1. Running head: FREDERICK DOUGLAS 1
Frederick Douglas
Krista Kyker
Shepherd University
Author Note
Dr. Bankhurst History 201 Monday Wednesday Friday Class 9:10-10:00am

2. FREDERICK DOUGLAS 2
Abstract
Frederick Douglas wrote a narrative autobiography describing the institution of slavery from the
slave’s standpoint in order to incite change by creating opponents of slavery. Previously, people
had argued that the institution of slavery helped to expand the economy while moving the
African Americans up toward a more civilized way of living and that the slave owner’s role as a
patriarchal figure in their lives instilled civility in a racial group of people that were otherwise a
substandard breed of the human race. Frederick Douglas sheds light on the African Americans
struggle to understand their place in society as a less than human subordinate being and showed
his readers why educating his people was the key element that led to their eventual emancipation
from the inhumane bondage of slavery in the United States of America.
Keywords: Douglas, Autobiography, Slavery

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Frederick Douglas Extra Credit
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas is an autobiographical account of his own
life and the impact that slavery had on his psyche. The book illustrate how education was
the key element that prompted his escape to freedom and how knowledge enabled him to
form his own opinion of his life and gave him the strength to lift himself up from the
bondage of slavery.
Education and Knowledge
Education was a source of power for Frederick Douglas that led to his personal
understanding of his own station in life. As a young slave, when his master’s wife began
teaching him the alphabet, he felt a warmth in the human connection that the instruction offered
him. When his master forbade his wife from teaching Frederick he let it slip that knowledge
breeds unhappy slaves which leads to insurrections and revolt. This was a pivotal moment in
Frederick’s life as he realized that the more he learned the more he would understand about his
own circumstances and be able to control the outcome of his own future. Master Auld made a
fateful mistake that day which sent a wave of truths and understanding through Frederick’s mind.
It was at that moment he realized that it was “to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black
man.”1 Frederick said “from that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom,”2
was knowledge. The atrocities of his circumstances were not able to break his spirit due to the
strength and comradery that education offered his heart. The young boys from the streets of
Baltimore whom Frederick traded food for knowledge became a tool for his intellectual growth
but also offered his soul the support and companionship that the lonely life of a slave was
1 Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas page 20
2 Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas page 20

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lacking. Frederick’s own determination and ingenuity only strengthened his resolve to learn as
much information as quickly as he was able to do within the bounds of his situation.
Strengths of the Narrative
Frederick Douglass wrote his autobiography in a narrative style that was inclusive of
other slave’s situations and experiences in order to illuminate that slavery was an institution with
many different layers. He successfully argued that a majority of plantation slaves and those
slaves being held in the Deep South had a worse station in life than he did. Although slavery in
itself was a miserable, degrading, and painful circumstance which led to the physical, sexual, and
psychological abuse of many of the slaves trapped within its grasp, plantation slavery proved to
have some of the worst conditions that existed. Frederick Douglas chose to expose these
experiences through his own eye witness accounts in order to shed light on the abuses of slavery.
Douglas used his yearlong experience with the “Nigger breaker”3 to illustrate his
experience as a slave in order to draw a parallel to the experiences of other slaves who lived their
entire lives in a similar situation. By doing so he was able to highlight the immorality, injustice,
and unlawfulness of the entire institution of slavery. If he had simply told his own life story
without describing the abuses of others, then his message would not have seemed as pressing and
it would not have enlightened others toward the abolition of slavery. Singularly, Douglas’s
experience could have been swept aside and forgotten but together alongside other stories of
injustice and abuse, the narrative became a powerful message of hope and righteousness.
Frederick Douglas’s message made the reader/listener envision starving naked children being
beaten to death if they took one piece of fruit from a forbidden tree and to visualize the female
slave forced to spend her life as a vessel forced to produce and carry her master’s children in
3 Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas page 34

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order to increase his wealth in human ownership. Douglas’s stories added more than the
descriptions of the daily beatings of slaves in his autobiography, it humanized the lives of those
slaves that were dehumanized in their situation which exposed the institution of slavery for what
it really was, the exploitation of an entire race of human beings.
At the heart of Frederick Douglas’s story was a plea to civilians to recognize the
atrocities and immorality of slavery and to stand up and help those that are still being hurt by the
institution. He says that he “would keep the merciless slave holder profoundly ignorant of the
means of flight adopted by the slave…Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let darkness
commensurate with his crime…”4 Douglas points out that there are still millions of people that
are being abused and hurt by evil masters on the plantations of the Deep South. He does not
condone the Underground Railroad but is asking his readers to find ways to help the slaves that
are still being held to escape. In my opinion Douglas chose to tell the story of other slaves in
order to encourage people who would listen to help emancipate these slaves. His autobiography
was not only his own story but the story of his fellow man - that were unable to read, write or ask
for help. Through his book he was asking for help for them. He was able to use his education to
free himself and then turn around and use his articulation to advocate for the abolition of slavery
everywhere. In a sense his own education was the beginning of his inner freedom which
eventually led to his physical freedom and his calling to free all mankind.
4 Frederick Douglas Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas page 60

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Bibliography
Douglas, F. (1845). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Vol. 1). (P. S. Stanely
Appelbaum, Ed.) Boston: The Anti-Slavery Office. Retrieved 1995