This is the second half of the tale of a personal hero of mine, Frederick Douglass. He was born a slave in Maryland around February either in 1817 or 1818.

I first became aware of his greatness when I read the letter he wrote to his “owner”. It should be required reading. To me it is every bit as powerful and impressive as The Declaration of Independence. If you’ve never read it, please do.

I am not going to do a full synopsis of his life, to get that you should read his books, they are as well written as the letter. I would recommend this one to start. These are a few of the things that made an impression on me from what I have read.

I left off when Frederick had fought his slave master and that “ rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.

Frederick was then hired out to another slaveholder, Mr. Freeland, and was very glad this one was not religious. Frederick said the more religious they were, the more beatings and cruelty they would inflict.

While he was there, he started teaching the other slaves how to read. This had to be done in secret, and he said he did it “because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like bettering the condition of my race.”

In 1835 he began planning escape, and got three others to join him. He describes the fear and  hopelessness of attempting this as being surrounded by certain death, trying to get to an small point of uncertainty.

They made plans and Frederick forged passes, but they were betrayed and arrested. His owner threatened to sell him to Alabama, but decided to send him to Baltimore to learn a trade.

One of the recurring circumstances is the threat that hangs over all slaves, they could be sold away at any time, with no regard for their families. That would have been horrifying. I imagine what it would be like if my wife or one of my kids didn’t come home because they sold away, and I would never see or hear from them again.

Working at a shipyard in Baltimore, he was severely beaten by four white apprentices because of racial tensions there. Because the attackers were white and no other white person would act as a witness, the law took no action.

After this he started working at a different shipyard and learned to caulk ships and was earning the highest wages earned by caulkers. This money he was required to give to his owner every Saturday. When reading the book, his anger at this is palpable:

I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,–not because he had any hand in earning it,–not because I owed it to him,–nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim- visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same.”

Sometimes the owner would give him a little of the money Frederick had earned, this was more of an insult, because Frederick felt it was acknowledging that it really did belong to him and the owner knew taking it as wrong.

Slavery is evil, and his writings really drive home all of the different little ways that it destroys the soul of both the slave and the slave keeper.

In this book, he doesn’t describe exactly how he escaped, because he doesn’t want any one to suffer for helping, and he doesn’t want to shut that avenue for future slaves to escape by.

He also does not agree with the Underground Railway’s public declarations of helping slaves escape. This makes the slave owner more wary and helps him to prevent the slave from escaping using well publicized methods.

Once he escaped he married Anna, a free black woman, and they went to New Bedford, MA. He was shocked at the level of prosperity, because in the south, whites with no slaves were poor, so Frederick had assumed the north was poor because there were no slaves.

He was also surprise to watch people work with no threats or whippings, but when he found work loading a ship the joy is obvious:

It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by those who have been slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a pleasure I had never before experienced.”

While in New Bedford, he started going to abolitionist meetings and began speaking at them. From there he became an important figure in the anti-slavery movement.

One anecdote that made me laugh: After Anna died, he married a white woman. People were SHOCKED. His reply? His first marriage had been to someone the color of his mother, and his second to someone the color of his father. (I didn’t mention he was half white, and it was widely believed that his owner was his father)

I hope some of the readers here will read his books, he is one of the most powerful writers I have ever read and this little article I wrote doesn’t do him justice.