Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was twenty years old when he made good on a resolution to be free and escaped his chains in September 1838. Facing the dread and apprehension of failure, the upstart Maryland slave boarded a train in Baltimore and successfully reached New York. Hungry, homeless, and fearful of capture,
Frederick Johnson,
as he called himself, found abolitionist benefactors who helped him to relocate to New Bedford, Massachusetts and start a new life, with a new purpose, and a new name. This spellbinding narrative tells the story of Frederick Douglass before he became a rock star for African American rights. Written in 1845, the first of three autobiographical accounts, Narrative of the Life showcases the intelligence, penetrating insight, wit, literary flair, and pathos of the young abolitionist as he documented his life in slavery for a skeptical northern public. Douglass recounts in vivid detail the dehumanizing character of chattel slavery contested by the irrepressible humanity of enslaved African Americans. Through his recollections, we feel the sting of the
heavy cowskin
whip and hear the tones
loud, long, and deep
of
souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.
A beloved American classic, Narrative of the Life is reprinted by Mercer University Press with a new introduction by Scott C. Williamson, who presents the fugitive Douglass in 1845, seated at his desk in Lynn, Massachusetts and standing at the crossroads of the American ideal of liberty and the waking nightmare of American slavery.