Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Douglass published this book in 1845 while he was still legally a fugitive, and he printed the names of the men who had claimed him. It begins with a boy who cannot learn his own birthday and ends with a free man in New Bedford sawing wood and rolling oil casks, reading an abolitionist newspaper he has paid for himself. In between are the whipping he watched as a child, the master whose warning about literacy taught him what to want, and the two hours in a stable that he calls the turning point of his life as a slave. He tells all of it in his own voice, and then stops short of telling how he got out.

What happens in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born in Tuckahoe, in Talbot County, Maryland, and never learned his birthday. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was hired out twelve miles away and came to him only at night; she died when he was about seven. His father was a white man, and it was whispered that his master was the man. As a small child on Colonel Edward Lloyd’s plantation, where his first master Captain Anthony worked as clerk, he saw his Aunt Hester tied up and whipped, went hungry and cold, and ate boiled corn meal poured into a trough for the children. He watched the overseer Austin Gore shoot a man named Demby for refusing to come out of a creek, and learned that killing an enslaved person in that county brought no charge. At about eight he was sent to Baltimore to live with Hugh Auld. Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet until her husband forbade it, warning that learning would make a slave unmanageable. Douglass took the warning as directions. Over seven years he traded bread for reading lessons from poor white boys, studied a schoolbook called The Columbian Orator, and learned to write by copying shipyard marks and the blank spaces in a schoolboy’s copybooks. When Captain Anthony died, Douglass was sent back to be valued with the livestock and divided with the rest of the estate. He fell to Lucretia Auld, returned to Baltimore, and was later taken to St. Michael’s by Thomas Auld, who hired him out for a year to Edward Covey, a farmer known for breaking young slaves. Covey worked and whipped him until he was broken in body and spirit. In August 1833 Douglass fought him for nearly two hours, and Covey never struck him again. He was hired next to William Freeland, taught a secret Sabbath school of more than forty students, and planned an escape by canoe up the Chesapeake in 1835. The group was betrayed and jailed at Easton. Sent back to Baltimore, Douglass was beaten by four white apprentices in Gardner’s shipyard, then learned caulking and had to hand every dollar of his wages to Hugh Auld. On the third of September 1838 he reached New York, by a method he refuses to describe. He married Anna Murray, settled in New Bedford, took the name Douglass, subscribed to the Liberator, and in August 1841 spoke at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket.

Where and when Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass happens

Chapter by chapter summary + why it matters

1. 1

   Preface and Letter: Two White Men Vouch for the Book

   William Lloyd Garrison opens with the anti-slavery convention at Nantucket in August 1841, where he first heard Douglass speak. He tells readers that Douglass wrote the Narrative himself, that nothing in it is exaggerated, and that Douglass has given his birthplace and the names of the men who claimed him, so the account can be tested. Wendell Phillips then writes to Douglass as a friend, glad that a history of slavery is at last being written by one of its victims. Phillips admits he is frightened, since no spot in the United States is safe for a fugitive who prints his own name, and says that in Douglass’s place he would have burned the manuscript.

   Why it mattersThe two letters work as certification, because white readers in 1845 doubted that a Black author could write such a book. Phillips’s fear is the plainest measure of the risk Douglass took by publishing at all.

2. 2

   Chapter I: A Birth Without a Date

   Douglass was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough in Talbot County, Maryland, and has never seen a record of his age; his best estimate is that he is now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was hired out twelve miles off and walked at night to lie down beside him, and she died when he was about seven without his being allowed to see her ill, dead or buried. His father was a white man, and it was whispered that his master was the man, though Douglass says the means of knowing was withheld from him. The chapter closes with the first whipping he ever saw, when Captain Anthony strung up his Aunt Hester by the wrists for going out at night and being found with a young man from Colonel Lloyd’s, which Douglass says was the chief offence.

   Why it mattersDouglass opens with what slavery takes before it takes any labor: a birthday, a mother, a father, and the words for what has happened. The beating of Aunt Hester is offered as his entrance to slavery, the moment a small child learns what the system is.

3. 3

   Chapter II: The Great House Farm

   The book moves to Colonel Edward Lloyd’s home plantation, where Captain Anthony served as clerk and superintendent over more than twenty farms. Douglass records the monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork and a bushel of corn meal, the yearly clothing, and the fact that children got two shirts a year and went naked when those wore out. He describes the overseers Mr. Severe and Mr. Hopkins, and the errands to the Great House Farm that were treated as an honor. The chapter ends on the songs sung along that road, which Douglass says northern listeners mistake for contentment.

   Why it mattersBy listing rations and clothing like an inventory, Douglass lets the arithmetic of the system make his case for him. His reading of the songs corrects a comfortable error held by many of the people buying his book.

4. 4

   Chapter III: Tar on the Fence

   Colonel Lloyd’s garden drew visitors from Baltimore, Easton and Annapolis, and he tarred its fence so that any enslaved person found marked with tar could be whipped as a thief. His stables were kept by old Barney and young Barney, who were punished for the look of a horse or the mood of its owner. Douglass tells of a man who met Lloyd on the road, did not recognize him, and answered honestly that he was worked too hard; within a few weeks he was chained and sold to a Georgia trader. Douglass uses the story to explain why enslaved people told strangers that their masters were kind.

   Why it mattersThe chapter is about surveillance as much as cruelty, since tar, spies and a chance meeting all turn ordinary life into evidence. A man sold for telling the truth shows that honesty itself carried a penalty.

5. 5

   Chapter IV: Murder Without a Charge

   Mr. Austin Gore takes over as overseer and runs the plantation on the rule that an accusation is a conviction. When a man named Demby stands in a creek to escape a whipping and refuses three calls to come out, Gore shoots him dead, explains that the example was dangerous, and keeps his post. Douglass adds three more unpunished cases, including Mr. Thomas Lanman of St. Michael’s, who boasted of killing two people, and the wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, who beat a girl of fifteen or sixteen, a cousin of Douglass’s wife, to death for falling asleep while minding a baby. The chapter closes with Mr. Beal Bondly, who shot an old man gathering oysters just over the property line.

   Why it mattersDouglass builds a legal argument here rather than an emotional one, since no white person could be convicted on Black testimony and these deaths were therefore not crimes in practice. He names the killers and their towns, daring anyone to disprove him.

6. 6

   Chapter V: Sent to Baltimore

   As a child Douglass was too young for field work, so he drove up the cows, kept fowls out of the garden, and helped Daniel Lloyd find the birds he shot. He suffered most from cold and hunger, slept on a clay floor inside a corn bag, and ate mush poured into a trough that the children crowded around like animals. At about seven or eight he was chosen to go to Baltimore to live with Hugh Auld, and spent three happy days scrubbing himself for the journey. He sailed from Miles River, saw Annapolis, and was met at the door by Sophia Auld and her small son Thomas.

   Why it mattersDouglass treats the move to Baltimore as the hinge of his whole life and says plainly that without it he would probably still be enslaved. The trough of mush is his clearest picture of what slavery made of childhood.

7. 7

   Chapter VI: The Lesson Hugh Auld Did Not Mean to Give

   Sophia Auld teaches Douglass the alphabet and then words of three or four letters, until Hugh Auld finds out and forbids her, telling her that learning would spoil a slave and unfit him for the work. Douglass hears the argument and understands for the first time how literacy and bondage are joined, and he resolves to learn. The chapter also compares city slavery with plantation slavery, arguing that shame before the neighbors restrains Baltimore owners. Against that Douglass sets Mrs. Hamilton across the street, who kept a cowskin by her chair and cut and half-starved Henrietta and Mary, the two people her husband owned.

   Why it mattersHugh Auld’s warning becomes Douglass’s instruction manual, and that irony drives the rest of the book. The Hamilton household is placed here so the chapter cannot be read as a defence of slavery in cities.

8. 8

   Chapter VII: Bread for Lessons

   Over about seven years in Hugh Auld’s house Douglass learns to read and write by stealth, since Sophia has turned against the idea and now snatches newspapers out of his hands. He trades bread to poor white boys on Philpot Street for lessons, reads a schoolbook called The Columbian Orator, and learns letters from the marks the ship carpenters made on timber and from the blank spaces in young Thomas Auld’s copybooks. Reading gives him arguments against slavery and also a misery he cannot put down, and he admits he sometimes wished himself dead. Two Irishmen unloading stone at a wharf tell him to run away north, and he begins to plan, partly so that he can write his own pass.

   Why it mattersThis is the chapter that keeps the book in classrooms, because it shows literacy as a dangerous act rather than a gift. Douglass is careful to record the pain of knowing alongside its power.

9. 9

   Chapter VIII: Valued With the Livestock

   Captain Anthony dies without a will, and Douglass is brought back from Baltimore to be valued and divided between Anthony’s son Andrew and daughter Lucretia. He dreads Andrew, who had days before taken Douglass’s own little brother by the throat and stamped on his head until the blood ran from his nose and ears, and he is relieved to fall to Lucretia and be sent back to Baltimore. Lucretia and Andrew both die soon after, and the estate passes to strangers; Douglass’s grandmother, who had served the family from youth to old age, is put in a hut in the woods and left alone. After Thomas Auld marries Rowena Hamilton and quarrels with his brother Hugh, he takes Douglass from Baltimore to St. Michael’s.

   Why it mattersThe valuation is the book’s plainest statement that slavery is a property law, since people and pigs are ranked on one list and inspected the same way. His grandmother’s end shows that a lifetime of service bought nothing at all.

10. 10

    Chapter IX: A Convert With a Whip

    In March 1832 Douglass goes to live with Thomas Auld at St. Michael’s, where he is hungry for the first time in more than seven years and where four people in the kitchen share less than half a bushel of corn meal a week. Auld experiences religion at a camp meeting in August 1832, and Douglass argues that the conversion made him crueler, because he could now find Scripture to justify the lash. Auld ties up Henny, a young woman whose hands were crippled by fire in childhood, and whips her again and again through the day before finally turning her out to fend for herself. A Sabbath school started by a young white man is broken up by class-leaders with sticks, and after nine months of quarrels Auld hires Douglass out for a year to Edward Covey, who is known for breaking young slaves.

    Why it mattersDouglass draws his charge against American Christianity from one household rather than from theory, which makes it harder to dismiss. The move to Covey is presented as a punishment meant to undo the effects of city life.

11. 11

    Chapter X: The Fight in the Stable, and the Plan That Failed

    Covey works Douglass in all weathers from before dawn, whips him almost weekly for six months, and watches from behind fences until the hands nickname him the snake. Broken in body and spirit, Douglass stands on the banks of the Chesapeake and speaks aloud to the passing sails. In August 1833 he collapses at the fan, is kicked and struck on the head, and walks seven miles bleeding to beg Thomas Auld for protection, who sends him straight back; he hides in the woods, is taken in by Sandy Jenkins, who gives him a root to carry, and on the Monday morning he seizes Covey by the throat and fights him for nearly two hours until Covey lets him go. He moves on to William Freeland’s farm in 1834, teaches a Sabbath school of more than forty students, and in 1835 plans an escape by canoe with Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey and Charles Roberts; they are betrayed and jailed at Easton, and Douglass is sent back to Baltimore, where four white apprentices beat him and nearly knock out his left eye before he learns caulking and hands his wages to Hugh Auld.

    Why it mattersThe fight is the centre of the book, and Douglass frames it as the recovery of a self rather than any change in his legal status. The failed plan shows how much an escape depended on trust among people who could be sold apart at any moment.

12. 12

    Chapter XI: The Escape He Will Not Describe

    Douglass opens the last chapter by refusing to state the facts of his escape, arguing that a full account would endanger the people who helped and would teach slaveholders where to watch. He hires his own time from Hugh Auld for three dollars a week, loses the privilege after a quarrel about a camp meeting, and fixes on the third of September 1838. He reaches New York, is taken in by David Ruggles, sends for Anna Murray, and is married by the Reverend James W. C. Pennington on the fifteenth of September. In New Bedford, Nathan Johnson houses them and suggests the surname Douglass; white caulkers refuse to work beside him, so he saws wood and rolls oil casks for nearly three years until, in August 1841, he speaks at the anti-slavery convention in Nantucket.

    Why it mattersThe withheld escape is an act of protection, and it turns the book’s most anticipated scene into an argument instead. The chapter ends where the preface began, which closes the circle on Garrison’s account of Nantucket.

13. 13

    Appendix: The Christianity of This Land

    Douglass adds an appendix to say that his attacks on religion are aimed at the slaveholding religion of America and not at Christianity itself. He separates the faith he holds from the version practised around him, and lists men who steal people during the week and fill pulpits on Sunday, sell people to build churches and buy Bibles, and forbid the Bible to the people they own. He prints a long satirical poem about pious slaveholders who whip and sell while singing of heavenly union, then signs off at Lynn, Massachusetts, on the twenty-eighth of April 1845.

    Why it mattersThe appendix exists because Douglass expected to be called an infidel, and it turns that charge back on the churches that kept fellowship with slaveholders. It also shows him working as a public controversialist and not only as a witness.

Characters and how they connect

Character Relationships who connects to whom, and the themes that bind them

Themes in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass what the novel is really about

Symbols & motifs

Important quotes

The ending of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, explained

The Narrative ends twice. The story proper closes in Chapter XI with Douglass reaching New York on the third of September 1838, marrying Anna Murray there, moving on to New Bedford, and finally speaking to a white audience at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket in August 1841. His last sentence leaves the verdict on his work to the people who know it. Then the appendix begins, and the freed man turns prosecutor: the religion practised by American churches, he says, is not the religion of Christ but a cover for stealing people, and he closes with a satirical poem about slaveholding preachers. Two things about the ending get argued over. The first is the withheld escape. Douglass says he will not give the means, the direction or the mode of conveyance, because doing so would endanger the people who helped him and would teach slaveholders where to watch. Some readers take that at face value, as protection for others still trying to get out. Others read it as an author refusing to hand the last piece of himself to a public that wanted the whole story, especially a public that had been told a fugitive could not have written the book. The text states the first reason outright and leaves the second to the reader. The second question is what freedom turns out to mean here. Douglass does not arrive in a promised land. He reaches New York penniless and afraid, is warned that the city is unsafe, finds white caulkers in New Bedford who will not work beside him, and saws wood and rolls oil casks for nearly three years. The name on the last page is one a stranger picked for him out of a poem he happened to be reading. Readers differ over whether the close is triumphant or guarded. The claim the book actually makes is narrower and harder: the man who stopped taking the whip in a Maryland stable is the same man now holding the pen.

Common misreadings

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Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland and was never told his own birthday. When he was about eight he was sent to Baltimore, where his owner’s wife started teaching him letters until her husband made her stop. Douglass decided that if reading was that dangerous to slaveholders, it must be worth having, so he learned in secret from poor white boys in the street. Later he was hired out to a farmer named Covey who beat him almost every week, until one morning Douglass fought back for two hours and Covey never hit him again. He tried to escape with four friends in 1835, was betrayed, and ended up in jail. In 1838 he got away to New York, where he married Anna Murray, and then moved on to New Bedford, where he took the last name Douglass. He wrote this book in 1845 but left out how he escaped, so that other people could still use the same road.

Compare & connect the story universe

Discussion & essay prompts for class, or your next paper

Key questions students ask

• Why does Frederick Douglass not know his own birthday
• How did Frederick Douglass learn to read and write
• What happens in the fight with Edward Covey
• Why does Douglass refuse to explain how he escaped
• How does Sophia Auld change in the Narrative
• What does Douglass say about Christianity and slavery in the appendix