INTRODUCTION + READING ASSIGNMENT + WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Assignment 25:
FREDERICK DOUGLASS (Part 2)

If literacy was such an all-empowering thing, Douglass would never have been sent to the self-styled "nigger-breaker," Covey, by Thomas Auld. This man, "Master Thomas," apparently only regards Douglass as a slave potentially "spoiled" for the life of a slave by the learning he has surreptitiously acquired.

Is book knowledge enough, then, to overthrow slavery? And if not, what else will be required? Certainly his battle with Covey takes on immense, and central significance with respect to such questions. It is the slave's decisive step towards freedom. Douglass's concluding chapters will thus take him from the nadir of his experience as a slave--his awful months with Covey in 1832--into his life as a freed but fugitive slave. The main portion of his narrative concludes, then, with Douglass detailing the first time he rose to publicly speak the facts of his enslavement, in Nantucket, on August 11, 1841. This is the very moment that both Garrison and Phillips describe in the prefatory texts, as their first encounters with Douglass; and as such Douglass's book has at that moment come full circle. It has narrated his life as a slave, and his self-emancipation, up to the moment that his public life, as America's greatest anti-slavery advocate, begins.

Yet Douglass also supplies an "Appendix," which addresses the hypocrisy of slaveholding Christians. This chapter sharpens the edge on what might otherwise be read as "mere" autobiography. The book's sociocultural work begins, as well, with that critique of Christian America.

Reading Assignment
  1. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Chs. 10-11, Appendix (pp. 2026-2057).
Writing Assignment
  1. What character traits does Douglass's writing assign to the slave-breaker, Covey? Why?

  2. In defeating Covey, what is the role of that root which Sandy Jenkins gives to Douglass?

  3. According to Douglass in these middle chapters, what specific forms does the hypocrisy of slave-owners take? How would you define Douglass's tone in critiquing that hypocrisy?

  4. In having to turn over the wages for his skilled labor to a slave-master, Douglass learns still more about slavery and freedom. In brief, what is it?

  5. In Douglass's view, what strategies of the slaveholder make the system work? He's implied or discussed them, throughout; but at the end of Chapter X, for instance, he discusses what slavery requires of the slave. Here and elsewhere, how does Douglass enable readers to understand the logic of the slave system?

  6. On arriving in New Bedford, what are Douglass's actions and, most importantly, his impressions? What surprise does he experience in surveying the scene, and how is it important to his anti-slavery argument?

  7. What moves Douglass to speak on August 11, 184, and how, in your view, is it the fulfillment of certain promises first set in motion when Douglass picked up a copy of The Columbian Orator?

  8. As Douglass's "Appendix" makes clear, he has strong views against Christianity. First of all, why? Is he critical of all, or just some, Christians? And what specific effects do you think that Douglass expected this "Appendix" to realize, from its details? Discuss.

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