One Man's Struggle for Freedom . Review on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave - Frederick Douglas

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an autobiography written when the author was only 27 or 28 years old-- but at that age he was already considered an up-and-coming figure in the United States' Abolitionist Movement, so called because its goal was to eradicate slavery within the U.S. Douglass himself had been born a slave in 1818, and the bulk of Narrative describes his experiences as a slave, many of which were appalling.

Douglass, who had been given the name Frederick Bailey at birth, hardly knew his mother. Before he was a year old, she was sold to another, neighboring plantation. This was a common practice, and its purpose was apparently to prevent the development of any ties between mother and child. Nor did Douglass know his father; the only thing he ever heard about him was that he was a white man.

Slave children were treated like animals; they literally ate from a trough like pigs, and were fed boiled corn meal. Nor did they have much in the way of clothing: Douglass recalls that the only thing he had to wear was a linen shirt reaching only to his knees. He had no shoes, no socks, or pants. Nor were slaves educated. In fact, teaching a slave to read or write was considered a crime. One of his masters, Mr. Hugh Auld, explained why: ''A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-- to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world... It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.... It would make him discontented and unhappy.''

There was a caste system among slaves. Field hands who worked the plantations were at the bottom and were therefore subjected to the worst treatment. They got the worst of the food and clothing and were subjected to the cruelest punishments. House slaves, who worked inside the plantation mansion, were treated somewhat better. City slaves were generally better off than those in the country, because their owners simply could not get away with the kinds of cruelties that somebody on an isolated plantation could. As Douglass notes,''He is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated slave.''

When Douglass was seven or eight, he was put to work. He was sent to Mr. Auld in Baltimore, to be the servant and companion of his son. He stayed with the Aulds for seven years and those seven years proved crucial. During that time, he managed to learn to read and write by coaxing a number of white boys into teaching him. He also began to learn about the Abolitionist Movement. In a way, Mr. Auld was proved right about Douglass, for he did develop a rebellious and defiant character. When he was around 17, he led a failed escape attempt that involved his writing bogus notes giving him and several other slaves leave to spend the Easter holidays in Baltimore-- and then forging his master's signature. A few years later, he did succeed in escaping and made his way to New Bedford. Three years later, in 1841, he began giving speeches and otherwise aiding the Abolitionist Movement.

Douglass' style does taking getting use to. He was a famous orator during the 19th Century, and his writing reflects this, as it can sometimes be heavy-handed and overblown. He sometimes seems to think in speeches, as in this passage, which he allegedly addressed to some ships:

''You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free!''

There's a lot more, but I believe you get the general idea. His descriptions of slaveowners and their brutalities are similarly florid: ''Mr. Severe [the overseer] was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother's release.... Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk.''

Some of Douglass' attitudes might also seem peculiar to modern readers. In his description of Mr. Severe, for instance, he seems to find the man's penchant for vulgar language almost as reprehensible as his cruelty. But then, Douglass lived from 1818 to 1895, which encompassed much of the Victorian Age. His attitude toward vulgarity makes sense in that context.

My main disappointment with Narrative-- at least the edition I have-- is that there is no afterward telling us what happened to Douglass after he began his career as an orator for the Abolitionists. The Narrative itself was written in 1845-- and Douglass lived until 1895. It would have been nice if the editors could have said a little something about his subsequent career, beyond a couple of paragraphs on the frontspiece.