Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

By 1855, Douglass is principally focused on writing his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom. In this book, his perspective has shifted to that of a man who has traveled extensively and found his place in the world. The book amplifies many episodes from Douglass’s youth that received short shrift in the first autobiography. It also divides itself into his two life stages—first as an enslaved person and later as a free man.

Blight writes, “The story of Douglass’s politics in the decade before the Civil War is about the complex education of a pragmatist who never gave up his radicalism” (252). The 1850s are a turbulent time in American politics because the expansion of western territories threatens to entrench the institution of slavery further rather than eradicate it. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act allow slavery north of the thirty-sixth parallel and indicate the influence of what Douglass terms the “Slave Power” in American politics.

According to Blight, “Douglass’s denunciations of the Kansas-Nebraska Act led almost inevitably to tacit support of the emerging Republican Party, formed in the law’s turbulent wake” (274). Douglass finds his own political loyalties divided since he wishes to support the Radical Abolition Party of his friend Gerrit Smith, but the party stands no chance of winning in a national election. The Republican Party, however distasteful to Douglass for various reasons, represents the only hope of placing real political power in the hands of abolitionists. 

To add to the author’s stresses during this decade, his friend Julia moves back to Britain because of tensions within the Douglass household. With five children at home and a dissatisfied wife, Douglass soon finds solace with a new female friend, the radical German journalist Ottilie Assing. She translates his biography into German by 1860 and remains in Rochester for the next twenty-four years.

Douglass first makes the acquaintance of radical abolitionist John Brown as early as 1847. While the two men are utterly dissimilar in temperament, they share a feverish determination to end slavery at all costs. Over the years, Douglass meets Brown frequently. He supplies the older man with funds and an occasional place to stay in Rochester. Most of Brown’s schemes to liberate enslaved people prove financially and personally disastrous, taking a toll on his health and the lives of his sons.

While Douglass generally approves of Brown’s plans to help enslaved people escape, the latter’s more extreme views on violent revolution leave him cold. Blight writes:

As long as Brown bravely advanced the idea of funneling fugitive slaves out of the upper South […] Douglass was on board despite the risks. But when assaulting a large US arsenal emerged in the scheme, the writer parted ways with the warrior (298).

Both Brown and Douglass cast themselves in the roles of Old Testament prophets who seek to make their erring nation repent its wicked ways. While they agree philosophically, the two men part ways on the best means to achieve the end of slavery. By the time Brown plans his 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry to lead a slave revolt, Douglass does his best to persuade the old man to rethink his strategy. Unable to reason with his friend, Douglass leaves. Days later, he is alerted to the disastrous results of the raid and the arrest and trial of the insurgents. Worse still, he finds that a warrant has been issued for his arrest as a co-conspirator. Douglass flees first to Canada and then to Europe, unsure what course to follow next.