Annotate the following essay. Bring your notes to class tomorrow (Wednesday) for a Socratic Seminar.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
www.gutenberg.org/files/23/23-h/23-h.htm
Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He
was not sure of the exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or
1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he
learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he
escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a
free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his
name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he addressed a convention of the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the
group that they immediately employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive
orator that numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he wrote Narrative
Of The Life of Frederick Douglass. During the Civil War he assisted in the
recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and
consistently argued for the emancipation of slaves. After the war he was active
in securing and protecting the rights of the freemen. In his later years, at
different times, he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshall and
recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to
Haiti. His other autobiographical works are My Bondage And My Freedom and Life
And Times Of Frederick Douglass, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively.
He died in 1895.
CHAPTER I
I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and
about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate
knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By
far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know
of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their
slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell
of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time,
harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information
concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The
white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be
deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my
master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave
improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest
estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of
age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was
about seventeen years old.
My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the
daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother
was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.
My father was a white man. He was admitted to be
such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered
that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know
nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were
separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my mother. It is a
common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children
from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has
reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some
farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an
old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not
know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward
its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for
the child. This is the inevitable result.
I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more
than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in
duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve
miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling
the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was a
field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise,
unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to the contrary—a
permission which they seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the
proud name of being a kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother
by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me,
and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little
communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little we could
have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I
was about seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was
not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was
gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any
considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I
received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have
probably felt at the death of a stranger.
Called thus suddenly away, she left me without
the slightest intimation of who my father was. The whisper that my master was
my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence
to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that
slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave
women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is
done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification
of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning
arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the
double relation of master and father.
I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark
that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend
with, than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their
mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom do any
thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she sees them under
the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of showing to his mulatto
children favors which he withholds from his black slaves. The master is frequently
compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of
his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to
sell his own children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of
humanity for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them
himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few
shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back;
and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental
partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave
whom he would protect and defend.
Every year brings with it multitudes of this
class of slaves. It was doubtless in consequence of a knowledge of this fact,
that one great statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the
inevitable laws of population. Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled or not,
it is nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of people are springing
up at the south, and are now held in slavery, from those originally brought to
this country from Africa; and if their increase do no other good, it will do
away the force of the argument, that God cursed Ham, and therefore American
slavery is right. If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally
enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become
unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like
myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently
their own masters.
I have had two masters. My first master's name
was Anthony. I do not remember his first name. He was generally called Captain
Anthony—a title which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the
Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three
farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an
overseer. The overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable
drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a
cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women's heads
so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would
threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a
humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an
overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of
slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a
slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending
shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip
upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no
tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its
bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the
blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her
scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would
he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever
witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember
it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a
long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a
participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the
entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a
most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which
I beheld it…
Short excerpt from Chapter II:
The slaves selected to go to the Great House
Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were
peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods,
for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the
highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went
along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out—if
not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other.
They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous
tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all of
their songs they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm.
Especially would they do this, when leaving home. They would then sing most
exultingly the following words:—
"I am going away
to the Great House Farm!
O, yea! O, yea!
O!"
This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which
to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of
meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those
songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of
slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could
do.
I did not, when a slave, understand the deep
meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the
circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.
They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble
comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer
and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was
a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.
The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with
ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them.
The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am
writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my
cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the
dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception.
Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my
sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the
soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and,
on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in
silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his
soul,—and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is
no flesh in his obdurate heart."
I have often been utterly astonished, since I
came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among
slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to
conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The
songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by
them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my
experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my
happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while
in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island
might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness,
as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted
by the same emotion.
