the slave breaker was to beat
into submission the slave, so when he goes back to
his master's domicile, he will be servile again. It's not
simply a literal beating through force, but a shaping of
the mind.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I am on that plantation a sign for about a year.
I saw the last almost every week for about six months.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
But Cuffy, this really horrible person who beats Douglas regularly,
also is in accordance with the general principal of slavery
that Douglas observes.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You know, there are two distinct differences in the Christianity
of the day, that of the slave holding master and
that of the true Jesus Christ. But I would hear
and see this parody every day in the life of
a slave and the slave master, who would be the
most pious man in the county, and then come home
(16:44):
and brutalize his slaves, and then they would be singing
in church heavenly union. And so I decided I would
write my own poem about this the parody. Come, senators,
hear me tell how pious Christ whip jack, and and
women buy, and children sell, and creach all the sellers
(17:04):
down the hell and sing of heavenly union. They loudly
talk of Christ reward and buying his image with a cord,
and scold and swing the lash of Horde and sell
their brother in the Lord to handcuff heavenly unions.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And you've been listening to Nathan Richardson playing Douglas himself,
and also Joey barretta an expert on all things Douglas,
tell the story of this great and remarkable man. Douglas
right there and then understood that education was his pathway
to freedom. When we come back, more of this remarkable
(17:45):
story of Frederick Douglas here on our American Stories. And
(18:08):
we returned to our American stories and the story of
Frederick Douglass when we last left off, Douglas had been
sent to a slave breaker, a punishment for his growing
desire to be free. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I found myself sitting just a few blades from the
Chesapeake Bay, looking at the ships sailing up to Annapolis,
and the only thing that gave me any kind of
hope were those white, billowing sails that represented some sort
of freedom.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Douglas talks about how, in the first six months of
being sent to Covey, the slave breaker, he had went
scarce a week without Covey whipping him. His back was sore.
Covey would resort to these tricks of deception. They worked
in all weathers he cold, rain, hail, snow. He would
always be required to work. He was required to work
(19:06):
until he collapse of exhaustion, and then he was expected
to work still more. The slave breaker had done his
job properly. That first six months of being beaten and
abused made him a slave again. However, that won't be
where the last six months end. He says that you
saw how a man was made a slave, you shall
(19:26):
see how a slave was made a man.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Mister Covey sent me on a task. He gave me
two unbroken oxen and a cart. He sent me down
to the woods to fill it up and bring wood
back to the farm. Well, never having driven oxen before.
It was a terrifying ordeal. We were halfway across the field,
the oxen were spooped. They ran through the woods, turned
(19:54):
the cart upside down. It took me two hours to
get the cart up right. Another two or three hours
to load the wood and head back to the house.
And then when I get back to the house again,
the oxen got spooked. They ran into the gate, broke
the wheel off and broke the gate off the fence. Well,
(20:15):
mister Kobe, he comes out, and he's very angry. He's
swearing he's gonna teach me a thing or two. He's
gonna give me the lash. For some reason, it did
not come Saturday Sunday, no lash. When he's coming from
church that Sunday, he says, Freddy, meet me in the barn.
(20:38):
We're gonna throw down some blades. I thought it was
kind of peculiar that he would be asking me to
throw down some blades on a Sunday on the Sabbath.
As soon as I walk into the barn, there he
stands with a rope and a lash. And I don't
know what came over me at that very moment, but
I decided that I would fight for my manhood. He
reaches over and tries to grab me and wear of
(21:00):
him by the throat. He called his overseer. He came
in the door, and as soon as he came in,
I gave him a swift kick in the stomach, and
he ran out coffee, and there we were. We were
fighting for another half an hour, or an hour at least,
until finally, mister Kobe he gives up, exhausted and pushes
me away, and he says, well, that will teach you
(21:22):
not to break my cart. He hadn't taught me anything
at all. As a matter of fact, I was the
one that had drew blood from him.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
So why does Douglas's last six months go better? It
is because Douglas fights back. That is how the slave
became a man. He calls this battle with mister Covey
as the turning point in his career as a slave.
He talks about it rekindling the few expiring embers of freedom,
a glorious resurrection from the tomb of slavery to the
(21:50):
heaven of freedom, and he resolves to fight for his freedom.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I was sitting there thinking about killing myself until I
came to the idea and the conclusion, why would I
kill myself a slave rather than die trying to run away?
Speaker 3 (22:06):
He resolved that although he was legally a slave in form,
he in his own mind was a human being and
a free person. He would no longer consider himself a slave.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I decided to come up with a plan that I
would get out of this place. Well, the only advantage
I had at that time was that on the weekends,
the colored people in Baltimore, they were given permission to
go down to the Camp Meetings, a place a gathering
where free and enslave colored people could get together and socialize,
(22:39):
could have sabbath sing songs, play games, and socialize. And
this is where I met Anna Murray. She was the
first of eight children to be born free, and she
was making her way as a housekeeper. We started to socialize,
and I was telling her that I was a slave,
that I might even be a slave for life, but
(23:02):
I certainly had designs that we might have a life together. Well,
Anna felt mutually, but she told me, she said, our children,
I don't want their father to be a slave. We
have to come up with some way to get you
out of this bondage. And so we made a plan.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
He talks about his escaped in his autobiographies. He sort
of censors the information in the first one because in
his escaped he had people help him along the way.
So Douglas was hired out in Baltimore to work in
the shipyards, caulking ships, that sort of thing. So what
did he do. Douglas disguises himself as a free black sailor,
(23:46):
and I.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Would catch a train out of Baltimore to Annapolis and
then to New York. And when I got on the train,
the conductor came up to me and he said, can
I have your freedom papers? Well, of course, and he
colored person traveling would have to show their freedom.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Papers, Douglas says, had the conductor looked carefully at this paper,
he would have found somebody who looked very differently than himself.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Colored sailors were permitted to travel if they were on
their way out to sea. And so when the conductor
walked up to me and asked me for my freedom papers,
I said, sir, I normally don't care my freedom papers
with me when I'm going out to sea, and he
waved me on. The next thing I know, I'm in
Annapolis and then Harvard to Grace and then New York.
(24:32):
For the first time, I am in free territory, but
still terrified. Even in New York, white or colored. A
bounty on a colored slave is considerable, and so I
had to be very careful I had to hide in
alleys and such until I was able to make my
way to the conductor of the underground Railroad, mister Ruggles.
(24:56):
And when I arrived at the house of mister Ruggles
and explained him my situation, he knew exactly what to do.
He said, so you tell me you've been working in
the shipyards in Fell's Point. You have a trade. Well,
there are ships in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It's a whaling town.
(25:16):
They're looking for green hands. So that's where we're gonna
send you. It sounded quite nicely, but I told him.
I said, well, I have another plan. I'm waiting on
my future wife, and I'm married to get here in
a few days. She arrived in New York and mister
Ruggles kind as he was, introduced us to a minister,
(25:39):
Reverend Pennington, and we got married. My wife was wearing
a plume colored dress. Mister and missus Frederick Augustus Johnson.
Of course that's my runaway name. We get to New
Bedford and our first place of staying is with Nan
(26:00):
and Polly Johnson. It seemed like every colored person that
ran away named himself Johnson. I told mister Johnson, I said, well,
I'm gonna need to find a new name. Well, mister
Johnson was reading a book at the time, a great
Irish tale, Lady of the Lake, and in that book
(26:20):
the main character's name is Douglas. He said, well, how
do you like the name Douglas, Frederick Douglas. Well, I said,
it sounds quite fitting. Of course, my birth name Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey. I have to lose Augustus Washington and Bailey,
but at least I'm holding on to some resimblus of myself.
(26:42):
And so now you know me as Frederick Douglas.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
What a story you're hearing about. Frederick Douglas's mind and
his will. He saw himself being a freeman, pictured it,
and then went about doing everything he could to become more.
So he makes his way up to the northeast to
New Bedford, Massachusetts, the willing capital of America and the world,
(27:11):
to start his new life a freer and less fearful man.
When we come back more of this remarkable story here
on our American stories, and we return to our American
(27:39):
stories and the final portion of our story on Frederick Douglas.
When we last left off, Douglas had escaped slavery to
a new freedom in Massachusetts. Soon his life would take
another drastic shift, a shift into public life. Let's pick
up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
This is where divine propertence sends me on the road
to my manumission. I'm in a church and I'm speaking
and in walks William oud Garrison.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
There there was the Masters's Anti Slavery Society, led by
the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. They're unpopular, They're viewed
as extreme, and Garrison would say, one cannot engage politically
within the corrupt American system. America was racist, the Constitution
was pro slavery, and the irredeeable.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
They hear me speak about my narrative and where I
came from in Tarbooth County, a story such as a
thousand other colored Maryland boys could have told with equal
skill and effect, but they saw something unique in me.
Mister Garrison comes up and he says, we're planning a
(28:53):
conference on Nantucket Island and we'd like you to come
and speak to our audience. I arrive in and here's
one of the largest or the largest audience I've ever
spoken to before. They asked me to stand up and
tell my story. I don't know what I was seeing
that day. I can't remember the words. I was shaking
like a leaf. But whatever I said, it excited the
(29:16):
audience greatly. There were cheers of hearing a story about
bondage from the slave himself, that I stole this head,
this body from my master and ran off with it.
That I prayed for twenty years from my freedom. It
was not until I prayed with my legs did I
(29:38):
actually attained my freedom.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So Douglas enters public life. He's the guy who goes
on stage saying, here's what slavery has done to me.
He gives his personal story. He talks about how he
was beaten and things like that. The Garrisonians well use
a tactic called moral suasion. It's the idea that they
had the moral principle correct. If the South left the Union,
(30:04):
but we abolished slavery, that would be perfectly fine. The
South would still have slavery, but at least we felt
right about how we operated in the North.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And so right then and there, mister Garrison, he says,
we want you to be part of our movement. We
want to take you with us, we want to hire
you as an agent, and we're going on a hundred
conventions tour.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
And Douglas goes on a tear about how if we
look at what America has done, we look at the
people who made the Constitution, how can we conclude anything
but that it was pro slavery. He talks about the
Constitution being conceived in sin, shapened and iniquity. Legalism of
reading the Constitution doesn't explain the fact of how it
(30:51):
is practiced in our country.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I published the narrative Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglas brought fire and people started to walk to buy
the book, not only in Massachusetts, but back in Talwood County.
The next thing I know, mister Garrison comes and he says, well,
this book has put you into some considerable unwanted attention.
Either you throw that book in the fire, or we
(31:17):
need to send you out of the country. So we
chose the latter. They arranged for me to travel to England,
and I came back after eighteen months with my manumission
seven hundred and thirty three dollars they raised. They negotiated
(31:38):
with my master Captain Anthony, and I had my manumission.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Douglas has made really famous under Garrison's watch in Garrison's organization,
but he wants to do more than that.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I started to get somewhat weary of telling the same
story over and over again. I was now beginning to
understand what this idea of abolition men. And my idea
is on how we might abolish slavery in this country. Well,
mister Garrison thought it was his job to do that.
(32:10):
It was my job to just tell the story of
the slave and let him do the philosophy. Well, I
thought I was able to do the philosophy as well.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
He calls himself basically he was treated as a prop
that the audience was surprised that it this thing could speak.
Combine that with his desire to learn and to think
things through, and Douglas will come to a different conclusion
on the Constitution and the country more generally. By eighteen
fifty one, he will make the break with the Garrisonians
(32:42):
public in his newspaper The North Star, in which he
says that we no longer subscribe to the notion that America,
the American Constitution is pro slavery.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
It was, in fact a fantas slavery document that Nowhere
in the body of the Constitution is there a single
mention of the term slave, slaveholder, slave master, or slave state.
Neither is there a reference to color. So I would
ask in any man to read the Constitution and tell
(33:17):
me where he will find a guarantee for slavery. Well,
my relationship with mister Garrison started to become quite fraid,
but I moved on. I moved to Rochester. I set
up my newspaper right there on Main Street, and I
started to publish. And it was around eighteen fifty two
(33:38):
that I actually got a request from the Rochester Antislavery
Sewing Society. The women in Rochester invited me to give
a speech on the meaning of the fourth of July. Well,
when I first got the request, I said, I will
not speak. I wan to the American slave is the
fourth of July. Well, of course they pressed me, everyone
(34:00):
pressed me, mister Douglas, who better than you, the ultimate abolitionists,
to give us your idea of what this democracy, what
this freedom means. And so of course I decided to
schedule the date not on the fourth, but on the
fifth of July. I kept them waiting a day.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
The Tony takes in the speech as one of critique
about the Declaration of Independence and Independence Day itself, not
necessarily the text of the declaration, but how America had
veered away from its noble founding principles.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Our forefathers they were good men, they were peaceful men,
but they chose revolution rather than peaceful submission to bondage.
And so it was ultimately, on the second day of
July seventeen seventy six that they ultimately went to Great
Britain to file their grievances, and they did it in
the form of a resolution in which they demanded their
(34:57):
separation from Great Britain. Well, they succeeded, and the benefits
of their success.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Douglas famously uses this approach of talking about himself as I,
so referring to I as black people and you as
his white audience, saying that the occasion of Independence Day
is something that ought to be revered for white folks.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
The problem is, though, is that our forefathers, they have
done their work. They've done it, and they've done much
of it. Well, they have lived and they have died.
Now we must live and we must do our own work.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
You have shared in its blessings. The blessings of America
that I, a black person, have not enjoyed. Slavery is
a sin and shameful, and America practices it.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
We have no right to wear out our father's reputation
to avoid our own idleness. As a matter of fact,
the Great Sidney Smith said, men seldom eulogize the fame
and fortune of their forefathers, except to exclude some folly
or wickedness of their own. We must do our own work,
(36:12):
and so, if anything, I'm saying that our constitution is
a great idea. But if it is a great idea,
and it is not a dead letter, then we must
do our own work to make it a more perfect union.
It was a fiery speech. You might want to understand
(36:32):
that what I was saying is that our country and
our freedoms are derived. There are two constitutions. There is
one literal constitution written by the founding fathers, and then
one literal constitution in our body. Politic it is how
we live the constitution and not how we read it.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
He appeals to the Declaration and Independence Day to say
that just because there is slavery in this country doesn't
mean there are always ought to be. So I think
that a reader then and perhaps still today tends to
view this speech as somehow down on America. That's the
wrong way to approach it. What Douglass is saying here
is that America did perpetuate injustice through slavery. However, it
(37:17):
has a founding which can be appealed to and fulfilled
in a way that would fight against slavery. Slavery was
incompatible with the founding. So the solution then is to
hold true to the Constitution, draw encouragement from the Declaration's
principles and the genius. He says, the genius of American
institutions in our principles make its downfall inevitable in America.
(37:40):
That is the hope he has.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
And a special thanks to Nathan Richardson who played the
part of Frederick Douglas. You can reach him at his
website SC Publishing dot com. Also a special thanks to
Joey burretta the story of Frederick Douglas here on our
Marriage in Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, the story of the most photographed man of
the nineteenth century, not Abraham Lincoln, but Frederick Douglas. Here
to tell the story of Douglas's life is Nathan Richardson,
an interpreter of the man himself and playing the man
(00:33):
himself for us in this story. Also Joey Barretta, an
expert on Douglas, and a Civitas Institute postdoctoral fellow at
U T. Austin. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Good morning, fellow citizens. It is indeed, and I'm here
with unusual diffidence to talk to you about the peculiar
topic of my life as a slave. I assure you
that the platform which I I stand now and the
place where I was born in Talbot County, near Saint
Michael's along the Tuckahoa River is considerable, and the difficulty
(01:10):
in getting from the former to the latter is by
no means light.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
The circumstances into which he was born really give you
some understanding of what it must have been like to
be a slave. It's a very demoralizing institution.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I was born in Talbot County, near Saint Michael's around
the year eighteen eighteen.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
He doesn't even know his date of birth for sure.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
The closest we could come would be planting time or
harvest time.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
That itself was a part of the feature of slavery.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
The slave master did not want you to have any
knowledge whatsoever. An educated slave is a worthless slave, would
be the mantra of the slave master.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
The enslaved person could not think of himself as someone
belonging to something greater than his master's domain.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I was taken away from my mother before I haven't
finished nursing. She was sold to another plantation about twelve
miles away. I never saw my mother doing the light
of day. She would occasionally walk twelve miles twenty four
miles round trip just to rock me to sleep at night,
and by the time I woke the next morning, she
(02:25):
would be gone back to her plantation to answer the
bell for hard labor.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
His father may have been a slave master, so Douglas
could have been conceived in a rape, and there's nothing
that could have been done about that.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I was raised by my grandmother, Betsey Bailey, who had
already given all the best years of her life to
Colonel Lloyd and Captain Anthony. She had already labored and
broke her back for him, and then now relegated to
a hut outside the farm to raise small children like
myself and my cousins and other children. And so there
(03:04):
I was with my grandmother, and she corralled all the
children and kept us until that day came when she
would eventually have to walk us to the Great House.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
He didn't think of himself as a slave, because he
lived with his grandmother in a simple cabin in which
there was someone who loved and cared for him. But
he sort of began to understand he was a slave
because she would refer to somebody called old Master. He
didn't know who that was or fully what that meant,
but she spoke of him in such a tone that
Douglas took special notice of it. He begins to think,
(03:37):
who is this person? The problem comes when he is
of sufficient age to be productive at the master's house.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I remember the day my grandmother walked me, and I
knew that I probably would not come back with her
to her hut. We got to the Great House and
I was immediately struck by seeing cousins and other children
running around on the plantation. She said, go play with
your cousins. They're happy to see you. I was clinging
(04:04):
to her dress because I knew if I lost sight
of her, I might never see her again. But I
went over to the side of the building and I
just sit there and I cried because I knew this
was going to be something new that I've never seen before.
My cousins came to me, my brother Perry, my sister Eliza.
They came to me and tried to console me. Nothing
(04:26):
could console losing first your mother, then your grandmother. Now
for the first time, I'm seeing the absolute brutality of slavery.
That my master would take a young woman who had
interest in another young colored boy on another plantation. He
(04:46):
found out that she had gone out in the middle
of the night to see him, brought her into the kitchen,
put her on a stool, tied her hands to a joist,
and commenced to whip her on her back until the
blood ran down her back. Witnessing this sit me into
a terror, and so I started learning what this institution
(05:08):
of bondage is all about. That the master would whip
a slave for no other reason than to intimidate other
slaves not to disobey the rules of the day.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
People are bought and sold, and you can acquire more
of them to do the work that you deem necessary.
So it's really treating them akin to the cattle you
have on the farm. You breed them, you make them work,
you get rid of them whenever you will, and you
care for them enough that they don't die. But you're
treating them as an animal who don't have maybe clothing
(05:46):
and shoes and a bed, the things that most people
take for granted.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
My position as a young born on the plantation was
to two occasionally if a horse or a cow or
a hog got out of the gate, that I would
go and fetch that horse or cow and bring them back.
There was at once this particular horse that would always
run away to the next plantation, and I'd find them
every time in the same exact spot with a big
(06:12):
pile of hay eating his field. And for bringing him back,
I would get a reward of a biscuit or a
slipper of bacon. Let's just say. I occasionally would leave
the gate over. I had to do that because food
was rationing and clothing was rationing to the slaves two
linen shirts, one pair of pants, one pair of shoes,
(06:37):
one jacket, the whole of which could have cost no
more than seven dollars. The children too young to work
in the field would have received neither shoes, nor trousers,
nor jackets. Two linen shirts per year, and when those
fail you you to win naked for the rest of
the year, regardless of the weather. I can remember sleeping
(07:00):
on the cold, hard ground with a burlout bag over
my head, and in the winter, the frost biting my
fingers and toes, and the gash white enough to put
up penciling. This was my plight on that plantation until
I became such a news that I could get more
tasks when we come back.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
More of the remarkable story of Frederick Douglas here on
Our American Stories. Leehabeb here host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we bring you stories of America,
stories of us, and it's because of listeners like you
that we're able to tell the story of its great
and beautiful country every day. Our stories will always be
(07:44):
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American stories. Is it our American
stories dot com to give, give a little, give a lot,
anymount helps to our American Stories dot Com. And we
(08:09):
returned to our American Stories and the story of Frederick
Douglas telling it is Douglas interpreter Nathan Richardson playing the
part of Douglas himself and an expert on all things Douglas.
Joey BURRETTA. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
So, just as the family was destroyed because it made
a slave think of himself as something beyond the master's property,
education did the same thing.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well, my master's mistress called me and she said, Frederick,
we're going to send you to Baltimore to live with
our cousins, Q and Sophia All. Now, they are city
people and we don't want them laughing at you, So
we want you to go down to the creek and
(08:55):
wash yourself up. We're gonna give you your first pair
of parents. Can you imagine getting your first pair of
pants when you're eight years old. I ran down to
the creek, I spent half the day washing myself up.
I came back, I got my first pair of pants,
and they put me on a sloop sailing up the
Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore. Miss Sophia opened the door and
(09:23):
she said, Freddie, we've been waiting for you. Are you hungry?
Are you tired? Well? I was quite surprised a white
woman smiling, beaming at me, inviting me in. If even
if I had looked in the face of my slave
master on the plantation, I would have gotten knocked down
on chitute. She said, hold your head up, young man,
there's no need to be a shame here. I went
(09:45):
on in. You see, I was sent there to be
the helpmate for their young son, Master Thomas. He of
course was around my age, and I was to be
his butler, so to speak. In the mornings I would
walk him to school, and while he was at school,
I'd be at home doing his chores. Missus all miss Sophia,
(10:07):
she was an avid reader, a kind person.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
She had no slaves before she was married, so the
way she treated Douglas when he was a kid was
different than how a slave master would have. She treated
him like a child.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
She would occasionally, as she was reading the Bible of
the newspaper, share an ab or She with me. That
was until her husband, mister hugh came and he said, Sophia,
I understand you're teaching that boy how to read. She said, yes,
what harm could that do? If you give him an inch,
(10:40):
he'll take an l You'll make him good for nothing.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Master hugh Ald comes into the picture and says, it
would spoil the best slave in the world. It would
spoil him. It would make him unfit for his servile
menial task positions. In my household, slaves were to be
on edge and generally illiterate. Douglas will learn on his own.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
She stopped teaching me how to read. As a matter
of fact, anytime that I might be in a corner quiet,
trying to learn a letter or a word, she would
come and snatch the paper right out of my hand.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
And he says that from this moment where he wall
tells his wife she can no longer educate Douglas that
he first understood the pathway from slavery to freedom, and
the pathway from slavery to freedom then was knowledge.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
And once I had a few words to describe my
misery as a slave, my mind started to free. You know,
you cannot enslave a freed mind. Once your mind is free,
your body has to follow. And so I would have
to devise various methods to teach myself how to read
and write. As I was walking the boys to school
(11:51):
in the morning, they would always on the way to
school be talking about the lesson, reciting the ABC's, or
talking about some words. And I would say to Master Thomas,
I said, Master Thomas, do you believe that I can
make a W? And of course you would say, how
can you make a W? Who taught you how to
(12:11):
read and write? And I would say, never mind, never
mind who taught me how to make the W? But
I can make this W. And if I make a
W in this sand, you show me how to make
a queue. And then I would make the W in
the sand, and then he would be obliged to show
me how to make the Q, and then I would
have a que. Or we might be walking along and
(12:32):
I might say to young master Tom, Master Tom, the
biscuits on this morning's table were very good. I have
one in my pocket. Now, if you have a word
in your notebook, it would be food for my brain.
This biscuit in my pocket would be food for your stomach,
and we wouldn't make a trade. He would give me
(12:54):
the word, I would give him the biscuit, and we
would both be fed. This is how I taught myself
how to read and write. Well. Of course, the elementary
words and letters were not enough. As a matter of fact,
one of the books that I saw the young boys
carrying on their way back and forth to school was
(13:17):
a book called The Colombian Orator, full of great speeches and.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Poems, basically a collection of abolitionist writings.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I decided I would make the money to buy one myself.
I saw this Columbian Orator in a book shop down
on the streets of Baltimore. And so what I did.
I sat up my shoe stand on the streets of Baltimore.
I found myself a stump, some shoe polish, and a brush,
And as the men would pass by, I would yell
(13:48):
out to them, five cents to shine your shoes, sir,
one sense to dust you're off. And with seventy five
cents I purchased The Colombian Ortor.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
He began to see himself as a human being deserving
a better life than slavery had given to him, and
he questions Why am I in this position? What have
I done to deserve this? And he would say nothing.
And he begins to desire freedom when he learns that
something that was good for him, education was being taken away.
(14:22):
That is what education really did to shape his understanding
of why he wanted to be free.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in
public on the stage. And if I chanced to fall
below Desmophenes or Cicero, don't view me with a critic's
I but pass my imperfections by large streams from little
fountains flow, tall oaks from little acorns grow. And though
(14:53):
I am now small and young of judgment, weak and
feeble tongue, yet all no great learned men like me
once learned to read their ABC. And so.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I was studying, and that was a real problem.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
I had no desire to go back to the plantation.
But as the slave master said, and mister Hugh told
his wife, an educated slave is a worthless slave. And
of course they decided to send me back to Talbot County.
They put me under the servitude of an notorious slave
breaker by the name of mister Kobe. And so, for
(15:34):
the first time in my life. I found myself under
the lash.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Douglas is sent to the slave breaker around age sixteen,
and the goal of the slave breaker was to beat
into submission the slave, so when he goes back to
his master's domicile, he will be servile again. It's not
simply a literal beating through force, but a shaping of
the mind.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I am on that plantation a sign for about a year.
I saw the last almost every week for about six months.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
But Cuffy, this really horrible person who beats Douglas regularly,
also is in accordance with the general principal of slavery
that Douglas observes.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You know, there are two distinct differences in the Christianity
of the day, that of the slave holding master and
that of the true Jesus Christ. But I would hear
and see this parody every day in the life of
a slave and the slave master, who would be the
most pious man in the county, and then come home
(16:44):
and brutalize his slaves, and then they would be singing
in church heavenly union. And so I decided I would
write my own poem about this the parody. Come, senators,
hear me tell how pious Christ whip jack, and and
women buy, and children sell, and creach all the sellers
(17:04):
down the hell and sing of heavenly union. They loudly
talk of Christ reward and buying his image with a cord,
and scold and swing the lash of Horde and sell
their brother in the Lord to handcuff heavenly unions.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And you've been listening to Nathan Richardson playing Douglas himself,
and also Joey barretta an expert on all things Douglas,
tell the story of this great and remarkable man. Douglas
right there and then understood that education was his pathway
to freedom. When we come back, more of this remarkable
(17:45):
story of Frederick Douglas here on our American Stories. And
(18:08):
we returned to our American stories and the story of
Frederick Douglass when we last left off, Douglas had been
sent to a slave breaker, a punishment for his growing
desire to be free. Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I found myself sitting just a few blades from the
Chesapeake Bay, looking at the ships sailing up to Annapolis,
and the only thing that gave me any kind of
hope were those white, billowing sails that represented some sort
of freedom.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Douglas talks about how, in the first six months of
being sent to Covey, the slave breaker, he had went
scarce a week without Covey whipping him. His back was sore.
Covey would resort to these tricks of deception. They worked
in all weathers he cold, rain, hail, snow. He would
always be required to work. He was required to work
(19:06):
until he collapse of exhaustion, and then he was expected
to work still more. The slave breaker had done his
job properly. That first six months of being beaten and
abused made him a slave again. However, that won't be
where the last six months end. He says that you
saw how a man was made a slave, you shall
(19:26):
see how a slave was made a man.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Mister Covey sent me on a task. He gave me
two unbroken oxen and a cart. He sent me down
to the woods to fill it up and bring wood
back to the farm. Well, never having driven oxen before.
It was a terrifying ordeal. We were halfway across the field,
the oxen were spooped. They ran through the woods, turned
(19:54):
the cart upside down. It took me two hours to
get the cart up right. Another two or three hours
to load the wood and head back to the house.
And then when I get back to the house again,
the oxen got spooked. They ran into the gate, broke
the wheel off and broke the gate off the fence. Well,
(20:15):
mister Kobe, he comes out, and he's very angry. He's
swearing he's gonna teach me a thing or two. He's
gonna give me the lash. For some reason, it did
not come Saturday Sunday, no lash. When he's coming from
church that Sunday, he says, Freddy, meet me in the barn.
(20:38):
We're gonna throw down some blades. I thought it was
kind of peculiar that he would be asking me to
throw down some blades on a Sunday on the Sabbath.
As soon as I walk into the barn, there he
stands with a rope and a lash. And I don't
know what came over me at that very moment, but
I decided that I would fight for my manhood. He
reaches over and tries to grab me and wear of
(21:00):
him by the throat. He called his overseer. He came
in the door, and as soon as he came in,
I gave him a swift kick in the stomach, and
he ran out coffee, and there we were. We were
fighting for another half an hour, or an hour at least,
until finally, mister Kobe he gives up, exhausted and pushes
me away, and he says, well, that will teach you
(21:22):
not to break my cart. He hadn't taught me anything
at all. As a matter of fact, I was the
one that had drew blood from him.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
So why does Douglas's last six months go better? It
is because Douglas fights back. That is how the slave
became a man. He calls this battle with mister Covey
as the turning point in his career as a slave.
He talks about it rekindling the few expiring embers of freedom,
a glorious resurrection from the tomb of slavery to the
(21:50):
heaven of freedom, and he resolves to fight for his freedom.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
I was sitting there thinking about killing myself until I
came to the idea and the conclusion, why would I
kill myself a slave rather than die trying to run away?
Speaker 3 (22:06):
He resolved that although he was legally a slave in form,
he in his own mind was a human being and
a free person. He would no longer consider himself a slave.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I decided to come up with a plan that I
would get out of this place. Well, the only advantage
I had at that time was that on the weekends,
the colored people in Baltimore, they were given permission to
go down to the Camp Meetings, a place a gathering
where free and enslave colored people could get together and socialize,
(22:39):
could have sabbath sing songs, play games, and socialize. And
this is where I met Anna Murray. She was the
first of eight children to be born free, and she
was making her way as a housekeeper. We started to socialize,
and I was telling her that I was a slave,
that I might even be a slave for life, but
(23:02):
I certainly had designs that we might have a life together. Well,
Anna felt mutually, but she told me, she said, our children,
I don't want their father to be a slave. We
have to come up with some way to get you
out of this bondage. And so we made a plan.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
He talks about his escaped in his autobiographies. He sort
of censors the information in the first one because in
his escaped he had people help him along the way.
So Douglas was hired out in Baltimore to work in
the shipyards, caulking ships, that sort of thing. So what
did he do. Douglas disguises himself as a free black sailor,
(23:46):
and I.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Would catch a train out of Baltimore to Annapolis and
then to New York. And when I got on the train,
the conductor came up to me and he said, can
I have your freedom papers? Well, of course, and he
colored person traveling would have to show their freedom.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Papers, Douglas says, had the conductor looked carefully at this paper,
he would have found somebody who looked very differently than himself.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Colored sailors were permitted to travel if they were on
their way out to sea. And so when the conductor
walked up to me and asked me for my freedom papers,
I said, sir, I normally don't care my freedom papers
with me when I'm going out to sea, and he
waved me on. The next thing I know, I'm in
Annapolis and then Harvard to Grace and then New York.
(24:32):
For the first time, I am in free territory, but
still terrified. Even in New York, white or colored. A
bounty on a colored slave is considerable, and so I
had to be very careful I had to hide in
alleys and such until I was able to make my
way to the conductor of the underground Railroad, mister Ruggles.
(24:56):
And when I arrived at the house of mister Ruggles
and explained him my situation, he knew exactly what to do.
He said, so you tell me you've been working in
the shipyards in Fell's Point. You have a trade. Well,
there are ships in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It's a whaling town.
(25:16):
They're looking for green hands. So that's where we're gonna
send you. It sounded quite nicely, but I told him.
I said, well, I have another plan. I'm waiting on
my future wife, and I'm married to get here in
a few days. She arrived in New York and mister
Ruggles kind as he was, introduced us to a minister,
(25:39):
Reverend Pennington, and we got married. My wife was wearing
a plume colored dress. Mister and missus Frederick Augustus Johnson.
Of course that's my runaway name. We get to New
Bedford and our first place of staying is with Nan
(26:00):
and Polly Johnson. It seemed like every colored person that
ran away named himself Johnson. I told mister Johnson, I said, well,
I'm gonna need to find a new name. Well, mister
Johnson was reading a book at the time, a great
Irish tale, Lady of the Lake, and in that book
(26:20):
the main character's name is Douglas. He said, well, how
do you like the name Douglas, Frederick Douglas. Well, I said,
it sounds quite fitting. Of course, my birth name Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey. I have to lose Augustus Washington and Bailey,
but at least I'm holding on to some resimblus of myself.
(26:42):
And so now you know me as Frederick Douglas.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
What a story you're hearing about. Frederick Douglas's mind and
his will. He saw himself being a freeman, pictured it,
and then went about doing everything he could to become more.
So he makes his way up to the northeast to
New Bedford, Massachusetts, the willing capital of America and the world,
(27:11):
to start his new life a freer and less fearful man.
When we come back more of this remarkable story here
on our American stories, and we return to our American
(27:39):
stories and the final portion of our story on Frederick Douglas.
When we last left off, Douglas had escaped slavery to
a new freedom in Massachusetts. Soon his life would take
another drastic shift, a shift into public life. Let's pick
up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
This is where divine propertence sends me on the road
to my manumission. I'm in a church and I'm speaking
and in walks William oud Garrison.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
There there was the Masters's Anti Slavery Society, led by
the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. They're unpopular, They're viewed
as extreme, and Garrison would say, one cannot engage politically
within the corrupt American system. America was racist, the Constitution
was pro slavery, and the irredeeable.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
They hear me speak about my narrative and where I
came from in Tarbooth County, a story such as a
thousand other colored Maryland boys could have told with equal
skill and effect, but they saw something unique in me.
Mister Garrison comes up and he says, we're planning a
(28:53):
conference on Nantucket Island and we'd like you to come
and speak to our audience. I arrive in and here's
one of the largest or the largest audience I've ever
spoken to before. They asked me to stand up and
tell my story. I don't know what I was seeing
that day. I can't remember the words. I was shaking
like a leaf. But whatever I said, it excited the
(29:16):
audience greatly. There were cheers of hearing a story about
bondage from the slave himself, that I stole this head,
this body from my master and ran off with it.
That I prayed for twenty years from my freedom. It
was not until I prayed with my legs did I
(29:38):
actually attained my freedom.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So Douglas enters public life. He's the guy who goes
on stage saying, here's what slavery has done to me.
He gives his personal story. He talks about how he
was beaten and things like that. The Garrisonians well use
a tactic called moral suasion. It's the idea that they
had the moral principle correct. If the South left the Union,
(30:04):
but we abolished slavery, that would be perfectly fine. The
South would still have slavery, but at least we felt
right about how we operated in the North.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And so right then and there, mister Garrison, he says,
we want you to be part of our movement. We
want to take you with us, we want to hire
you as an agent, and we're going on a hundred
conventions tour.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
And Douglas goes on a tear about how if we
look at what America has done, we look at the
people who made the Constitution, how can we conclude anything
but that it was pro slavery. He talks about the
Constitution being conceived in sin, shapened and iniquity. Legalism of
reading the Constitution doesn't explain the fact of how it
(30:51):
is practiced in our country.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I published the narrative Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglas brought fire and people started to walk to buy
the book, not only in Massachusetts, but back in Talwood County.
The next thing I know, mister Garrison comes and he says, well,
this book has put you into some considerable unwanted attention.
Either you throw that book in the fire, or we
(31:17):
need to send you out of the country. So we
chose the latter. They arranged for me to travel to England,
and I came back after eighteen months with my manumission
seven hundred and thirty three dollars they raised. They negotiated
(31:38):
with my master Captain Anthony, and I had my manumission.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Douglas has made really famous under Garrison's watch in Garrison's organization,
but he wants to do more than that.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I started to get somewhat weary of telling the same
story over and over again. I was now beginning to
understand what this idea of abolition men. And my idea
is on how we might abolish slavery in this country. Well,
mister Garrison thought it was his job to do that.
(32:10):
It was my job to just tell the story of
the slave and let him do the philosophy. Well, I
thought I was able to do the philosophy as well.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
He calls himself basically he was treated as a prop
that the audience was surprised that it this thing could speak.
Combine that with his desire to learn and to think
things through, and Douglas will come to a different conclusion
on the Constitution and the country more generally. By eighteen
fifty one, he will make the break with the Garrisonians
(32:42):
public in his newspaper The North Star, in which he
says that we no longer subscribe to the notion that America,
the American Constitution is pro slavery.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
It was, in fact a fantas slavery document that Nowhere
in the body of the Constitution is there a single
mention of the term slave, slaveholder, slave master, or slave state.
Neither is there a reference to color. So I would
ask in any man to read the Constitution and tell
(33:17):
me where he will find a guarantee for slavery. Well,
my relationship with mister Garrison started to become quite fraid,
but I moved on. I moved to Rochester. I set
up my newspaper right there on Main Street, and I
started to publish. And it was around eighteen fifty two
(33:38):
that I actually got a request from the Rochester Antislavery
Sewing Society. The women in Rochester invited me to give
a speech on the meaning of the fourth of July. Well,
when I first got the request, I said, I will
not speak. I wan to the American slave is the
fourth of July. Well, of course they pressed me, everyone
(34:00):
pressed me, mister Douglas, who better than you, the ultimate abolitionists,
to give us your idea of what this democracy, what
this freedom means. And so of course I decided to
schedule the date not on the fourth, but on the
fifth of July. I kept them waiting a day.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
The Tony takes in the speech as one of critique
about the Declaration of Independence and Independence Day itself, not
necessarily the text of the declaration, but how America had
veered away from its noble founding principles.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Our forefathers they were good men, they were peaceful men,
but they chose revolution rather than peaceful submission to bondage.
And so it was ultimately, on the second day of
July seventeen seventy six that they ultimately went to Great
Britain to file their grievances, and they did it in
the form of a resolution in which they demanded their
(34:57):
separation from Great Britain. Well, they succeeded, and the benefits
of their success.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Douglas famously uses this approach of talking about himself as I,
so referring to I as black people and you as
his white audience, saying that the occasion of Independence Day
is something that ought to be revered for white folks.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
The problem is, though, is that our forefathers, they have
done their work. They've done it, and they've done much
of it. Well, they have lived and they have died.
Now we must live and we must do our own work.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
You have shared in its blessings. The blessings of America
that I, a black person, have not enjoyed. Slavery is
a sin and shameful, and America practices it.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
We have no right to wear out our father's reputation
to avoid our own idleness. As a matter of fact,
the Great Sidney Smith said, men seldom eulogize the fame
and fortune of their forefathers, except to exclude some folly
or wickedness of their own. We must do our own work,
(36:12):
and so, if anything, I'm saying that our constitution is
a great idea. But if it is a great idea,
and it is not a dead letter, then we must
do our own work to make it a more perfect union.
It was a fiery speech. You might want to understand
(36:32):
that what I was saying is that our country and
our freedoms are derived. There are two constitutions. There is
one literal constitution written by the founding fathers, and then
one literal constitution in our body. Politic it is how
we live the constitution and not how we read it.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
He appeals to the Declaration and Independence Day to say
that just because there is slavery in this country doesn't
mean there are always ought to be. So I think
that a reader then and perhaps still today tends to
view this speech as somehow down on America. That's the
wrong way to approach it. What Douglass is saying here
is that America did perpetuate injustice through slavery. However, it
(37:17):
has a founding which can be appealed to and fulfilled
in a way that would fight against slavery. Slavery was
incompatible with the founding. So the solution then is to
hold true to the Constitution, draw encouragement from the Declaration's
principles and the genius. He says, the genius of American
institutions in our principles make its downfall inevitable in America.
(37:40):
That is the hope he has.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
And a special thanks to Nathan Richardson who played the
part of Frederick Douglas. You can reach him at his
website SC Publishing dot com. Also a special thanks to
Joey burretta the story of Frederick Douglas here on our
Marriage in Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.