Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself (The John Harvard Library) - Softcover

Harvard has done us all a service in reviving YDouglass' most important work. -- Jim Walls "San Francisco Sunday Chronicle" Harvard has done us all a service in reviving [Douglass'] most important work.--Jim Walls "San Francisco Sunday Chronicle " Douglass did not know much about himself. Rather vaguely, he was aware that he had been born somewhere around 1817; he had seen his mother "to know her as such" no more than four or five times in his life, usually very briefly and at night, and he grew up knowing nothing better than the life of the stalled ox or the mule, a wholly owned creature with no rights that anyone was bound to respect. More than one hundred years later, [this] account of the things men can do to those who are completely in their power is something to make the blood run cold. If there was a kindly, human side to chattel slavery, this man who lived far outside of the cotton belt, who was for long periods a trusted house servant, who was even hired out (by his owner) to work in a shipyard, far from the eye of the man with the whip--this man, who should have seen that humane side if any slave could see it, never got a glimpse of it. "But for the hope of being free," Douglass wrote, "I have no doubt but that I shoul

Written more than a century ago by Frederick Douglass, a former slave who went on to become a famous orator, U.S. minister, and a leader of his people, this masterpiece is one of the most eloquent indictments of slavery ever recorded. Douglass