First a note about the length of books. At 764 pages of text plus 84 pages of notes, an eight page introduction, and a 25 page index, this is one of the longest books I have read, perhaps outdone only by the King James Bible and Leon Tolstoy’s two volume War and Peace. I have been posting the number of pages in my reviews, as does The Economist, but The Atlantic, Harpers, Macleans, and The New Yorker do not. But the number of pages alone does not accurately reflect the length of a book. This definitive biography is published on 6’ x 9’ pages with narrow margins and average font size, few spaces, and no blank pages, and will take days to read. Perhaps the total word count, an estimated average reading time or actual listening time for audio versions would be more useful guides for potential readers. Is posting the number of pages useful at all?
Written by a Yale professor of American history, this is much more than a biography of the 19th century anti-slavery freedom fighter. It could stand alone as the reference work for a university semester-long course in Civics or American history, with striking relevance to the political and racial controversies endemic in the 21st century, usually with the roles of Democrats and Republicans reversed.
Frederick Douglass , born as Fred Bailey, sometime in 1818, to a Maryland slave mother, never saw her after he was six years old, and was never sure who his father was, although he was probably her slave master. Beaten as a child, he nevertheless showed so much potential that he was allowed to learn to read and write. Escaping to Lynn, Massachusetts, and then to Rochester, New York, he honed his oratory and writing skills to become the preeminent anti-slavery campaigner, touring tirelessly in the free states and in Europe. With frequent references to Old Testament prophets, biting satire, irony, and unrelenting consistency he exposed the cruelty of slavery, the hypocrisy of slave owner Christians and their clergymen, the folly of compromising black leaders, and the duplicity of corrupt politicians.
The history exposed in this exhaustive nonfiction is replete with names that many modern readers will recognize but not know details about. Douglass, once he became a freedman, interacted with five presidents, numerous other politicians, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, John Brown of the Harper’s Ferry raid fame, Stephen Foster, Robert Green Ingersoll, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, his eventual undisputed successor, Booker T. Washington, and a host of other familiar people. He made enemies with his militant rhetoric, not only in the Confederate states and with white supremacists but with many fellow freedom fighters because of his uncompromising insistence on total equality of the races and his reluctant eventual endorsement of violence as a tactic to end slavery.
Those who think that extreme political polarization, a politicized judiciary and ‘fake news’ are new phenomena should read about the lies and extreme politics in the mid 1800s, with the Dred Scott ruling of the Supreme Court and that court’s ruling in 1883 that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional. Judicial interference or biases in determination of election results is not new either, witness the 1876 election fiasco. And although Abe Lincoln is remembered as the emancipator of slaves, few recall that he also tried to enact legislation to forcibly move blacks in the south en masse to Africa or Caribbean islands, refused to allow blacks a commissioned position in the Union Army or provide them with equal pay, and in his first term, continued to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act to return captured slaves to their owners. Both he and Douglass supported extrajudicial killing of captured Confederate soldiers in one-for-one tit-for-tat retaliation for the killing of Union soldiers. And the U. S. government and industrialists sabotaging their own diplomats is not new either as shown when Douglass was the ambassador to Haiti, late in his career.
Douglass’s life was plagued by financial difficulties, and a demanding, dysfunctional, continuously feuding extended family. Blight provides a vivid picture of the perils of daily life in an age when many children died before their parents, semi-starvation was common, and diseases such as consumption (tuberculosis) and malaria were endemic and untreatable.
No one’s life is without some inconsistencies, and Douglass’s is no exception. Although he may or may not have been sexually unfaithful to his illiterate black first wife, he certainly was emotionally unfaithful to her and, for intellectual stimulation and female companionship, relied heavily on two fawning educated white women who spent months with him, often in the Douglass home. The great orator and writer, suffragist, and advocate of black self- improvement never bothered to teach his wife to read or write. The fighter for black equality and rights mocked native Americans and Irish immigrants as inferior to the black slaves, and believed that it was appropriate to confine Natives to forests and reserves while blacks should have no such restrictions, and he scorned all Catholics. And he blatantly used nepotism in his role as the Marshall of the District of Columbia, to employ impoverished family members. His sarcastic dehumanization of enemy Confederate warriors and southern slaveholders, comparing them to animals, is an example of the necessary first step leading good people to become torturers and commit horrendous atrocities, as Philip Zimbardo has shown in The Lucifer Effect.
Blight does not measure up to Douglass’s writing skill, but this is nevertheless an enjoyable, educational, long read, and it provides insightful context to 21st century societal conflicts and politics. It is worth the time investment, especially if you are a retired history buff. Otherwise, be sure to read about the relevance of Frederick Douglass to the future of America by the same author in this month’s issue of The Atlantic
Thanks, Cal.
P.S. I will probably not post any reviews next week, as I have just started into an equally long epic- The Secret World. A History of Intelligence.
The Passionate Reader 