Our copy of the work is a first edition.Douglass's graphic Depictions Of Slavery, Harrowing Escape To Freedom, And Life As A Newspaper Editor, Eloquent Orator, And Impassioned Abolitionist.sacred Lifewhen It Was First Published, Many Critics Doubted That the Narrative Of The Life And Times Of Frederick Douglass had Even Been Written By Frederick Douglass. For reference, the Narrative was published about twenty-five years after the Missouri Compromise, five years before the Compromise of 1850, and about nine years before the Kansas-Nebraska Act. They could not believe that he had once been a slave as he claimed to have been! Douglass, therefore, wrote this Narrative in part to prove them wrong.ĭouglass’s Narrative was first published in 1845, about seven years after he had escaped from slavery. As Douglass began to work for the cause of abolition, some critics alleged that his personal history had been invented. Interestingly, Douglass also had a more particular purpose. As his friend William Lloyd Garrison explained in the preface to this work, “He who can peruse without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit, …without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed… must have a flinty heart, and be qualified to act the part of a trafficker ‘in slaves and the souls of men.” In other words, Douglass wrote to show the wrong of slavery and advance the cause of abolition.
We can identify at least two important purposes that Frederick Douglass had in writing his autobiography. Toward the end of his life, Douglass even served as an ambassador to Haiti. He befriended many notable figures of the day: not only fellow abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown but also President Abraham Lincoln. He became a key figure in the abolitionist movement as an orator and newspaper publisher. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an autobiographical publication prepared by one of the most important American abolitionists of the nineteenth century.Īs the Narrative explains, Douglass was born into slavery but escaped in 1838.
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