Douglass, Frederick

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DIVORCE

DOUGLASS, FREDERICK

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Abolitionist, Author, and Politician

Frederick Douglass was a nineteenth-century abolitionist, author, and politician. Through his autobiographies, Douglass fashions himself as a representative, mid-nineteenth-century black male, though his definition of black manhood often seems to lack a specific African-American dimension. Woven into his critique of slavery and racism is an ideal of manhood shared by white middle-class men and grounded in notions of individualism, self-reliance, and entrepreneurial capitalism.

Born a slave on a Maryland plantation, Douglass became an abolitionist and supporter of women's rights after his 1 838 escape. His autobiographies share similarities with other texts that celebrate the emancipation of the autonomous self, such as Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (written between 1771 and 1 789), Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance," and Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." His work may have also inspired Henry David Thoreau's Walden ( 1854).

The central image in the early part of Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass ( 1845) is that of his aunt Esther, who was punished and sexually abused by the slave owner Aaron Anthony (who was probably Douglass's biologi cal father). Witnessing the degradation of his aunt at the hand of his biological father complicates Douglass's articulation of his own identity as a black male, for blackness is connected to oppression and femininity, whereas masculinity, associated with whiteness, independence, and power, seems unattainable for him. Grappling with this problem in his autobiographies, Douglass articulates a male identity firmly grounded in capi talist market structures and emerging northern, white middle class definitions of manhood.

Douglass experienced his first exposure to the meanings of freedom and prosperity in 1 827 while living in Baltimore as the slave of his master's relatives. Upon returning to the plan tation, his owner assigned Douglass to a slave breaker, Mr. Covey. A fight with Covey, in which Douglass prevailed, proved critical to Douglass's construction of male identity. In early versions of his autobiography, this symbolic reversal of

Frederick Douglass, the former slave who became a leading abolitionist and, in his autobiography, presented a model of African-American man hood. Douglass's expression captures the self-assertion and determination

that he considered fundamental to African-American manliness, while his dress suggests that he, like white abolitionists, associated manhood with middle-class status. (From the collections of the Library of Congress)

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the master-slave relation gives him the independence and self-sufficiency characteristic of the traditional artisan; in sub sequent revisions, it represents his achievement of an entre preneurial manhood based on mastery over other men in the workplace. In either case, manhood for Douglass meant indi vidualism, self-reliance, and hard work.

Douglas seems to have avoided close relationships with women, who remain at the margins throughout the numerous revisions of his autobiography. His interpretation of middle class manhood apparently required the repression of qualities considered to be feminine, including intimacy. An ardent fem inist and supporter of women's rights at the 1 848 Seneca Falls women's rights convention, Douglass may have been primarily attracted to antebellum feminism because he could identify with women's demands for autonomy and independence, and with the overall middle-class nature of the movement.

Douglass's definition of manhood reflects the cultural currents and constraints of his time. His autobiographies con vey a Victorian middle-class commitment to the notion of separate spheres and identify manhood in relation to eco nomic individualism furthered by an emerging capitalist mar ket economy-represented by the concept of the self-made man. But Douglass's writings also reflect the obstacles black men confronted in articulating an ideal of manhood in a soci ety dominated by white middle-class values. Douglass's embrace of a white ideal of manhood may strike a modern observer as an insufficiently race-conscious solution to the predicament. However, by successfully appropriating norms of white middle-class manhood, Douglass helped to chip away at racial barriers and paved a way for others.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1 989.

Martin, Waldo E., Jr. The Mind of Frederick Douglass. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1 984.

McFeely, William. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, 1 99 1 . Sundquist, Eric J., ed. Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical

Essays. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. FURTHER READING

Clark Hine, Darieen, and Earnestine Jenkins, eds. A Question of Manhood: A Reader in u.s. Black Men's History and Masculinity. 2 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

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Franklin, Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism. Edited by J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. ZaII. New York: Norton, 1986.

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Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial

Self New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1 970.

Wyllie, Irvin G. The Self-Made Man in America; The Myth of Rags to Riches. 3rd ed. New York: Free Press, 1954.

SELECTED WRITINGS

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. 1 845. Reprint, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 200 1 .

---. Autobiographies. New York: The Library o f America, 1 994.

RELATED ENTRIES

Abolitionism; African-American Manhood; Artisan; Capitalism; Cult of Domesticity; Emancipation; Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Franklin, Benjamin; Individualism; Market Revolution; Midclle Class Manhood; Race; Self-Made Man; Slave Narratives; Slavery; Thoreau, Henry David; Violence; Whiteness

-Thomas Winter

DUELING

Dueling in America lasted from the eighteenth century through the late nineteenth century, serving as a way for self styled gentlemen to settle conflicts about apparent insults through a series of elaborate steps, leading ultimately to vio lence. The practice was especially important in dramatizing relationships between rituals and expressions of masculinity and social class.

The duel was far more common in the South than in the rest of the United States. Political figures, military leaders, lawyers, newspaper editors, and other men in public positions of authority ran the risk of being publicly insulted, and, when insulted, often turned to the duel, as many southern men put it, "to demand satisfaction:' Some politicians claimed that par ticipating in a duel was necessary to preserve their reputations as honorable men worthy of being leaders, especially as it showed they valued their principles more than their lives.

The process that might lead to a duel began when one man heard or read that another had insulted him, either by suggesting that the man was not the other's equal or by ques tioning his character-a concept rooted in understandings of both manhood and upper-class status. He might hear, for example, that someone questioned his courage, his honesty, or the good name of family members. Two instances involv ing the future president Andrew Jackson dramatize typical