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Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Indecision. Overthinking.
Second-guessing every choice you make. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Beige on beige on beige. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire.
Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Hey, it's Amy Brown from The Bobby Bones Show. Join me in supporting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for a chance to win a trip to meet Megan Maroney at the 2025 iHeart Country Festival in Austin, Texas on May 3rd, hosted by Bobby Bones. We're going to hook you up with tickets, flights, hotel, food credits, and a meet and greet with Megan Maroney. Take action now to support St. Jude and help cure childhood cancer, and you're going to be entered for a chance to win. Visit iHeartCountryTrip.com to learn more.
Get this. Adults with financial literacy skills have 82% more wealth than those who don't. From swimming lessons to piano classes, us parents invest in so many things to enrich our kids' lives. But are we investing in their future financial success? With Greenlight, you can teach your kids financial literacy skills like earning, saving, and investing. And this investment costs less than that after-school treat. Start prioritizing their financial education and future today with a risk-free trial at Greenlight.com slash iHeart. Greenlight.com slash iHeart.
We've all done it. You see a headline but don't have time to read the whole story, or there's so much news you're not sure what is worth your time. I'm Colby Ekowitz, co-host of Post Reports, the weekday afternoon podcast from The Washington Post. Post Reports brings you what's relevant and revealing. Breaking stories, politics, wellness, culture. Each episode goes beyond a headline for the context you need.
Find Post Reports now, wherever you're listening. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, the story of the most photographed man of the 19th century. Not Abraham Lincoln, but Frederick Douglass. Here to tell the story of Douglass's life is Nathan Richardson, an interpreter of the man himself and playing the man himself for us in this story. Also, Joey Beretta, an expert on Douglass and a Civitas Institute post-doctoral fellow at UT Austin. Let's get into the story.
Good morning fellow citizens. It is indeed, and I'm here with unusual diffidence to talk to you about the peculiar topic of my life as a slave. I assure you that the platform which I stand now and the place where I was born in Talbot County near St. Michael's along the Tuckahoe River is considerable and the difficulty in getting from the former to the latter is by no means light. The circumstances into which he was born really give you some understanding of what it must have been like to be a slave.
It's a very demoralizing institution. I was born in Talbot County near St. Michael's around the year 1818. He doesn't even know his date of birth for sure. The closest we could come would be planting time or harvest time.
That, it seems to me, is the most important time. That itself was a part of the feature of slavery. The slave master did not want you to have any knowledge whatsoever. An educated slave is a worthless slave would be the mantra of the slave master.
The enslaved person could not think of himself as someone belonging to something greater than his master's domain. I was taken away from my mother before I even finished nursing. She was sold to another plantation about 12 miles away.
I never saw my mother during the light of day. She would occasionally walk 12 miles, 24 miles round trip just to rock me to sleep at night. And by the time I woke the next morning she would be gone back to her plantation to answer the bell for hard labor.
His father may have been a slave master so Douglas could have been conceived in a rape and there's nothing that could have been done about that. I was raised by my grandmother Betsy Bailey who had already given all the best years of her life to Colonel Lloyd and Captain Anthony. She had already labored and broke her back for him and and then now relegated to a hut outside the farm to raise small children like myself and my cousins and other children.
And so there I was with my grandmother and she corralled all the children and kept us until that day came when she would eventually have to walk us to the great house. He didn't think of himself as a slave because he lived with his grandmother in a simple cabin in which there was someone who loved and cared for him. But he sort of began to understand he was a slave because she would refer to somebody called Old Master. He didn't know who that was or fully what that meant but she spoke of him in such a tone that Douglas took special notice of it. He begins to think who is this person?
The problem comes when he is of sufficient age to be productive at the master's house. I remember the day my grandmother walked me and I knew that I probably would not come back with her to her hut. We got to the great house and I was immediately struck by seeing cousins and other children running around on the plantation.
She said, go play with your cousins, they're happy to see you. I was clinging to her dress because I knew if I lost sight of her I might never see her again. But I went over to the side of the building and I just sit there and I cried because I knew this was going to be something new that I've never seen before. My cousins came to me, my brother Perry, my sister Eliza, they came to me and tried to console me.
Nothing could console losing first your mother then your grandmother. Now for the first time I'm seeing the absolute brutality of slavery. That my master would take a young woman who had interest in another young colored boy on another plantation.
He found out that she had gone out in the middle of the night to see him, brought her into the kitchen, put her on a stool, tied her hands to a joist and commenced to whip her on her back until the blood ran down her back. Witnessing this sent me into a terror and so I started learning what this institution of bondage is all about. That the master would whip a slave for no other reason than to intimidate other slaves not to disobey the rules of the day. People are bought and sold and you can acquire more of them to do the work that you deem necessary. So it's really treating them akin to the cattle you have on the farm. You breed them, you make them work, you get rid of them whenever you will and you care for them enough that they don't die but you're treating them as an animal whom don't have maybe clothing and shoes and a bed.
The things that most people take for granted. My position as a young boy on the plantation was to occasionally if a horse or a cow or a hog got out of the gate then I would go and fetch that horse or cow and bring them back. There was a once this particular horse that would always run away to the next plantation and I'd find them every time in the same exact spot with a big pile of hay eating his field and for bringing them back I would get a reward of a biscuit or a sliver of bacon.
Let's just say I occasionally would leave the gate open. I had to do that because food was rationed and clothing was rationed to the slaves. Two linen shirts, one pair of pants, one pair of shoes, one jacket, the whole of which could have cost no more than seven dollars.
The children too young to work in the field would have received neither shoes nor trousers nor jackets. Two linen shirts per year and when those fail you, you'll win naked for the rest of the year regardless of the weather. I can remember sleeping on the cold hard ground with a burlap bag over my head and in the winter the frost biting my fingers and toes and a gash wide enough to put a pencil in it. This was my plight on that plantation until I became such an age that I could get more tasks. When we come back, more of the remarkable story of Frederick Douglass here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show we bring you stories of America, stories of us and it's because of listeners like you that we're able to tell the story of this great and beautiful country every day.
Our stories will always be free to listen to but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Visit OurAmericanStories.com to give.
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That's Shakeology.com. Hey, it's Amy Brown from The Bobby Bones Show. Join me in supporting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for a chance to win a trip to meet Megan Maroney at the 2025 I Heart Country Festival in Austin, Texas on May 3rd hosted by Bobby Bones. We're going to hook you up with tickets, flights, hotel, food credits and a meet and greet with Megan Maroney. Take action now to support St. Jude and help cure childhood cancer and you're going to be entered for a chance to win.
Visit IHeartCountryTrip.com to learn more. Get this, adults with financial literacy skills have 82% more wealth than those who don't. From swimming lessons to piano classes, us parents invest in so many things to enrich our kids' lives. But are we investing in their future financial success? With Greenlight, you can teach your kids financial literacy skills like earning, saving and investing. And this investment costs less than that after school treat. Start prioritizing their financial education and future today with a risk-free trial at Greenlight.com slash I Heart.
Greenlight.com slash I Heart. And we return to our American stories and the story of Frederick Douglass. Telling it is Douglass interpreter, Nathan Richardson playing the part of Douglass himself and an expert on all things Douglass, Joey Bereta. Let's pick up where we last left off.
So just as the family was destroyed because it made a slave think of himself as something beyond the master's property, education did the same thing. Can you imagine getting your first pair of pants when you're eight years old? I ran down to the creek. I spent half the day washing myself up. I came back.
I got my first pair of pants and they put me on a sleet sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore. Miss Sofia opened the door. She said, Freddie, we've been waiting for you. Are you hungry?
Are you tired? Well, I was quite surprised. A white woman smiling, beaming at me, inviting me in. If even if I had looked in the face of my slave master on the plantation, I would have gotten knocked down a notch or two. She said, hold your head up, young man.
There's no need to be ashamed here. I went on in. You see, I was sent there to be the helpmate for their young son, Master Thomas. He, of course, was around my age and I was to be his butler, so to speak.
In the mornings, I would walk him to school and while he was at school, I'd be at home doing his chores. Mrs. All, Miss Sofia, she was an avid reader, a kind person. She had no slaves before she was married. So the way she treated Douglas when he was a kid was different than how a slave master would have. She treated him like a child. She would occasionally, as she was reading the bible of the newspaper, share an A, B, or C with me. That was until her husband, Mr. Hugh, came and he said, Sofia, I understand you're teaching that boy how to read.
She said, yes, husband. What harm could that do? If you give him an inch, he'll take an L. You'll make him good for nothing. Master Huoldt comes into the picture and says, it would spoil the best slave in the world. It would spoil him.
It would make him unfit for his servile, menial task positions in my household. Slaves were to be uneducated and generally illiterate. Douglas will learn on his own. She stopped teaching me how to read.
As a matter of fact, any time that I might be in a corner, quiet, trying to learn a letter or a word, she would come and snatch the paper right out of my hand. And he says that from this moment where Huoldt tells his wife she can no longer educate Douglas, that he first understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. And the pathway from slavery to freedom then was knowledge. And once I had a few words to describe my misery as a slave, my mind started to free. You know, you cannot enslave a freed mind.
Once your mind is free, your body has to follow. And so I would have to devise various methods to teach myself how to read and write. As I was walking the boys to school in the morning, they would always on the way to school be talking about the lesson, reciting the ABCs or talking about some words. And I would say to Master Thomas, I said, Master Thomas, do you believe that I can make a W? And of course, he would say, how can you make a W?
Who taught you how to read and write? And I would say, never mind. Never mind who taught me how to make the W. But I can make this W. And if I make a W in this sand, you show me how to make a Q. And then I would make the W in the sand. And then he would be obliged to show me how to make the Q. And then I would have a Q. Or we might be walking along and I might say to young Master Tom, Master Tom, the biscuits on this morning's table were very good.
I have one in my pocket. Now, if you have a word in your notebook, it would be food for my brain. This biscuit in my pocket would be food for your stomach. And we would make a trade.
He would give me the word, I would give him the biscuit, and we would both be fed. This is how I taught myself how to read and write. Well, of course, the elementary words and letters were not enough. As a matter of fact, one of the books that I saw the young boys carrying on their way back and forth to school was a book called The Columbian Orator, full of great speeches and poems. Basically a collection of abolitionist writings.
I decided I would make the money to buy one myself. I saw this Columbian Orator in a book shop down on the streets of Baltimore. And so what I did, I sat at my shoe stand on the streets of Baltimore. I found myself a stump, some shoe polish and a brush. And as the men would pass by, I would yell out to them, five cents to shine your shoes, sir. One cents to dust you off.
And with 75 cents, I purchased the Columbian Orator. He began to see himself as a human being, deserving a better life than slavery had given to him. And he questions, why am I in this position?
What have I done to deserve this? And he would say, nothing. And he begins to desire freedom when he learns that something that was good for him, education, was being taken away. That is what education really did to shape his understanding of why he wanted to be free. You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage. And if I chance to fall below, desmocenies or Cicero, don't view me with the critic's eye, but pass my imperfections by. Large streams and little fountains flow.
Tall oaks from little acorns grow. And though I am now small and young, of judgment weak and feeble tongue, yet all great learned men like me once learned to read their ABC. And so I was studying.
And that was a real problem. I had no desire to go back to the plantation. But as the slave master said, and Mr. Hugh told his wife, an educated slave is a worthless slave. And of course, they decided to send me back to Talbot County. They put me under the servitude of a notorious slave breaker by the name of Mr. Colby.
And so for the first time in my life, I found myself under the lash. Douglas is sent to the slave breaker around age 16. And the goal of the slave breaker was to beat into submission the slave. So when he goes back to his master's domicile, he will be servile again. It's not simply a literal beating through force, but a shaping of the mind. There I am on that plantation assigned for about a year.
I saw the lash almost every week for about six months. But Cuffee, this really horrible person who beats Douglas regularly, also is in accordance with the general principle of slavery that Douglas observes. You know, there are two distinct differences in the Christianity of the day, that of the slaveholding master and that of the true Jesus Christ. But I would hear and see this parody every day in the life of a slave and the slave master who would be the most pious man in the county, and then come home and brutalize his slaves. And then they would be singing in church of Heavenly Union. And so I decided I would write my own poem about this, the parody. Come saints and sinners hear me tell How pious priests whip Jack and Nell And women buy and children sell And preach all sinners down to hell And sing of Heavenly Union They loudly talk of Christ's reward And bind His image with a cord And scold and swing the lash aboard And sell their brother in the Lord to handcuff Heavenly Union. And you've been listening to Nathan Richardson playing Douglas himself and also Joey Paretta, an expert on all things Douglas, tell the story of this great and remarkable man. Douglas right there and then understood that education was his pathway to freedom.
When we come back, more of this remarkable story of Frederick Douglass here on Our American Stories. Tired of spills and stains on your sofa? Wash away your worries with Anibay. Anibay is the only machine washable sofa inside and out where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices. That's right, sofas start at just $699. Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabric. Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.
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Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In.
Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Words.
Sorry, LiveLaugh lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire.
Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. If you could do one thing this year that could help you lose up to 20 to 30 pounds without lifting a single weight, and it would actually be good for you, would you do it? And if it would actually improve your health and digestion, and it tastes like a chocolate shake, wouldn't that be the ultimate win?
Well, here it is. It's called Shakeology. Packed with vital nutrients, protein, probiotics, adaptogens, and superfoods. It's the easiest way to reset your nutrition, curb cravings, and feel incredible, all in under the two minutes it takes to make a simple shake.
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That's Shakeology.com. Hey, it's Amy Brown from The Bobby Bones Show. Join me in supporting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for a chance to win a trip to meet Megan Maroney at the 2025 I Heart Country Festival in Austin, Texas on May 3rd, hosted by Bobby Bones. We're going to hook you up with tickets, flights, hotel, food credits, and a meet and greet with Megan Maroney. Take action now to support St. Jude and help cure childhood cancer, and you're going to be entered for a chance to win. Visit IHeartCountryTrip.com to learn more.
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That's SelectQuote.com. And we return to our American stories and the story of Frederick Douglass. When we last left off, Douglass had been sent to a slave breaker, a punishment for his growing desire to be free. Let's return to the story. I found myself sitting just a few blades from the Chesapeake Bay, looking at the ships sailing up to Annapolis.
And the only thing that gave me any kind of hope were those white billowing sails that represented some sort of freedom. Douglass talks about how in the first six months of being sent to Covey the slave breaker, he had went scarce a week without Covey whipping him. His back was sore. Covey would resort to these tricks of deception. They worked in all weathers.
Heat, cold, rain, hail, snow. He would always be required to work. He was required to work until he collapsed of exhaustion and then he was expected to work still more. The slave breaker had done his job properly. That first six months of being beaten and abused made him a slave again.
However, that won't be where the last six months end. He says that you saw how a man was made a slave, you shall see how a slave was made a man. Mr. Covey sent me on a task. He gave me two unbroken oxen and a cart. He sent me down to the woods to fill it up and bring wood back to the farm. Well, never having driven oxen before, it was a terrifying ordeal.
We were halfway across the field. The oxen were spooked. They ran through the woods, turned the cart upside down. It took me two hours to get the cart upright. Another two or three hours to load the wood and head back to the house. And then when I get back to the house, again, the oxen got spooked.
They ran into the gate, broke the wheel off and broke the gate off the fence. Well, Mr. Covey, he comes out and he's very angry. He's swearing he's going to teach me a thing or two. He's going to give me the lash.
For some reason for some reason, it did not come. Saturday, Sunday, no lash. When he's coming from church that Sunday, he says, Freddie, meet me in the barn. We're going to throw down some blades.
I thought it was kind of peculiar that he would be asking me to throw down some blades on a Sunday on the Sabbath. As soon as I walk into the barn, there he stands with a rope and a lash. And I don't know what came over me at that very moment, but I decided that I would fight for my manhood. He reaches over and tries to grab me and I grab him by the throat. He called his overseer. He came in the door and as soon as he came in, I gave him a swift kick in the stomach and he ran out coughing. And there we were, we were fighting for another half an hour or an hour at least until finally Mr. Covey, he gives up exhausted and pushes me away. And he says, well, that will teach you not to break my cart.
He hadn't taught me anything at all. As a matter of fact, I was the one who had drew blood from him. So why does Douglass' last six months go better? It is because Douglass fights back. That is how the slave became a man.
He calls this battle with Mr. Covey as the turning point in his career as a slave. He talks about it rekindling the few expiring embers of freedom, a glorious resurrection from the tomb of slavery to the heaven of freedom. And he resolves to fight for his freedom. I was sitting there thinking about killing myself until I came to the idea and the conclusion, why would I kill myself a slave rather than die trying to run away? He resolved that although he was legally a slave in form, he in his own mind was a human being and a free person. He would no longer consider himself a slave. I decided to come up with a plan that I would get out of this place.
Well, the only advantage I had at that time was that on the weekends, the colored people in Baltimore, they were given permission to go down to the camp meetings, a place, a gathering where free and enslaved colored people could get together and socialize, could have Sabbath, sing songs, play games and socialize. And this is where I met Anna Murray. She was the first of eight children to be born free and she was making her way as a housekeeper. We started to socialize and I was telling her that I was a slave, that I might even be a slave for life, but I certainly had designs that we might have a life together. Well, Anna felt mutually, but she told me, she said, our children, I don't want their father to be a slave. We have to come up with some way to get you out of this bondage.
And so we made a plan. He talks about his escape in his autobiographies. He sort of censors the information in the first one because in his escape, he had people help him along the way. So Douglas was hired out in Baltimore to work in the shipyards, caulking ships, that sort of thing.
So what did he do? Douglas disguises himself as a free black sailor. And I would catch a train out of Baltimore to Annapolis and then to New York. And when I got on the train, the conductor came up to me and he said, can I have your freedom papers? Well, of course, any colored person traveling would have to show their freedom papers.
Douglas says, had the conductor looked carefully at this paper, he would have found somebody who looked very differently than himself. Colored sailors were permitted to travel if they were on their way out to sea. And so when the conductor walked up to me and asked me for my freedom papers, I said, sir, I normally don't carry my freedom papers with me when I'm going out to sea.
And he waved me on. The next thing I know, I'm in Annapolis and then Harvard at Grace and then New York. For the first time, I am in free territory, but still terrified.
Even in New York, white or colored, a bounty on a colored slave is considerable. And so I had to be very careful. I had to hide in alleys and such until I was able to make my way to the conductor of the underground railroad, Mr. Ruggles.
And when I arrived at the house of Mr. Ruggles and explained to him my situation, he knew exactly what to do. He said, so you're telling me you've been working in the shipyards in Fells Point. You have a trade. Well, there are ships in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It's a whaling town.
They're looking for green hands. So that's where we're going to send you. It sounded quite nicely, but I told him, I said, well, I have another plan. I'm waiting on my future wife and I'm married to get here. In a few days, she arrived in New York and Mr. Ruggles, kind as he was, introduced us to a minister, Reverend Pennington, and we got married.
My wife was wearing a plume colored dress. Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Augustus Johnson. Of course, that's my runaway name.
We get to New Bedford and our first place of staying is with Nathan and Polly Johnson. It seemed like every colored person that ran away named himself Johnson. I told Mr. Johnson, I said, well, I'm going to need to find a new name.
Well, Mr. Johnson was reading a book at the time, a great Irish tale, Lady of the Lake. And in that book, the main character's name is Douglas. He said, well, how do you like the name Douglas? Frederick Douglas.
Well, I said, it sounds quite fitting, of course. My birth name, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. I have to lose Augustus Washington and Bailey, but at least I'm holding on to some resemblance of myself. And so now you know me as Frederick Douglas. What a story you're hearing about Frederick Douglass's mind and his will. He saw himself being a free man, pictured it, and then went about doing everything he could to become one. So he makes his way up to the Northeast, to New Bedford, Massachusetts, the whaling capital of America and the world to start his new life. A freer and less fearful man.
When we come back, more of this remarkable story here on Our American Stories. Made with performance fabric. Experience cloud-like comfort with high resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.
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Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Procrastination. Putting it off. Kicking the can down the road. In.
Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Carpet in the bathroom.
Like, why? In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire.
Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. If you could do one thing this year that could help you lose up to 20 to 30 pounds without lifting a single weight and it would actually be good for you, would you do it? And if it would actually improve your health and digestion and it tastes like a chocolate shake, wouldn't that be the ultimate win?
Well, here it is. It's called Shakeology. Packed with vital nutrients, protein, probiotics, adaptogens, and superfoods. It's the easiest way to reset your nutrition, curb cravings, and feel incredible all in under the two minutes it takes to make a simple shake. No meal prep.
No guesswork. Just a smarter way to fuel your body and start feeling your best. Shakeology isn't just a shake. It's a lifestyle upgrade that makes healthy living easy, delicious, and totally doable. Shakeology is all your vital nutrition made simple. You can get free shipping, big discounts, and a free shaker cup when you subscribe at Shakeology.com.
That's Shakeology.com. Hey, it's Amy Brown from The Bobby Bones Show. Join me in supporting St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for a chance to win a trip to meet Megan Maroney at the 2025 iHeart Country Festival in Austin, Texas on May 3rd hosted by Bobby Bones. We're going to hook you up with tickets, flights, hotel, food credits, and a meet and greet with Megan Maroney. Take action now to support St. Jude and help cure childhood cancer and you're going to be entered for a chance to win. Visit iHeartCountryTrip.com to learn more.
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That's selectquote.com. And we return to our American stories and the final portion of our story on Frederick Douglass. When we last left off, Douglass had escaped slavery to a new freedom in Massachusetts. Soon, his life would take another drastic shift, a shift into public life.
Let's pick up where we last left off. This is where divine providence sends me on the road to my manumission. I'm in a church and I'm speaking and in walks William Lloyd Garrison. There, there was the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society led by the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
They're unpopular, they're viewed as extreme, and Garrison would say one cannot engage politically within the corrupt American system. America was racist, the constitution was pro-slavery and the irredeemable. They hear me speak about my narrative and where I came from in Talbot County. A story such as a thousand other colored Maryland boys could have told with equal skill and effect. But they saw something unique in me. Mr. Garrison comes up and he says we're planning a conference on Nantucket Island and we'd like you to come and speak to our audience.
I arrive in Nantucket and, and here's one of the largest or the largest audience I've ever spoken to before. They asked me to stand up and tell my story. I don't know what I was saying that day, I can't remember the words, I was shaking like a leaf, but whatever I said it excited the audience greatly. There were cheers of hearing a story about bondage from the slave himself. That I stole this head, this body, from my master and ran off with it. That I prayed for 20 years for my freedom.
It was not until I prayed with my legs that I actually attained my freedom. So Douglas enters public life. He's the guy who goes on stage saying here's what slavery has done to me. He gives his personal story. He talks about how he was beaten up by the south.
He talks about how he was beaten and things like that. The Garrisonians will use a tactic called moral suasion. It's the idea that they had the moral principle correct. If the south left the union but we abolished slavery that would be perfectly fine.
The south would still have slavery but at least we felt right about how we operated in the north. And so right then and there Mr. he says we want you to be part of our movement. We want to take you out with us.
We want to hire you as an agent and we're going on a hundred conventions tour. And Douglas goes on a tear about how if we look at what America has done, we look at the people who made the constitution, how can we conclude anything but that it was pro-slavery? He talks about the constitution being conceived in sin, shapened in iniquity.
Legalism of reading the constitution doesn't explain the fact of how it is practiced in our country. I published the narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas. It caught fire and people started to flock to buy the book, not only in Massachusetts but back in Talbot County. The next thing I know Mr. Garrison comes and he says well this book has put you into some considerable unwanted attention. Either you throw that book in the fire or we need to send you out of the country. So we chose the latter. They arranged for me to travel to England and I came back after 18 months with my manumission.
$733 they raised. They negotiated with my master Captain Anthony and I had my manumission. Douglas is made really famous under Garrison's watch and Garrison's organization, but he wants to do more than that. I started to get somewhat weary of telling the same story over and over again. I was now beginning to understand what this idea of abolition meant and my ideas on how we might abolish slavery in this country. Well, Mr. Garrison thought it was his job to do that. It was my job to just tell the story of the slave and let him do the philosophy.
Well, I thought I was able to do the philosophy as well. He calls himself basically he was treated as a prop that the audience was surprised that it, this thing could speak. Combine that with his desire to learn and to think things through and Douglas will come to a different conclusion on the Constitution and the country more generally. By 1851 he will make the break with the Garrisonians public in his newspaper The North Star in which he says that we no longer subscribe to the notion that America, the American Constitution is pro-slavery. It was in fact a anti-slavery document that nowhere in the body of the Constitution is there a single mention of the term slave, slave holder, slave master, or slave state.
Neither is there a reference to color. So I would ask then any man to read the Constitution and tell me where he will find a guarantee for slavery. Well, my relationship with Mr. Garrison started to become quite frayed but I moved on. I moved to Rochester. I set up my newspaper right there on Main Street and I started to publish and it was around 1852 that I actually got a request from the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. The women in Rochester invited me to give a speech on the meaning of the Fourth of July. Well, when I first got the request I said I will not speak. What to the American slave is the Fourth of July? Well, of course, they pressed me.
Everyone pressed me. Mr. Douglas, who better than you, the ultimate abolitionist, to give us your idea of what this democracy, what this freedom means. And so, of course, I decided to schedule the date not on the 4th but on the 5th of July.
I kept them waiting a day. The tone he takes in the speech is one of critique about the Declaration of Independence and Independence Day itself. Not necessarily the text of the Declaration but how America had veered away from its noble founding principles. Our forefathers, they were good men, they were peaceful men, but they chose revolution rather than peaceful submission to bondage. And so, it was ultimately on the second day of July 1776 that they ultimately went to Great Britain to file their grievances and they did it in the form of a resolution in which they demanded their separation from Great Britain. Well, they succeeded and we reap the benefits of their success.
Douglas famously uses this approach of talking about himself as I, so referring to I as black people and you as his white audience, saying that the occasion of Independence Day is something that ought to be revered for white folks. The problem is, though, is that our forefathers, they have done their work. They've done it and they've done much of it well.
They have lived and they have died. Now, we must live and we must do our own work. You have shared in its blessings the blessings of America that I, a black person, have not enjoyed. Slavery is a sin and shameful and America practices it. We have no right to wear out our father's reputation to avoid our own idleness. As a matter of fact, the great citizenship of idleness.
As a matter of fact, the great Sidney Smith said, men seldom eulogize the fame and fortune of their forefathers except to exclude some folly or wickedness of their own. We must do our own work. And so, if anything, I'm saying that our constitution is a great idea. But if it is a great idea and it is not a dead letter, then we must do our own work to make it a more perfect union.
It was a fiery speech. You might want to understand that what I was saying is that our country and our freedoms are derived. There are two constitutions.
There is one literal constitution written by the founding fathers and then one one literal constitution in our body politic. It is how we live the constitution and not how we read it. He appeals to the Declaration in Independence Day to say that just because there is slavery in this country doesn't mean there always ought to be. So I think that a reader then and perhaps still today tends to view this speech as somehow down on America.
That's the wrong way to approach it. What Douglas is saying here is that America did perpetuate injustice through slavery. However, it has a founding which can be appealed to and fulfilled in a way that would fight against slavery. Slavery was incompatible with the founding. So the solution then is to hold true to the constitution, draw encouragement from the Declaration's principles, and the genius, he says, the genius of American institutions.
And our principles make its downfall inevitable in America. That is the hope he has. And a special thanks to Nathan Richardson who played the part of Frederick Douglass. You can reach him at his website scpublishing.com. Also a special thanks to Joey Beretta.
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