Journal for Douglass

"Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice."
http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/home.html


Abraham Lincoln could not have been more fortunate in his adviser. We learned from "Lies My Teacher Told Me" that Abraham Lincoln came slowly to his commitment to the abolition of slavery. Frederick Douglass's ability to speak so powerfully about the subject must have had a lot do with it.
The exposition of the evil of slavery is not what astonishes the twenty first century reader of Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of the Life." What is astonishing is the intelligence, the courage, the strength, and the eloquence of the man himself. As a young boy he is taken to Baltimore to serve another master. His new mistress treats him kindly and starts teaching the child to read. When the master discovers this he is furious with his wife and takes her to task in front of the boy. The young boy hears the master explaining to his wife that slaves would not remain slaves if they were taught to read. The ten year old Douglass takes this unintentional revelation as the key to his liberation and grasps it with all the strength of his spirit. He teaches himself to read by lengthening his errands and cunningly enlists the help of some white boys he has befriended. He is profuse in his gratitude to these boys, with whom he shared affection.He continues his self-education with the same resourcefulness and perseverance and in this way he acquires a mastery over the written word that is impressive centuries later.
Nowhere is the intelligence of the voice, the incisive analysis of the institution, and the intricate multiplicity of his themes so brilliantly displayed as in the following paragraph, where he has been sent to be "broken" by Edward Covey.

"Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could have had it done with out such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for the sake of training to which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion - a pious soul - a member and class-leader in the Methodist Church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a "nigger-breaker." I was aware of all the facts, having been acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man." (Douglass, p. 2097.)