Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

by David W. Blight

**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History**

“Extraordinary…a great American biography” ( The New Yorker ) of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era.

As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence he bore witness to the brutality of slavery.

Initially mentored by William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass spoke widely, using his own story to condemn slavery. By the Civil War, Douglass had become the most famed and widely travelled orator in the nation. In his unique and eloquent voice, written and spoken, Douglass was a fierce critic of the United States as well as a radical patriot. After the war he sometimes argued politically with younger African Americans, but he never forsook either the Republican party or the cause of black civil and political rights.

In this “cinematic and deeply engaging” ( The New York Times Book Review ) biography, David Blight has drawn on new information held in a private collection that few other historian have consulted, as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass’s newspapers. “Absorbing and even moving…a brilliant book that speaks to our own time as well as Douglass’s” ( The Wall Street Journal ), Blight’s biography tells the fascinating story of Douglass’s two marriages and his complex extended family. “David Blight has written the definitive biography of Frederick Douglass…a powerful portrait of one of the most important American voices of the nineteenth century” ( The Boston Globe ).

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Frederick Douglass won the Bancroft, Parkman , Los Angeles Times (biography), Lincoln, Plutarch, and Christopher awards and was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Time.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, American History, Race, Biography Memoir, Civil War

769 pages, Paperback

First published October 16, 2018

About the author

David William Blight is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. In 2021, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Reviews

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautiful. One description called it "cinematic" and I think that's pretty accurate. You feel the sense of Douglass and the beautiful prose really captures his words and the time. It's annoying that people call him an "imperfect man." I mean, who isn't an imperfect person? This book certainly covers the warts and all. What's amazing about Douglass is that he never wavered. He never softened. He was strident until the end. After talking against slavery, he moved on to lynching and then Jim Crow. He wasn't soft like Booker T. Washington. He wasn't afraid to call out everybody--Susan B. Anothony, Lincoln, everybody. And he eviscerated the Southern Democrats. He was also incredibly prescient in what would happen in the south (it got worse). He was not predjudiced against immigrants and he fought for womens suffrage (even when the suffragette's showed their racism and their claws). The book is long and not all parts of it are necessary, but it's beautiful!

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Men talk of the Negro problem. There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their Constitution" -Frederick Douglass

"There is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours." -Abraham Lincoln to Douglass

David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass was great. In it Blight effectively shows that Douglass was a prophet, who used rhetoric couched in the Old Testament, for the abolition of slavery, voting rights for blacks, women's suffrage, and other civil rights issues. But this is not a complete hagiography, Blight gives a balanced look on his subject. He is critical of him when Douglass made racist and misogynistic statements against Native Americans and women, respectively (even though he was highly depended upon women throughout his life). What impressed me the most about his story is that how later on in life he motivated and encouraged a new generation of leaders to become active, leaders such as Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Finally, Blight does a great job of using Douglass's words from his speeches, letters, and other writings to share his thoughts on the issues of the 19th Century. Douglass's words still ring true in the 21st Century.

Also on Medium: https://medium.com/ballasts-for-the-m...

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, I know this won a Pulitzer and I'm only a reader/reviewer, but I struggled with this. Maybe it was a Grant hangover, but that biography from Chernow I rated five stars. This was well researched, numerous sources listed, but there were so many facts, words that evokes no emotion in me. I finished the book knowing who Douglass was and what he accomplished, but never felt I knew the man. I also dislike when a author guesses what a person would do in a given situation. Words like possibly or maybe. Anyway, yes again with the comparison but Grant was over a thousand pages and I could have kept reading. This, while I appreciate the work that went into it, was relieved when I finished.

[Donna Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars, rounded up. Thanks go to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the DRC, which I received free in exchange for this honest review.

Douglass is a key figure in American history, and Blight has made his career largely through his expertise on Douglass’s life. I expected to be impressed here, and indeed, the endnotes are meticulous and I would be amazed if there was a single error anywhere in this work. But aspects of the biography rub me the wrong way, and ultimately, I realized that the best way around this is to go back and read Douglass’s own autobiographies again.

Whether we read what Douglass tells us, or what Blight (or any credible biographer) has to say, there are two impediments that stop me short, and because I have never been required to start at the beginning and end at the end to complete a scholastic or professional assignment, I tend to read the beginning; recoil; abandon; and then return in an undisciplined, skipping-around manner that is uncharacteristic of my usual methods.

First we have the Christian aspect. Douglass was tremendously devout, and during his time it was much more common to discuss religion publicly and even in daily conversations, sometimes at length. It repels me. So that’s my first problem. It’s not Blight’s problem, but it’s one I have to deal with.

The second problem—again, not Blight’s, and it’s inherent in reading about Douglass—is that slavery was horrible. Douglass actually had a slightly better life than most of his peers, gaining an education and living in the master’s house, but it was nevertheless traumatic. It is unavoidable to see what he endured and not reflect on exactly how hellish life was for the four million that endured life in this dehumanizing, degrading system. After I read a certain amount of it, I feel as if I need to take a long shower to wash away the stain.

As for Blight’s book, there are some good moments here, and I learned some things. Who helped Douglass on his road to freedom? Free Black people did. Who knew that there were vastly more free Black folks in Baltimore, Maryland than there were slaves? The textbooks and other materials used to teach adolescents about slavery and the American Civil War overemphasize, to a degree amounting to deception, the participation of kindly white people, largely Quakers, and provide only a fleeting glimpse of the occasional African-American.

But I find that the eloquent passages that I highlight as I read this are not Blight’s words, but quotations from Douglass himself.

Meanwhile, the obstacles to appreciating this book are consistent and irritating. Blight makes much of inconsistencies in Douglass’s three autobiographies, and when he refers to the differences there is a superior, smirking quality to his prose that doesn’t sit well. I wouldn’t like it coming from any writer, but when the writer is a Caucasian, it adds an extra layer of insult. No matter how long Blight publishes, no matter his standing in the Ivy League, he will never be fit to polish Douglass’s boots. If he once knew it, I suspect he has forgotten it. So that’s a problem, and it’s hard to read around it.

The other issue, a more common one, is the tendency to guess at what is not known. This makes me crazy. The narrative will flow along in a readable, linear fashion, and then I start seeing the speculation, which is barely visible. Might have. Must have. Likely. It makes me want to scream. If you don’t know, Professor Blight, either don’t put it in, or address the unknown in a separate paragraph explicitly addressing the possibilities. Weed out the unimportant guesses and deal with the more critical ones head on. When these inferences are salted randomly into the text, we come away with tangled notions. Apart from the key events in his life, which of the finer details were fact, and which were surmise?

Excuse me. I need to find a nice brick wall so I can slam my forehead against it.

So there it is. For all I know, Blight may gain half a dozen prestigious awards from this work; it wouldn’t be the first time a book I’ve complained about went on to garner fame and glory. But I call them like I see them, and what I see is that it’s a better plan to read what Douglass says about himself, even though Blight appears to consider himself a more reliable resource than his subject.

If you want this thing, you can have it October 2, 2018.

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've put off reviewing this because I feel like I want to find the right quote, the perfect words, the right path to unpacking my thoughts about this piece. It was a lot to digest. My main information about Douglass comes from his popular Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This book expands on all of Douglass' narratives and serves as both a biography of Douglass and a BLACK history of his time, but also as an analysis of those autobiographies. There are multiple themes Blight is working on in this book and he nails almost all of them. I walked away from this biography fed, nourished, and given a better perspective of Douglass the man AND Douglass the myth. I feel like both the REAL man was expanded by the biography (I loved the last years of Douglass' biography just as much as the action-packed first years) as much as his myth and reputation. I especially loved the careful analysis of the Lincoln/Douglass relationship and the chapters that dealt with Douglass' relationship with the early suffragists. Nervous isn't the right word, but I was a bit hesitant to read the chapters about Blight and his wives/women and children. What major figure can be SO BIG and also have all their family shit together? But the frailties of his family and the way Blight paints his relationship with women seems to plant him firmly in the earth and in his time. He wasn't abstract. He was a man. But GOD, imagine living under THAT man's shadow.

[Peter Beck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frederick Douglass is the most brilliant and inspiring person I have ever encountered. This sprawling 769-page book was the balm I needed to help get me through what will hopefully be the final days of our Trumpian dystopia. I knew little about Douglass or the African-American experience before reading this book, save for raptly watching “Roots” as a kid. For example, I was unaware of the historical significance of 1619 or the meaning of Juneteenth until recently. “Frederick Douglass” fills a gaping hole in my education.

Eminent Yale historian David Blight could never have anticipated just how timely his book would be. That America would still be struggling to realize Douglass’s life-long quest for racial equality 125 years after his death is not surprising, but Blight opens with Douglass’s speech dedicating the Emancipation/Freedmen’s Memorial in Washington, DC. in 1876. President Grant and Washington’s leading lights attended. The statue depicts Lincoln standing and granting freedom to a former slave who is on bended knee. The statue became a focal point for the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer of 2020. Unlike the NYC statue of TR on horseback with a Native American and African-American on foot, the statue has not been taken down. The Black community itself remains divided on the fate of a statue paid for by former slaves. Somehow I never ran across this statue in my ten years of working in DC and walking to appointments.

Douglass’s self-education and dramatic escape from slavery to become one of the greatest orators the world has ever known are incredible feats in and of themselves, but what impressed me most about him was his unwavering pursuit of the most effective course for achieving the freedom and rights of his people. Douglass was “discovered” by the most famous white abolitionist of the 19th Century, William Lloyd Garrison and quickly became his protégé, but in time, Douglass came to realize that Garrison’s methods--non-violence and a refusal to participate in elections--would not work. When Douglass went his own way, Garrison went from being his mentor to tormentor, but Douglass did not waiver. Unfortunately, Blight tells us little about Garrison, even though Douglass would revere him for the rest of his life (Garrison’s portrait hung in his parlor).

At the same time, Douglass refused to participate in the armed insurrection being planned at Harpers Ferry in 1859 by his friend John Brown (Ethan Hawke is bringing this story to life for Showtime). He knew that trying to overthrow slavery without the backing of the government would be impossible. That did not stop the governor of Virginia from accusing Douglass of being a conspirator, which forced Douglass into exile for six months in his second home, the United Kingdom. Douglass also steadfastly rejected the colonization plans favored by some abolitionists as well as Lincoln (initially) and even many former slaves. Douglass questioned why slaves should leave their own country. Was not most of the world already the colony of a European power?

Frederick Douglass is one of the greatest speakers the world has ever known. David Bight is at his best helping us appreciate his speeches. He was more than merely eloquent. He elicited the full range of emotions from his audiences, from anger and sadness at the horrors he vividly recalled to laughter with his impressions of slave owners--an MLK and a Trevor Noah all rolled into one. He made logical, cogent arguments based on scripture, literature and the U.S. Constitution. When his house mysteriously burned down while on a speaking tour, his family knew what to save--his library, including the complete works of Shakespeare and Dickens. He liked nothing better than taking on a formidable debater. Above all else, Douglass always conveyed to his audiences the hope that America was capable of positive change, even though he would have the n-word hurled at him his entire life (the word appears over two dozen times).

Douglass also provides a fascinating perspective on Abraham Lincoln. At first Douglass didn’t know what to make of Lincoln’s mixed views on slavery, but over the course of three meetings he would come to deeply admire Lincoln. Douglass had a great take on Lincoln’s trip to Washington for his inauguration in 1861, “Mr. Lincoln entered the Capital as the poor, hunted fugitive slave reaches the North, in disguise, seeking concealment, evading pursuers, by the underground railroad” (p. 336). Douglass was unimpressed by the “weakness, timidity and conciliation” of Lincoln’s inauguration speech (ibid.). Douglass welcomed the outbreak of war but lambasted Lincoln later that year for sacking Gen. John Fremont for unilaterally freeing the slaves of Missouri. Douglass’s view of Lincoln would hit its lowest point in 1862 due to military setbacks and Lincoln telling a Black delegation, “We should be separated” (p. 371). As Lincoln grew into the job and embraced both emancipation and Black troops, Douglass was awed by Lincoln’s willingness to listen during their first meeting in 1863. This did not end his criticism of Lincoln nor did that criticism stop Lincoln from telling another visitor “I want to have a long talk with my friend Frederick Douglass” during their second meeting (p. 436). Lincoln’s assassination would serve as a heartbreaking reminder that America’s “second revolution” would suffer countless setbacks over the next 155 years.

Douglass’s personal life was complicated. He married a free woman he met in Baltimore shortly before his escape to freedom in 1838. Though married over 40 years, Douglass never mentioned his wife by name in his three autobiographies. Given that Anna was reserved and illiterate, what little we know about her comes from their daughter Rosetta (lovely name!). Like Thomas Jefferson, we only know that Douglas grieved deeply when his wife passed. Throughout his life in freedom, Douglass forged relationships with a number of abolitionist women, the closest of which was with the fascinating German translator of his second autobiography, Ottilie Assing. Assing helped Douglass publish his newspaper and lived off and on in the Douglass home for 20 years. Given that we do not know if their relationship was ever physical, Blight inappropriately refers to Douglass’s domestic situation as a “ménage a trois” (p. 387). Douglass’s remarriage to white suffragist Helen Pitts in 1884 led to widespread outrage, but Douglass had found his soulmate. Blight includes two pictures of each wife. The difference? Anna appears alone. Helen is with Frederick. Inexplicably, Blight fails to mention that upon Douglass’s death, Helen would spend the final eight years of her life devoted to preserving Douglass’s legacy, including converting their Cedar Hill home in Washington, D.C. into a national memorial.

Success would skip a generation in the Douglass family. Douglass’s three sons would never amount to much and his surviving daughter would marry a wretched man. However, during the Civil War, his son Lewis would serve valiantly in the Massachusetts 54th (made famous by the wonderful movie “Colors”). Though many of his 21 grandchildren would die young from disease, Douglass would live long enough to see a grandson become a concert violinist and others become teachers.

Blight is a brilliant writer, but “Frederick Douglass” is not without flaws. Blight tries to follow a chronological narrative, but it jarringly skips around at times. The final third of the book also drags a bit. In particular, the chapter on the burdens placed on Douglass by his family (“All the Leeches that Feed on You”) could best be summarized in a few paragraphs. Also, the Epilogue, which covers Douglass’s final days, is not as focused and sharp as I had expected. Moreover, Blight does not sum up Douglass’s life. The final third of the book is also plagued by Blight’s incessant use of nicknames to refer to Douglass, including “the Sage of Anacostia.” I could not imagine reading a book about Lincoln and having him repeatedly referred to as “Honest Abe.” Blight also failed to include a bibliography, forcing readers to wade through nearly 100 pages of footnotes to identify worthwhile additional reads.

Douglass never stopped giving eloquent, heart-wrenching speeches, but what impressed me most about his later years was not the positions he held (including ambassador to Haiti), but the role he played as mentor to the next generation of African-American leaders, including Ida Wells and poet Paul Dunbar. Douglass had as good a death as one could hope for (spoiler alert?)--he had just come home from a seminar on women's’ suffrage and was getting ready for a lecture that evening when he collapsed in his study from a heart attack, dying within minutes in the arms of his wife. Sadly, he died amid never-ending lynchings and the long darkness of the Jim Crow era. Are American voters ready to further Frederick Douglass’s dream on November 3rd?

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a time when race relations are strained, the name of Frederick Douglass is tossed around with great regularity. It also being Black History Month, I thought to educate myself a little more about the man and the impact he made on US history. Turning to this biography by David W. Blight, I tried my best to understand how the man, his writings and outward sentiments shaped America, with views that still resonate today.

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in a small shed on a plantation in Maryland, around 1817, the mulatto son of a slave and slaveholder. While he was a curious child, Frederick was also subjected to deplorable abuse towards those around him. His being born in the middle of America’s love affair with the slave trade is not lost on the reader who pays attention to the early portion of Blight’s book. Still, young Frederick tried always to see the best in people and sought to better understand what was going on and his place in the larger picture. While he was not permitted to attend school, Frederick paid some of the white children to teach him, usually presenting fresh baked goods to earn his keep. Frederick learned the basics of reading and writing, which would be cornerstones to his future livelihood.

When Frederick grew into adulthood, he discovered more complicated set of writings that would help shape his moral being. Pulling on passages of the Bible and other tomes of the great thinkers, Frederick began to see that there was hope, albeit bleak, out of the slavery that surrounded him, using numerous verses to explain kindness and equality, even though neither seemed possible at this time. This education would be met with some downsides, as Frederick began seeing the harsher side of some people, receiving the lash for speaking out for simply being Black. He tried his hand at odd jobs less out of desire than necessity, but was also prone to getting beaten for the colour of his skin and the apparent lack of speed when working.

When he grew old enough, Frederick took two major chances to shape his future: he changed his name and fled the plantation on which he had been working. Neither would be easy, but both necessary to ensure his future prosperity. Frederick assumed the name FREDERICK DOUGLASS (the repeated final letter to make him stand out) and sought to forget the middle names that had been used as yokes of remembrance from his slaving days. His escape, as Blight explains, was one of need and DIVINE intervention, as he needed to get to the free lands so that he could protect himself and spread the word. Douglass made it to New York after escaping on a train, having been encouraged by Anna Murray, a free black woman. This being the early 1840s, the abolitionist movement was still in its infancy, but Douglass’ oratory skills made him the perfect speaker to decry the horrors of slavery and the need to protect the Back population.

As the years passed, Douglass took Anna as his wife and began a family all while he continued to speak around the North about abolition and the topics of equality. Douglass would become a great orator and a key voice in the equality movements of Blacks, women, and the poor. As Blight explains, Douglass began many speaking engagements across the North and was key to drumming up support to ending slavery. He also made a trip across the Atlantic, when’re Douglass spoke in Ireland and Scotland, though he met some resistance as ‘slavery’ was seen with a much larger definition, hinting at the English control over these peoples.

While Douglass had been doing all he could to pass abolitionist sentiments across the North, there was still little impetus to legislatate an end to slavery. Douglass was well aware that the politicians in Washington (and the state capitals) needed to tackle the issue. It was not until the presidential election of 1860 that the option might have been a reality, with the battle between Democrat Stephen Douglas and Republican Abraham Lincoln. The Republican was staunchly against slavery and stumped on that sentiment, which grew the ire of the South and began a push for secession from the country. When Lincoln was successful at the polls, Douglass hoped that this would usher in change, but the strong-willed politician did not turn that passion into legislation. Instead, the country split and the Civil War began, which would be fought—at least partially—along the slavery/abolition lines. Douglass is said to have been very happy to see the war, as it would ensure that the country answered the question once and for all.

Politics and the Civil War came together for Douglass even more impactfully when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation would not only free the slaves, but allow them to serve alongside their brethren for the Union Army. Douglass could not have been prouder, but also cautions, as this meant his son and one son-in-law would soon be serving and could die or face blowback from fellow soldiers not as enlightened as their Commander in Chief. While Lincoln led from the White House, Douglass continued to feel that that passion the Illinoian once felt about slavery waned as the pressure of the national stage befell him.

When an assassin’s bullet killed Lincoln there was little time to mourn, as the country was still in the midst of its Civil War. However, Douglass watched as the Union soldiers tied things off and freedom was soon victorious. This would mean a country in which slavery was done, but fractured as to how it out to move forward. Reconstruction was the next stage, though Washington politicians were sloe to push for its true progress, as Douglass continued to rally from his various pulpits. He would see a country that accepted the tossing off of shackles, but not the complete integration of Blacks. As Blight explores, the Reconstructionist period was slow and hard going for Douglass, who turned to other things, not least of which penning successive volumes of his autobiography to pass the time, The era of slavery was done and its greatest opponent was still hoping for more.

In the latter portion of the tome, Douglass looks to revisit old haunts to see how the years had changed sentiments towards slavery and plantation-style ownership. Douglass took these times to try to understand how his life had come full circle and how that would make for a greater country for his grandchildren and their offspring. Blight explores this in some sentimental passages, as Douglass returned to the place his blood family were torn away from him and how he had to accept his lot in life, at least for a time. With a few more symbolic jobs and a great deal of time to sum up his life, Frederick Douglass basked in the knowledge that he had made a difference, though he would not live to see the equality about which he spoke when he died in 1895.

There is something about a biography that always gets my blood flowing. It could be the moments to learn something new about a person who has done so much, or it might be the entertainment of seeing how the author will portray the many people who grace the pages of the tome. David W. Blight did both numerous times, as I was in awe over all I discovered about one of the great abolitionists. Frederick Douglass was much more than simply a man who sought to toss the shackles of slavery aside. His views resonated decades before the movement to end slavery came into fashion. He used his eloquent ability to speak and write, rallying people all over the world, to see equality as the only way to live, even if it meant a great deal of adversity. Blight highlighted so many parts of Douglass’ life, while speeding over others, all in an attempt tp show readers just how much the man accomplished in his lifetime. Great chapters exhibit the countless themes of freedom, equality, and justice that Douglass sought to make cornerstones of his life, as well as how the America of the time resisted or limped along towards the horizon. While the book is definitely dense and information heavy, the dedicated reader will surely pull something from it that they can take with them, as I did at numerous points. I can only hope that Doug;ass’s views are not lost in the annals of history, either due to the vilification of equal rights or the right’s attempt to accentuate racial inequality. With an election for president coming up in 2024, and a candidate whose views on racial inequality are clear trying to return to his former position of autocratic authority, those who cannot cast a ballot can only hope that America’s return to greatness will have Douglass’ passion for equality in mind, not the suppression of rights through laws and at the hand of police batons.

Kudos, Mr. Blight, on this stunning piece of writing, I did take so much away from it.

Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/

[Samantha Zee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm going to be up front and say that this is a very detailed and well done biography of Douglass, to the point where if you are not extremely interested in his life, or writing some sort of extensive paper on Douglass, DO NOT READ THIS.

It's long. Like technically 900+ pages long, but with the occasional picture and the notes/sources in the last section, it is closer to just over 700 pages.

I would like to say this is written like a narrative, but while it's mostly in chronological order, a lot of the material directly quotes from Douglass' works/letters/speeches. Almost excessively. Which really took me out of the experience, since the tone and wordage of Blight did not always flow with the quote form Douglass. There are also a few sections during Douglass' life with less information available, so Blight uses what he can to piece together what he thinks happened.

Surprisingly, while the book is obviously focused on Douglass, the topic of his marriage and kids are glanced over, at best. There are entire chapters dedicated to women out side of his marriages, but just a couple sentences a chapter (if at all) about his wives and kids.

Honestly, I would not recommend this book to a casual reader because it is a lot of work to get through. Unless you are really into biographies or need to write a research paper on Douglass, I would pass on this book.

[Dave Tamanini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stupendous biography by David Blight. Douglass is among the greatest of Americans and his life work is as relevant today as back then. A long read but worth the time and knowledge gained.

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years ago I read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and was kind of blown away, not only because it was such a powerful book, but also because it seemed so beautifully written. Unfortunately I've long forgot any aspect other than my impression and few factual details. But that impression stuck with me. Not everyone was writing beautiful autobiographies in 1845, and no one had his story line. The memory made me quite interested when this book came out.

Frederick Douglass was a fascinating figure and lived a long constantly interesting life. And in these 900 pages, David Blights walks us, slowly, through the full trajectory of it, from childhood as a house slave, the disciplinary actions he was subjected to, his young adult life as a slave and dock worker with income, when he became a self-taught intellectual, to his escape, emergence within the abolitionist movement as a special and remarkably erudite speaker. And this is just the beginning. Phew. Douglass would go on to defy the peaceable abolitionist movements (led by William Lloyd Garrison), stake out his own name, and migrate towards promoting violence, meeting a few times with John Brown. He would rejoice in the American Civil War, where he recruited heavily for black soldiers to enlist, and pushed his sons to join...but did not sign up himself. His relationship with Abraham Lincoln was one of my main interests and it was way more complicated than I realized...and Lincoln was a bit more racist than I realized. But then the war ended and so did slavery...

So, what's an abolitionist to do once his mission seems accomplished...and he makes his living giving speeches. This is one of the odd aspects of Douglass, he was just a normal person trying to enjoy a normal life...kind of. He was human anyway, and flawed. Tightly knit with his family, but also keeping at least one mistress. He was at this point a famous speaker and drew in large crowds wherever he spoke. But, as that was his main source of income, and he had to constantly travel around country and speak, without his core message.

With our vision in hindsight, it's easy to track the major issues of the day. Jim Crow laws were expanding, Jim Crow life was north and south. But, worse in the south where the racism was violent, repressive, with newly freed blacks suffering massacres and lynchings. And we know today the cumulative impact of this. But Douglass was full of hope after the Civil War. He expected some trials and so he could only preach for black Americans to go make a living. It was a long time, and years of speeches, before it began to click with Douglass how serious these problems were. Lynchings peaked in the 1890's, after reconstruction efforts faded, and for the elder Douglass the shoe eventually dropped, but the vigor he put into the anti-slavery movement was no longer all there.

This is a long book. The opening was fascinating and Blight's style is elegant, but tires after a while, at least on audio. And so the book tends to fade in the less interesting parts, but they don't really last long. There always another surprise around the corner, another chance meeting, new role, or family issue or dramatic changes to what was happening, what he was experiencing and what he was saying about it. Really, a fascinating life that I'm grateful to know it in detail from a solid and impressive effort from Blight. Recommended to those interested.

Douglass in his 20's, in the 1840's and at age ~58 in 1876


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31. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
reader: Prentice Onayemi
published: 2018
format: 36:57 audible audiobook (912 pages in hardcover)
acquired: May 3
listened: May 4 – Jul 5
rating: 4

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful biography. David Blight imagines Douglass so deeply. Blight brings Douglass to life with such loving clarity. As I began this book, I was wondering what was left to learn about Douglass, when Douglass himself left us his autobiographies and his speeches. I was wrong. There is so much to learn about him. The way this biography opens, with the scene of the speech Douglass gave at the public dedication of the Emancipation Memorial, electrified me. I had of course read Douglass's famous 4th of July speech, but if anything, this later speech, given in 1876, was even more excoriating to his audience. As early as 1876 Lincoln had already become the hero-god of the Civil War, and here was Douglass, telling his self-congratulatory audience, wait a minute--let's remember that this man, Lincoln, was perfectly fine with slavery until he had no other choice. Blight made me feel the bravery of Douglass, where I could imagine him standing there before President Grant and all the other white dignitaries and refusing to buy into their feel-good story about the Civil War, and indeed, throwing that story back in their faces.

Blight provides a close reading of Douglass's autobiographies, too, and helped me to understand the way Douglass shaped his own story to further his life goals. By the end of this biography Douglass felt far more contemporary in his thinking. His convictions and contradictions and outspokenness and anger reminded me strongly of James Baldwin. This is a wonderful work of history and human connection.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

On September 3, 1838, a young Black couple entered the Philadelphia, Wilmington, & Baltimore train station in Baltimore, Maryland. Dressed as a sailor, the young man gave a teary farewell to the woman, then paced nervously on the platform next to the waiting train. Just as the train started moving, a friend rushed up to hand him his baggage, which he took as he boarded the “Negro” car and settled in for his journey. Thus began the most famous slave escape in American history. Over the next 24 hours, Frederick Bailey rode the line through Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Upon reaching Philadelphia, Bailey then switched to a night train that took him to Hoboken, after which he rode a ferry across the Hudson River to New York and freedom.

Though uneventful, the trip became fodder for one of the busiest and most successful lecturers in all of American history. In the decades that followed, Bailey – who in the interests of anonymity would soon change his last name to Douglass – recounted the event innumerable times before audiences on two continents, highlighting the tension of the journey and the ecstasy he felt upon its climax. It soon formed the basis of a career devoted to campaigning for the end of chattel slavery in the United States, a campaign that, as David Blight details in his biography of Douglass, made him one of the nation’s foremost celebrities. In doing so, Douglass helped to redefine the nation, in ways with which Americans are still grappling today.

Such were the unpromising beginnings of his journey that many of the details of Douglass’s birth are unknown. This includes the identity of his father, who was a white man and likely the owner of his mother, Harriet Bailey. Frederick experienced the cruelties of slavery from an early age, as he was separated from his mother as an infant and raised instead by his maternal grandparents. At the age of six he began to work for the Auld family, one of the richest families in Maryland. After six years working on their plantation, Douglass was sent to serve Thomas and Sophia Auld in Baltimore, where he learned how to read. This fueled the adolescent Douglass’s intellectual curiosity, with his voracious reading – usually conducted surreptitiously – laying the foundation for his subsequent criticisms of the institution that held him in bondage.

Douglass’s intellectual growth made him difficult to manage as an enslaved person, and he soon plotted his escape. Working as a ship’s caulker gave him a measure of autonomy that he sought to exploit, while his budding relationship with Anna Murray, a free Black woman, gave him access to resources. With her help he effected his escape north to freedom, albeit one initially overshadowed by his status as a fugitive. Moving to Massachusetts, he worked as a day laborer while starting a family with Anna. It was at his local African Methodist Episcopal Zionist church that Douglass began his career as a speaker, where his handsome countenance and natural gifts as an orator quickly made him a much-sought-after figure. As early as 1840 white abolitionists were employing him for their cause. Blight’s exploration of Douglass’s role in the prewar abolitionist movement is one of the greatest strengths of his book, as he details the complex and often difficult relationships he had with many of its leading figures, several of whom treated Douglass as more of a tool for their agenda rather than a colleague with whom they could collaborate.

By the early 1840s, Douglass was a prominent fixture on the New England antislavery speaking circuit. It was during this time that he wrote the first of his three autobiographies, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which brought the marketing of his life’s story on behalf of abolitionism to a new level of prominence. The book quickly became a bestseller, not just in America but in the United Kingdom, where Douglass toured from 1845 until 1847. Empowered by his growing success, he adopted an increasingly confident and strident tone upon his return, and began charting his own course within the abolitionist movement. No longer echoing the rejection of political solutions advocated by his former ally, William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass instead embraced political abolitionism as the best means of achieving his goal. Though his effort to launch a newspaper, the North Star, was not as successful as he hoped, it nevertheless gave Douglass a new platform from which to comment on current events, especially in terms of their relevance to the one issue that mattered to him above all others.

Over the decade that followed, Douglass relied on his voice and his pen in equal measure to denounce slavery. The circumstances were not promising, however, as the antislavery cause struggled to gain traction in American politics. As Douglass searched for a party that could best advance his cause, by the mid-1850s he begrudgingly settled on the Republican Party, which seemed to offer only half-measures in response to the demands of slavery’s supporters. That Douglass was prepared to go further was evident in his association with John Brown, the militant abolitionist whose embrace of violence Douglass found difficult to oppose. Blight devotes considerable space to exploring their relationship, one that forced Douglass to take a hasty trip to Canada when his correspondence with Brown was uncovered in the aftermath of the disastrous raid on Harper’s Ferry. Though this was followed by a second trip to Great Britain, Douglass returned in time to participate in the 1860 elections, which altered completely the prospects for abolition in America.

As with so many others, it took Douglass time to appreciate this. Like many abolitionists, he was disappointed by Abraham Lincoln’s temporizing on the issue, and even contemplated emigrating to Haiti. The outbreak of war in 1861, however, soon found Douglass committed to its transformation in an antislavery crusade. Giving full vent to his hatred of the Southern states, he denounced their brutalities from the stage and the page, and celebrated the announcement of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation as the realization of his hopes for the war. With the war now the means to achieve Black freedom, Douglass became the Union Army’s foremost recruiter among the Black population, with two of his own sons enlisting in the famed Fifty Fourth Massachusetts. Though still dissatisfied with Lincoln’s reluctance to go further, the failure of the dump-Lincoln movement with which he flirted led Douglass to cast his ballot for the president and celebrate his re-election in 1864.

The Union’s victory and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment represented the triumph of the cause for which Douglass had devoted over a quarter-century of his life. Yet Douglass soon found a new cause in campaigning against the meandering Reconstruction policies of Andrew Johnson. Now regarded as a leader of a vastly expanded population of free Blacks, the veteran campaigner was more in demand than ever on the speaking circuit. These later years proved frustrating ones for Douglass, however, as he found his hopes for Black equality steadily eroded by the intransigence of Southern whites. Family matters also challenged Douglass during this period, as his many children struggled to achieve financial independence from their father. Nevertheless, for all of his personal difficulties and the reversals that came with the rise of Jim Crow, Douglass remained an active and engaged public figure right up to his death in 1895, fighting to the end for his vision of what the nation could become.

Douglass’s influence did not end with his death, as the eulogies of a new generation of Black activists attested. This reflected in part the ongoing relevancy of the issues he addressed throughout his life for a country still divided by race. This alone makes his life and achievements worth reading about, and there is no better book to do so than Blight’s excellent biography. In it he provides a valuable examination of Douglass’s thought and activism within the context of its times, showing both its contemporary significance and its ongoing relevancy. Best read alongside Douglass’s many writings (particularly his Autobiographies and Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings in the Library of America series, both of which Blight edited), it is a superb work that is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand Douglass’s outsized contribution to our nation’s history.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A triumph of historical biography. Blight is very even handed in his treatment of such a venerated figure of American history - he shows Douglass as fully human, warts and all. I savored the reading of this over many months and enjoyed marinating in the story of such an important part of my country's history. The bibliography of this book is so rich; I will be reading from Blight's referenced materials for years to come.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley

We like, want, our heroes to be uncompleted, to always be heroic and constant while in the spotlight, and to leave that spotlight before they change politics or ideals. We want to remember Lincoln as the great emancipator not as the man who at one point wanted all freed slaves to return to Africa, a place they had never seen. That ruins the image of martyr Lincoln. We have the same feeling of many of our heroes, including Frederick Douglass.

Who despite what some people think is, in fact, dead. Perhaps the memory of Douglass is doing great things in a symbolical sense, but the actual man is long dust.

For most people, Douglass is the man who escaped slavery and publicly spoke out against it. Some people even confuse him with Henry “Box” Brown. Many students read Douglass either his Autobiography, or perhaps more commonly, the selection detailing his learning to read. The drawback to the commonly used selection is that it is many times the student’s only reading of Douglass, who sometimes some students think is a woman who is having sex with her mistress.

People today have heard of Douglass, but they don’t know of Frederick Douglass.

David W. Blight corrects that in his massive, though it does not read that way, new biography of Douglass.

Perhaps the hardest part of any Douglass biography is the reconstruction of his early life. This isn’t because of a lack of memoirs, but a surfeit of them, including subtle but important differences. Did he ask to be taught or did Sophia Auld teach him because of her own idea? A combination of both perhaps? Blight’s reconstructing of Douglass’s early life makes it clear when there is a question about what happened, where Douglass himself differs or where scholars raise questions. He does not choose sides; he deals with facts and context. A refreshing thing.

It is also something that he uses when dealing with Douglass’s relationship to his first wife Anna Murray, a free black woman who played a central role in Douglass’s escaping slavery. Murray was illiterate, not stupid, but illiterate as common for many people than. She and Douglass married soon after his escape, and they stayed married until her death. She birthed his children, she gave him a home to return to. Sadly, we do not know what she thought about her husband, about his relationship with the white women who would stay at her house, or about his feelings towards her for she is left out of his writing – much of interior family life seems to be. Blight, it seems, is slightly frustrated by this mystery of Anna Murray, and in the beginning, it almost seems like he is being, not condescending or dismissive, but almost shrugging off, not an accurate description but close. As the biography progress, however, you become grateful and happy that Blight does not presume to know what Anna Murray would think. He does suggest authors that try to channel her, but Blight keeps her presence as a real woman, almost shaking his head at Douglass’s silence. It helps that he keeps Douglass’s second wife, Helen Pitts, off page for much of the time as well.

Blight’s depiction of Douglass is within the context of his time and dealing with those who see contradictions and problems in who Douglass was – such as his expansionist tendencies, his view on Native Americans. Blight presents an imperfect human, as all humans are, but presents him with understanding and a feeling of fascination that are easily transmitted to the reader.

[Colleen Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Blight is one of those historians who, when another book is published, I put it on my list of books to buy because of my deep respect of his ability. In his work, he focuses a lot on memory, particularly as it relates to the Civil War and because of the way that the purpose of the war was hijacked by Lost Causers and their memories.
I have read at least one of Douglasses autobiographies and some of his speeches, along with his letter to Thomas Auld. I thought I knew a lot about him but reading this book revealed to me just how wrong I was. The book reveals Douglass to the reader as a great man and one of the great leaders of the Nineteenth Century, unafraid to speak truth to power whether he was addressing Abraham Lincoln or any of the luminaries of his times. The reader learns about Douglass, the public man and the private man with so many struggles within his own family. Blight presents his subject, warts and all and humanizes him. It is quite long but worth it. I recommend it highly.

[Sam toer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive, scholarly and monumental work; a powerful portrait of a self-made hero, and one of the most important figures of the nineteenth century, whose voice lives on. As Blight writes, “There is no greater voice of America's transformation from slavery to freedom than Douglass's."

[kayla goggin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exhaustive and exhausting. This is the boiled, unseasoned chicken breast of biographies.
I understand why this book won the Pulitzer for history this year because it really is incredibly detailed and well-researched (I would be shocked if there was a single detail of Douglass's life that wasn't included in this book) but Blight's bland, bland, BLAND writing made this a slog for me. 900+ pages but felt like 1500 pages.

[Theo Logos · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Douglass was the prose poet of America’s and perhaps a universal body politic. He searched for the human soul, envisioned through slavery and freedom in all their meanings. There had been no other voice quite like Douglass’s. He inspired adoration and rivalry, love and loathing. His work and his words still wear well.”

”If slavery and race were the centerpieces of American history through the 19th century’s rise, fall, and resurrection of the republic, no one represented that saga quite like Douglass.”


Frederick Douglass was a maestro of autobiography. His initial fame was based on his autobiographical writings. He wrote three, separate and independently interesting books about his life that stand as monuments to the form. So it is a daunting task to write a biography of the man who so brilliantly and thoroughly chronicled his own life. Fortunately, David W. Blight was equal to the task. His thorough and fascinating, Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the great man builds on the autobiographies, while adding not only valuable information from a plethora of sources (many previously unavailable) but adds an insightful independent perspective that is beyond the purview of autobiography, no matter how brilliant. It is a long and detailed book that should not be taken on lightly, but it never drags, is consistently interesting, and should be considered necessary reading for anyone with a serious interest in Frederick Douglass.

In his introduction, Blight lays out just why Douglass is such a critical figure deserving of such a massive biography. Of course, as a brilliantly literate escaped slave, Douglass was a superstar of the pre Civil War Abolitionist movement, easily the most famous man of his race in America. But throughout his long, eventful life, Douglass was much more. Blight writes:

”In roughly the last forty years, Douglass has more and more been treated by scholars as a political philosopher, constitutional and legal analyst, author capable of prose and poetry, proponent of the natural rights tradition, self-conscious voice of and about the nature of memory, a religious and theological thinker, a journalist and an advocate of public education. Today, Douglass is taught and examined in law schools, in history, English, art, political science, and philosophy departments, in high schools, graduate schools, and community reading groups.

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom captures this great American in all his brilliance, power, passions, complications, and contradictions. It thoroughly covers every stage of his life, from childhood in slavery, young manhood as America’s foremost abolitionist and early Black journalist, his mature years as the primary advocate for the freedom and welfare of his race, and his old age as a barnstorming advocate for the Republicans, government functionary, and diplomat. It is a life full of trauma, triumph, and tragedy, a life in service to causes far larger than self, a life that stood out as a colossus spanning 19th century America. Blight quotes the commemorative words of 20th century poet Robert Hayden in a perfect summation of the meaning and value of this life:

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is finally won;
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://thebestbiographies.com/2021/0...

This Pulitzer Prize-winning biography was catalyzed by the author’s lifelong interest in Douglass and his access to a collection of privately-held documents covering the last decades of his subject’s life. What resulted is a weighty, thorough, meticulously thoughtful and incredibly penetrating analysis of Frederick Douglass’s life and times.

Readers expecting a colorful and carefree journey through Douglass’s life are likely to be disappointed, however. This book is far more history than biography and the 764-page narrative demands an uncommon degree of focus and perseverance. Readers hoping to encounter the vibrant scene-setting often found in biographies by McCullough or Chernow will discover that this author’s style is more reminiscent of a relatively concise Robert Caro.

Blight’s account of Douglass’s early life as a slave and his escape to freedom at the age of twenty-one will capture the attention of everyone, however. And throughout this thirty-one chapter epic there are countless gripping moments certain to fascinate, illuminate and enlighten.

Of particular note: accounts of Douglass’s interactions with John Brown (and the aftermath of his raid on Harpers Ferry), insights into Douglass’s perspective on the Civil War as well as his attitude towards Lincoln’s war-time actions and Douglass’s memorable White House encounter with Andrew Johnson. Also noteworthy are Blight’s observations regarding Douglass’s relationships with his wife, Julia Griffiths and a German immigrant-journalist named Ottilie Assing.

But for all that this author was able to uncover as a result of his access to unpublished documents, there is much about Douglass’s personal life – and a non-trivial amount of his public life – that remains a mystery. Blight is careful to note where facts are uncertain, but some readers will grow weary of the narrative’s frequent speculation or heding, often accompanied by caveats such as “probably,” “likely,” and “may have.”

In addition, because Douglass was a prolific public speaker, much of the narrative is devoted to the details of his speaking tours. Over the course of several lecture circuits and countless speeches, these logistical recitations can grow tedious. Finally, for all the charm, heroism and inspiration that pervades Douglass’s story, this book is essentially the carefully reconstructed context of a man and his cause. Only rarely does it feel like the eloquently-told story of an intolerant world as seen through the eyes of an uniquely inspirational person.

As history, David Blight’s “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” is superb; it is comprehensive in scope, exhaustive in detail, scrupulously thoughtful in its analyses and notably revealing of Douglass’s travels and travails. But as biography it is often underwhelming – dense, dry, inconsistently engaging and frequently exhausting. As a result, as historically meritorious as this book proves to be, readers seeking a colorful, engaging biography are likely to find it disappointing.

Overall rating: 3½ stars

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monumental biography of one of 19th Century America’s most remarkable men: Frederick Douglass, who went in a few decades from runaway slave to abolitionist figure and writer to presidential adviser, political rabble-rouser and living legend. Douglass hasn't received a full biography in decades (not since a tiresome psychobiography by William McFeely) so I was thrilled about this, especially knowing Blight's other work. It certainly didn't disappoint, though I'll caution that Blight's approach is a little idiosyncratic. While the book does follow a roughly chronological narrative, he does zero in on specific writings and speeches of Douglass's, using them to frame his personal development, his reaction to specific events and how his inspiring words and human actions either complemented or diverged from each other. I found this particularly interesting the chapter on John Brown, showing how Douglass, the apostle of violent resistance to slavery, refused an opportunity to put words into action (though, in fairness, he may well have been put off by the quioxtic nature of Brown's enterprise). Blight also explores Douglass's fractious relations with abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, politicians like Lincoln and Grant and younger black leaders who viewed the older Douglass more as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party than a devoted civil rights leader; his efforts to tangle post-emancipation with new issues (racial equality, women's suffrage and lynching), his fame and fractious personal life (from a menage-a-trois with his first wife and a German admirer to a dastardly son-in-law who repeatedly tried blackmailing, then destroying Douglass). At worst, Blight can loose track of the thread in his digressions, or engage in odd speculation (particularly when dealing with Douglass's first wife, who left little record making it hard to reconstruct her thoughts and actions). On the whole though, it's as insightful, thorough and engaging a documentary as a towering figure like Douglass deserves.

[Ashley G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fascinating throughout. The photographs within the text were invaluable. The conclusion and the way David Blight held up Frederick Douglass' words about lynching next to the cries of 21st century protest was chilling.

I found myself continuously enamored with the life of Frederick Douglass as told by Blight. There is just so much content as the book comes in at 775 pages before the notes section but some highlights for me:
- Quotes from a speech given at a dedication of an Abraham Lincoln statue where Douglass speaks less than honorably of the late Lincoln.
- The circumstances surrounding his several trips to the White House
- How he learned to read (a story well-known, but always lovely to hear again)
- The roles his children played in the civil war
- The violence he befell on the speaking circuit
- The way he dealt with segregation when travelling with white colleagues
- A deeper look into both of his marriages
- His love of photography
- His reconciliation with his former slave owner
- The outrageous and by todays standards unthinkable headlines about Douglass in the press
- The way he ran his businesses
- The untoward way he referred to Native Amercans and Irish men in some of his speeches calling for black suffrage.
- The tragic deaths of many of his grandchildren
- And on and on and on.

This gave a complete look at Douglass that made him more human than hero while not taking away from the great impact he had as an activist.
A great resource and one I'm sure to reference again and again.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David Blight was a beautiful and meticulously researched biography of one of history's giants of the nineteenth century. From his humble beginnings as a slave in the south, he ultimately escaped slavery as a young man in Baltimore, Maryland. Frederick Douglass worked tirelessly for the abolition of slavery and reconstruction after the Civil War. He later fought just as relentlessly for the suffrage movement. As a young child he had been taught to read by one of the slave owners mistresses and quickly learned the power of the spoken and written word as he became, not only one of our greatest orators, but also a very respected and prolific writer. This biography relates the complexities of his two marriages and very large extended family. This stunning book is brimming with beautiful prose throughout as Douglass continues to fight for civil rights and justice at a very critical time in our national history. It was a very uplifting book.

"Above all, Douglass is remembered most for telling his personal story--the slave who willed his own freedom, mastered the master's language, saw to the core of the meaning of slavery, both for individuals and for the nation, and then captured the multiple meanings of freedom--as idea and reality, of mind and body--as perhaps no one else ever has in America."

"Powerful oratory, he learned, could 'scatter the clouds of ignorance and error from the atmosphere of reason. . . .irradiate the benighted mind with the cheering beams of truth.'"

"My joys have far exceeded my sorrows and my friends have brought me far more than my enemies have taken from me." -- Frederick Douglass, 1881

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky, her grand old woods, her fertile fields, her beautiful rivers . . . her star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slaveholding . . . when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean . . . and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.” -Frederick Douglass

I admire David Blight for being able to synthesize the life of Frederick Douglass in only a thousand pages. While reading about this extraordinary man, surely one of the giants of the 19th century, I couldn’t help but feel like two or three thousand more pages would’ve been not only reasonable but essential to even begin to tell his life story.
In a sense, there were multiple iterations of Douglass that could (and have) inspire books on their own.
Born to a black mother and a white slave owning father, whose identity he suspected but spent his life trying to confirm, Douglass grew up as most slaves did in the early 19th century, poor and under the constant threat of violence. Douglass however even as a child began to chafe at his bondage, and began secretly scouring the surrounding areas around his plantation for people who could provide him with books.
With knowledge came ideas of freedom and autonomy until one day his “master” Edward Covey beat him one too many times. Douglass, at great risk to himself retaliated, and in retaliation saw that he had more power than he realized.
Douglass would later escape, find odd jobs to survive in North, until he was able to find work in printing, catching the eye of prominent abolitionists. Under the tutelage of men like William Garrison, Douglass would be put on a path to fame as a spokesman for black people everywhere, tirelessly writing and speaking until the day he died (he would have a heart attack minutes before a carriage arrived to take him to another speaking engagement that evening).
While most Americans know Douglass the public figure, I was more fascinated by Douglass the man. As with most prominent men and women, a certain kind of mythology builds up around them that smooths the rough edges of their personality and eventually turns them into flawless human beings.
Flawless was something Douglass certainly was not.
He could be petty and hold grudges for years. He likely had several mistresses who would occasionally stay months at a time under the same roof as his wife and family. He would later in life held government posts which he would use to provide jobs for his large and extended family of sons, daughters, grandchildren and hangers on.
While an outspoken proponent of women’s suffrage, he believed voting rights were less critical for women than for blacks and believed the latter needed to take precedence.
Douglass could also be patronizing and racist toward Native Americans. As with most racism, there are hierarchies, and in an attempt to show whites that blacks were deserving of their respect he would contrast black behavior with the “uncivilized” behavior of Native Americans. He would write:

“The negro likes to be in the midst of civilization, in the city, where he can hear the finest music, and where he can see all that is going on in the world. A black man, wears a coat after the latest European pattern.  If you see him go down town and not see his face, you would think that it was a [white] man going along. They are not going to die out.”

It was not Douglass’s finest hour.
And yet despite these human frailties and shortcomings, Douglass was also a principled and dedicated voice for black freedom who for 50 plus years kept a grueling schedule of traveling inside and outside the United States. He would speak to almost anyone who invited him, early in his career about emancipation, later reconstruction, and finally later in life against the horrors of lynching.
He would throughout his life alternate between believing that blacks and whites could live in peace and believing that violence was an acceptable way for blacks to achieve equality.
He would never compromise his firm insistence that colonizing black people outside the United States (a view advocated even by some prominent abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln) was madness. In his view, blacks were born on American soil and have as much right to it (if not more considering the blood and sweat blacks contributed to its prosperity) as any white man.
Douglas would also, despite supporting American expansion in principle, as envoy to Haiti and at risk of losing his appointment, be a loud and dissenting voice against his country’s attempt to steal strategic land from this poor country. Outraged by the behavior of his country, Douglass would write:

“Is the weakness of a nation a reason for robbing it? Are we to wring from it by dread of our power what we cannot obtain by appeals to its justice and reason?”

It is one of many examples of the many facets of Douglass. As Blight writes:

“Douglass lived by many of the best elements of ambition and honor. Sometimes it brought out of him a nearly self-destructive hypersensitivity, and sometimes it prompted his best work.”

In short, Douglass was a man of sometimes maddening contradictions. However the best of Douglass, his fiery oratory and writings, as well as his being a symbol of uncompromising hope to millions of how far blacks in America could rise, far outweigh some of the more unpleasant parts of Douglass’s life.
He was an endlessly fascinating man and one whose words resonate long after his passing.
When Douglass wrote that white Americans did not value black lives late in his life that, “The murder of a black man no longer mattered ‘in point of economy’ as it had during slavery.”, it does not require a great leap to feel Douglass describing events in 2020. While life may be materially better for some, the violence toward black bodies in Douglass’s time continues today.

[Lulu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frederick Douglass was a gifted orator, brilliant writer, and not a bad strategist when it came to dealing with the politics and politicians of his day, but he was still a very complexed man.

This biography comes in at over 900 pages and through it all, Frederick Douglass is still some what of a mystery to me. This was basically a repackaging of his autobiographies with some outsider commentary and opinions (which tend to contradict the man the world adores). The author seems to fill in the blanks for certain parts he couldn’t find the exact answers to and there was a lot of repetition. So while this wasn’t a bad biography, it still wasn’t great.

Another thing that greatly annoys me is how, historically, we all but ignore his first wife, Anne Murray Douglass. I think this is largely due to the widely assumed fact that he treated her like crap. I mean after all, she only help him escape slavery, kept a stable home for him for 43 years while raising their 5 kids as he traveled the world, and accept his "intellectual friendships" with “random” white women. Alas, this is not Anna's story (can Bernice McFadden jump on that though?).

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: Perhaps the definitive biography of this escaped slave who became one of the most distinguished orators and writers in nineteenth century America as he for abolition and Reconstruction and civil rights for Blacks.

There is no simple way to summarize this magnificent biography of Frederick Douglass. Douglass lived an amazingly full life captured admirably in these 764 pages from his birth, likely conceived by a white plantation owner, to the attempts to break him on Covey's plantation, his quest to learn to read, and discovery of the power of words, his escape, and rise as an orator and writer, advocating first for abolition using the narrative of his own slavery, and later for full rights of blacks, even after the failed promise of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. He traveled relentlessly on speaking tours throughout his life, and was walking out the door of his home to speak when he collapsed and died of a heart attack. He wrote prodigiously, editing two newspapers and authoring his autobiography in three successive versions.

We could explore his oratorical greatness. Blight liberally quotes excerpts of his most famous speeches giving us a sense of the power of his rhetoric. We could trace the growing fault line between William Lloyd Garrison and Douglass, who differed on whether abolition would come through moral suasion or violence. We could explore his efforts to launch his own newspaper, struggling along for many years until closure. Blight uncovered editions of previously lost copies that enabled him to render a fuller account of the paper than previous biographers.

His later career reflected the tensions of trying to support Republican efforts at Reconstruction, only to condemn the eventual compromises and erosion of protections under the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments that exposed Blacks to lynching, suppression of voting rights. It exposed him to criticism from younger activists. At one point late in his life, he serves as an honorary representative of Haiti, a country in which Africans had thrown off the yoke of their white French oppressors.

Blight also traces the familial struggles Douglass faced. Wanting a family when he had been stripped of one in childhood, he married Anna, a free woman, who did not share his love of words and the public limelight. She made a household in Rochester that sheltered fugitive slaves, radicals like John Brown, and eventually, her children's families, as well as Frederick's sophisticated white women friends Julia Griffiths Crofts, and later Ottilie Assing, who may have been something more to than that to Douglass. Assing even stayed for months at a time. Awkward? Perhaps, but we hear nothing of it from Anna, Awkward and distressing as well were the failures of their children, including his daughter's husband. Part of the reason for Frederick Douglass's unremitting lecture tours was the necessity to support this growing brood unable to be self supporting. This was an irony for one who prided himself on his self-sufficiency.

Frederick Douglass was a fighter, from the plantation to the Baltimore docks to the lecture and convention circuit. No one fought more passionately for Black civil rights. He fought until the day he died. The fact that the fight has had to be picked up by Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Dubois, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama, and still endures makes the case that it is not for lack of fighting and arduous effort that we still seek King's dream. Rather we need to pay attention to a larger American story of a country that has continued to struggle and fail to live up to its ideal of "liberty and justice for all." To read this biography of Douglass is both to marvel at the vision and drive and relentless fight for freedom of this man, and to grieve for the generations of compromises and lost opportunities that are the story of this country. It suggests that progress can only occur when Black prophets of freedom like Douglass are joined, generation after generation, by Whites who advocate for the nation's ideals��with the relentlessness of Douglass. Douglass never gave up on the possibility of liberty and justice for all, including his own people. And neither should we.

[Leela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant historian, amazing primary sources, and secondary source analysis. This book was a god send while I was researching and writing my history paper on Narrative's importance in comparison to his other abolitionist work. In fact even beyond pure research, it was genuinely interesting.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone doing research on the abolitionist movement or Douglass. I would also recommend it to anyone looking to understand more about the experiences of a slave turned abolitionist hero and statesman.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frederick Douglass is well known to some and should be well known to all. An escaped slave he went on to be a pioneer of the early civil rights movement. Of course, this first involved abolition and then the fight for equal treatment under the law. The book covers his entire life in detail from his birth as a slave and the speculation that his owner was his father all the way to his death. His self-education and ability to speak and write are amazing and his passion and zeal for his cause are equally laudable. His personal life can be interpreted to leave much room for improvement between the insinuations of affairs to the difficulties his children had being gainfully employed the public image of this icon is much different than his private life. The detail and research are excellent, but I did find it dry in some places. All in all, it should be read as this is an important American historical figure who is criminally overlooked and underappreciated.

[Scott Hitchcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's amazing how little I knew about Douglass beyond a couple of headline bullets. When thinking of Civil Rights leaders the 1950's and 60's leaders are well documented in our society but not nearly enough attention is given to their predecessors. Douglass was an amazing orator to rival King and going on a tour of the south to do it during the reconstruction era at least as dangerous if not much more so than 80 years later.

What was also amazing was his time abroad in Europe after escaping slavery. His treatment there much better than in America a lesser man might have washed his hands of the situation or maybe just written on the topic rather than return.

Then there's the grief aspect. He lost over ten grandchildren and a few of his children in the course of a few years. So much pain. I'm sure continuing in his struggle helped keep his mind off of is pain.

The author does a good job of pointing out Douglass's flaws and humanizing him. No man is perfect. His struggles with other abolitionists and at times with woman's suffrages groups was at times very tenuous.

Highly recommended.

[Rochelle]

A must-read to gain a nuanced understanding of today's issues surrounding the history, ideology and entrenched attitudes of White supremacy and privilege Frederick Douglass and many others sought to eradicate so that the rebirth of the republic from the ashes of slavery could fulfill its promise. He was prescient, passionate about America fulfilling its own spiritual promise to the world--a promise, judging by the shootings, mass detentions, and destruction of civil rights, remains largely unrealized.

[Z. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to think of another figure in U.S. history more obviously worthy of a comprehensive biography than Frederick Douglass. Not only was he himself a tremendous autobiographer in his own right (his Narrative is, in my opinion, one of the most important literary works this nation has produced), but his life is an almost unbelievable cross-section of 19th-century American political and public life. From a childhood and adolescence in slavery, through his daring escape (with the crucial assistance of his fiancée, Anna Murray), a relentless half-century career as a traveling orator, editorship of two weekly newspapers, authorship of three volumes of autobiography, fearless participation in the Underground Railroad, active working relationships with most of the major anti-slavery, women’s suffrage, and civil rights activists of his day as well as the likes of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, a turbulent family life (including a long, probably romantic extramarital relationship with radical German émigré Ottilie Assing, fatherhood of two sons who served in the storied 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War, and a scandalous late-life second marriage to a white reformer), and various Republican political appointments in the Reconstruction era and Gilded Age (including an ambassadorship to Haiti), Douglass saw and did it all.

Blight’s acclaimed biography—it won the Pulitzer, and was recently voted one of the 100 best books of the 21st century in a highly-publicized New York Times poll—gives this incredible life the sustained attention it deserves, and particularly helped me to fill in the large blanks left by the Narrative (which was, after all, published when Douglass was only about 27, a full 50 years before the end of his life and career). Blight is suitably reverent and never salacious, though he does give a warts-and-all treatment; Douglass, like any mortal who lives so long and does so much, inevitably had his warts, a few of them sizable. The book’s scope and level of research are impressive, and, while Blight’s workmanlike prose style can’t and doesn’t try to compete with Douglass’s abundantly-quoted rhetoric, he does carry the reader along with confidence, dignity, and clarity. In many ways, this feels like the platonic ideal of a biography on a Great Figure from History: thorough, authoritative, even-keeled, admiring without being worshipful.

Still, though it’s hard to think of anything very substantial to criticize, I did find this a bit of a plodding read, particularly in its middle third. Maybe it’s because of a tendency on Blight’s part to belabor certain points (there are probably a few more asides about Douglass’s participation in the “jeremiadic tradition” of the Old Testament prophets than are strictly necessary), or my own lack of practice with biographies of this length (about 800 pages, or in my case 37 audio hours stretched over 2 1/2 months), or simply the fact that even a very capable biographer can’t help but fall short when their subject is both so enormous and already such a master of this very form. I also wonder, though Blight is always at pains to do his due diligence, whether there’s an inevitable mismatch when a white academic tries to do justice to a figure whose Blackness is so integral a part of his story, career, and self-conception.

One thing I can say is that, when I choose to immerse myself in the story of a person’s life in the way an 800-page biography demands, I do want to come away with a stronger sense of the subject as a person, in addition to and beyond the realm of their work. It’s impossible not to get a sense of Douglass’s personality from Blight’s book, but for most of its length this is very much an overview of Douglass’s public-facing career, with comparatively little attention paid to his (often quite complicated) personal relationships and home life. Blight’s justification for this is that Douglass was a single-minded, tirelessly mission-oriented man (he had a speaking gig scheduled the day of his death), and deeply unrevealing about his private affairs. I have no doubt that’s true, but I was still a bit exasperated by the seemingly endless repetitions of, for instance, “What [Douglass’s long-suffering and largely illiterate first wife] Anna may have thought of this, we can’t know”—as if the fact that Douglass didn’t record such information himself means that it’s not worth trying very hard to read between the lines. Very few “characters” in Douglass’s life, whether romantic partners, family members, rivals, or colleagues, are sketched in a way which makes them truly come alive, which is a shame since Douglass associated with so many individuals over the course of his nearly 80 years whose personal stories were nearly as fascinating as his own.

Prophet of Freedom starts with a description of an unveiling of a statue of Lincoln literally breaking the bonds of an enslaved man, an occasion at which Douglass gave a characteristically unsparing speech reminding his audience of Lincoln’s flawed humanity and the ongoing work to be done for civil rights in America. Maybe it’s appropriate, given this opening image, that the Douglass presented by this book also sometimes feels more like a statue than a man: monumental, inspiring, and singular, but ultimately still opaque.