Frederick Douglass has been told his whole life who he was, what he was, and
where he belonged. He was separated from his mother at a very young age. The
family that he knew where his fellow slaves, and most of them were not his real
family. He was led to believe that his father was his master, the man who would
whip him and treat him as property and not as a son. Now a freeman he must
become his own person. Frederick Douglass does not know if he likes chicken or
beef, in a sense. His whole life he was never been given the choice of anything.
He was told that he would eat chicken, and he probably never tasted beef. Now it
was time for him to become a freeman not only in the sense of the words but in
his heart and soul. When he tried to escape the first time, and then was found
out, he feared being left in the prison forever by himself. He feared being
killed, for trying to obtain his freedom. Frederick writes: “Immediately after
the holidays were over, contrary to all our expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr.
Freeland came up to Easton, and took Charles, the two Henry’s, and John, out
of jail, and carried them home, leaving me alone. I regarded this separation as
a final one. It caused me more pain than any thing else in the whole
transaction. I was ready for anything rather than separation. “ (304) There we
see that he feared being alone. Which tells us something about his character. He
was ready for anything, except being left in jail and separated from his
surrogate family. That is what these men were to him. They lived together as a
family, and living with another person or four other people you became
aquatinted on a personal basis. They ate, slept, and breathed each other for a
portion of their lives. When they decided to try to escape they were going to do
it together. They trusted each other because each of their lives was in each
person’s hands. They had to be very careful of the mannerism in which they
acted. The slightest wrong move or expression would send suspicion upon them,
and cause a whipping or the fear that they might be killed. When he left
Baltimore to make his freedom path to New York City, he was really alone. He did
not even know himself. When he arrived in New York, and was a freeman he wrote
home to a friend and tried to explain how he felt he said, “I felt like one
who had escaped a den of hungry lions.” (314) Later on he says, he was feeling
diminished and again he was lonely and insecure with his surroundings. He was
afraid to be seized by the masters again. So his wife and himself set off to
find work and a home. How would they know when it was there home or when they
would feel secure and at home? After arriving in New York, Mr. Ruggles told him
that he needed to decide where he wanted to live. How did he expect a slave who
has only been where he has been told to go, and I’m sure did not know where he
was half the time to make a decision on where he wanted to make home. However,
he makes a wise decision, he tells Mr. Ruggles that he wants to go where he can
make use of his trade, a chalkier. With a new wife, and only five dollars they
head out to start a life as free people. Even now as a freeman someone else is
deciding upon where they should go. He thought that he should go to Canada, but
was urged against. Even though Mr. Ruggles is helping them, maybe they should
have gone to Canada. It was Frederick’s suggestion, and it seems as though he
was intrigued by that idea. Then he was urged otherwise and decided upon a safe
place. The morning after Frederick and Anna arrived in New Bedford, he was told
he would have to pick a name, for the reason that there were so many Johnson’
s in Bedford. So what, there must be a hundred Smith’s and they don’t have
to change their names. Your name is a part of your identity, yet he is being
told that he must do something. He has not been asked whether or not he wants to
change his name, he is being told. Even though we can probably understand the
necessity for this evil, it is another commodity that has probably caused
confusion for him. He talked about the people in Bedford comparing them to the
people in the south. He said that he was disappointed with the appearance of
things. He acquaints them at the same level with the non-slave holding
population of the south. Namely, poor whites. He expected them to be barbaric
because they do not own slave and they do their work for themselves. In a way he
is saying he expected the white people of the north to be unaccustomed and
awkward at the outset of work. If that is all that he has known his whole life
then he cannot be expected to know of any other ways. It is like giving a baby a
set of utensils and expecting him or her to know exactly what to do with them.
He has been place in this setting that is as unfamiliar to him as he is to
himself. When he escaped and arrived in New York City, he had no idea what to
expect. Ultimately, he was scared that as soon as he would arrive in the city,
he would be capture and returned to his life of imprisonment. The year 1838 was
a turning point in his life. He makes his way down a path that holds his future
or his death, he marries a woman whom is his “intended” wife who he hardly
knows, and he heads out to Bedford to find a place where he can find out who he
really is. Now, as discussed previously, the condition of the people and
surroundings astonishes him, because he never saw “whites” carry on in this
manner. Or even allow they to live in such a manner. He also said “I found the
colored people much more spirited than I had supposed they would be,”(319), so
far everything that has been witnessed by Frederick Douglass has been not what
he has expected. He talked of the gentleman who threatened a colored man to let
his master know of his where about, However that notion was shortly thrown out,
upon the threat upon the informants life. Here Frederick Douglass did not have
to live in fear that he would be kidnapped and returned, and he could live
contently and happily. Even though this may take some getting used to, it was
there right in front of him just waiting for him to grab it, and he did, when he
took his life into his own hands just to be a freeman. Something that millions
of people take for granted every day in this society. After three days of being
in Bedford, Frederick Douglass found work in oil, but it did not matter. Now,
all the money he made was his. From the start of his life in the work force, up
until now, he worked so people, who do not know what hard work is, could live.
Every Saturday he would march himself to his masters door, and the little bit of
money that he made, his six or eight dollars, was turned over to a man who did
not lift a finger to earn it. From this moment on every penny that was handed to
him went into his pocket. There were no more Saturday’s of giving to someone
else; he could now give to himself and his family. He became a man, in every
sense of the word. Frederick Douglass was not going to receive any more
whippings because his earnings for the week were not enough to satisfy some fat
cat. Now that his money was his own and he did not have to answer to anyone as
to where he wanted to go, it is now time for him to find out who he really is.
When it comes to dinner would he rather have that chicken or beef? Maybe, in a
way by writing this narrative he is expressing himself. He is letting the people
who read this see that even though people can make excuses for slavery it is a
form of imprisonment. These “masters” take the lives of other human beings
and make them what they want them to be. They work them to the bone, do not feed
them, poorly clothe them, allow them to live in conditions that most people
would not let there dog be exposed to, and yet they think that this was ok. If
after reading the life of a slave, how could u even condone these actions? How
could you sleep at night knowing that there were people out there who were being
beaten if they, in the slightest manner, made a wrong move? Yes, they did have
the abolitionists, but they only did so much. The “Underground Railroad”
allowed for some safe passage to the north, but they needed the courage to leave
everything behind. The slaves that were left behind were made an example out of
so they could scare the others into not running away for a better life.
Frederick Douglass was not scared anymore; he made it perfectly clear that we
needed to read about the truth. America, which was supposed to be a free
country, was only free to those who were not property. If you were a black man
you had a collar with identification tags like the dogs or you were branded with
the initials of your master and that was who you were. You were not Frederick
Douglass; you were the property of Captain Aaron Anthony or Mr. Hugh. In 1845
this narrative was published, and he first visited Europe, England, why there,
why not right here where the problem was. He had to go across an ocean to get to
people who were willing to listen to his message of freedom. It is ironic that
he went to England, the land that America fought for freedom from. Our
forefathers wanted a better life for us, they wanted us to have life, liberty,
and happiness, and here we are depriving thousands of people that because of the
color of there skin. The logic here is missing a beat. Everything that every
American was striving for, we deprived these people of, something is just not
right there.