Douglass Fredreick

Citizenship and the Fourteenth Amendment

"... all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

From the Declaration of Independence, 1776

America has a unique history in that it witnessed two major social upheavals. The first was the ruthless wresting of the land from the Native Americans in the seventeenth century followed by a Civil War fought over the right to slavery. Frederick Douglass' life spanned the latter as he grew from a child who "lived on its low banks [Tuckahoe creek]" to grow and become a man who "walked boldly and talked clearly in a world noisy with hatred." This tender and effective use of language grabs attention as William McFeely proceeds to present an astute analysis of the human side of Frederick Douglass without diminishing his stature as person who many see as one of America's three greatest heroes along with Grant and Lincoln.

Born Frederick Augustus Bailey in 1818, he adopted the name Douglass. Douglass spent his childhood in time spent running wild "in the pure, open air, and in the bright sunshine" and relative shelter from the "formalities of American chattel slavery. His education in its disciplines, both subtle and brutal came later ..." His first experience of this brutality came when as a young boy he saw his young aunt Hester whipped by "old master" in Wye House. Around this time, his intelligence and intellect had begun to manifest themselves. "He was ceaselessly curious about ... the world from which he was excluded" and would continue to see this exclusion as a challenge through his life with the hope of overcoming it one day.

Life in the city, to which Douglass migrated as a young boy, was different, the times were changing as the number of slaveholding enterprises waned, and "landowners were looking for nonagricultural sources of income." Disputes over the subject of slavery also came out into the public arena as Benjamin Lundy "called the slave trader a 'monster in human shape'" in his narrative, published in 1827. Words like 'abolition' and 'slavery' came in constant, even if surreptitious use. His own experience of the rebuff he faced when he appealed to Thomas for help and "Thomas's ridicule of his claim that if he returned to Covey he would be killed." The physical showdown with Covey that followed would prompt him to later orate, "He only can understand the deep satisfaction I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery." McFeely proceeds to describe the experiences Douglass went through in planning an unsuccessful attempt to escape slavery and his appeal to court against a murderous attack by a white supervisor. The court held that the testimony of thousand blacks would be "insufficient to arrest a single murderer."

McFeely's narrative of Frederick's escape from slavery reads like an adventure thriller and highlights