Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In the spring of 1845 Douglass's first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, was published by the Anti-slavery Office in Boston. In the 1840s firsthand narratives of slavery, world travels, and Native American captivity were more popular than fiction with the reading public in the United States. Although Douglass's recollection of his first two decades in slavery was not the first slave narrative to gain wide readership, it became the most popular and most enduring account of American slavery. The Narrative served two important purposes. First and foremost it was antislavery propaganda that aimed to reveal the horrors of slavery, and as such it outsold any other black autobiography appearing in print before the Civil War. More than 4,500 copies sold during its first four months in publication, and by 1848 it had been translated into German, French, and Dutch. During Douglass's tour of Ireland and Great Britain from 1845 to 1847, at least two Irish and four English editions were printed. As many as thirty thousand copies of the book were sold by 1853.

Besides adding his own story to the growing body of slave narratives, Douglass had a second and more personal reason for penning an account of his enslavement. While on the antislavery lecture circuit, Douglass was sometimes charged with defrauding his audience. Some believed that one who spoke so eloquently could never have been enslaved. Douglass wrote the Narrative to dispel the skepticism of his critics, but he did so at great personal risk. Although the book appeared seven years after Douglass left slavery, he was legally still a fugitive who risked recapture and possible return to slavery by revealing the intimate details of his life in bondage. Douglass willingly placed his freedom in jeopardy, but only to a degree. He left the United States for an extended tour of Ireland and Great Britain, returning in April 1847 after British reformers supplied the funds to pay his slave master to grant his true freedom.

Douglass's Narrative begins with his earliest memories as the slave of Aaron Anthony, chief overseer of the wealthy Maryland planter Edward Lloyd IV, who may have been Douglass's father. During the division of Anthony's estate following his 1826 death, Douglass passed to Anthony's daughter, Lucretia Planner Anthony Auld, and her husband, Thomas Auld. Douglass spent his youth traveling between the household of Thomas Auld on Maryland's rural Eastern Shore and that of his brother, Hugh Auld, who lived in Baltimore. For the year 1834, sixteen-year-old Douglass was leased to a small farmer near Saint Michaels, Maryland. In areas of the Upper South, where crops were becoming increasingly diversified after 1820, slave leasing was a common means of earning extra income. Owners who held more slaves than they could employ on their farms leased their surplus workers to small farmers, businesses, or manufacturers. Besides supplying cash payment for slaves' labor, the practice of leasing slaves released owners from the burden of providing housing and food. Leasing was commonly conducted during the New Year holiday, and most lease contracts between owners and small farmers, industrialists, or even railroads were for an entire year's service.

In chapter 10 of the Narrative, Douglass gives a detailed account of his year as the leased slave of Edward Covey. Born about 1806, Covey managed to rise from humble beginnings as a tenant farmer to accumulate real estate valued at $23,000 by 1850. Although he was a small farmer among the many great plantations in Talbot County, Maryland, Covey gained the reputation as a “slave breaker,” which allowed him to negotiate lucrative lease arrangements with area planters eager to have their slaves taught appropriate behavior and discipline. Douglass's master, Thomas Auld, probably had in mind reducing the spirit of his young slave when he arranged the year-long lease with Covey for 1834. Before returning to Saint Michaels in March 1833, Douglass had spent several years in the Baltimore home of Hugh and Sophia Auld, and he had there learned to enjoy the quasi freedom of the urban environment. Although it was illegal, Douglass managed to learn to read and to interact with both slaves and the free black community. When he returned to rural Saint Michaels, he brought some of his urban ways with him and organized a short-lived Sabbath school for area slaves with the help of a local white man. Disbanded after only three meetings, the Sabbath school pointed to Douglass's audacity and likely led his master to seek out the help of the notorious “Negro breaker” Covey. However, instead of breaking Douglass's spirit and making him more fit for slavery, the year with Covey instilled in Douglass a desire to be free.

Douglass's struggle and eventual fight with Covey is one of the most enduring narrations of a master's cruelty and also one of the clearest descriptions of slave resistance. Covey expected Douglass to work alongside his other three leased slaves, performing general labor on his farm. Having spent much of his youth in Baltimore, Douglass was unaccustomed to field work and suffered whippings as a result of his incompetence. During Douglass's first week on the farm, Covey directed him to drive an oxen cart to gather a load of firewood. Because Douglass had no experience in driving a team of oxen, it seems likely that Covey had set Douglass to fail. When the cart turned over and the oxen scattered, Douglass managed to locate them but returned without the firewood. Covey then subjected him to the first of almost weekly beatings. Instead of meekly complying with Covey's demand that he strip off his clothing, Douglass refused, maintaining his dignity as best he could under the circumstances.

The repeated beatings and hard labor he endured under Covey's lash very nearly broke Douglass's spirit. The tide turned, Douglass notes, in August 1834 when Covey pushed him past the limit of his strength to tolerate this malicious treatment. On a hot August day, Douglass fell ill and collapsed while fanning wheat. The description of the events that follow left the readers of Douglass's Narrative with a chilling portrait of the evil nature of slavery and the indifference of slaveholders to the suffering of the enslaved. Instead of providing the ill Douglass with medical attention, Covey kicked him repeatedly and hit him in the head with a hickory slat removed from a nearby barrel. Ill, dazed, and in severe pain, Douglass sought the refuge of his owner, Thomas Auld, whom he believed would remove him from Covey's household once he learned of the latter's brutal behavior. Taking some five hours to cover the seven miles between Auld's home and the Covey farm, Douglass found no refuge with his master, who instead sent him directly back to Covey.

In his Narrative and in subsequent orations and writings, Douglass described what followed as the major turning point in his life as a slave. With his antislavery readers cheering him on, Douglass told of his resolve to no longer be the passive recipient of Covey's violent attacks. When Covey tried to beat Douglass the Monday following his ordeal, Douglass fought back, leaving the supposed “Negro breaker” embarrassed and in pain. Douglass finished the year in Covey's employ but was never beaten again. The fight with Covey rekindled Douglass's desire to be free. When he recounted these events in his speeches and autobiographies, he sought to restore agency to the enslaved population that northern antislavery audiences sometimes viewed as helpless victims.