Frederick Douglass eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 78 pages of information about Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 78 pages of information about Frederick Douglass.

  “I knew the noblest giants of my day,
    And he was of them—­strong amid the strong: 
    But gentle too:  for though he suffered wrong,
  Yet the wrong-doer never heard him say,
  ‘Thee also do I hate.’ ...

      A lover’s lay—­
    No dirge—­no doleful requiem song—­
    Is what I owe him; for I loved him long;
  As dearly as a younger brother may.

  Proud is the happy grief with which I sing;
  For, O my Country! in the paths of men
  There never walked a grander man than he!

  He was a peer of princes—­yea, a king! 
  Crowned in the shambles and the prison-pen! 
  The noblest Slave that ever God set free!”

Bibliography

The only original sources of information concerning the early life of Frederick Douglass are the three autobiographies published by him at various times; and the present writer, like all others who have written of Mr. Douglass, has had to depend upon this personal record for the incidents of Mr. Douglass’s life in slavery.  As to the second period of his life, his public career as anti-slavery orator and agitator, the sources of information are more numerous and varied.  The biographies of noted abolitionists whose lives ran from time to time in parallel lines with his make very full reference to Douglass’s services in their common cause, the one giving the greatest detail being the very complete and admirable Life and Times of William Lloyd Garrison, by his sons, which is in effect an exhaustive history of the Garrisonian movement for abolition.

The files of the Liberator, Mr. Garrison’s paper, which can be found in a number of the principal public libraries of the country, constitute a vast storehouse of information concerning the labors of the American Anti-slavery Society, with which Douglass was identified from 1843 to 1847, the latter being the year in which he gave up his employment as agent of the society and established his paper at Rochester.  Many letters from Mr. Douglass’s pen appeared in the Liberator during this period.

Mr. Douglass’s own memories are embraced in three separate volumes, published at wide intervals, each succeeding volume being a revision of the preceding work, with various additions and omissions.

I. Narrative of Frederick Douglass.  Writen by himself. (Boston, 1845:  The American Anti-slavery Society.) Numerous editions of this book were printed, and translations published in Germany and in France.

II. My Bondage and My Freedom. (New York and Auburn, 1855:  Miller, Orton & Mulligan.) This second of Mr. Douglass’s autobiographies has a well-written and appreciative introduction by James M’Cune Smith and an appendix containing extracts from Mr. Douglass’s speeches on slavery.

III. Recollections of the Anti-slavery Conflict.  By Samuel J. May.  (Boston, 1869:  Fields, Osgood & Co.) Collected papers by a veteran abolitionist; contains an appreciative sketch of Douglass.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Frederick Douglass from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.