Home > About > Bill Peak's Library Column > The One That Didn't Get Away at the Talbot County Free Library
I first encountered Yale's David Blight as a featured historian on one of Public Television's "American Experience" documentaries. I was impressed not only by the depth of his learning, but also by the manner in which he shared what he knew. The man has a wonderful, folksy voice and a down-home way of making even the most arcane information seem understandable. My wife, the Ph.D. historian, was pleased PBS had been able to lure him before the camera. “He's the real thing,” she said, “brilliant, talented, at the top of his game.” Melissa can be pretty sparing with her praise when it comes to historians; the fact that she was impressed, impressed me even more.
And now Dr. Blight's long-awaited biography of Talbot County's most famous native son has finally come out (October 16), its author is being hailed in the pages of The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times as Douglass's perfect Boswell, and Dr. Blight is taking time out of a triumphant, nationwide book tour to give a reading here in Talbot County next Saturday, November 10, at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. I've already had the chance to read Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, and I have to tell you, if you are at all interested in American history, and, in particular, the history of the Civil War, you're not going to want to miss this one.
But Blight's book is much more than just a traditional recounting of facts and dates, it is, by my lights, the best kind of history: both thoughtful and thought-provoking. Again and again, as I worked my way through Prophet of Freedom, I found myself stopping to consider the decisions Douglass made in his life, and how I might have reacted in a similar situation. Douglass first joined the abolitionist movement under the guidance of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, who demanded of his followers a strict adherence to his philosophy of pacifism and total abstention from the political process. But, as time passed and pro-slavery forces grew stronger and stronger—successfully arguing for the expansion of slavery into ever-more western territories and engineering passage of the Fugitive Slave Act—Garrison and Douglass parted ways (not amicably), and Douglass's language became increasingly inflammatory and his involvement in the political process complete.
By 1852, Douglass was regularly stirring public passions with statements like, “Properly speaking, prejudice against color does not exist in this country. The feeling (or whatever it is), which we call prejudice, is no less than a murderous, hell-born hatred of every virtue which may adorn the character of a black man.” While it's easy to see, with the 20-20 hindsight of history, that Douglass was right to cut to the chase like this, it is the genius of Blight's work to make us think about the struggle his subject went through to reach so drastic a conclusion, and how radical a departure it represented for the former slave from the principles he had learned from his more famous, better educated mentor. Surely, Garrison would have told him, this is no way to appeal to the conscience of a Southern slave-owner who may himself have doubts about slavery; you leave him no room for self-examination, correction; he must fight back, give as good as he got, or see his pride destroyed.
But Douglass didn't stop there. In 1854, when a deputy U.S. marshal was killed in Boston during an attempt to rescue a fugitive slave Massachusetts was about to send back to Virginia, Douglass wrote that the deputy, by becoming the hired gun of such forces, made “himself the common enemy of mankind and his slaughter was as innocent, in the sight of God, as would be the slaughter of a ravenous wolf in the act of throttling an infant. We hold that he had forfeited his right to live, and that his death was necessary.” Blight does an excellent job of tracing the path that led Douglass from Garrisonian pacifism to such unhesitating militancy, but he also asks us to struggle along with Douglass through the moral questions involved in arriving at such a state. At what point does the division between one national party and another become so severe, and the opposing side's beliefs so odious, that a man may in good conscience call for violent insurrection (always remembering, of course, that both sides will almost certainly feel so justified)? During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, would Douglass have sided with the Black Panthers or Martin Luther King, Jr.? And, more disturbing still, what would the great orator have to say to us about the state of democracy and equality in our country today?
You might want to consider asking the author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom some of these questions when he speaks this Saturday, at 1:30 p.m., in the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum's Van Lennep Auditorium. Dr. Blight's lecture is made possible by a partnership between the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, the Frederick Douglass Honor Society, and the Talbot County Free Library. Though his lecture is free and open to the public, seating is limited, so free tickets are required to attend. Tickets may be picked up at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, the Talbot County Free Library, or by request from members of the Frederick Douglass Honor Society. I hope to see you there, as I should imagine the discussion will be spirited. I don't think Frederick Douglass would have had it any other way.