My Bondage and My Freedom

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and enslavement.

Chattel slavery, in which enslavers were granted legal rights to the people whom they enslaved as though they were property, began in what would become the United States during European colonization. Even though Northern states passed laws to abolish slavery after the American Revolution, the system of enslavement remained in the South after other colonizing powers had abolished the practice—the United Kingdom, for example, passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. Enslavers in the South argued that the Southern economy depended on enslavement due to the prevalence of the cotton industry and other commodity crops.

Nevertheless, resistance to slavery grew in the United States, and abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, spread the word about the plight of enslaved people and fought for their emancipation. Anti-enslavement societies grew and took part in various activities such as publishing information, holding lectures and meetings, raising money, and lobbying politicians. As he narrates in My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass was a talented orator with a compelling story, and he became involved in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, spoke at events, and solicited subscribers for their anti-enslavement newspapers.

African American people organized many conventions to discuss how to end enslavement, and the National Convention of Colored Citizens in 1843 inspired Douglass to further action. My Bondage and My Freedom documents his process of starting The North Star (which later became Frederick Douglass’s Paper), his own anti-enslavement newspaper, in 1847. He was aided by his family members, who also fought for abolition. One of his most famous writings published in The North Star was a letter to Thomas Auld, his enslaver discussed in My Bondage and My Freedom, on the 10th anniversary of his freedom, September 8, 1948. In it, Douglass describes the suffering he endured while enslaved and his new role as an anti-enslavement activist (Bernier, Celeste-Marie and Andrew Taylor. If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection. Edinburgh University Press, 2018, p. lvii).

Douglass took part in several international tours of Great Britain and Ireland to speak on abolition and gain support. Between 1845 and 1847, he spoke throughout both nations. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1860 and worked partly with the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society. Both international lecture tours helped Douglass to stay safe during precarious times in the United States: During the first tour, he evaded kidnapping by his former enslaver; during the second tour, he avoided an unfair trial for his knowledge of radical abolitionists’ raid of a military site in Virginia, the Harpers Ferry Armory, which aimed to incite an insurrection of enslaved people.

The Civil War (1861-1865) marked a turning point in abolitionism in the United States. The Union of Northern states fought the Confederacy of Southern states, which had attempted to secede from the United States; these Southern states feared that enslavement would eventually be abolished since many politicians in the North opposed its expansion in new Western states. Douglass and other Black activists campaigned for African Americans to be able to fight for the Union in the Civil War, as many did, including Douglass’s sons. During this time, Douglass had risen to such prominence that he met with Abraham Lincoln to discuss abolitionism. Due to the efforts of Douglass and countless other abolitionist campaigners, Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the 13th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1865 outlawing enslavement (unless as a criminal punishment).