Bondage

This episode is the first of a three part series about the great Frederick Douglass.  This episode deals with the early life of Douglass - how he was kept from his mother, the moments he first realized the importance of education, and some examples of his eloquence.

Transcript

Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 218 - Bondage - This is the first of three episodes of Celebrate Poe dealing with the great Frederick Douglas.  Now Frederick Douglas was a man of great accomplishment who made a genuine difference in the lives of millions of people - and Poe and Douglass were basically contemporaries - born approximately 10 years apart.

While Edgar Allan Poe and Frederick Douglass came from vastly different backgrounds and writing styles, they both share a mastery of suspense in their respective works.

Edgar Allan Poe weaved psychological suspense by tapping into the deepest fears and anxieties of the human psyche. His stories, often featuring dark and mysterious settings, explored themes of death, madness, and the supernatural. 

Frederick Douglass, a formerly enslaved abolitionist and author, used suspense in his writings to highlight the injustices of slavery and advocate for social change. His works, such as his "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass", kept readers on the edge of their seats as he recounted his harrowing experiences under slavery and his daring escape to freedom. 

Poe would often use dark, isolated settings in his works, such as crumbling mansions or stormy landscapes, to create a sense of unease and claustrophobia.  And his vivid and often grotesque imagery appealed to the reader's sense of fear and disgust. Poe's stories often featured unpredictable twists and turns, keeping the reader guessing until the very end, and his characters were often tormented by inner demons - often facing impossible choices, Of course, such impossible choices added to the overall suspense.

Douglass would often slow down the pace of his narrative at key moments, building tension and anticipation. He would end chapters at critical junctures, leaving the reader eager to know what happened next.
Douglass used vivid descriptions of his experiences to evoke empathy and outrage in his readers.  And he often concluded his narratives with a call to action, urging readers to join the fight against slavery.
In conclusion, while Poe and Douglass employed suspense in vastly different ways, they both used it to achieve powerful effects. Poe's suspense explored the dark corners of the human psyche, while Douglass' suspense exposed the evils of slavery and inspired readers to take a stand for justice.

But there is no direct evidence that Edgar Allan Poe ever mentioned Frederick Douglass in his writings or letters - or that Douglass ever wrote about Poe.  While they were contemporaries who lived in the same region of the United States for a time, their paths never seem to have crossed in any documented way.

Some scholars believe they even lived within a few blocks of each other at one point in the Baltimore area, however, there's no record of them interacting.

As for social circles: Poe primarily moved within literary and journalistic circles, while Douglass was deeply involved in the abolitionist movement. Their social spheres likely wouldn't have overlapped much.

Now Poe's views on slavery were complex and contradictory. While he didn't actively support abolition, some critics believe he also expressed criticism of the institution on moral grounds. Douglass, of course, was a leading voice against slavery and its injustices.

So the rest of this - and the following - podcast episodes are about Frederick Douglas - I could do an entire podcast series on just the life, times, and works of Frederick Douglas alone, but this and the following episodes will have to suffice - for now.

And for this and the following episodes, I am going to read from some works of Frederick Douglass - wish I could afford to have a James Earl Jones or a Denzel Washington to read the works in their incredible acting styles and commanding voices, but I am just going to give the words a try in my natural voice - for me to try and imitate an African-American speaker would come across as insulting and wildly inappropriate.   By the way, when I use the terms colored boy or colored school, I am using the terms as originally written, and not as insults.
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland. His birthplace was likely his grandmother's cabin. In successive autobiographies - and Douglas wrote 3 autobiographies - he gave more precise estimates of when he was born, his final estimate being 1817. Various historians have determined that Douglass was born in February of 1818.  Though the exact date of his birth is unknown, he chose to celebrate February 14 as his birthday, remembering that his mother called him her "Little Valentine."

Douglass's mother, enslaved, was of African descent and his father, who may have been her master, was apparently of European descent. In his Narrative (published in 1845 - the same year that Poe published The Raven), Douglass wrote: "My father was a white man.” According to David W. Blight's excellent 2018 biography of Douglass, "For the rest of his life he searched in vain for the name of his true father."  Douglass's genetic heritage likely also included Native American.Douglass said his mother Harriet Bailey gave him his name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and, after he escaped to the North in September 1838, he took the surname Douglass, having already dropped his two middle names.

He later wrote of his earliest times with his mother:

The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing. ... My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant. ... It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. ... I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.

After separation from his mother during infancy, young Frederick lived with his maternal grandmother Betsy Bailey, who was also enslaved, and his maternal grandfather Isaac, who was free. Betsy would live until 1849. Frederick's mother remained on the plantation about 12 miles away, visiting Frederick only a few times before her death when he was 7 years old.

Returning much later, about 1883, to purchase land in Talbot County that was meaningful to him, he was invited to address "a colored school":

I once knew a little colored boy whose mother and father died when he was six years old. He was a slave and had no one to care for him. He slept on a dirt floor in a hovel, and in cold weather would crawl into a meal bag head foremost and leave his feet in the ashes to keep them warm. Often he would roast an ear of corn and eat it to satisfy his hunger, and many times has he crawled under the barn or stable and secured eggs, which he would roast in the fire and eat.

That boy did not wear pants like you do, but a tow linen shirt. Schools were unknown to him, and he learned to spell from an old Webster's spelling-book and to read and write from posters on cellar and barn doors, while boys and men would help him. He would then preach and speak, and soon became well known. He became Presidential Elector, United States Marshal, United States Recorder, United States diplomat, and accumulated some wealth. He wore broadcloth and didn't have to divide crumbs with the dogs under the table. That boy was Frederick Douglass.

At the age of 6, Douglass was separated from his grandparents and moved to the Wye House plantation, where an Aaron Anthony worked as overseer.After Anthony died in 1826, Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld, who sent him to serve Thomas' brother Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia Auld in Baltimore. From the day he arrived, Sophia saw to it that Douglass was properly fed and clothed, and that he slept in a bed with sheets and a blanket. Douglass described her as a kind and tender-hearted woman, who treated him "as she supposed one human being ought to treat another." Douglass felt that he was lucky to be in the city, where he said enslaved people were almost freemen, compared to those on plantations.

When Douglass was about 12, Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet. Hugh Auld disapproved of the tutoring, feeling that literacy would encourage enslaved people to desire freedom. Douglass later referred to this as the "first decidedly antislavery lecture" he had ever heard. "'Very well, thought I,'" wrote Douglass. "'Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.' I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.” - here he came to the conclusion that education could break the bonds of slavery.

Under her husband's influence, Sophia came to believe that education and slavery were incompatible and one day snatched a newspaper away from Douglass. She stopped teaching him altogether and hid all potential reading materials, including her Bible, from him. In his autobiography, Douglass related how he learned to read from white children in the neighborhood and by observing the writings of the men with whom he worked.

While living in Baltimore, Douglass internalized his feelings about wanting to read and write, while being very careful about approaching the idea of freedom that he ached for - feelings that he wrote about in My Bondage and My Freedom about an occurrence on a Baltimore wharf -

I went, one day, to the wharf; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a large cargo, II went on board, unasked, and helped them. When we had finished the work, one of the men came to me, aside, and asked me a number of questions, and among them, if I were a slave. I told him “I was a slave, and a slave for life.” The good Irishman gave his shoulders a shrug, and seemed deeply affected by the statement. He said, “it was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for life.” They both had much to say about the matter, and expressed the deepest sympathy with me, and the most decided hatred of slavery. They went so far as to tell me that I ought
to run away, and go to the north; that I should find friends there, and
that I would be as free as anybody. I, however, pretended not to be
interested in what they said, for I feared they might be treacherous.
White men have been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then—to
get the reward—they have kidnapped them, and returned them to their
masters. And while I mainly inclined to the notion that these men were
honest and meant me no ill, I feared it might be otherwise. I
nevertheless remembered their words and their advice, and looked
forward to an escape to the north, as a possible means of gaining the
liberty for which my heart panted.

Douglass continued, secretly, to teach himself to read and write. He later often said, "knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom." As Douglass began to read newspapers, pamphlets, political materials, and books of every description, this new realm of thought led him to question and condemn the institution of slavery. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator, an anthology that he discovered at about age 12, with clarifying and defining his views on freedom and human rights. First published in 1797, the book is a classroom reader, containing essays, speeches, and dialogues, to assist students in learning reading and grammar. He later learned that his mother had also been literate, about which he would later declare:

I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any love of letters I possess, and for which I have got—despite of prejudices—only too much credit, not to my admitted Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my stable, unprotected, and uncultivated mother—a woman, who belonged to a race whose mental endowments it is, at present, fashionable to hold in disparagement and contempt.

In 1833, Thomas Auld took Douglass back from Hugh ("[a]s a means of punishing Hugh," Douglass later wrote). Thomas sent Douglass to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker". He whipped Douglass so frequently that his wounds had little time to heal. Douglass later said the frequent whippings broke his body, soul, and spirit.The 16-year-old Douglass finally rebelled against the beatings, however, and fought back. After Douglass won a physical confrontation, Covey never tried to beat him again.

In My Bondage and My Freedon, Douglas was to later write:

If at any one time of my life, more than another, I was made to drink
the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six
months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked all weathers. It was
never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, snow, or hail too
hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more
the order of the day than the night. The longest days were too short
for him, and the shortest nights were too long for him. I was somewhat
unmanageable when I first went there; but a few months of his
discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken
in body, soul and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed; my
intellect languished; the disposition to read departed; the cheerful
spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed
in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!

Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times, I
would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
accompanied with a faint beam of hope, flickered for a moment, and then
vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was
sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was
prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this
plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality.

Still, Douglass came to see his physical fight with Covey as life-transforming, and introduced the story in his autobiography as such: "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”

Douglas was more determined to escape from his masters than ever.  He later wrote in My Bondage and My Freedom regarding his thoughts:

 I cannot describe the tempest and tumult of my brain, The
reader will please to bear in mind, that, in a slave state, an
unsuccessful runaway is not only subjected to cruel torture, and sold
away to the far south, but he is frequently execrated by the other
slaves. He is charged with making the condition of the other slaves
intolerable, by laying them all under the suspicion of their
masters—subjecting them to greater vigilance, and imposing greater
limitations on their privileges. I dreaded murmurs from this quarter.
It is difficult, too, for a slavemaster to believe that slaves escaping
have not been aided in their flight by some one of their fellow slaves.
When, therefore, a slave is missing, every slave on the place is
closely examined as to his knowledge of the undertaking; and they are
sometimes even tortured, to make them disclose when they are suspected
of knowing of such escape.

Nevertheless, Douglass tried to escape from Freeland, who had hired him from his owner. Unfortunately Douglas was betrayed in his attempts at escape.

In 1837, Douglass met and fell in love with Anna Murray, a free black woman in Baltimore about five years his senior. Her free status strengthened his belief in the possibility of gaining his own freedom. Anna Murray encouraged him and supported his efforts by aid and money.  BTW - Anna Douglas would later be Frederick’s wife for 44 
years.

On September 3, 1838, Douglass again attempted to escape - but this time he boarded a northbound train of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad in Baltimore. The area where he boarded was formerly thought to be a short distance east of the train depot.  But in reality, the depot at the Canton Depot of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad on Boston Street, in the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore - much further east.

Although he ended up only some 20 miles (32 km) from the Maryland–Pennsylvania state line, it was easier to continue by rail through Delaware, another slave state. Dressed in a sailor's uniform provided to him by Anna Murray, who also gave him part of her savings to cover his travel costs, he carried identification papers and protection papers that he had obtained from a free black seaman.

Join Celebrate Poe for the second of three episodes regarding Frederick Douglas. -  Episode 219 - Freedom!

Sources include:  Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself, His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time, My Bondage and My Freedom, Life and Times of Frederick Douglas all by Frederick Douglas, 

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