My Bondage and My Freedom by Fredrick Douglass

My Bondage and My Freedom

Fredrick Douglass - 1818 to 1895

Because it’s Black History month this month of February, I decided to read My Bondage and My Freedom by Fredrick Douglass. Douglass wrote about his life as a slave and his eventual emancipation as a free man.

A little historical data on slavery.
Fredrick was born a slave in 1818, and he wrote this book in 1855. In 1850, the average price of a slave was $500, which would be around $12,000 in today's money. Below you'll find a table that shows the number of slaves imported to the 13 colonies, and then to America. In 1850, the total population of slaves was 3,204,313 slaves. The total population in America in 1850 was 23,191,876.

For comparison, in the Ancient Roman Empire in the 100s BC, there were roughly 5,000,000 slaves. "For the Empire as a whole, the slave population has been estimated at just under five million"

Date	Numbers
1620–1700	21,000
1701–1760	189,000
1761–1770	63,000
1771–1790	56,000
1791–1800	79,000
1801–1810	124,000[7]
1810–1865	51,000
Total	597,000

And this is where the slaves came from in Africa: 

Origins and Percentages of Africans imported into British North America and Louisiana (1700–1820)[19][20]	Amount %
West-central Africa (Kongo, N. Mbundu, S. Mbundu)	26.1
Bight of Biafra (Igbo, Tikar, Ibibio, Bamileke, Bubi)	24.4
Sierra Leone (Mende, Temne)	15.8
Senegambia (Mandinka, Fula, Wolof)	14.5
Gold Coast (Akan, Fon)	13.1
Windward Coast (Mandé, Kru)	5.2
Bight of Benin (Yoruba, Ewe, Fon, Allada and Mahi)	4.3
Southeast Africa (Macua, Malagasy)	1.8

About the book. 

What an amazing narration of his life. 

It is very rare to read the writings from a slave about his treatment as a slave. Even more rare is Douglass' writing to his old master. 

I dispose as follows: I am myself; you are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man, and so am I. 

There were three things that stood out to me as I read this:

1. The beauty and force of expression from Douglass’ writings. His narration of his life was as impassioned as it was eloquent, and I will study them to try to pattern my writing after his use of rhetoric. But most of all, it was the impressive categorization of the life as a slave as one of liberty vs. tyranny.
   
   This wasn’t your modern liberal interpretation of slavery as victim vs. perpetrator; Douglass wrote as an impassioned man yearning to be free. Free from the lash. Free from hard labor with nothing to show for it. Free to live with his wife and children without being torn from them at the slave auction. Free to read and write. This was real freedom! Douglass has produced the most inspiring text I’ve ever read about true freedom and liberty.

I have shown that slavery is wicked  - wicked, in that it violates the great law of liberty, written on every human heart.

If a mother shall teach her children to read, the law in Louisiana proclaimed she may be hanged by the neck.

Said by his old master: "Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world" 

What I enjoyed most from the book was Douglass’ writings on human nature and the nature of humanity. 

"That day, in the woods, I would have exchanged my manhood for the brute good of an ox" 

"The dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute." 

"I know of many honorable instances of persons who maintained their honor, where all around was corrupt." 

"He was a wretched man, at war with his own soul, and with all the world around him."  

2. Damn these slaves had it hard! The life of a slave was a life of total control. They were not treated as human beings, but common cattle. Mothers were separated from daughters, father’s from their sons, and grandmothers from their children. The use of the lash was constant. Young female slaves bought as ‘breeders’ to have children born into slavery, the same way a farmer breeds his cows to produce more livestock for his farm. The inhumanity towards the slaves was total. 

"A mere look, word, or motion, a mistake, accident, or want of power, are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time."

"Because you have no idea how easy a matter is to offend a man who is on the look-out for offenses." 

"Poor Cael's back, always scantily clothed, was kept literally raw, by the lash of this religious man and gospel minister." 

"In the beginning he was only able -- as he said -- "to buy one slave" and, scandalous and shocking as is the fact, he boasted that he bought her simply "as a breeder" 

For a man is no more condemned there for buying a woman and devoting her to this life of dishonor, than for buying a cow, and raising stock from her."

Another interesting note was the influence that Christianity had on him. Christ reached his heart and helped him to have the moral authority to fight off the all-encompassing world of slavery. Douglass wrote about his religion and its influence on his thoughts on liberty and slavery. 

"I love the religion that is based upon the glorious principle, of love to God and love to man; which makes its followers do unto others as they themselves would be done by. If you demand liberty to yourself, it says, grant it to your neighbors. 

If you claim a right to think for yourself, it says, allow your neighbors the same right. If you claim to act for yourself, allow your neighbors the same right. It is because I love this religion that I hate the slaveholding, the woman-whipping, the mind-darkening, the soul destroying religion that exists in the southern states of America."

3. Douglass lived his life after the pattern of transcendence I wrote about earlier. His origins were more than humble. He lived with his grandmother because his mother did not have the time to raise him, she was too busy with her work as a slave. Douglass eluded to the fact that he himself was the offspring of his mother and of his master, which was not uncommon at the time. 

"My father was a white man, or nearly white. It was sometimes whispered my master was my father."

Even though he was probably his master’s son, it didn’t matter, he was still considered chattel, and whipped accordingly. 

But through his struggle in life, Douglass overcame. He was taught how to read by his mistress, and once he learned how to read, he then taught himself how to write. He would read the Columbian Orator, which you can purchase and read yourself, and be enthralled with the writings on liberty and with the eloquence of the passages. 

Eventually, Douglass was able to escape to freedom, but even there, he faced hardship and prejudices in the Northern States, and he wasn’t ever comfortable until he went to England. He lived in England and traveled to Ireland for two years where he would speak with many interested people about the factual conditions of slavery in America. This was his moment of transcendence, the moment of unreal greatness of character and mind.

To find a slave born deep into bondage in the inhuman conditions of total tyranny, then for him to learn to read and to write under punishment of death, to then try many times to escape and live in a free state, only to be constantly worried about kidnappers that would come and rob him of his freedom again. After all that, to then go to England and present his side of his sordid tale, his own perspective from the mouth of a whipped slave, to tell them with his own voice the cruel barbarity of the slave masters, and then have those words echo throughout the world, was a moment of transcendence. 

His was a life well lived, an exemplary life of a gentleman that transcended his humble origins to speak to the world of his own life’s struggle. All of this he did in order to help his very literal sisters and brothers that still remained in chains as property that belonged to his old master in Maryland. 

Another beautiful part of the book were the poems Douglass would bring into his writings. Here are a few that I thought were quite noteworthy. 

From the Columbian Orator:  

Lines spoken at a school-exhibition, by a little boy seven years old

YOU’D scarce expect one of my age,

To speak in public, on the stage; 

And if I chance to fall below

Demosthenes or Cicero,

Don’t view me with a critic’s eye,

But pass my imperfections by.

Large streams from little fountains flow;

Tall oaks from little acorns grow:

And though I now am small and young, 

Of judgement weak, and feeble tongue;

Yet all great leanrned men, like me,

Once learn’d to read their A, B, C.

Sang by the slaves on their holidays during Christmas:

We raise de wheat

Dey gib us de corn;

We bake de bread,

Dey gib us de cruss;

We sif de meal,

Dey gib us de huss;

We peal de meat,

Dey gib us de skin;

And dat's de way,

Dey take us in;

We skim de pot,

Dey gib us the liquour,

And say dat's good enough for nigger.

Walk over! Walk over!

Tom butter and de fat;

Poor nigger you can't get over dat;

Walk over!

A Psalm of Life

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, how’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act, act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

Of a Virginia Slave Mother to Her Daughters Sold into Southern Bondage 

By John Greenleaf Whittier

    GONE, gone,—sold and gone,

    To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,

Where the noisome insect stings,

Where the fever demon strews       

Poison with the falling dews,

Where the sickly sunbeams glare

Through the hot and misty air;

    Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

    To the rice-swamp dank and lone,      

    From Virginia’s hills and waters;

    Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

    Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

    To the rice-swamp dank and lone.

There no mother’s eye is near them,        

There no mother’s ear can hear them;

Never, when the torturing lash

Seams their back with many a gash,

Shall a mother’s kindness bless them,

Or a mother’s arms caress them.        

    Gone, gone,—sold and gone,

    To the rice-swamp dank and lone,

    From Virginia’s hills and waters;

    Woe is me, my stolen daughters!

I would recommend anyone interested in liberty, freedom, slavery, American history, history, eloquence, rhetoric, and humanity to read this wonderful book by Fredrick Douglass. You can read it for free right now!

If you don't have the time to read My Bondage and My Freedom, read his Reception Speech that he gave at Finsbury Chapel in Moorfields, England on May 12, 1846. 

When I think about some of my modern American woes, it is almost shameful to compare them to a life that Douglass lived, and to countless others that were born into that same fate. Douglass is one of the best writers on Liberty I have ever read, and I am glad to have his works on my shelf to read and to study from. His was a life well lived.