Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Page 3

specious term it may disguise itself, slavery
is still hideous. _It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to brutalize
every noble faculty of man._ An American sailor, who was cast away
on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three years,
was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and
stultified--he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his
native language, could only utter some savage gibberish between
Arabic and English, which nobody could understand, and which even
he himself found difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the
humanizing influence of THE DOMESTIC INSTITUTION!"
Admitting this to have been an extraordinary case of mental
deterioration, it proves at least that the white slave can sink as low in
the scale of humanity as the black one.
Mr. DOUGLASS has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative,
in his own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to
employ some one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production; and,
considering how long and dark was the career he had to run as a
slave,--how few have been his opportunities to improve his mind since
he broke his iron fetters,--it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his
head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving
breast, an afflicted spirit,--without being filled with an unutterable
abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a
determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable

system,--without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a
righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose arm
is not shortened that it cannot save,--must have a flinty heart, and be
qualified to act the part of a trafficker "in slaves and the souls of men."
I am confident that it is essentially true in all its statements; that
nothing has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing
drawn from the imagination; that it comes short of the reality, rather
than overstates a single fact in regard to SLAVERY AS IT IS. The
experience of FREDERICK DOUGLASS, as a slave, was not a
peculiar one; his lot was not especially a hard one; his case may be
regarded as a very fair specimen of the treatment of slaves in Maryland,
in which State it is conceded that they are better fed and less cruelly
treated than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana. Many have suffered
incomparably more, while very few on the plantations have suffered
less, than himself. Yet how deplorable was his situation! what terrible
chastisements were inflicted upon his person! what still more shocking
outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble powers and
sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even by those
professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus! to
what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how destitute of
friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest extremities! how heavy
was the midnight of woe which shrouded in blackness the last ray of
hope, and filled the future with terror and gloom! what longings after
freedom took possession of his breast, and how his misery augmented,
in proportion as he grew reflective and intelligent,--thus demonstrating
that a happy slave is an extinct man! how he thought, reasoned, felt,
under the lash of the driver, with the chains upon his limbs! what perils
he encountered in his endeavors to escape from his horrible doom! and
how signal have been his deliverance and preservation in the midst of a
nation of pitiless enemies!
This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of
great eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them
all is the description DOUGLASS gives of his feelings, as he stood
soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being a
freeman, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay--viewing the receding
vessels as they flew with their white wings before the breeze, and

apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit of freedom. Who
can read that passage, and be insensible to its pathos and sublimity?
Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library of thought, feeling,
and sentiment--all that can, all that need be urged, in the form of
expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of crimes,--making
man the property of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system,
which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image,
reduces those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a
level with four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in human flesh
above all that is called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one
hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that continually?