61 pages • 2 hours read
Frederick DouglassNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1845A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Preface-IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary
Douglass’s autobiography begins with a Preface written by William Lloyd Garrison, a prominent abolitionist and journalist who ran the anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator. Garrison met Douglass at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket in August 1841. Douglass had recently “made his escape from the southern prison house of bondage” (1) was attending the convention to learn about the principals and activities of abolitionists. Douglass made a powerful speech narrating his own experiences as an enslaved person that captured the audience’s attention. Garrison and John A. Collins, the general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, asked if Douglass would dedicate his talents to the cause of anti-slavery. From then on, Douglass lectured and wrote widely under the auspices of both the American and Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass gained fame as a public speaker and then wrote his autobiography.
Garrison asserts that there is no exaggeration in Douglass’s narrative, that it is drawn from reality. Garrison defends enslaved and formerly enslaved people from the charges that Black people are inferior, noting that under slavery, people are unable to reach their full potential but that there is no difference between the races. White people are ignorant and uninformed about the institution of slavery, and many will try to undermine Douglass’s account, but Garrison notes that he has meticulously detailed everything, and any lies would easily be disproven. He concludes that slavery is an evil institution that must be abolished immediately.
Introduction Summary: “Letter from Wendell Phillips, Esq.”
Before Douglass’s autobiography starts, a private letter sent from leading abolitionist Wendell Phillips to Douglass is included. In the letter Phillips references the fable of “The Man and the Lion,” where the lion states that he was misrepresented because man always told history, and what a different narrative would emerge if the lions wrote history. Phillips reflects that Douglass telling his own story reflects the lion writing history, for the history of slavery was previously told by the enslaver.
Phillips refers to the West India experiment of 1838, when Britain abolished the slave trade and freed people throughout the British colonies. However, as Phillips notes, the success of this experiment did not seem to help the abolitionist cause, as too many people remained focused on the rising price of sugar than the human costs of slavery. Phillips believes Douglass has a unique voice that can bring people to the abolitionist cause. He suggests that Douglass compare racism in the North and the South to give readers a full and unbiased picture. He notes that racism exists in the North, but it in the South, the enslaved person is at the “noon of night” (15), or total darkness. Phillips notes Douglass’s bravery in publishing his book, for it makes him vulnerable to people who tried to catch self-emancipated people. Phillips concludes by proposing that New England, where the pilgrims sought refuge, should become a place of asylum for self-emancipated people.
Preface-Introduction Analysis
In the Preface William Lloyd Garrison highlights the inhumanity of slavery and how enslavers, traders, and other people who enforced and held up the institution strove to dehumanize enslaved people, to “cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind” (5). Despite these efforts, enslaved people maintained their humanity and “require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point of human excellence” (5), disproving racist narratives about the natural inferiority of Black people. As evidence, Garrison cites an incident of a white American sailor who was held in bondage for three years off the shore of Africa. By the end of the three-year period, the sailor was “be imbruted and stultified […] and having forgotten his native language, could only utter some savage gibberish between Arabic and English, which nobody could understand, and which even he himself found difficulty in pronouncing” (6).
Garrison concludes that systemic slavery produces inequality, and that there is no natural inferiority among the races. Douglass is evoked as an example of what people freed from slavery could accomplish. Garrison notes that Douglass wrote his autobiography himself, despite a lack of formal education and the horrors he suffered under slavery.
Garrison clearly identifies the aims of the autobiography as an abolitionist text. He emphasizes that the biography shows “slavery as it is” (6) and describes how Douglass’s narrative “is sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable” (9). Douglass’s story is presented not as an extraordinary account but as a common experience that reflects the larger structure of slavery. People are ignorant of the horrors of slavery and remain incredulous when they hear of mutilations, brandings, and savage cruelty; of whips, chains, thumb-screws, blood-hounds, overseers, and patrols. These cruelties are necessary to maintain slavery. Turning a human being into property requires incredible inhumanity to maintain the system. Documenting these horrors does not libel the character of Southern planters, it simply describes what degradations the system necessitates. Because of this, there can be no humane slavery. Slavery is incompatible with the Christian faith and any liberal doctrine. Reform is not possible; the system must be abolished.
In his letter Wendell Phillips articulates the significance of Douglass telling his own story, framing it as an intervention into history. The story of slavery will finally be told from the perspective of the enslaved person, not the enslaver. He uses the “Man and the Lion” fable as an analogy, and further emphasizes the importance of Douglass telling his own story by referencing the abolition of slavery in the British colonies of West India, which did not have a significant impact on abolition in America. He also notes that the West India “experiment” was a success, and it did not have negative social or economic impacts on Britain.
Finally, Phillip’s highlights a significant reality for formerly enslaved people in this period. Douglass freed himself, but he was considered a fugitive. Under the Fugitive Slave Act, people were legally authorized to capture self-emancipated people for bounty. Under the Great Compromise of 1850, Congress outlawed new pro-slavery states but allowed self-emancipated people to be captured and returned to their owners. Douglass’s public platform made him very vulnerable to people who hunted self-emancipated people for bounty, and Phillips explains that “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 Northern Law has no shield for you” (15). Douglass’s bravery in telling his own story is compared to the signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, which the founding fathers signed “with the halter around their necks” (15), at risk of death. By comparing Douglass and other self-emancipated people to the founding fathers and the pilgrims, Phillips argues that former enslaved people have as much as a claim to American civil rights as anyone else.
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