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Frederick Douglass
My Bondage and My Freedom
(Autobiography)
Part I – Life as a Slave; Part II – Life as a Freeman
Published by
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[email protected] 2018 OK Publishing ISBN 978-80-272-4035-7
Table of Contents
CHAPTER II. Removed from My First Home
CHAPTER IV. A General Survey of the Slave Plantation
CHAPTER V. Gradual Initiation to the Mysteries of Slavery
CHAPTER VI. Treatment of Slaves on Lloyd’s Plantation
CHAPTER VII. Life in the Great House
CHAPTER VIII. A Chapter of Horrors
CHAPTER IX. Personal Treatment
CHAPTER XI. “A Change Came O’er the Spirit of My Dream”
CHAPTER XII. Religious Nature Awakened
CHAPTER XIII. The Vicissitudes of Slave Life
CHAPTER XIV. Experience in St. Michael’s
CHAPTER XV. Covey, the Negro Breaker
CHAPTER XVI. Another Pressure of the Tyrant’s Vice
CHAPTER XVII. The Last Flogging
CHAPTER XVIII. New Relations and Duties
CHAPTER XIX. The Run-Away Plot
CHAPTER XX. Apprenticeship Life
CHAPTER XXI. My Escape from Slavery
CHAPTER XXII. Liberty Attained
CHAPTER XXIII. Introduced to the Abolitionists
CHAPTER XXIV. Twenty-One Months in Great Britain
CHAPTER XXV. Various Incidents
LETTER TO HIS OLD MASTER To My Old Master, Thomas Auld
WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY?
Introduction
When a man raises himself from the lowest condition in society to the highest, mankind pay him the tribute of their admiration; when he accomplishes this elevation by native energy, guided by prudence and wisdom, their admiration is increased; but when his course, onward and upward, excellent in itself, furthermore proves a possible, what had hitherto been regarded as an impossible, reform, then he becomes a burning and a shining light, on which the aged may look with gladness, the young with hope, and the down-trodden, as a representative of what they may themselves become. To such a man, dear reader, it is my privilege to introduce you.
The life of Frederick Douglass, recorded in the pages which follow, is not merely an example of self-elevation under the most adverse circumstances; it is, moreover, a noble vindication of the highest aims of the American anti-slavery movement. The real object of that movement is not only to disenthrall, it is, also, to bestow upon the Negro the exercise of all those rights, from the possession of which he has been so long debarred.
But this full recognition of the colored man to the right, and the entire admission of the same to the full privileges, political, religious and social, of manhood, requires powerful effort on the part of the enthralled, as well as on the part of those who would disenthrall them. The people at large must feel the conviction, as well as admit the abstract logic, of human equality; the Negro, for the first time in the world’s history, brought in full contact with high civilization, must prove his title first to all that is demanded for him; in the teeth of unequal chances, he must prove himself equal to the mass of those who oppress him—therefore, absolutely superior to his apparent fate, and to their relative ability. And it is most cheering to the friends of freedom, today, that evidence of this