wants to be something special. not just a city on a hill, but a city that cares and loves one another and is willing to work with one another and understand that politics is indispensable to our bringing about progress for as much people as possible. sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span. next on american history tv, historian david white, director of the center for study of slavery resistance and abolition presents a talk titled "frederick douglass at 200." douglass's life as an abolitionists, public speaker and writer, as well as how we think about him now. the maryland historical society hosted this 90 minute event to mark the bicentennial birth of frederick douglass. there are few people in the

history of this great country who have left that mark in the wake as had frederick douglas. he is without a doubt one of the most important men in american history and his legacy continues with us today. born into slavery in 1818 in maryland, heat wave the way for generations of american who fought for justice and equality but did it peacefully. his writings are as relevant today as they were in the 19th century. this month we celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of this great man and are honored to welcome frederick douglass biographer david blight who discusses his life and work. a teacher,ght is scholar and public historian. at yield university -- yale university. he is the director of gilman universe 34 slavery and abolition. organizes conferences,

working groups, lectures, administering in the frederick douglass apprise an outreach programs involving slavery. he is currently writing a new full biography of frederick douglass that will be published by simon and schuster. thenewest books include second autobiography, my bond my freedom. blight is the author of "slave no more: two men who escaped freedom." of "raceo the author and reunion." published by harvard university press in 2001. prize in theincoln frederick douglass price purity is has a phd from university of wisconsin madison. he has also taught at harvard university and north central college in illinois.

member ofcted as a the society of american historians in 2000 two and served as the society's president from 2013 to 2014. he also served on the board of advisors to the abraham lincoln bicentennial commission and is involved in planning numerous conferences and events to commemorate the civil war. he has received honorary doctorate degrees from transylvania university, boating college and dominican college. in 2009 he shared the jury for nonfiction national book award. it is my great honor to welcome david blight. [applause] prof. blight: thank you, mark. thank you for coming out tonight on an ugly day in baltimore.

it was fun. i got to spend time in the archives. thank you to the archivist. charlie thank you to for the dinner last night and a long good historian conversation. representatives, senators and the governor. i hear you have adapted frederick douglas in maryland. it is about time. it is a good thing, it is more than a good thing. there was a rumor a year ago that douglas might not even be gone. [laughter] blight: those of us who worked on him, and there are a lot of us, we often feel that way when we wake up from nightmares. last year, i do teacher institutes in the summer with high school teachers. i did one last summer on the life and writing of douglas. they ordered these online.

by the end of the week everyone in the seminar had this t-shirt. [laughter] [applause] blight: you can buy cap's, douglas 2020. and my teacher students but one of my favorite quotes on the back. vote.", my voice, my that is the last sentence of douglas is my on ditch my freedom. i will say several things about this new biography. this is the cover. i brought a whole bunch of postcards. thinklisher gave me i 2000. i have to get rid of them. pick one up. you can order online. you will not get it until september, that is if i get the final edits i want to begin with two passages.

this is going to seem like church for a moment. my apologies. one of the arguments i will be making tonight is that the bible, and particularly the old testament was extremely important to douglass. i want a begin with two brief passages that he not only read but certainly came to embody. the first is from jeremiah in the first chapter. "behold, i have put my words in your mouth to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow. to build and to plant." note the dichotomies in there. to destroy and to rebuild is at the heart of douglas' ideas. the heart of his life, the heart

of the story come the story of the coming, the fighting and the consequences of the civil war. douglass was a serious student of the hebrew prophets. there is this line in genesis. almost everybody knows the story, somehow. it is in genesis 8, where it says, "and the dove came into him in the evening and in her an olive leaf, plucked off. noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth." that is in the middle of the famous story of noah's ark. i am going to begin with a story that happened here in baltimore, where douglass employed that noah's ark story.

i want to begin with the background. i will get him to baltimore, it will just take a few minutes. i'm not pandering to you because we are in baltimore, this is simply one of my favorite douglass stories. i found a couple of incredibly cool things as a historian about this. the election of 1864, those of you who know american history, and that is most of the people here, will remember that that is lincoln's reelection. there was nothing -- there was no foregone conclusion that lincoln would win in 1864. the war was in stalemate that summer, a terrible stalemate in virginia and in georgia in particular. and in mobile bay, where great naval battle will be fought. it began in the previous winter,

that election season in the midst of civil war. notary public -- no republic had ever held a general election amidst a civil war. how do you do that? no blueprints. where do you look that up in the constitution? it began when the senate passed the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery. both houses. the senate passed it, but the house did not. there was no way to get a two thirds majority in the house. the 13th amendment we know was passed one year later, in january of 1865, was actually brought to congress the previous year. it was the republican's brand, an amendment to end slavery became the brand on the republican party, and rightly so. they chose that.

oh my god, now they had to run a presidential election campaign branded as the party of abolition. that spring and summer, and then into the fall, the democratic party, and the parties have reversed a lot in terms of ideology, i do not need to explain that, do i? [laughter] it has been most of the century since the party of lincoln ceased to be the party of lincoln. that is another matter. the democratic party, white supremacist to its core, ran a campaign not just against lincoln, but against emancipation, and against war-weariness. and war wariness was absolutely real in the north.

there is a remarkable exhibit on maryland in the civil war which does not shy away from the horror of war and the problem of death. that summer, and i will leave a lot out here, lincoln himself at times believed he would not be reelected, or there was not a good likelihood of him being reelected. and for the second time, he met with frederick douglass at the white house. their second meeting occurs in august 1864. the first meeting occurred a year earlier. the first time they went -- they met, douglass stood in line at the white house and asked to meet the president. the second time, it was at lincoln's invitation, because he wanted to talk to frederick douglas, the most famous and most important voice or spokesman for african-americans, black america. he wanted to talk to douglas about this emancipation problem,

and he floated a trial balloon on douglass. he asked douglass, looking eye to eye in lincoln's white house office, eye to eye, and lincoln asked douglass if he would be interested in setting up a scheme, a plan, to final slaves -- follow slaves out of the upper south, as many as possible before election day, under the auspices of the army. douglass would have to be the head of it and the recruiter of all these other agents, and the scheme was that douglass would recruit a couple of dozen agents to make this happen with the help of the army. lincoln's apparent idea was to get as many slaves behind our lines and as legally free, before george mcclellan wins this election in the fall and democrats take over on a peace platform, or a negotiated peace

platform with the confederacy. in effect, lincoln looked douglass in the eye and asked him to be a legal john brown. frankly, there is some evidence of this, it is not hard fact . i think douglass was just stunned. sure, he said, yes. he didn't have a clue how this was supposed to happen. of course, he was saved from having to make it. he did go home to rochester, new york. he contacted all sorts of abolitionist, writing to people, lining people up to get involved in the scheme. and there were a lot of northern abolitionists that had been serving for more than a year as recruiters of black soldiers. they had experience with some of this. he never had to enact this plan. the plan was abandoned, as many of you know, because of battlefield events that changed

the course of this election, particularly the fall of atlanta in the first week of september. sheridan's conquest up the shenandoah valley, and the late august fall of mobile bay to admiral farragut. these were huge turning point in the civil war. arguably, the most important. when you get into the parlor game, most important turning point of the civil war, which we love to argue about, it is one of my favorite. [laughter] maybe next year i will go back to saying it was antietam. anyway, he was saved from that plan. and now, the election campaign, douglass wanted to campaign for lincoln. but the republican party, tainted with this brand of emancipation, begins to back away. this is what happens in politics, we all know this. republicans begin to shy away from saying they are the party

of abolition, because the democrats are pillorying them with the most white supremacist , racist campaign in history, until the next one. which was 1868, which was worse. they called abraham lincoln, abraham africanus the first. they called him the miscegenation or in chief. the very word of miscegenation, or race mexico, was invented in november of 1864 by "the new york world," that the republican party was running a miscegenation campaign, that its ultimate goal was race mixing. and they put out cartoons, they put out lithographs of miscegenation balls being held in northern cities. so you have got a scared republic.

even william h seward, lincoln's secretary of state, publicly backed away from abolition and said, that may just be a matter of what the courts decide. that's always a resort for some politicians. the courts will decide, whatever that means. and the courts, of course in america in the middle of the civil war, where the most -- were the most discredited institution in the government because of the dred scott case. they wouldn't let douglass campaign for lincoln. they didn't want him on the stump. they will after the war. douglass would stump for every republican candidate from ulysses grant, to the end of his life. the republicans managed to narrowly win. just briefly, douglass was the keynote speaker at a major

black convention in syracuse in the fall of 1864. 150 delegates from most of the states, including some southern states. this is the old tradition of the black convention and they hadn't had one in something like nine years. douglass gave a stunner of a speech at the convention. he told them everything was at stake in this election, everything, he said. not just their freedom, but the survival of the nation, the survival of an american civilization. it was in it -- it was an existential moment. and his audience believed him. and by the way, at that convention, henry highland garnet and john mercer langston and this incredible generation, some of them douglass' generation but most of them younger generation and rivals of

douglass, they had all kinds of ceremony. up on the stage at the convention they brought out the battle flag of a black regiment that fought at port hudson, and they sang "the battle hymn of the republic." it was written two years earlier. they sang "john brown's body." they sang hymns. imagine. and they are praying that lincoln and the republicans might win, because if they don't , all bets are off. on election night in rochester, i found one credible newspaper clipping about this in a scrapbook collection i will tell you about in a minute, and the scrapbook collection is the reason i did this biography. otherwise, i was not going to write a biography of douglass, but anyway i found this report. it was reminiscent of a

rochester paper by a man who said he had been a poll worker on the night of the election. 1864, november 8. and he remembered he was the one broke i was the one who put frederick douglass' ballot into the box. he probably was. and he walked into the center of town late that evening to go to the telegraph office with the election returns. and he said, they were walking into the center of town and for -- four drunken, white socks white men came into the middle of the street and challenged douglass with the n-word over and over. and the guy said douglass put up his fists and said, let's have at it. douglas was a fighter. -- douglass was a fighter. you don't need to read the narrative to know he has put with his fists before.

-- fought with his fists before. according to this eyewitness account, the drunken white thugs scurried off into a dark alley. and then he quotes douglass as saying, i suppose the boys were just upset, they didn't like the results of the election. i don't know what douglass said that night, the eyewitness is probably making of dialogue he -- making up dialogue he had with douglass, but what an anecdote. anyway, sorry. but the following sunday, five days later, douglass did what he had done so many times in rochester. he went to speak at spring street ame church, a black church in rochester. douglas had a sort of regular -- douglass had a sort of regular gig there on sunday afternoons for years. he would do a whole series of lectures, like six series on a topic. he went to spring street on the sunday right after the election, a packed church, a mostly black audience, and he began his

speech with the story of noah's ark. he recited some of genesis, and he told the story of noah who at one point freed a dove from the ark and the ark returned with an from the ark and the dove returned with an olive branch. and he freed the dove again, and the dove didn't come back. and noah removed the tarp from the ark, and he could see land. and douglas reinterpreted that to the reelection of lincoln. douglas went to the oldest rebirth metaphor in western culture. the survival of noah's ark.

one week later, the 16th of november, douglass came back to baltimore for the first time ever since he escaped in 1838. he had never been back -- well, actually, he had taken a train through here to get to washington, but he had never gotten off. on november 1, maryland historians know this, maryland held a referendum to vote whether to be a free state. and they voted narrowly, i have the numbers here, it's amazing. 30,174 to 29,799. that was the number all marylanders ought to know.

60,000 votes were cast. the yes vote one to make -- won to make maryland a free state. maryland was a very divided place, and it wrote a free-state constitution. douglass decided, i am going back to baltimore. maryland is a free state. and he came back to baltimore with, in effect, a kind of paparazzi in tow. he went to fells point, i believe it was on dallas street. vessel ame church -- bethel ame church. he went to druid hill.

was one of the churches he did attend when he was a slave. he took the pulpit. when he arrived at the door he is met by a woman named eliza mitchell. eliza was his sister. she was two years older, born a slave like him. she had lived all of her life in talbot county, eastern shore. eliza had seven or eight children. she had named one of them for douglass, the last name. we are told she remained largely illiterate the last -- the rest of her life, but she knew a lot about her famous brother. and she came, what is it, 60 miles from talbot county, how far is it? 75 miles, thank you. [laughter]

my friends who are the force of frederick douglass, and eastern talbot county. eliza walked all the way up here to meet that guy. it is not clear whether he knew her, but they embraced. press reports say he walked arm in arm with eliza to the pulpit, and he was surrounded on the pulpit by the american flag and he gave a speech, again beginning with noah's ark. but there's a variation on it this time. the audience, everybody knew the book of genesis. he told the story of noah out and thedove comes back, and noah sends out

the dove again and it doesn't come back. douglass says, the fact that i am standing here today is the equivalent of the dove. i am the dove. the oldest rebirth metaphor in western culture, and he put himself right in the middle of it. and it worked. sometimes if we put ourselves in the middle of a biblical metaphor, you are not going to get away with it, right? [laughter] no. always a bad idea comparing yourselves to god's work or something. that's what he did. anyway, we got to baltimore. in his speech for the dedication of the national african american museum of history and culture,

the dedication was september 24, 2016. douglass was not there. [laughter] but president barack obama was , and he delivered a remarkable speech, what he called a "clear eyed view of a tragic and triumphant history of african-americans." he spoke of history that is central to the larger american story and one that is both , these were obama's words, "contradictory and extraordinary." he likened the african-american experience to the deaths of shakespeare and scripture. he said the embrace of truth as best we know it is where real patriotism lies. are you missing obama? don't answer that. major pivotsf the of the country's past, obama wrapped his central theme, this contradictory and extraordinary history, he wrapped his central theme in a remarkable sentence

about the epic of the civil war. "we button on our union blues," said obama, "to join the fight for our freedom. we have railed against injustice for decade upon decade, a lifetime of struggle and progress and enlightenment that we see etched in frederick douglass' mighty, lionine gaze." we can get that gaze up here. not moving. here it is. the gaze in some photos coming -- you cannot quite see the eyes, although this is a favorite photo, for a lot of people.

it is january 1863, after the emancipation proclamation. douglass is sitting on a book, -- with a book. it could be the bible, it can't be "life and times" yet because he hadn't written yet. but that is a stunner. he is a little older, the white hair comes in, the lionine gaze. everybody probably knows by now that douglass was the most american of the 19th century. he got to lay out that gaze a lot of times. 162 or 163 photos of douglass exist, and according to the intrepid authors of "picturing frederick douglass" it's an amazing book, and they found a

lot of new photos. he just barely surpassed george armstrong custer as the most-photographed american. aren't you glad? mark twain's third and maybe grant is fourth. that is a little blurry, sorry. i wanted the old douglass, actually, on the cover of my book and i sent my publisher three examples. -- i have justm come to adore the old douglas. this is the younger douglas. -- douglass. that is the photo used, or at least the lithograph of it, in the narrative, his first autobiography. and then there is this, from 1857 or 1858.

that was in the kansas city museum, the nelson atkins museum, and it was found there. it had never been displayed. and my god, amazing. that is a good place to stop, anyway. the lionine gaze. how americans react to douglas'' gaze, since it is in posters everywhere, and how we gaze back at it. more importantly, how we we re-appropriate-- and reengage douglass legacies, in some ways informs how we use our past and who we are. douglass's life emerges from the full scope of the 19th century. he is representative of the

worst and best of the american spirit. douglass constantly probed the ironies of all those american contradictions, over slavery and race. few americans used shakespeare and the bible, to go back to obama's line, to comprehend his story and that of his people as much as douglass. and there may be no better example of an american radical than the slave- who became a lyrical profit on the ideas of freedom and natural rights and human equality. obama may have been channeling in some ways, douglass in the dedication speech, knowingly or not. so do many of us today. you don't need me to recite, not here, where douglass came from, in the eastern shore of course. 20 years as a slave, about nine

years as a fugitive slave, and from the 1840's to the 1890's he became not only the abolitionist and the editor, but in order of almost unparalleled stature and the author of three autobiographies that are classics of the genre. that alone is a pretty good accomplishment. as a public man, he began his abolitionist career two decades before america would divide and fight a civil war over slavery, that he openly welcomed, the war, that is. douglass was born in a, sorry, backwater of the slave's society of the south. that is what he ends up calling it at times. just as steamboats appeared in american rivers, but before the

telegraph, the railroad and the rotary press changed human mobility and consciousness, and changed his life, especially that railroad and that press. he died after the emergence of electric lights, the telephone, and the invention of the phonograph. it is frankly amazing that he never got recorded, that we know of. it could still appear, someday. it might be sitting in this building and hasn't been found in a box. who knows? there is an amazing letter in his library of congress papers. in the last year of his life, the fall of 1894, he goes to dinner in washington at the home of a man named mr. anderson. i couldn't figure out who mr. anderson was. he goes on to write a thank you letter to mr. anderson which is amazing, because mr. anderson

had a phonograph and played it for douglas. and he played the voice of the reverend weirs, whom douglas knew, and he goes back and writes a letter and calls the phonograph a divine creation. he says, "is it possible the human voice to live forever? -- live forever?" and when you read that he is talking about himself. he has been an oratory for 53 years, but he didn't get recorded. why didn't somebody record it? he loved this one will go faster than that one and so on you this can never be measured, though i tried it and i quit. he may also have been, along with mark twain, the most widely traveled american public figure of the 19th century, in sheer miles.

now, does that matter? no, probably not. forcares, right, except number freaks? but by the 1890's, in sheer miles and countless number of speeches, he had few rivals as a lecturer in the golden age of oratory. and it is likely that more americans saw douglass speak than any other public figure of his times. it is impossible to figure that list out. i don't know, with all these digital humanities centers appearing in universities now, somebody is going to count this may be at some point and give us a list. he struggled with the pleasures and perils of fame as much as anyone else in his century as well, with the possible exception of ulysses s. grant and pt barnum. [laughter] >> grant had a terrible problem with fame. did he ever.

the oratory and writer lived to orator,interpret, this douglass, black emancipation, to work for women's rights long before they were achieved, to realize the civil rights triumphs and tragedies of reconstruction, and to witness america's economic and territorial expansion in the gilded age, and he favored american expansion. he lived to the age of lynching and jim crow laws, when america collapsed into retreat from the very victories and revolutions in race relations that he had helped to win. he played a pivotal role in america's second founding, out of the civil war, and he very much wished to see himself as a founder and a defender of the second american republic. and i was so pleased to see that on the statue of douglass that they have now unveiled at the university of maryland, one of

the inscriptions on it is, a founder of the second american republic. i almost cheered when i saw that. douglass was many things, and it is a set of really paradoxes and opposites that make his story so attractive to biographers, and i think to many people, readers, one hopes as well as a lot of constituencies, and i mean that politically. in fact, there is this old saying about abraham lincoln, that i think david donald point in a 1955 essay. and the line is simply, getting right with lincoln, choosing your lincoln and using lincoln for your cause, getting on the side of lincoln. what would lincoln think? what would lincoln have done? we do that now with douglass, to some degree.

that is both good and maybe not. listen to these opposites. he was a radical thinker and a proponent of classic, 19th century classical -- political liberalism. at different times he hated and loved his country. he was a ferocious critic of the united states and all of its afterisies, but also emancipation, he became a government bureaucrat, a diplomat and a voice of territorial expansion, especially through the caribbean. in other words, american empire. he strongly believed in self-reliance and he demanded an activist, interventionist government at all levels to free slaves, to feed the confederacy and protect black citizens against terror and discrimination. douglass was a serious constitutional thinker, and few americans have ever analyzed

race as both a concept and a reality with more poignancy than this mostly self-taught genius. --genius with words. he was a radical editor, writer and activist, but also a hard-earned pragmatist who had to learn, i can get the best deal possible. douglass was jim crowed more times than he could count but loved the declaration of independence, the natural rights tradition, and especially the reinvented u.s. constitution fashioned in reconstruction. all of those things were true, it just depends on when you look. he fought against mob violence, but he believed in certain kinds of revolutionary violence. that one kind of depends on whether it is the john brown story. in his own career, he heroically tried to forge a livelihood with his voice and his pen, but

fundamentally, i would argue, was not a self-made man, an t -- and a symbol key image and a symboln he touted through a speech and through which modern american conservatives have adopted him. he truly believes women were equal and ought to have all fundamental rights, but he conducted his own personal life sometimes as a patriarch in a difficult marriage and while overseeing a large, often dysfunctional, extended family. context is history. context and timing are off and -- often everything. and james baldwin put it in 1948, he here is casting cell of -- sentiment or celebration to

the side. baldwin said, "frederick douglass was first of all a man, honest within the limitations of his character and his time, quite frequently misguided, sometimes pompous, gifted but not always a hero, and no say -- and no saint at all." you have to love james baldwin but you read that and think, ouch. but baldwin's unabashed bluntness there is a good place for a biographer to begin to make judgments from the sources. but so are the interpretations of, for example, a very different kind of writer, the former neoconservative turned neoliberal journalist and political theorist michael wind, in a widely read book from 1995. he rejected -- this was the 1990's, do any of you remember the 1990's? -- he rejected both

a leftist multiculturalism and a conservative self-help individualism, and he called for a new american nationalism that he termed in a very awkward phrase multiracial, mixed-race transamerica. and he decided douglass was the model. multiracial, mixed-race transamerica. and he ends up calling -- actually more than once in the book -- frederick douglass was "the greatest american of all-time." and you look at who is writing. indeed, the old fugitive slave has become in the early 21st century a malleable figure adopted by all elements of the political spectrum, not least of which by current republicans who have claimed douglass, at times i think quite ahistorically, as

by elevating a single feature of his thought which was black self-reliance. and he staunchly argued, make no bones about it, black self-reliance. but they have done this at the expense of a long-term, enduring radicalism in douglass' thought. at least, some of them do. and i remember vividly at the unveiling ceremony for the statue of douglass at the u.s. capitol in 2013, so chosen by the district of columbia because every state and now the district gets two monuments. that is why jefferson davis is there. another matter. congressional republicans at this huge ceremony -- when they unveil a statute at the capital, it is an act of congress. all the leadership was there. mcconnell, oni, and on. joe biden. they all spoke, they had an

eight minute staff prepared speech. but the fun part, i found it fun, was that it was an entirely partisan event. the republicans all got up and talked about what a great republican douglass was. and many members of the house were wearing this giant button around that said frederick douglass was a republican, or maybe it was is, i don't know. [laughter] i don't remember. i don't remember. but they were proud, wearing these things, high-fiving old freddy d. and then the democrats got up in -- and their argument was, douglass had always been in favor for the home rules for the district of columbia. and actually, he was. there is plenty of evidence that he favored home rule and statehood for the district. so, weirdly on the surface at least, they are both right, but anyway. getting right with douglass.

the book i have written tries to do what i suppose any good biographer does, which is to try to find all these complexities in the whole of his life, but never to sidestep his essential, radical voice. douglass was and is a hero, there is no way around it. he has been all but adopted as a national figure in ireland, scotland, britain and maybe some other nations. careful where i say that about scotland right now. [laughter] his narrative is read all of the world, he has appeared in countless murals, political satirical's, works of fiction, lots of works of contemporary fiction with douglass as a cameo character or a main character. i could go through them if you want. i especially love the way he

is used in the recent book called "half of a yellow sun" by a nigerian writer. if you haven't read that book, douglass is kind of a star in a strange way. i will leave it there, but you can as me later if you want me to explain it. he has appeared in paintings, of course. here it is again. and this is one -- and there is one in annapolis which i have not seen yet. i have to go there. and poetry. every african-american poet of the 20th century had to write his or her douglass poem. the sheer complexity of his thought and life is what makes him an icon, held in some degree of commonality. he was brilliant, courageous, and possessed a truly uncommon endurance of racism as he also delivered one ferocious critique of it after another.

he wrote so many words that will last forever. his literary genius ranks with many of america's greatest writers of the 19th century, and many literary historians and critics have been arguing that now for 20 years and more. but he was also vain, at times arrogant, always hypersensitive to slights. he did not take well to rivals who challenged his position as greatest spokesman of his race, although he also mentored many young black writers and leaders. he liked being on a pedestal, and he did not intend to get knocked off. douglass was thoroughly and beautifully human. above all, douglass is remembered most for telling his personal story, a slave who will -- who willed his own freedom,

mastered the masters language, sought to the core the meeting of slavery for individuals and for the whole nation, and then captured the multiple meanings of freedom as an idea and reality of mind and of body, as perhaps no one else in america ever has. now, this book i have done comes out of a lifetime of working on douglass but i truly had put douglass out of my life permanently, until about eight or nine years ago. and i counted my private collection of douglass material, and the reason i did this book was that collection. i want to mention it just briefly. i went to savannah, georgia to do yet another talk on the douglas narrative to high school teachers. and my host there who was from the georgia historical society,

said there is a local gentleman here, he is a collector, and would like to go to lunch. i said fine. at that lunch i met walter evans, an amazing man. he took me over to his house. it was one of those beautiful four-story brownstones on jones street in savannah. walter is an african-american, a retired surgeon who grew up in segregated savannah, but came north for education and went to the michigan medical school, practiced as a surgeon in detroit for over 30 years. we have a lot in common because we are both tigers fans. but walter started collecting both manuscripts, african-american manuscripts, rare books, and art in the 1970's. and he has one of the finest collections of african american art in private hands anywhere in the world. he is the executor of jacob

lawrence's estate. but his manuscripts. but he took me over to his house that day and on his dining room table he got out his douglass collection. and it was one of those moments when i actually, i think i cursed, because it was like, i don't want to do a douglass biography. [laughter] i don't want to do a douglass biography! but someone is going to have to. and almost nobody had worked with walter's collection. a few people had seen it, but not -- no one had really done anything with yet, not a lot of people. i spent many, many, many weeks. actually, linda, his wife's dining room table. she puts the coffee on, they would tell me not to come before 8:00 and stay as long as you want. it is the greatest research archive i have ever worked in, because surrounding you on the walls of walter's house, are the five duncanson's, the famous

black landscape painter. and in the foyer and entrance of the house, there is a statue and it is unbelievable. and that stuff should not be in his house. [laughter] we have made him an unbelievable offer at the library at yale and he thinks it is worth more than the library does or it [laughter] -- until the library does. [laughter] but it ain't over, until it is over. anyway, encountering that collection, i will just say one more word about it. at the heart of it, although there are a lot of letters and family documents and a couple of little narratives by his children, are 10 or so large family scrapbooks that were kept by douglass' son over the last third of douglass life. his daughter, rosetta, had a little hand in it.

but what that collection makes possible is seeing into the last third of douglass' life. he lives until 1895 -- 30 years after the war, 30 years after emancipation. the postwar life that becomes more exemplary and more symbolic and more of a bureaucrat and the older man and he is always lecturing and he makes money and he is a republican, all of that. we sometimes just don't bother much with the older -- we love the younger douglass, the heroic douglass, the man who gave his narrative and shook the world. the elder douglass was a man who was falling out of touch. we think. no he wasn't. i mean, yes he did sometimes. but i find the older douglass completely fascinating, and walters collection makes it possible. but i hope my book will be the most thorough of that last third of douglass' life than anyone -- that anyone has ever written. six -- i amo name

going to run right through them -- six themes, really questions, or problems, really, that i faced as a biographer, and the main themes of this book that i think any douglass biographer has to face. there are others, but this is -- these are the big ones, and i will wrap up. the first, douglass is a man of words. he is a creature of words. we know him because of his words. words were the only form of protest, the only persuasion, the only weapon, the only form of real power he ever had. and he became by a variety of partly mystery, but not entirely mystery -- how douglass developed his amazing facility with language. in one way, the book i have written -- and i actually wanted to call it this, but my editor scratched this idea -- i wanted

theall it "douglass: biography of a voice." said, nope, too literary. the first one is, it is about words. that is both a joy and a problem, because you can use to o much of his words. second, the autobiography. the first major problem that a biographer of douglass faces is the autobiography, because they are always in the way. the subject you are writing about is always in the way, hiding lots of things that you can't see. you want to grab your subject by the lapel and say, mr. douglass, please tell us more about anna. please tell us more about what you said to your two sons when you recruited them into the army when they were 19 and 20 years old. mr. douglass, what did you really think of lincoln?

i have a list that goes on forever and i have this imaginary seminar we are going to have some day with douglass, and we are going to chain him to the chair. he can't get out. but what happens with douglass is as soon as you get him sitting down, he slithers out of the room. he is gone. that's not going to be in the autobiography. there are three of them, 1200 pages in all. never trust anybody about themselves who writes 1200 pages of autobiography. he is trying to manipulate you. of course he is. all great autobiographies do that. them andave got to use do you ever have to use them. one quick thought on autobiography. anyone who works on douglass or a figure who wrote so much memoir, you need to read about memoir. aboutare a zillion books

autobiography. some say it is complete text -- some say it is complete fiction, some say it is a form of history, some say it is life writing. there are many books about writing memoir. one of my favorites is by a woman named mary karr. k-a-r-r. does anybody know her work? she is a pretty wild and crazy extraordinary writer. her voice is extraordinary. she was a woman who was institutionalized with mental problems, drinking and drugs, converted to catholicism. she has had many lives within her life, just like douglass did. but she has written fiction and poetry and a lot of things, but she wrote this book called "the art of memoir." and she has an argument that at first you think, no. it goes against every thing you've read about memoir. she says, the best memoirs are those that tell the most truth.

you think, wait a minute, memoirs by definition are really -- not really telling all the truth, they cannot. but she goes on and actually has her own favorite list, and she includes douglass on it. saying they are the whole truth, but more in the way of truth. there is a difference between accuracy and truth, and she says this. this is a quote. "most memoirs are driven to their projects for their own deeply felt, psychological reasons." that is not surprising. said,e says, "as yates mad ireland hurt me into poetry. so most of us," this is karr, " have been hurt. that is a memoir. "

i read that and i said bingo. douglass is hurt, as a memoir. in his scars and frankly the rage in his mind, heart and soul, were always there. he was lucky he was so good with words because he could expend that rage in language, and not some other way. the third big thing with the book i have already demonstrated is douglass' grounding in the bible. i will be quick with this. he first started hearing about the bible and reading about the bible while he was a slave, even on the eastern shore. especially on the eastern shore. and then father lawson and two white preachers in baltimore, he names them. he names the churches and preachers that influenced him. at least three different churches in baltimore, maybe more.

and then when he got to new bedford, within the first year he is in new bedford, the local himme -- ame church had preaching3 . this kid was good. only 20 years old, but take the pulpit, kid. and he did. he rooted his own story, and especially that of african-americans, and the -- in the oldest and most powerful stories of the hebrew prophets. it is all over his writing. especially the oratory. in america, the people had turned from or never embraced their creeds or their god. the american jerusalem, its temples and its horrid system of slavery had to be destroyed. the nation had to face exile and extinction and bloody retribution. this is a story at the heart of the old testament. and only then could the people and the nation experience renewal, and a possible new history.

douglass was a living prophet of an american destruction and -- destruction, exile, war for its existence, and redemption. jeremiah and isaiah in particular, as well as other pro phets, were his guides, they gave him his stories, his resolve, and his ancient wisdom. in order to deliver his ferocious critique of slavery and his country before emancipation, and then his strained but hopeful critique, narrative, of its future after emancipation. it is easy to call douglass a prophet, to call something prophetic. in my book, i try to show why he merits that lofty title. and he fits this description is, one ofrophet

the greatest descriptions about prophets. in a world classic called "the prophets" from 1955, the author says this. "the prophet is human, yet he employs notes one octave too high for our ears. he experiences moments that defy our understanding. he is neither is singing saint nor a moralizing poet, but in a -- but an assaulter of the mind. often his words begin to burn where conscience ends." douglass, his words begin to burn where conscience ends. assaulter of the mind. careful readers of douglas will stop at times -- of douglass

will stop at times, and shudder at a passage he writes or startle at it in recognition. "oh, does he say that well," or, "ooh, that hurt." in my book i attempt at least to demonstrate how douglass came by his king james cadences, and -- as well as how he used the biblical story to break down and rebuild, as jeremiah recollected his own charge. case, ofuglass'cas course, he is breaking down and rebuilding america itself. he succeeded and failed, as did the prophets of old. the fourth big problem is especially the story of his postwar life, the last third of his life. how douglass took these crooked paths from being a radical

outsider, an abolitionist, through time and events to become a political insider. it's a great story and we have seen it happen again and again through history, especially for african-american leaders. during the greatest pivot of american history, the civil war era, this man of language reaped great change to transform from a radical abolitionist into a republican party functionary. not an easy thing to do. these changes are historical, inextricably linked to events in time, not a matter merely of his moral growth or decline. and they provide a model for many other leaders, again, through time ever since. the outsider-to-insider story especially animates that second half of his life, and it became one of douglass' most challenging psychic dilemmas. it had its ethical cost at

times. he repeatedly faced the question of how uncompromising radicalism could mix with a learned pragmatism to try to affect real power, with how to condemn the princes and their law, but also influence and eventually join them. how do you square covenant with politics? the eternal dilemma of something how do you square covenant with called a democracy. whiche fifth problem, drives the book i have written anyway, is the turbulent problems of the public and private in douglass' life. throughout, i tried to balance, as any biographer has to, between these two registers of any persons story, the public man and the private life. and everything is fair game.

throughout, i try to balance family with the famous man. in douglass' case, he married twice, of course. first to anna murray douglas, a -- who he met here, a black woman born free in maryland, probably only three miles from where he was born. who remained largely illiterate for the rest of her life, but absolutely the center of his home and made his home through many dislocations and 44 years. and his second wife, helen pitts douglass, a highly educated white woman 20 years his junior, and a remarkably compatible companion by all accounts, during the last decade of his life. douglass sustained very important friendship relationships with two white european women, julia griffiths

from england and otelia ossining from germany, both of whom became important influences of differing kinds in his life. but most important, and we can come back to that, most importantly, douglass and anna had five children, four of whom lived into adulthood. little annie, anna's namesake, died at 11 years old. between them, they produced 21 grandchildren for the douglass'. and during the last quarter or so of this famous man's life, this entire extended family, which came to include even some fictive kin and a variety of proteges and other hangers on, became financially and emotionally dependent on the patriarch of a clan in bitter disagreement with itself. douglass' extended family is not a happy family. there is no family photograph.

douglass sustained exhausting , health threatening lecture years, threeolder months during the winter. you go in the winter because the farmers farm in the summer and they are willing to go to lectures in january. he did these lecture tours in great part to support his extended family and the big house on the hill, cedar hill in washington dc, near the centers of gilded age power that he could only partially penetrate through his appointment as marshal of the district, recorder of deeds of the district, and an appointment to the santo domingo commission. he did get government appointments and they were very important financially. this story is douglass' own unique saga of the extended family, but it is also very modern and there are many anecdotes about that i could use, but i am not.

he experienced at least two and maybe three genuine emotional breakdowns in his life, and both can only be explained by the treacherous character of this private-public divide. and finally, sixth, when you deal with douglass you are dealing with a multi-faceted intellectual. a thinker, a mind. an editor, a writer in numerous genres, memoir, short-form editorials which he mastered politically, extended speeches, and one work of fiction. he wrote and spoke millions of words. his trove of commentary contains beauty, brilliant storytelling, sermons, political stump speeches, and assaults on the mind that are his legacy, and the essential reason we even

talk about him. in roughly the last 40 years, douglass has been treated in our own time more and more by scholars as a political philosopher, a constitution and legal analyst, an author capable of prose and poetry, a proponent , a self-conscious voice of and about the nature of memory, a religious and theological thinker, a journalist, and the list could go on. today douglass is taught and examined in law schools, and history, english, art, english, political science departments, in high schools, law schools, community reading groups. and in the book i have done, i tried at all times, and it is never simple, to balance as best as i can the narrative of his life with analyses of his evolving mind, and give his ideas a central place in his

unforgettable story. but it is douglass' story, i think, why you're here. it is a story that gives and instructs. what are the ideas? there is no greater waste in america's terrible transformation from slavery to freedom than douglass. for all who wished to escape from imprisonment of outward or inward captivity, they do well to feel the pulses of his life and read the words of his voice. and then, go act in the world. go act. in the final lines of his second autobiography, "my bondage and comes some of his greatest work.

published in 1855 as the politics of the slavery crisis was embroiling the nation, douglas wrote that he would never forget his own humble origins, nor cease while heaven lends the ability to use my voice, my pen and my vote to advocate the great and primary work of the universal and unconditional emancipation of my entire race. as we look at douglass' lionine gaze in our own time as we read him and teach him, we may recognize that such a universal work still continues. band we have to do it with our pens, our voices, and our votes. thank you. [applause]

>> that was brilliant. thank you, really. we have a couple of questions here and i think we can go through these. >> i have to cover my book back up here, but what the hell. >> one of the questions -- why did douglass write not one but three autobiographies? >> yeah, that is always a little bit of a puzzle. the first one he writes to tell the world who he is. oh, thank you. [laughter] one button changes the world. and to make some money. in 1845, he is still a fugitive slave. he has been out on the circuit for almost four years as a lecturer. he has really proven he can do this abolitionist itinerary.

speaking and preaching. did he ever. he took the anti-slavery circuit by storm, but what he had been doing on the anti-slavery circuit is essentially telling his own story most of the time. we don't have a lot of text of those early speeches. but what he is out there doing is telling all the stories in the narrative. he sat down in the winter of 1844-1845 and he put those stories into a narrative form, a book. he published his first -- he had a first published essay in a magazine in the fall of 1844. he has a letter to the editor that says, oh, if i could write for a book. that first one was revealing himself, telling the world who he is. and he didn't just go to england because he was afraid of being captured as a fugitive slave because he had exposed himself. he had already exposed himself

over and over. he could not keep it in print. it sold 30,000 copies in the first four or five years. that is a bestseller in -- that is a bestseller today. trust me. [laughter] but "my bondage and my freedom" 10 years later, a whole different reason. i will be very brief. "bondage and freedom" is his coming out as a political abolitionist. he has transformed in 10 years between the first autobiography and the second into a political abolitionist. he is no longer in the garrisonian camp. he is -- he has had a terrible andkup with his mentor, "bondage and freedom" is among other things a political analysis of the slavery crisis in america. and it is douglass' coming out out as an advocate using certain kinds of violence. is a much more lyrical douglass. he has really mastered prose.

he wants to show it off and he dearly needs the money. don't make any mistake. "bondage and freedom," if i recollect correctly, sold about 18,000 copies in the first year or two. that is remarkable. he took his sons on the road with him after he published "bondage" and it would work the -- and they would work the crowds. it was a family affair. teenage boys trying to sell you a book of the guy speaking. pretty good idea. "life and times" later on, douglass never stopped telling his story. again, it is the weapon he had. by the time he writes the first -- he wrote two editions. in a sense, he wrote four autobiographies. 1881-1882, he is now beyond his federal service. he is beyond -- no, is he still

a recorder? yeah, he is still a recorder. but he has a lot more to tell. "bondage and freedom" ended in 1855. he has stories about john brown, about lincoln, about the war, about the construction, about everything up to the 1880's. he sits down again 10 years later and brings it up to date. but in the third autobiography, it is the old man summing up,ab, settling scores, telling you how famous he is. and it did not sell very well. but it is still an amazing book. each has its own context in -- and reason why he wrote it. but "life and times" was a commercial failure. even though there are a zillion copies around you can find today.

isanother question we had what did douglass think of a plan to return blacks africa? -- to africa? >> by and large he hated the colonization plan. the plans in various schemes about african-americans being transported back to africa or off to the caribbean somewhere or to central america. but it doesn't mean that at times he did not respect some of the people who lead such schemes. some, particularly black leaders, and again context is terribly important. but douglass hated the basic ideology of colonization. to him it was black people are not americans. they cannot have a future here. and he saw it as essentially proslavery. he saw it essentially as a denial of the birthright of the african-american. again, in certain context like in the wake of the dred scott

case, just remember what the dred scott case said. have -- black people have no right. that white people ought to acknowledge and will never be citizens. never, when the supreme court speaks it is supposed to mean never. in the three years between dred scott, almost before years between dred scott and fort sumter there were numerous schemes led by black leaders. martin delaney, there was a plan led by james redpath to take black folk to haiti, or parts of haiti. and douglass had problems in his own family on this one. because two of his sons got very interested in leaving the country. had no hope. they actually applied for this federal scheme to relocate haiti.to that island off he had a problem at home on this one.

two twentysomething sons saying, dad, i ain't staying. until the emancipation proclamation came. overnight they are ready to enlist in the union army. he even booked passage in april of 1861 to go have a look at haiti with his daughter. and his passage to haiti was like the week after the firing on fort sumter. there is this wonderful little short piece in the newspaper, "trip to haiti canceled." [laughter] by and large, douglass hated the ideological thrust in the values -- and the values of most schemes, and it cost him ferocious debates with some people because at the heart of it he believed in this idea that america could never truly

be biracial. -- because at the heart of it was the idea that america could never be truly biracial. he did not accept that. >> in your book to be published soon, you write as mr. douglass as statement and diplomat? >> a good deal. especially when it comes to haiti. i wrote an entire chapter on his experience as the u.s. minister to haiti. he was appointed by president harrison as the u.s. ambassador to haiti. he served almost two years. not the best experience of his life. not the best -- one of the more misguided experiences perhaps. he was serving two masters. one was his principles and soul, and the other was the united states government. and he got caught in between. his problem, though, began with himself.

and you have got to admit this. he was a proponent of u.s. expansion into the caribbean. and i learned a lot about this from one of my own undergraduate students. two of them actually have done dissertations on this, brilliant stuff where in the wake of the , civil war a lot of former abolitionists -- douglass was not alone -- but a lot of them in the wake of emancipation in the civil war, the transformation of america, they decided that the new america, abolitionist america ought to take itself abroad now. ought to take antislavery to the rest of the world, most of which is in some way enslaved. especially the poor, desperate places like santo domingo and haiti. and at the same time, the u.s. would create stations for the new navy in these places. in a sense, he became a proponent of a kind of american imperialism, although it was not called that. it was this kind of abolitionist expansion.

but he found that haiti was a very messy, complicated place. he did a lot of reading and research on it, but he did not speak french. although he took ebenezer basset with him, a fascinating african-american friend who had been -- douglass was the third black american to be u.s. minister to haiti. that was not one of his first. he had a bunch of firsts but that was not one. wasook asset with him, who a fluent in french. he and his wife, they got caught in a coup d'etat at one point. practically had to flee for their lives. he was, i would say, a good diplomat, but not his best track. doing diplomacy. and it muffled his voice in many ways, although once he quit he -- although once quit, he was

free to speak about it. he was still a loyal republican but he was not loyal to the people he had to fight with inside the u.s. state department, mainly the secretary of state. but what came out of it, of course, was the nation of haiti respected douglass so much that they made him their representative at the chicago world's fair, the columbian exposition. douglass became the representative of the nation of haiti to the world's columbian exposition. i have a whole section of that -- of the book on that, too, which is an amazing story because douglass held out, appeared every day for six months at the haitian pavilion as like exhibit a. people would just come to gawk at him. he said that. people walk in here every day just look at me. he felt a little bit like a zoo animal. but he gave one of the most amazing speeches of his life at

the chicago exposition on behalf of haiti and about american lynching. >> had frederick douglass not existed, who else would have taken his place in this position? and secondly, is there historically a second place assigned to anyone? >> that is one of those quasi-counterfactual questions. that i have to actually answer. a fully counterfactual -- anyway. rivals, rivals, rivals. at one point, william wells brown wanted the mantle. at another point, martin delaney did. they worked together at his newspaper. his biggest rivals after the war though were by and large the next generation of black american male leaders who were college-educated. and they were. john mercer langton.

richard t greener went to harvard. there is a whole slew of them. these guys were highly educated. they were all at least 20 years younger than douglass. they had all grown up kind of looking at douglass as a great man of the race, but what happens to the great man? the younger generation wants to knock him off. they want tenure. or something. and he had bitter rivalries. actually, i will give you two candidates. and they were not really rivals. the first was james smith, who was arguably douglass' most important black male friend he ever had. smith wrote the introduction to "my bondage and freedom," the first-ever biography written on douglass. it is terrific, still to this day.

it is only 20 pages. he was the most highly educated african-american of the 19th century. three degrees from the university of glasgow. ba, ma, and an md. he began a physician, dr. in -- became a pharmacist, a doctor in broadway, new york city. became an amazing writer. sometimes under pseudonyms in douglass' newspaper. he was douglass' alter ego. everything smith wasn't, and smith was everything douglass wasn't. he had a incredible formal education. but douglass was a fugitive -- was a former fugitive slave genius that could give speeches so much better than smith. smith only lived until 1865 and died of heart failure, but they were extremely close allies. they tended to agree on all these strategic issues on abolitionism.

which was always dividing them. the second candidate i will give you as a second most important african-american of the 19th century, although he left the country for 20 years, alexander crumell. not that well known. he was a minister, a theologian, grew up in new york city, went to the university of cambridge. a phd in theology from cambridge. went to africa for a while as a missionary. spent 20 years of the epic of the civil war in africa or britain. came back after the war and became a kind of conservative theologian. but somebody douglass had enormous respect for even though they disagreed often. they were actually on the same platform sometimes. they lived near each other in washington. aswas not as well-known

douglass, but as an intellectual he should be. they shared a platform once at harpers ferry. and they had a standoff. as the subject was the 20th anniversary of emancipation, for -- or the end of the war. 1883 or 1885. check me. but crumell was giving this speech. and crumell was incredibly eloquent. this was one of the first black colleges. crumbmle, 20 years after emancipation, is telling the next generation of young blacks stop dwelling on the past. but the past behind you. your life is in the future. put slavery out of your narrative. there is a press report that said douglass was sitting in the front row and "most vociferously objected." [laughter] they had quite a go over the question of how much do you look back?

what about memory? they still have enormous respect for each other. again, kind of an alter ego. highly educated cambridge graduate. douglass, graduate of talbot county. i would give those as two candidates, although john mercer langston thought he was. the new frederick douglass. langston and douglas were not only rivals, they got in court against each other a number of times. bad, ugly stuff. >> final question. did douglass develop his own plans for reconstruction? >> no. there is not a unique frederick douglass plan for reconstruction but he was a staunch proponent of what became known as radical reconstruction. activist interventionist use of

federal power in the states. as the 14th amendment says in section one -- excuse me, the first civil rights act in 1866 and the 14th amendment confirms, he believed in black suffrage, universal black male suffrage, and yes, he would have preferred women have the right to vote at the same time. and he has a terrible, terrible, ugly falling out with susan anthony and elizabeth cady stanton over the right to vote for women over the 16th amendment. but douglass wanted a reconstruction that was an occupation of the south. his reconstruction was essentially the scheme of that he is stevens, and to a great extent, charles sumner. there are all look -- there are little things they might have

disagreed on. he wanted the three constitutional amendments. he wanted them to be more radical, but he took what they could get. both are compromises of a sort as you probably know. but he wanted enforcement. he wanted these rights but he wanted them protected. he used to say famously, and this is what republicans -- i'm sorry if this offends anybody -- there was a new book out called "self-made man." it is a short book sponsored by the cato institute. and they love to seize on his speeches. he said, "what the negro is for you to leave him alone." became thegro alone" dictum he would use. then he would say, "get him fair play and protect him." give him his rights, let him have a farm, property, and leave him alone. but protect him. it was the protection that fell apart in the terror of reconstruction violence.

i will say this, too. douglass was not a very effective or modern economic thinker. he did not believe in property redistribution. he did not much believe in land redistribution. he wasn't an aggressive radical economic thinker at all. he believed most solutions were political. he was not a 20th-century man. you can't make him a marxist, even if it is your -- if you put your life into it, you can't make him a marxist. not even close. in fact, he is the opposite. but when it came to reconstruction, he wanted a remade, redesigned american south. he wanted most black people to stay on the land, which was controversial. he wanted mechanical education. and he wanted enforcement and protection.

much of that, of course, would fall apart. the man of words could not do a lot about it except keep preaching against it. one of the things that gives his life such -- this is deeply related to reconstruction -- such a remarkable trajectory. if he had just faded into the woodwork of the chicago's world fair and said nice things ceremonially, then went home and put his feet up and saw to his orchards at cedar hill for the last year and a half we would not know this. what did he do? he wrote the lessons of the hour. that bitter, ferocious critique of lynching. a five or four part analysis of what he called the excuses for launching. -- for lynching. the arguments hold up today about as well as they did then. and he took it on the road. old man, he is 76, traveling all over the place.

in these stinking trains. to tell the country that it is losing its soul and it is losing the civil war. that douglass we had at the end going out with that amazing speech, which he gave dozens of times, is one of the things that again makes that life such a trajectory that is almost irresistible. >> thank you. [applause] >> we have a reception right outside. if you did not have your answer

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