Is the United States of America today, closer to the composite nation Frederick Douglass advocated and planned for? Douglass never said the USA would be a country of justice or equality but would be on the path. https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/418-frederick-douglass-our-composite-nation/

Frederick Douglass: Visionario estadounidense

Frederick Douglass (en torno a 1818-1895) fue un orador abolicionista, ministro, escritor, reformista y estadista que nació en la esclavitud en Maryland, se escapó a Nueva York alrededor de los 20 años y se convirtió en un orador y escritor de talento. Debido a la potencia de su condena de la esclavitud y a su habilidad para presentarla, Douglass se contaba entre los oradores más populares de los circuitos de conferencias; llegó a ser un autor de éxito de ventas y, para el final de su vida, era el estadounidense más fotografiado del siglo XIX.

Frederick Douglass: Visionnaire américain

Frederick Douglass (vers 1818-1895) était un orateur abolitionniste, pasteur, écrivain, éditeur, réformateur et homme d'État, né esclave dans le Maryland, qui s'était enfui à New York vers l'âge de 20 ans et était devenu un orateur et un écrivain de talent. Grâce à la force de sa condamnation de l'esclavage et à ses talents de présentation, Douglass était l'un des orateurs les plus populaires du circuit des conférences; il devint un auteur à succès et, à la fin de sa vie, était l'Américain le plus photographié du XIXe siècle.

The Heroic Slave: La nouvelle de Frederick Douglass sur l'Affaire de la Creole

L'auteur abolitionniste, orateur et homme d'État Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) est bien connu pour ses discours, son autobiographie et d'autres ouvrages traitant de la question de l'esclavage aux États-Unis au XIXe siècle, mais en 1853, il écrivit son seul ouvrage de fiction, la nouvelle The Heroic Slave (L'Esclave héroïque), inspirée de l'Affaire de la Creole de 1841 et de son meneur, Madison Washington.

Frederick Douglass: American Visionary

Frederick Douglass (circa 1818-1895) was an abolitionist orator, minister, writer, editor, reformer, and statesman, who had been born a slave in Maryland, escaped to New York at around the age of 20, and became a talented orator and writer. Owing to the power of his condemnation of slavery and his skill in presenting it, Douglass was among the most popular speakers on the lecture circuit, became a bestselling author, and, by the end of his life, was the most photographed American of the 19th century.

Douglass championed civil rights for all people, and, at a time when women's suffrage was a controversial issue, argued for a woman's right to vote. His central concern, however, was the abolition of slavery and awakening his fellow Americans to the horrors and hypocrisy of the institution. In answer to the question "What did Frederick Douglass do?" it is not too much to say that he awakened the conscience of the United States to its great shortcomings in human rights and the betrayal of its own ideals as framed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Douglass firmly believed in the ideals of both documents and felt every American should be able to share in the benefits of the society those ideals informed, no matter their skin color or sex. From shortly after his escape from slavery in 1838 until his death in 1895, Douglass maintained his vision of a United States that lived the ideals of its founding. He continued to fight for equal rights for all people and the recognition of freedom as the natural condition of every human being, and one that should never be denied to another, especially not by a government founded on the principles of liberty and justice.

Early Life

Douglass was born a slave, circa 1818, on a plantation of the Eastern Shore region of Talbot County, Maryland. His mother was Harriet Bailey, a slave, and his father was rumored to have been a White man, most likely Harriet's owner. She named her son Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, a name he would go by until he escaped from slavery, dropped his middle names, and chose the surname Douglass.

In his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he writes that he rarely saw his mother, as she lived on another plantation 12 miles (19 km) away, could only visit him at night, and had to walk that distance both ways to be back home before sunrise. He never knew his birthdate and chose 14 February after his self-emancipation because he seemed to remember his mother calling him her "Little Valentine." The year of his birth is also unclear; Douglass himself said he never really knew how old he was, but he supposed it to be around 1818. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Betsy Bailey (a slave), and her husband, Isaac, who was a free man. Douglass' mother died when he was seven years old, and he would later write:

Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.

(Narrative, 352)

When Douglass was six, he was sent to the Wye House Plantation, and around the age of nine, he was given to Thomas and Lucretia Auld, who sent him to Baltimore to serve Thomas' brother, Hugh Auld, and his wife, Sophia. Sophia treated him kindly, made sure he had clean clothes and a nice bed, and, most importantly, began teaching Douglass to read.

Douglass' lessons with Sophia were stopped when Hugh Auld told her that teaching him to read would make him unfit as a slave. Auld's lecture, Douglass later wrote, was the first time the young slave connected literacy with freedom, and Douglass would always stress the importance of education as the path to equality.

Although Sophia had stopped his lessons, Douglass continued on his own, finding and hiding any reading material he could. He would later cite two books – an anthology of classical writings called The Columbian Orator, and the Bible – as his earliest tutors.

Around 1833, Thomas Auld had an argument with his brother and took Douglass back. Seeming to feel the boy had become spoiled by life in Baltimore, Thomas Auld sent Douglass to work for the famous "slave-breaker" Edward Covey. Covey beat Douglass so often and so severely that the wounds had not healed from a previous beating before he was whipped again.

When Douglass was 16, he fought back, later famously writing, "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man" (Narrative, 389). He defended himself against Covey and was never beaten again. Usually, if a slave lifted his hand against a White man, he was publicly beaten, but this did not happen in Douglass' case, which he attributes to Covey trying to protect his reputation as a "slave-breaker."

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What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?: Frederick Douglass' Challenge to America

"What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?" is Frederick Douglass' masterwork of oration, delivered on 5 July 1852 at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Also sometimes given as "What, to the Slave, is your Fourth of July?", the piece has long been recognized as among the greatest speeches in American history and what scholar David W. Blight calls "the rhetorical masterpiece of American abolitionism" (230).

Douglass was invited to give a Fourth of July speech that year by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, specifically by one of its leaders, Julia Griffiths, the English abolitionist who would also inspire Douglass to write and publish his novella The Heroic Slave (1853), a fictional account of the Creole Mutiny of 1841.

The event was originally set for 4 July 1852, but Douglass insisted it be moved to 5 July because, in the Black community, the Fourth of July had become a day of mourning as it was a date associated with widespread slave auctions throughout the South, held as part of the nation's celebration of independence. Griffiths and the others agreed to Douglass' demand out of respect for his feelings but also because the Fourth fell on a Sunday that year, a day when many did not participate in social events outside of church. The speech was therefore given on Monday, 5 July 1852.

It was an immediate sensation. Almost 600 people were in attendance, and, afterwards, Douglass "had it printed in bulk and sold it in his paper as well as out on the lecture circuit at fifty cents per copy or $6 per hundred" (Blight, 229). It became a bestseller, remains among the most popular of Douglass' works, and continues to be recited today, most often by civil rights activists, around the Fourth of July.

American Ideals & Slavery

The speech highlights the discrepancy between the ideals upon which the United States was founded and its persistent practice and defense of chattel slavery. Douglass had been born a slave in Maryland circa 1818, escaped to New York in 1838, and, by 1852, was the most popular speaker on the abolitionist lecture circuit as well as a bestselling author due to his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). He had also already established his anti-slavery newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York, worked with the Underground Railroad, and had lectured in Ireland and Great Britain between 1845 and 1847.

By the time of "What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?" he was a celebrity speaker and author whose views on slavery and the hypocrisy that supported it were well-known. His audience in July 1852 would have come to expect, generally, what his speech would focus on – and Douglass did not disappoint – but in "What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?" he developed many of his earlier arguments more fully and crafted an abolitionist opus whose points resonate as powerfully today as when the speech was first given.

Douglass begins by praising the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence before moving to his claim that the past is meaningless unless its lessons are applied to the present. America, he notes, was founded on principles of liberty and justice for all people, and yet that same country supports, defends, and prospers from slavery, condemning the international slave trade while regularly engaging in the same domestically.

The speech was given two years after the US Congress had passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required citizens of any state in the Union to assist in the capture and re-enslavement of freedom seekers who had fled captivity. Douglass cites this legislation at length as a glaring example of how America has failed to live up to the vision of its founding.

Citing the US Constitution as a "glorious liberty document," Douglass dismisses the argument that it, in any way, supports slavery and points out that it, in fact, opposes the practice. As long as people are legally denied their basic human rights in America, he argues, the United States fails to honor its Constitution and cannot be said to be living up to its original vision.

Throughout the speech, Douglass hints at – and in some passages predicts – the inevitability of the American Civil War, claiming that the nation cannot continue in its present division between slave states and free states while pretending to uphold universal principles of liberty. Even so, he also presents a hopeful vision at points, and especially toward the conclusion of the piece, that America will learn from its past – as well as the history of other nations – to fully embrace and live the ideals it was founded upon.

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The Heroic Slave: Frederick Douglass' Novella of the Creole Mutiny

Abolitionist author, orator and statesman Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) is well-known for his speeches, autobiography, and other works addressing the issue of slavery in the United States in the 19th century, but, in 1853, he wrote his only work of fiction – the novella The Heroic Slave – based on the Creole Mutiny/Creole Rebellion of 1841 and its leader, Madison Washington.

Douglass was approached by the British abolitionist Julia Griffiths (1811-1895), whom he had met in England, then a founder of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, and was asked to write a short story for an anthology she was preparing, Autographs of Freedom, which would present fictional works on the institution of slavery and, hopefully, reach a large audience in the same way that Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) recently had.

The Heroic Slave was published in 1853 by John P. Jewett and Company of Cleveland, Ohio, and, while it never attained the commercial or critical success of Uncle Tom's Cabin, it enjoyed respectable sales and, among the abolitionist community at least, was a bestseller.

Douglass could have chosen any event to deal with in his piece of historical fiction, but he chose the Creole Mutiny, as this event was of particular interest to him and had formed the basis of several speeches, lectures, and other works since 1841. The historical figure of Madison Washington, about whom almost nothing is known outside of the narrative of the Creole Mutiny, offered Douglass the opportunity to create a character, in the words of scholar David W. Blight, "of transformative eloquence as well as action" (250) and present the rebel slave leader to a White audience not only as a noble hero but also as a warning that there were many more "Madison Washingtons" among the slave population and, sooner or later, they would act just as he had done on board the Creole, though most likely with far more bloodshed.

The Creole Mutiny

The Creole Mutiny/Creole Rebellion was an insurrection led by Madison Washington on 7 November 1841 aboard the slave ship Creole, bound from Richmond, Virginia, to the slave markets of New Orleans, Louisiana. Washington had escaped slavery in Virginia in 1839 but returned in 1841 to free his wife, Susan, who was held on the same plantation he had been. Washington was recognized before he could locate Susan, re-enslaved, and sold to one Thomas McCargo of Richmond, a slave trader who was planning on selling a large number of slaves in New Orleans.

Washington was among the 135 enslaved men, women, and children aboard the Creole and, it is thought, prepared to take the ship before he ever set foot on board. He was acquainted with the story of the Amistad Seizure of 1839 in which illegally kidnapped Africans successfully took over the schooner La Amistad and eventually won their freedom as well as with the wreck of the Hermosa off the British territory of the Bahamas in 1840, which resulted in all the slaves on board freed by British authorities, as Great Britain had abolished slavery by this time.

Washington and 18 others took the Creole, resulting in the death of only one White man – the slave trader William Henry Merritt – and had the ship redirected to the port at Nassau in the Bahamas, where all the slaves were freed except the 19 who had taken part in the mutiny. These 19, including Washington, were finally also freed in April 1842. Washington and his wife, who was also aboard the Creole, then presumably began their new life as free people in the Bahamas and vanished from the historical record.

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