By
David W. Blight
Simon
& Shuster – 2018
Reviewed
by: Steve Halpern
The
first time I read Frederick Douglass’ autobiography, (Douglass wrote three
autobiographies) I understood that this had to be one of the most important
works of literature available to the public. Although this book is over 100
years old, the language and the story give us an intimate portrait of Douglass’
turbulent and inspiring life. The book also, in my opinion, gives us the best
explanation of why the extremely bloody Civil War erupted.
Because
I found Frederick Douglass so inspiring, I wrote a biographical poem about his
life that can be seen at this link.
Frederick Douglass poem
David
Blight, in his biography made an incisive attempt to examine what Douglass was
thinking throughout his life. While I believe there are limitations to this
book, I also believe that Blight has achieved his objective of giving us a more
informed view of who Frederick Douglass was.
Anyone
who has read Frederick Douglass’ autobiography will recall that while he was a
child, he witnessed a slave by the name of Esther being tied up and whipped by
a slave owner Mr. Anthony. David Blight asked a useful question: How did seeing
this horrendous torture effect the young child who was then known as Frederick
Washington Bailey?
We
can then ask more questions. What was Douglass thinking when he violated the
slave laws as a child and learned how to read? What was he thinking when he
risked his life, and fought back against a so-called “slave breaker” by the
name of Covey? What was he thinking when he risked his life, and the life of
his future wife, by escaping from slavery?
What
was he thinking when he was exposed to racial discrimination in the North, and
severely beaten while giving and abolitionist speech in Indiana? What was he
thinking when abolitionists, who he usually agreed with, slandered him when he
developed his own independent ideas? What was he thinking when he needed to
leave this country after he wrote his autobiography, because he could then be
more easily be apprehended and returned to slavery?
These
are the kinds of questions David Blight has attempted to answer. In answering
these questions we can see why Douglass felt that the Fugitive Slave Act needed
to be resisted with the force of arms. He armed himself, and encouraged
everyone to arm themselves, and resist any attempt to send Black people into
slavery by legal or illegal means. He felt that murdering a so-called “slave
catcher” was merely an act of self-defense against someone who was attempting
to rob someone of their rights as a human being.
David
Blight gave this summary of how Douglass viewed his support of the Union Army
in the Civil War in his newspaper The
North Star. “Douglass wanted slaveholders humiliated, then eliminated, and
in their wake he might find his place in a dominion of human equality. To get
to that distant shore, to a new America, he probed the darkest ranges of human
wrath.”
In
order to gain a perspective to the life of Douglass, I believe it is useful to
summarize his ideas with respect to individuals as well as issues.
Frederick Douglass & William Lloyd Garrison
After
Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery, he initially met the abolitionist
leader William Lloyd Garrison and found him to be a breadth of fresh air.
Garrison also viewed Douglass as a uniquely important asset to the abolitionist
movement. Because of this relationship, Garrison aided Douglass in his
transition from being a common laborer, into an ardent advocate and orator for the
abolitionist movement.
Because
Douglass was such a powerful, articulate, and eloquent speaker, many argued
that he never could have been a slave. For this reason, Douglass wrote his
first of three autobiographies.
However,
this book gave the authorities clear evidence that Douglass had illegally
escaped from slavery. This meant that Douglass needed to escape this country to
maintain his freedom. Garrison aided Douglass in his escape, and helped him
organize a speaking tour of Ireland, Scotland, and Britain.
For
the first time in Douglass’ life he felt a sense of equality. During this time,
audiences were thrilled by his speeches and the story of his triumphant escape
from slavery. British supporters were so inspired by his story, they organized
to purchase Douglass’ freedom from a slave-owner in Maryland.
During
this time, Douglass felt that the leaders of the abolitionist movement were
making unreasonable demands. Because he had been a slave, Douglass was
especially sensitive to those who attempted to control his life. However, because
of Douglass’ support of abolition, he went along with this relationship for a
time.
Upon
returning to the United States, Douglass also returned to the nation that
viewed him as a second-class citizen because he was Black. He felt that the
best way to advance the abolitionist movement was to support the minority
political parties that opposed slavery. Garrison and his supporters opposed
this point of view. A vicious debate on this question ensued, and Douglass
found himself slandered by people he admired in the past.
These
were some of the reasons why Douglass moved his family to Rochester, New York
and began to publish his newspaper The
North Star.
Frederick Douglass & President Abraham Lincoln
Today,
we continue to see the institutionalized discrimination against African
Americans in education, housing, employment, as well as enforcement of the law.
However, I believe that most people today feel gratified that the institutions
of chattel slavery, as well as Jim Crow segregation no longer exist. This was
not the case in the years when Frederick Douglass lived.
For
me, there is one aspect of Douglass’ life that is genuinely heroic. He lived in
a profoundly racist era, yet he gave thousands of speeches arguing that the United
States would not be able to make any significant advancement, without doing
away with racial discrimination.
President
Abraham Lincoln was a product of his times. His aided his family in working as
a dirt farmer. He managed to escape that reality, became a lawyer, and then a
government official. However, Lincoln had never been a slave.
Lincoln
always hated slavery. However, for about ten years, Lincoln believed that the
answer to the problem of slavery was to ask African Americans to leave this country.
He, and many others, had the idea that Black people would then move to colonies
in Africa or Central America.
Even
after Lincoln became President, he enlisted several African American leaders to
aid in his efforts to set up a colony of Black people outside the United
States. Lincoln attempted to defend his ridiculous argument, with an even more
ridiculous statement. He argued that the primary cause of the Civil War was the
fact that Black people lived in this country.
Because
Douglass had a completely different life experience than Lincoln, he chastised
the President as if Lincoln were an erring child who didn’t know any better. He
argued that the real cause of the war was the “cruel and brutal cupidity of
those who wish to possess horses, money, and Negroes by means of theft, robbery,
and rebellion.” He continued to argue that the idea that Black people should
return to Africa, had just as much value as the idea that everyone of European
descent, should return to Europe. Black people created enormous amounts of wealth
in this country and deserve the right to live here.
Douglass
had this opinion of Lincoln at the time: “a genuine representative of American
prejudice and Negro hatred.” He summarized Lincoln’s colonization scheme: “It
expresses merely the desire to get rid of them (blacks) and reminds one of the
politeness with which a man might try to bow out of his house some troublesome
creditor or the witness of some old guilt.”
Thinking
about these words we might ask the question: Why did Douglass also feel that
Abraham Lincoln was one the most important people he met in his life? We can
begin to answer this question with what Lincoln referred to as his, “fiery
trial” in organizing the Union Army to defeat the Confederacy in the Civil War.
The
abolitionists weren’t the only ones who opposed the politics of the slave
owners in this country. The slave owners demanded complete control of the
federal government in order to maintain their system of human bondage. This
meant that the new territories in the West, like Kansas, needed to become slave
states. This meant that the Northern states needed to dedicate themselves to
apprehending escaped slaves who became neighbors of workers and farmers in the
North. This meant that the United States needed to go to war against Mexico, so
slave owners would have more land.
Growing
numbers of people from all classes began to challenge these measures. These
stark differences led to the election of President Abraham Lincoln. Initially,
Lincoln and his supporters felt that the differences between the North and the
South could be resolved without the abolition of slavery.
However,
Lincoln was different from previous Presidents in that he wasn’t going to go
along with all the dictates of slave owners. This disobedience of Lincoln was
the spark that caused the slave states to break from the Union and to establish
another nation where slave owners continued to rule.
Initially
most politicians in the North and South felt that the Civil War would be a
brief affair and an accommodation suitable to both sides could be reached.
Frederick Douglass had a better understanding of what slavery was. He knew,
from the beginning, that the Civil War would be a protracted battle that could
only have a meaningful conclusion if the entire slaveocracy was completely
destroyed.
Lincoln
learned through experience that the government of slave owners had no intention
of compromise. Yet, while the Union Army had much better resources, in the
early stages of the war, the Confederacy was actually winning. This was the
“fiery trial” that changed Lincoln’s attitude towards the war.
Lincoln
relieved General George B. McClellan of his command as the top Union military
officer. He replaced McClellan with General Ulysses S. Grant. General Grant as
well as Generals Sherman and Sheridan used the advantages of the Union army to
carry out an unrelenting war against the Confederacy. The Confederate
resistance to this unrelenting war caused the deaths of perhaps 400,000 Union
soldiers.
Most
historians agree that the Civil War was the bloodiest war in the history of the
United States. I do not agree with that point of view. The facts are that the
Confederacy formed another nation with another monetary currency. Understanding
this, I believe that only the deaths of Union soldiers should be counted as
deaths during the Civil War in this country. In World War II more U.S. soldiers
lost their lives than deaths of Union soldiers in the Civil War.
Because
of the enormous losses to the Union Army through death, injury, and desertion,
the recruitment of Black soldiers became a necessity for a union victory.
President Lincoln began to understand this, and argued that he drafted his Emancipation Proclamation because this
was necessary to win the war.
For
Frederick Douglass, making the Emancipation Proclamation the law of this
country was one of the most important events of his life. In all, hundreds of
thousands of slaves would simply leave the plantations to gain protection with
the Union Army. As a result, the Confederacy experienced food shortages because
many slaves no longer worked to produce food.
This
extreme change in the political thinking of Lincoln caused Frederick Douglass
to view the President as one of the most important people he met in his life.
In
this context, there is one more issue that I feel is relevant. Frederick
Douglass had two sons who served in combat during the Civil War. However,
Douglass never was a soldier in the war and many criticized him for this.
The
facts are that Douglass dedicated himself, throughout his life, to the struggle
against slavery and then against Jim Crow segregation. He was the central
leader in those struggles. He was injured, while in slavery, and as an
abolitionist, advancing that struggle.
The
assassination of Abraham Lincoln demonstrated clearly that the goals of the
Civil War were compromised, in part, because of his death. While we don’t know
how Lincoln would have governed in the post Civil War years, we know that the
Presidency of Andrew Johnson was a disaster.
Likewise,
we need to understand that Frederick Douglass was a central leader for Black
rights in this country. In my opinion his contribution to the struggle was just
as important as Lincoln’s. Had he lost his life in the Civil War, this would
have been a blow to Black rights in this country. After the Civil War, Douglass
went on to provide a bridge from the abolitionist movement, to the civil rights
movement that would eventually force the government to abolish Jim Crow
segregation.
Frederick Douglass, Karl Marx, & Vladimir Illyich Lenin
Frederick
Douglass and Karl Marx lived during the same years. They probably never
communicated to one another. They had completely different backgrounds, as well
as differing philosophical outlooks. These might be the reasons why David
Blight didn’t mention the name Karl Marx in his biography of Douglass. Yet, on many
of the most important questions Douglass and Marx had similar viewpoints. Why?
Frederick
Douglass was born a slave and broke the slave laws just so he could learn how
to read. One of the two books that most influenced him was the Bible.
Throughout his life he used quotations from the Bible to defend the struggle
for Black rights in this country. He ridiculed slave owners use of the Bible to
defend the human bondage he considered diabolical.
Douglass’
politics were based on what he felt was rational at the time. In 1952 he
ridiculed the celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on
the Forth of July. (This speech can be seen on
YouTube) In this speech, he
asked: What does the slave have to celebrate about a document that denies his
or her rights as a human being?
Then,
at the beginning of the Civil War, Douglass worked to recruit Black soldiers to
risk their lives to support the Union cause.
Then,
with the defeat of radical reconstruction, Douglass argued that the government
refused to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments to the
Constitution. Instead, the same government that outlawed slavery, in effect,
refused to give citizenship rights to African Americans.
Karl
Marx was born into a middle class family in Germany. His father needed to give
up the Jewish religion and convert to Christianity in order to get one of the
better professional jobs. This enabled Marx to attend a university where he
became an ardent student of philosophy.
Marx
developed a philosophy that he called dialectical
materialism. This philosophy is different from the philosophy of formal
logic or pragmatism that we learn in school. In formal logic and pragmatism
social problems are resolved by using strategies that have succeeded in the
past.
Marx
argued that the reality we experience is the result of a history of battles
between classes for supremacy. So, in 1929, working people had been toiling at
jobs for their entire lives, but discovered that the banks closed their doors
and their savings were gone. This isn’t supposed to happen according to formal
logic or pragmatism. This reality is one example of why Marx argued that the
job of the philosopher isn’t merely to study the world, but to change it.
Marx
argued that a central flaw of the capitalist system was what he called the crisis of overproduction. In other
words, capitalists are routinely driven to increase the production of
commodities. Eventually there are more commodities on the market than workers
are buying and capitalists simply close down their factories. Because banks
rely on corporate investments, when they stop receiving payments on loans from
corporations, banks simply go out of business.
Marx
understood how working people have the potential break from this reality. They
can push capitalist governments aside, and establish workers governments that
make human needs and not profits their central priority.
With
this perspective, Marx viewed revolutions as the progressive driving force of
history. In his day, he viewed the transition from feudal societies, where
royal families ruled, to capitalism where the owners of large corporations
ruled and profited from a mass production economy.
Marx
wrote about the reality of the United States before the war in an article
published in 1861.
“Armed
propaganda of slavery abroad was the avowed aim of the national policy; the
Union had in fact become the slave of the three hundred thousand slave-holders
who held sway over the South. A series of compromises, which the South owed to
its alliance with the Northern Democrats, had led to this result.” It was these
actions that led Frederick Douglass to argue that Black people had no reason to
celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1852.
During
these same years, Marx also had this to say: “In my opinion, the biggest things
that are happening in the world today are on the one hand the movement of the
slaves in America started by the death of John Brown, and on the other the
movement of the serfs in Russia.” This was one of the reasons why Douglass
dedicated himself to recruiting Black soldiers for the Union Army.
Understanding
why the thinking of Marx and Douglass began to come together, we can see why
both leaders understood that the Civil War would be a bloody and protracted
battle for supremacy. Both followed the war carefully and both had confidence
that the Union had a real chance for victory. They both understood that the way
to defeat the Confederacy was to obliterate the institution of slavery in the
United States.
While
Frederick Douglass became an admirer of Lincoln, Marx’s organization the International Workingmen’s Association sent
a letter to Lincoln congratulating him on his election victory in 1864.
Karl
Marx felt that the Union victory in the war strengthened the entire working
class. This victory placed the working class in a better position to engage in
an international struggle to advance the rights of workers. Along these lines,
Marx wrote a three-volume analysis of capitalism where he showed that this
system would ultimately collapse, and that the only way for working people to
have a future, is to put in place a government that supports our interests.
After
the Civil War, the politics of Douglass and Marx diverged a bit. Initially
Douglass took jobs with the government, but continued to be critical of the
federal government’s refusal to defend the citizenship rights of African
Americans.
On
this question, Vladimir Illyich Lenin made a crucial contribution to the
Marxist movement. Lenin understood that there were many nationalities in
Czarist Russia that experienced routine and vicious discrimination. Lenin
argued that the working class would never be able to liberate itself unless
there was a movement to dismantle every form of discrimination experienced by
these oppressed nationalities.
These
ideas of Lenin on the national question were relevant in the times of Frederick
Douglass and continue to be relevant today.
Frederick Douglass & Martin
Robinson Delany
We
have seen why Frederick Douglass opposed the colonization ideas of Abraham
Lincoln. However, Martin Robinson Delany was an abolitionist who also favored
colonization. The reasons Delany gave for his ideas were similar to the ideas
of Lenin. Delany believed that, “a people to be free must necessarily be their
own rulers.” Delany didn’t feel that this was possible for Black people in the
United States.
While
Douglass ardently opposed this point of view, he also made plans to visit Haiti,
to explore the viability of Black people emigrating to that nation. This was a
nation ruled by former slaves. At that time, thousands of African Americans
moved to Haiti in an effort to escape the vicious racism of this country.
Clearly,
only a minority of African Americans left this country. However, years after
the Civil War, Marcus Garvey advanced a similar perspective as Delany. Garvey’s
Universal Negro Improvement Association became
the largest Black mass organization in the history of this country.
Garvey’s
ideas were similar to the ideas of Elijah Mohammed who in turn influenced
Malcolm X. While Malcolm argued that Black people need to control their own
communities, he wasn’t an advocate of emigrating to Africa. Malcolm X
eventually was won to the idea that Black people needed to become a part of an
international movement to liberate humanity. Using similar words as Frederick
Douglass, Malcolm argued that Black people need to defend their interests, “by
any means necessary.”
I
believe that Frederick Douglass made a mistake when argued that Black people
needed to remain in the Southern states and force the Jim Crow governments to
respect their rights. Millions of Black people disagreed with this perspective
and became apart of what has been known as The
Great Migration. One of the strengths of the Civil Rights movement was the
fact that this was an alliance made up of Blacks and whites from both the North
and the South.
Frederick Douglass on women’s rights
As we
have seen, Frederick Douglass had a unique perspective towards the world
because of his years in slavery. During his lifetime, women didn’t have the
right to vote or to own property. Growing up in slavery, Douglass viewed women
who were self sufficient and worked just as hard as men. Yet, the savagery
slave women experienced was just as horrific, or even worse, than the treatment
of slaves who were men.
We
see an expression of the difference between slave and free women in the words
of Sojourner Truth. Sojourner Truth listened to the complaints of women who
were free and understood that her experience as a slave was completely
different. She asked the question: “Aren’t I a woman?” (This speech can be seen
on
YouTube - Truth)
Frederick
Douglass opposed all forms of oppression. I believe that his experience in
slavery gave him even more reasons to support women’s rights. He was proud of
the fact that he attended and supported the first meeting demanding women’s
rights in this country.
The
15th Amendment to the Constitution was supposed to give all men who
were citizens of this country voting rights. This meant that millions of Black
men who had been slaves could vote for the first time.
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were both pioneer leaders of the movement for
women’s rights in this country. They both opposed the 15th Amendment
because it failed to give women the right to vote.
Frederick
Douglass favored the idea of voting rights for women, but supported the 15th
Amendment. He felt the Amendment would be an important advance for Black people
who lacked any political power at that time.
Both
Anthony and Stanton argued against that perspective. However, in their
arguments for women’s suffrage they made outrageous, racist, and demeaning
comments about Black men.
Susan
B. Anthony argued that by giving Black men and not women the vote, women would
become slaves to Black men. These were her words: “Their emancipation is but
another form of slavery. It is better to be the slave of an educated white man,
than a degraded, ignorant black one.”
This
racism within the women’s movement continued. Ida Wells was an African American
who became a leader of Black people in the struggle against lynching as well as
the woman’s right to vote. She was excluded from a demonstration demanding
women’s right to vote, but marched in that demonstration anyway.
I
believe that the racist attitudes of some women who demand equal rights
continue today in a different form. Today, affluent women as well as working
women demand equal rights. However, many affluent women consider their demands
as more important than the demands of working women. This is an international
problem that can only be resolved through struggle.
David Blight in Philadelphia
I
had the opportunity of listening to David Blight talk about his biography of
Frederick Douglass at the free library in Philadelphia. Blight is a professor
at Yale University and I expected a rigid talk by an Ivy League professor who
claimed to be an expert on the life of Douglass. This clearly was not the kind
of talk by Blight that I had the pleasure of listening to.
I
found Blight to be as engaging as any college professor I’ve ever listened to.
He didn’t come across as an expert. Instead, he spent over an hour explaining
why he found studying the life of Frederick Douglass to be both fascinating and
inspiring. By taking this approach, he took about 200 people in the audience on
a journey into the life of one of the most important people who has ever lived
in this country.
Blight
dedicated his book to Walter O. Evans and Linda J. Evans. Walter Evans was a
medical doctor who collected African art as well as manuscripts of famous Black
people. Walter and Linda Evans’ collection of the writings of Frederick
Douglass became the core of the research Blight used to write his biography.
I
believe there is another name that we should credit with introducing us to Frederick
Douglass’ life. This is Philip S. Foner. Foner was a college professor at City
College in New York City when he was fired for being associated with the
Communist Party.
During
the time when Foner was blacklisted, he published many books on labor and
African American history. One of Foner’s projects was a multi-volume summary of
the writings and speeches of Frederick Douglass. Before the publication of this
work, few people in the academic community knew who Frederick Douglass was.
Today, we can read a single volume of Douglass’s speeches and writings edited
by Philip Foner, abridged by Yuval Taylor, and published by Lawrence Hill
Books.
While
I enjoyed listening to Blight’s talk, there was one point where we are in
disagreement. Blight spoke about President Obama’s speech at the opening of the
African American Museum in Washington. Blight was impressed with the fact that
Obama mentioned only one person in history, and that was Frederick Douglass.
This
is how David Blight described Douglass’ attitude toward the Democratic Party
that Barrack Obama represents: “Douglass portrayed the Democrats as the enemies
of mankind, and of history itself. They were the ‘fiendish. .
.hellhounds’ ready to pounce on black people and their allies at their
first grasp of power.”
Why
did Douglass have this opinion of the Democratic Party? It was the Democrats
who enforced the laws of both slavery and Jim Crow segregation.
Clearly
Blight would, no doubt, argue that the Democratic Party of today is different
from that party in the past. What are the facts?
While
the Democrats ran the systems of slavery and Jim Crow, it was the Democratic
President William Clinton who drafted a Crime Bill that set the stage for the
mass incarceration that we have today.
We
might recall how Frederick Douglass advised people to defend themselves against
the notorious slave catchers. We might then recall that President Obama
deported more immigrants than any other President in history. According to my
calculations, Obama deported on the average over 800 immigrants every day
during his presidency.
These
immigrants might be deported to nations where the prevailing wage is $2 per
day. We might speculate as to the cost for a slave owner of sustaining a slave
for one day. This might be a similar cost as the wages of many workers in the
world today.
In
my opinion, there is a direct link from the slaves who escaped human bondage,
to the Black people who escaped Jim Crow segregation, to the immigrants who
come to this country in search of a living wage.
In
any case, I believe that we have a lot to learn from the life of Frederick
Douglass. He lived at a time when vicious racist attitudes were the norm. Yet,
he engaged in a struggle where he found the words that began to convince people
that there would never be any significant advances in this country, until all
forms of racial discrimination are eliminated.
