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Frederick Douglass continues to be an irresistible topic for biographers, as all the difficult, miraculous, and unresolved myths about the creation of the nation seem to collapse in the narrative of his life.
The scourge of slavery; the grace of individual liberty; the sanctity of the Constitution, the suffrage of women; the transformative power of equal opportunities; the moral decency of the American experience: all this mythology insinuates into Douglass's life in a controversial and enlightening way, reflecting the racial and political tensions that then consumed the country.
The fact that so many problems identified and confronted by Douglass 150 years ago remain difficult, urgent and unresolved today only adds to the allure of history.
In Frederick Douglass: Prophet of LibertyThe author and historian David W. Blight does not hide his admiration for his subject: "There is no greater voice of America's transformation from freedom to slavery. than that of Douglass, "he wrote in the first pages.
But Blight understands the very high bar that he's set in choosing to write about a man who is best known for writing so eloquently about his own life.
Blight managed to paint a portrait of Douglass that also explains his monumental public exploits, as well as his charms and his weaknesses.
And perhaps the greatest asset of Blight's book is that he manages to position the singular individual personality that is Frederick Douglass in perfect relation to the monumental society's monumental injustices that have both formed the world. animator of the abolitionist.
"Douglass's experiences began to shape a disposition, a set of mental habits, a personality that may have lasted all his life," writes Blight. "He was always looking for a sense of home, a concept he had long insisted on in autobiographies.He was capable of great love and great compassion, but he perhaps had even more need to receive love and compassion until adulthood. "
As rich as his goal as a biographer is for a biographer, Douglass represents a significant obstacle for anyone interested in the chronicle of his life: what can be added to the life of a man who has written three famous autobiographies and who did his life work to explain to America how his cultural and political folklore was in constant and tragic collision with his sad reality?
Blight pays well for this effort by paying great attention to the man, even if he prepares the legend. And he recognizes that he is working against all odds. "… the first major problem in the writing of Douglass's biography is that the subject itself is getting in the way."
Douglass mastered the powerful human drama of telling his own story in his own voice. He left little room for biographers to improve his work.
Blight accepts the challenge by choosing a path that makes Douglass a narrator and his ability to tell and tell his personal story of slavery as a memory against elaborate economic, social and especially religious infrastructure that supported and tolerated slavery. Finding and then raising his voice against slavery and continuing the crusade for half a century ensured Douglass's place in the age-old canon of American freedom.
"In a certain way," writes Blight, "this book is the biography of a voice."
What emerges is a man, a warrior, with a raw glow devoted to the cause of abolitionism. But also a portrait of someone naturally concerned about his place in the world and suspicious of so many people who have declared themselves allies for the cause.
"In a sense, he was hurt forever, and he did not react well to new injuries," writes Blight, "even if it's only perceived or imagined." Under these flawless white shirts worn under the frock coat, hair on his head pushing high and separating neatly, Frederick fashioned an elegance that generally held his rage against slavery immersed in social contexts.But this would burst in his rhetorical speech, and sometimes in deprived of his closest companions. "
In the end, this sumptuous and sprawling biography – 854 pages, including notes and thanks – is mainly a long meditation on the American penchant, so popular and so particular, of invention and reinvention.
Douglass is an extreme early example of this type of self-transformation. He went from slavery to global abolitionist celebrity and advisor to the president, who would deliver to Douglass the triumph of his life.
The legend of Douglass in the catalog of the American myth is that the fugitive slave became abolitionist escaped from slavery on the east coast of Maryland and made its way into the world with courage and a flawless determination, transforming from the most degraded life form to the bottom of the social ladder to some one at the top. And, most deliciously, he did it by stealing knowledge and learning from his slaves, the Auld family who possessed him.
"In the sordid history of American slavery, few images are as ironic as that of Sophia Auld reading what Douglass describes as a quiet music voice while the slave boy is asleep under the table near his feet, "writes Blight.
At the emotional heart of Douglass's story is his incremental and non-ironic creation of an identity of freedom, learning and fulfillment, despite long difficulties, despite his birth as a slave . The three autobiographies allow him total control over the creation and preservation of his own mythology. He grafted his life story on that of the larger American history by placing himself at the center of the most delusional questions that the republic of the time was currently facing, and perhaps now: how to solve the problem of race?
The Blight opus manages to be both a celebration of a remarkable life and a sober reminder of the many ways in which our appalling lives have shaped our terrible moments. In many ways, the central issues are then the central issues now.
In the winter of 1864, slavery had been abolished. Douglass was now advising the President of the United States who had liberated his people. It should have been a moment of triumph. But while the civil war was raging, a war that Douglass called a "war for abolition", the world's most famous abolitionist still pleaded a fundamental humanitarian argument for equality and freedom. ;membership:
"I end where I started – no war, but a war of abolition, no peace, but a peace of abolition, freedom for all, chains for no one; a soldier at war, a worker for peace, a voter from the South as far north, America as his permanent home, and all Americans his compatriots. "
It is difficult to think of a life that has more embodied the ethics of its time than that of Frederick Douglass. Blight says that the way we use this legacy will determine who we are as a people in the future. His best example, of course, is Douglass – who used his past to invent a better future for himself and his country.
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