c-span. >> good evening everyone welcome to your historical society, i'm alex i'm manager of public programs here and it's a joy to welcome you to our robert h smith auditorium. tonight's program "frederick douglass: prophet of freedom" is a math mew mike glad at the scene lecture in biography for fall 2018. the lecture was founded in the name of mike. passion for biography. i'd like to thank edith glad at the scene for their generous support of this electricity

series. as well for their ongoing support we do two of these a year, so keep an eye out this spring for the next mike gladat the scene lecture and biography. thank you to everyone for their great work and support. i also just learned we have former governor -- assistant governor david patterson in the audience tonight so we'd like to recognize and thank him. so welcome. and tonight's program will last an hour, and it will also include a question and answer session. the q and a will be conducted via written questions on note cards and as you are coming into the tawrmt you may have received a note card or pencil. if not we will have staff going through to give you a card or will be by later on to collect them as well.

there will also be a book signing out in our smith gallery and the books will be for sale out there. so at last we're thrilled to welcome david w. blight back to new york historical society. in addition he is class of 1954 professor of american history. and director of the study of slavery he is the author or editor of a dozen books awarded the bank croft prize, the lincoln prize and the frederick douglass prize among many others. his most recent book is "frederick douglass: prophet of freedom." our moderate is eddy god. and doctor glawd is the author of several books, how race still enslaves the american soul and exodus, religion, race and the

nation in early 19th century black america. before we begin as always we ask you silence your electronic devices and cell phones. and please join me in welcoming our guests. >> how are you all doing? good. welcome. >> thank you eddy for doing this. >> so let's jump into this, it is a wonderful book x so buy it. david talk a little bit about the archive. that informs this magisterial text. you had access to something that

most folks haven't had access to. >> david: i had no intention of ever writing a full life of douglass. i had done an early book on dissertation on douglass, in 1989, i had edited his two autobiographies, etc., but i had douglass out of my life. [laughter] except for giving talks on douglass's narrative to teachers, and i went to savannah georgia publicity ten years ago to give a talk to teachers on douglass's narrative, because they were teaching it, and -- but my host at the georgia historical society said there's a local collector who wants to meet you and have lunch. that collector was walter evans, who is now a dear friend, and to whom this book is in part

dedicated. he took me over to his house, and got out on his very dining room table, his douglass collection. walter is he deserves a moment here. everywhere i speak about this i give walter as many moments as i can. he's an african american retired surgeon who grew up in segregated savannah. came north for education. went to the michigan medical school practiced in detroit for 30 some years, which gave us a lot in common because i grew up in flint michigan, and although he had season tickets to the tigers and i could never afford them. [laughter] at any rate walter started collecting in the 1970s. african american rare books, manuscripts and art. and in his remarkable house in savannah, is a library of rare

books name any book in the african american tradition he has a first edition. but his house is chock full of archive boxes. now this stuff should be at the library at yale and we have tried to get him to sell it. [laughter] and walter if you're watching they're still waiting. but, what it consisted of consin essence are ten large scrap books kept by douglass's sons during the last third of their father's life. also a lot of family papers and letters, photographs, and a lot of other tidbits. walter bought over time from one other collector. and when i saw that collection, it was one of those moments a historian rarely has such luck. where i realized i don't want to do this.

i don't to do this. i'm going to do this. [laughter] because if i didn't try to work with this material somebody else would. a lot of other douglass scholars have gone there. most of them have improved to walter. but if you want to work with his collection you spend time on his dining room table, and i spent several spring breaks there, a lot of other weeks. but without that collection i'd have never done this, and particularly that collection opens up the life of the older douglass, which we talked a lot about. the aging douglass, the patriarch douglass. and that's not the douglass people generally know. they know the younger heroic douglass from reading the autobiography that new archive is the reason i did this but the douglass archive is extraordinary in many forms and a lot of it digitized though not all of it. i also had access to missing

issues with frederick douglass's newspaper, which the yale libraries, i won't tell you how they got them, well they bought them and some cases, but there have always been missing issues of frederick douglas's newspaper, he published the newspaper for 16 years and they are gold mines of information and i got access now to i believe every issue of douglass's newspaper. they>> so the result is this extraordinary account of one of the most important voices of the 19th century. and we get a story from radical outsider to political insider. it's a story that in some ways reveals a powerful and flawed human being, and all too human douglass in some ways to emecho

niech a here. let's think of this in term of three categories. douglass as prof douglass as writer and politician. i douglass as politician. talk a little bit about this prophet of freedom. >> david: first i have to say eddie has really read this book. it's a little scary. we were chat away and had time on the telephone. he's bring up details i can't hardly remember. if you put the word prophet in your title you better be ready to defend it. it's a big word. and all through the words of working on douglass you can't miss it in his rhetoric, written and spoken that he is deeply steeped in the bible and particularly in the old testament.

now that's not surprising in the 19th century. many people were most intellectuals were. not all, but most. his first reading in serious ways comes not just in reading the bible, but in reading with ministers, with preachers, and the streets of baltimore and in certain churches in baltimore. but what douglass adopted isn't rocket science. he adopted the great story of the old testament. the idea that the temple of jerusalem. this is what the great prophet isaiah and aseekial, and amos were saying. that the temple had to be destroyed that the people had become so sinful, so poisoned, they had to have a reckoning. and in that reckoning many of them would die. some of them would be sent into exile. some of them would serve the

exile. some of them might find a promiseland. douglass took that great story of exodus, and all of its parts, along the way, and he did what so many americans did, especially african americans, and eddie has written about this. he took the exodus story and he applied it to his own people. and to his own life. and, especially to his country. now it makes him at times sometimes blood-thirsty orter. it makes him unpleasant to read. especially in the midst of the civil war when he becomes a virulent war propagandist, he advocates the death of every white southerner and words that are not pleasant to say the least. he did what the -- hebrew prophets did in the confounding

language of the old old testame. he was able to find language at times to expleses a dilemma. to explain a historical condition. to explain an irony. to explain something terrible out of which there might be possibility. it sent me in the course of working on this back to some theology friends, theologian friends, some of them may be here. donald shriver. who told me david read walter brewing. , and read so and so, and so and so. my good friend richard said you have to read robert alter and so and so and so and so. and i was trying to teach myself about the hebrew prophets, the prophets douglass was so adept at quoting and paraphrasing and using. and i came to realize particularly from reading abraham, the great theologian

that a prophet is sometimes that person in our society in our lives perhaps from the religious world, sometimes maybe more from the political world. sometimes from both at the same time, who as -- said, sometimes speak in octaves the rest of us can't quite hear. but we have recognize from it anyways. or as hexal also said, the prophet is often that writer that spokesperson who has been shattered by some cataclys mic experience and therefore can shatter others. and douglass had a terrible shattering in his 20 years as a slave, and experience that was burned into his soul. and i think psychotherapied him psycholongically, i can't prove it but i can suggest it. all you need to do is to dip

into one or another of many of his various great speeches. take the fourth of july speech. if that's not a prophetic work of rhetoric i'm not sure any american ever wrote one. it's the rhetorical masterpiece of american ablimp. it is a -- defined as that kind of rhetoric that story, that calls the people back to the alter, back to their cause, back to their principles and back to their proper way or face damnation. the fourth of july speech is like a symphony. and the middle movement is horrible. the final movement barely lets you back up. >> eddie: right. >> david: there are many places in douglass's lific in the

oratory and in his writing where you can find the elements of the progettic. was he always self conscious of that? no. i don't know if any instance where he called himself a prophet. hello, i'm here today to be your prophet. a real prophet doesn't do that. a real prophet never tells you he's a prophet. but he's going to hurt you while he teaches you. and douglass did that. over and over again. now it doesn't mean that he's always right by any means, and doesn't mean he's also prophetic, especially the older douglass who struggles with all kinds of contradictions and conflicts in the last third of his life. >> so when you think about the young douglass and his prophetic voice. what is the relation to -- there's a sense of these moments part of the story that you tell

is this ongoing act of self-creation that is douglass's life. and we have a -- of the young douglass in african american studies in princeton and you can just see the fires in his eyes. the fire in his eyes and the sculpture. there's -- absolutely. you can see it. he's against. and that intensity, has something to do with his rage against a peculiar institution, the kind of moral stridency but then you tell a story that in the midst of this there's this insistence of douglass's self v sense of self-possession. he chafes an interesting source of ways. alongside the -- let's talk a little bit about that. >> well, douglass sort of wrote himself into existence.

publicly. he's 20 years a slave in maryland, eastern shore maryland and then baltimore. he escapes in 1838. she spends three years in bedford massachusetts, working at all kinds of menial jobs. indeed well they were in bedford during the same part of the year and lots of scholars have tried to have them meet. but, a novelist must have them meet because we can't find that meeting. and it's just not there. but, doesn't mean i didn't use moby dick for an epigraph on that chapter. when melvillcalls the ship a pulpit, i thought wow that's an epigraph. anyways, but he begins to also preach at the local church. he's 21, and 22 years old. he's just out of slavery.

he's not perfectly formed by any means. as an orator yet, or as a thinker or anything yet. who is at 22. but he gets discovered by gay sewnians. the proponents of williamloid garrison's approach to ending slavery which was moral persuasion, moral situationism, garrison was a genuine radical. believed in immediatetism which means ending slavery now, not waiting for some gradual plan over decades or generations. he was a religiously driven radical abolitionist. garrison was. he also had some principles or tenants and strategies that were very difficult for a frederick douglass and for that matter a lot of black abolitionists to follow. such as strict nonviolence. such as strict non-politics that is you did not get involved in

political parties because political parties were complicit with slavery. they were dirty institutions. had to get your hands dirty in politics. douglass is going to take time to leave that one behind but he's going to learn politics as you're going to point out. he loved williamloid garrison. he was like a mentor, figure of father figure to some degree. particularly for a young man who was a genuine orphan. that's one of the first things you need to know about frederick douglass he barely knew his mother and never knew his father. although he knew he was biracial. that's about all he could conclude and he spent the rest of his life trying to figure it out. but the gays ownians were douglass's ablistest home. they he said they were my

church, and my community. once they discovered him as a speaker, and took him to nan tuck toot do his first public speech in august 1841 where he was this trembling kid, he says i shook in my shoes as i got up to speak for the first time to white people. but they discovered in him a young man with a voice. not just a orator's voiz voice but a story. he was already a good story teller. and he'd been preaching at the church from the text on sundays when it was his job to preach he knew how to do that. so for the next three and a half years they hired him. he went out on the road, and as an abolitionist. in mind and body because that's the way he came to feel about it. day in, and day out, month in, and month out, all across the north. at first in new new england,

back-break tours. in the first few years he traveled with many people. and some others. garrison himself at times. this is where douglass cut his teeth as a public abolitionist, as an orator, and he toed the line of gay sewnian gr, g garri. at the end of this period by 1845, he decided to sit down in the winter of 1844 and '45, and write up the stories he's been telling on the circuit. what he did in the first speech was two things. he told his own tale. he told his story as a slave which is all there in the

narrative. episode after episode of the fight with edward or the learning his literacy from ms. sophia and all the beatings and the terrible whrippings that he witnessed and experienced but he also perfected his favorite speech at least add first. what was known as the slave holder's sermon. and the slave holder's sermon was frederick douglass trotting out the passages of the bible saying slaves obedient to your masters. and he would mimic a pro-slavery minister. he'd prance around the stage and go into his southern accent. he would tillry the hypocrisy of christian slave holding. and he was a star at it. it got to the point where wherever they would go as a speaking troop they always work the system was they would always have a resolution to speak to. two or three you spoke to or

against. and douglass would start to speak to the resolution but the audience would start to say fred, do the sermon. [laughter] and he'd say all right. and heed break into the slave holder's sermon. he kept doing that kind of speech for years and yeech yeard years. this is where he cut his teeth as a radical abolitionist employing the only weapon they had which was power of the word spoken and then written of course in newspapers. >> and so there's the sense in which douglass cuttic his teeth from the garrison, drawing on the language of the king james bible, and writer's manual, that he carried with him that he carried with him -- the sense in which he understood as aristotle the importance of reterage and it's role.

>> david: he'd never read aristotle, but he surely could have. >> eddie: but he understood the moral role of reterage. >> david: and an order must have a moral position. must reach the hearts of the audience not just their minds. >> eddie: so the biography in so many ways teams to be organized along the lines where each autobiography, constitutes an anchor. so you have the early douglass, you have the narrative. you have the bondage and freedom, and then you have to life and times and its various iterations. and so in each moment as you said douglass is writhe himself into existence so there's a way in which douglass understood the power of language. you call him an ironnest in the text. so he's doing this, and running around the country with garrison's and having some issues with them. there's beginning to be a break

but he's fine-tuning his craft. talk about him as this literary figure. . maybe i would write a book. clearly he wanted to put this for his narrative out because he wanted to say this is who i am, this is my story. don't doubt me.

i am real. he lives another seven years as fugitive slavea fugitive slavess british friends bought his freedom. he wrote the autobiography 1200

pages. in the middle of the 1850s his masterpiece is my bondage and freedom 350 page autobiography which is a much more political book in the midst of a great crisis. he also lives a lot more from a different kind of abolitionist. the third in 1881 h 1881 he kinf summing things up the life of frederick douglass is a text that's full of name dropping and wants to know famous people. on the other hand for us scholars is a gold mine of just tough stories and details. what we know about the relationship especially down to

the attack of harpers ferry. he mastered the short form political editorial for the newspaper and kid right and go after a political issue whether it is kansas, nebraska or whatever it is and it just kind of nail it in a way that works. he also wrote these elaborate speeches and text. the fourth of july speech is a masterpiece of the writing. he said i worked for three weeks on this for longer than anything i've ever delivered and you can tell. and if i can never get him in a room and asked him one of my 100 questions i would ask him what did you read before that speech. where are your notes.

1852, 53 he writes a novella based on the leadbelly rebellion that is a real event. he wrote it and he tried poetry. there is a fair amount. he is a prose poetry writer and at times had a check metaphors. my great friend once wrote an essay called how abraham lincoln won the civil war with metaphors. some of you may remember that essay. i wouldn't say douglas one but he certainly taught us a lot in this century.

so he becomes a skilled writer who never is completely satisfied with his grasp. there's a wonderful passage on page 259 that i wrote yes! all great autobiographies is about the loss, the hopeless but the necessary quest to control the past but forever slips away. they cannot live with or without

a. it's almost manic in the way that he is constantly returning if we talked about this earlier telling the story of his stepfather in order to profess iprocessit as an act of self cr. this is what we mean by writing oneself into existence. it's a gorgeous chapter on douglas and lincoln.

they become absolutely central to the founding of the country. there's something going on here. it's about trying to retrieve douglas. you get the sense that the archives will allow you.

it is indelibly affected for the affection. douglas is scarred by this life as a slave child teenager and young adult and he experienced every kind of brutality. he was beaten savagely by at least one ovary and one overseer and he witnessed all kinds of savage beatings at the white house plantations.

douglas was like seven years world witnessing this stuff and there are many elements and many moments where the memory is so important in trying to understand douglas. i didn't think of this ahead of time until i was writing one of the first chapters what do we remember of our childhood. how do we remember childhood, he is re-creating it over and over in his life and telling us over and over how terribly important it. also for his humane sensibilities.

he talks about how slavery could make an angel. how do we rid of her childhood and i thought let's go back and read douglas but then later in life he's all about memory and memory of the civil war to try to preserve that abolitionist emancipation. to make the country remember that it's the greatest result of the war and responsibility but

he's also trying to line up his own life. anyone here that tried to write anything on the chandra of the memoir knows that you are trying constantly to figure out what goes in and what doesn't and what can i trust in my memory and what can i not trust. what in my memory makes a great story and what doesn't. but it's also true at the end of the day douglas seems to believe he had one great story to tell if it was his story he kept doing it and he wrote great speeches on political issues.

one of his owners and potentially his father, although we don't know. this is another way of asking if your father my father. he didn't get a yes but he never stops trying to figure out his paternity because he knows. shhe has white kinfolk and black kinfolk he didn't know and they

found him later in life he not only had four surviving adult children of 21 grandchildren and siblings who either adopted him or he adopted them out of slavery and all of them end up at the big house in washington n at one time or another they all die in air and the there and thl buried from there. they lost four or five in one month.

douglas the writer of the political pragmatist of the republican, the blood shirt waving figure, the one guarded his position as the black leader the man who was famous as a celebrity. douglas learned politics. the decade that leads to the civil war as a garrisoning and he was supposed to be the parties alone but he was a very political fan" said speeches by the liberator and said don't vote which is a bit of a contradiction to some of his followers to say the least.

but by 1850, 51, 5253 the crisis especially over its expansion is exploding across the country on the political parties and douglas comes to realize this is a hugely political question. he only shouldered up to it carefully in the 1850s at first he considered himself a free cellular he goes to the convention in 184 1848 and they called him up to speak.

he didn't quite know what to do with that party in 1854 that he was kind of excited about it and it's against the expansion of slavery and he begins to develop a kind of hard earned pragmatism about the crisis over slavery and realized you may have to make relationships with people you don't like this principles you can't stand but they can make things happen. he began to realize the party from 5456, 58 and 1860s when lincoln runs is causing the south grief. he came slowly to trust some republicans by charles sumner and a few others.

he followed the debates a lot they had quite an exchange on each other and anyway, he becomes a republican for sure in the civil war because the republican party was waging war against slavery as many in this room know douglas was a ferocious critic of the first year, year and a half because the government wasn't moving against slavery in fact it was sending them back to slavery or try to put the final proclamation of january, 1863

douglas not only changed his tune, he appropriated lincoln as lincoln appropriated him and he saw what was now the civil war had become what lincoln hadn't wanted it to become in his famous words he did not want it to become a remorseless revolutionary struggle that is exactly what it had become. if there were pockets of free black voters he would be sent there and there were other sections of the of it it's quitn

issue today. the cato institute loves to appropriate douglas because he was a staunch proponent of the self-reliance raising themselves by their own institutions and their own hard work but every

leader to speak of was a proponent of self-reliance. that is not unusual. but sometimes in the way biscuits per trade today in the political discussions is the way douglas gets appropriated now it drives me crazy because to do that douglas has become a little bit like abraham lincoln everybody wants to have him on their side. he's on our side, and now he's on our side. what would douglas think of black lives matte lives matteree to movement or this or that, what would he think of donald trump. [laughter] he would say no. >> before we go to questions,

you do something so wonderful in the text. say a word about anna marie. >> his wife of 44 years. he meets her in baltimore probably at the church. i don't know for sure. when he was 18 or 19 and she was 3-years-old she was born fre fre out on eastern shore on the other side of the river from where he was born they probably played at the same know when they were kids but they didn't know each other. they fell in love in baltimore. he escaped from slavery in late august 1838 and she had the extraordinary bravery to pack her bags and wait for a ladder r anletterand when frederick got w york city down on the lower west side they found himself safe

within 48 hours he writes a letter back to baltimore. whoever he wrote it to, she took the same three trains and fuzzy in new york in the same 38 hours or so to join him. that was an extraordinary act of bravery. we wouldn't have known about either one of them and she remained his help pay for all of those decades and the mother of five children she remained illiterate all of her life by and large and it was there wasa problem. the most famous african american man on letters into the world of the most famous black man in the world was married to an

illiterate woman who couldn't be part of that intellectual life in meaningful ways. we know what we know from what the children wrote about her and one of the things in the collection and savanna are little narratives written by two of the sons. there are two narratives. i try to find my way into the life and there are no documents that she wrote. no letters. but there's lots of little

testimonies about her. she kept the books. she did numbers when he didn't and she provided a home and if you get to know him at all you would sense this but he's desperate to make and preserve a home because he had never had one. and that is what she represent represented. >> let's go to some of the questions from the audience. one of the first, i heard frederick douglass bias against native americans is true? >> somebody has read a copy of the page. he trafficked in some stereotypes, no question.

when he sometimes would take the case after in particular for the uprightness and ambition they should stop worrying about black folks. they want to rip open a blanket whereas a black man wants to own a company. it is a stereotype that was all over the culture that i have students read chapters of this in a seminar they won't douglas to be a forever advocate of the rights and to be against the

reservations he just bought for the proper thing, so all too human. >> what is the relationship between douglas and grand? he becomes president in 1868. douglas had been an admirer. grant appoints him to a commission in 1870, 71 in the commission sent to what is now the dominican republic to discuss the leadership. they were trying to annex and he was the secretary for the

commission, not an official member of the commission. the big trip he went swimming in the surf on day and almost drowned but grants put him on that commission and advocated for the annexation. he became an expansionist and there were reasons, lots of abolitionists did. this is in 70 to 71 70, 71 recon isn't falling apart at. reconstruction hasn't fallen apart. douglas was among a large group who now argued the united states is now an abolitionist countri countries. we are the nation of emancipation and we should take the team, 14th and 15th amendments out to the world in

the societies like the caribbean and give them our ideas. that is not unfamiliar to us. americans of all stripes have done this for a long time before they come back from the commission frocommission, grante regular commissioners for a special dinner but he always at least from a distance admired him. he wanted to grant to run again. he wouldn't know how to trust the other candidate despite the scandal. he wanted the republicans to win. he didn't think that grant could lose but they never have a truly close relationship which is always made the fascinated with

the speech in 1876 as the second greatest speech with the unveiling of the monument and the park in washington and friedmans memorial and kranz pulled the rope that unveiled them and i went to the papers to find out what that grant think. nothing there. he must have gone back for a nap at the white house. >> how did the rise of jim crow in fact fax >> douglas got thrown off of lots of trains and he'd been to jim crow more than she could count by hotel, tavern, restaurant train, stagecoach.

it got to be a source of humor for him at times. but later douglas lives to see if in mississippi this is the first disenfranchisement is douglas lives to see the beginnings of the segregation in the 80s and 90s. nothing about it as much as i could tell surprised him because he's experienced all of the antebellum jim crow over and over.

as anotheit is another variatioe proslavery ideas it would be the reconstruction an and tradition brought back to life. for him it was the resurrection of slavery. >> manifestation as our national state. >> it's also why it was so important. how influential was he in getting this passed? >> i don't think it was crucial in getting the resolution passed.

he was the only male speaker, the only black participant who signed the declaration of righ rights. he was there and gave his presence to this event was huge and he was from that time on and before was a women's rights man. he was always for women's rights and is a patriarch in many ways in his private life. that didn't mak make make impacl for some reformers and radicals in abolitionists. but he was all in on women's suffrage and economic rights and civil rights until the 14th and 15th amendments he has a terrible breakup and susan anthony and cady stanton miss

behaved badly in the way they treated douglas with all kinds of racist epithets not just aimed at douglas but aimed at the black man. they didn't want to wait any longer, they wanted women and 15th amendments. but everybody with one eye open understood it never would have passed. but at that point it put us in or you can have your country back. douglas didn't have a choice. it's one of those moments in his life where he has to make decisions and choices about this political issue or that it's often what did they help him buy

his freedom and not the abolition? >> two reasons. he spent 1845 to 47 about 18 or 19 months and he's still in his 20s. a huge turning point in his life he gets treated like a hero most of the time and to this day they made him a patron saint. his friends began to realize that he thought about it but he couldn't.

the idea that he was going to move and and forceful children didn't make sense. douglas would not return to the united states until he had an official document in his hand that he was free the other part is not garrisoned himself but they were very strict and said it was to be complicit with slavery you don't pay slaveholders. he said thank you very much i will take my freedom.

>> douglas is telling his story. what should we take from this current moment what did this story teach us? >> history is never over. it has surprises and when you think you've won a victory, watch out. hhe's one of those reformers who livelived to see his cause triuh and frankly almost beyond his belief in 58 and 59 they had little reason to believe they would see slavery destroyed and

the new constitution crafted out of it but that he also lives 30 more years to see those causes an obstetrician will amendments and civil rights acts all but wiped out or erased by the supreme court and by terrorist violence and the eye a politics that would not and could not preserve it. the trajectory of his life covers most of the 19th century and the greatest transformative event in covers that great story from slavery to freedom, which we still in so many ways are living, fighting over that

amendment. we are still fighting over the supreme court. [laughter] on that note, thank you for joining us. [applause] i do want to remind you we have the books for sale and david will be signing books out there. thank you for moderating tonight's wonderful discussion. there's sthere is so much less . i want to make sure i make a correction for my intro because i just learned before he was the 55th governor of new york from 2008 to 2010 and was the first african-american governor so we are so thrilled to have him with us in the audience.

[applause]

>> how is everyone doing this evening? i.e. word here at the library during the cultural program so i'm glad to see all of you here tonight. we had a great editor of the history magazine so i hope you