Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1881

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Part 1, Chapters 18-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Life as a Slave”

Part 1, Chapter 18 Summary: “New Relations and Duties”

The epic battle leaves Covey chastened and henceforth “gentle as a lamb” (117). Frederick, meanwhile, sees his reputation growing. His fellow Eastern Shore slaves know that he can read and write. Now they know he will fight, too. Unfortunately, Frederick knows he is unusual and that the slave system makes it nearly impossible for slaves to develop habits that will make them both yearn for freedom and fight for it. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, for instance, slaveholders encourage slaves to spend their holiday free time drinking and playing games. Indeed, masters might view anything less than mindless debauchery as a sign of impudent aspirations toward self-improvement.

On January 1, 1835, one year after arriving at Covey’s, Frederick leaves for his next assignment at the farm of William Freeland, whom he finds to be a much better man than Covey. Though his situation is “every way improved,” Frederick remains “restless and discontented” (121). At Freeland’s, Frederick meets fellow slaves Henry and John Harris, Handy Caldwell, and Sandy Jenkins, the same Sandy who gave him food and shelter while he was hiding in the woods from Covey. With these men and a few dozen others as both friends and students, Frederick begins a Sunday school. The local slaveholders, however, will not allow it, for they “preferred to see the slaves engaged in degrading sports, rather than acting like moral and accountable beings” (123).

Part 1, Chapter 19 Summary: “The Runaway Plot”

In 1836, his second year with the comparatively humane Freeland, Frederick resolves to make his escape from slavery. He confides his plan to his friends Henry and John Harris, Sandy Jenkins, Charles Roberts, and Henry Bailey. They are all, “except Sandy, quite clear from slaveholding priestcraft” (128)—that is, not given to obey. The plan, which involves using Chesapeake Bay to sail part of the way northward, has many obstacles, but Frederick feels confident that, with a bit of luck, the fake passes he has written for each of his conspirators will give them sufficient cover until they reach the free states.

On the morning of the intended escape, while working in the fields as usual so as not to raise suspicion, Frederick has a sudden ill feeling, which he expresses to his fellow laborer and co-conspirator: “Sandy, we are betrayed!—something has just told me so” (136). Within minutes, constables arrive. They take Frederick and two of his compatriots, Henry and John Harris, 15 miles to Easton, where they are imprisoned for conspiring to run away. There they languish, wondering if Sandy has betrayed them and if they will be sold to the Deep South, where they will perish in the rice swamps or cotton fields. Slave-traders swarm like locusts, awaiting judgments against the would-be runaways. Finally, Master Thomas Auld comes for Frederick. Perhaps because the “crime” of escaping has not actually been committed and the fake passes are never found, Master Thomas chooses not to sell Frederick to the Deep South but instead sends him back to Baltimore once again to live with Hugh and Sophia Auld and to learn a useful trade.

Part 1, Chapter 20 Summary: “Apprenticeship Life”

Miraculously, the thwarted runaway plot costs Frederick and friends nothing but a few days of anxiety. Master Thomas Auld, too, seems somewhat changed, concerned even about Frederick’s safety following the events that led him to the Easton jail. Local slaveholders have branded Frederick a troublemaker, and in such cases they are not above taking matters into their own hands.

In Baltimore, while apprenticing at William Gardiner’s shipyard, Frederick is attacked and injured by a group of white laborers who do not approve of his presence among them. Sophia Auld’s natural kindness reveals itself once more as she tends his wounds. Outraged, Hugh Auld removes Frederick from Gardiner’s shipyard and sends him elsewhere to learn the calking trade, though Master Hugh, in the custom of the avaricious slaveholder, keeps all of Frederick’s weekly earnings.

Part 1, Chapter 21 Summary: “Escape from Slavery”

Frederick, now a young man in his very early twenties, resents Hugh Auld’s taking his weekly earnings and resolves once again to make his escape. To effect his plan, he strikes a “hard bargain” with Auld whereby the master will allow him to hire out his time and keep his extra earnings in exchange for boarding himself and paying Auld three dollars per week. By this arrangement, Frederick hopes to earn money he will need upon reaching the free states.

The arrangement appears satisfactory until one Saturday evening when Frederick decides to accompany friends to a Methodist camp-meeting outside Baltimore instead of checking in with Auld. This excursion raises Auld’s suspicion as well as his ire. It also puts an end to the “hard-bargain” arrangement whereby Frederick has enjoyed a taste of liberty. By this time, however, Auld’s wishes and orders make little difference. For several weeks, Frederick plays the chastened and dutiful slave, all the while planning his flight northward. On Monday, September 3, 1838, his life as a slave comes to an end.

Part 1, Chapters 18-21 Analysis

Douglass’s observations regarding Christmas week call to mind a famous historical document and its objection to institutionalized oppression. In her 1848 “Declaration of Sentiments,” written for the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention and modeled after the Declaration of Independence, Elizabeth Cady Stanton accuses man of rendering woman “morally, an irresponsible being” (Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “Declaration of Sentiments.” 1848. National Park Service, 2015). Slaveholders used Christmas week for the same purpose. They encouraged drunkenness and debauchery as a reminder of the slave’s dependence. Douglass’s emphasis on moral responsibility, which slaveholders denied to slaves, and deprivation of which Elizabeth Cady Stanton also cites as a mark of tyranny, stands as a powerful insight into the nature of freedom.

Frederick’s fear of being sold and shipped to the Deep South calls to mind another famous piece of historical writing. In an 1854 speech in Peoria, Illinois, denouncing the recent repeal of the Missouri Compromise—a speech that helped propel him to national prominence—Abraham Lincoln referred to a “sneaking individual, of the class of native tyrants, known as the ‘SLAVE-DEALER’” (Lincoln, Abraham. “Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854.” 1854. National Park Service, 2015). Slave-dealers, Lincoln says, were despised in the South, and yet they hover around the Easton jail, where Frederick and his co-conspirators languish for days following the failed runaway plot.

Slaveholders often hired out their slaves, particularly those slaves who had learned a trade. Frederick learns calking, a skill that makes him valuable to Hugh Auld, the man who functions as Frederick’s master in Baltimore. At the end of a week, Frederick hands all the money he has earned to Auld. After all the horrors of slavery that he has both witnessed and experienced, it is this simple act of lawful thievery that hastens Frederick’s decision to escape.