My Bondage and My Freedom

The opening chapters spend more time with the family and community of Douglass's childhood. His grandmother's cabin, the nearby mill, and his fear of removal give that early home a particular shape. Later, his account of the Black religious mentor Lawson shows education taking place through conversation, faith, and mutual help as well as books.

The division between bondage and freedom does not end the book's account of racism. After escape, Douglass must find work, travel through segregated public spaces, and address audiences that doubt what an educated Black man could have experienced. His growing skill as a speaker creates a difficulty: some listeners take that skill as evidence that he could never have been enslaved.

James McCune Smith introduces the volume, which Douglass dedicates to Gerrit Smith. Its twenty-five chapters are followed by letters and speeches. The final chapters explain his decision to publish a newspaper and his changing interpretation of the Constitution. These subjects make the book a new account of his development, with concerns the shorter Narrative does not reach.

The first twenty-one chapters trace Douglass's life under slavery. He remembers his grandparents' home, removal to the plantation, his mother's visits, and the household's unequal distribution of food and protection. In Baltimore, Sophia Auld's early lessons and Hugh Auld's opposition encourage his determination to read. Lawson's religious teaching gives him a further reason to prepare for a useful life.

Douglass returns to the Eastern Shore, endures Edward Covey's violence, and describes resisting him. He teaches other enslaved people, joins an unsuccessful escape plan, and is sent back to Baltimore. There he learns caulking and confronts the appropriation of his wages. His successful escape remains partly undisclosed because he still wishes to protect other people.

The freedom section begins with insecurity in New York and the move with Anna Murray to New Bedford. Douglass becomes an abolitionist lecturer and grows dissatisfied with being restricted to personal testimony. His tour of Britain and Ireland broadens his experience of public life. Supporters obtain his legal freedom, and he returns to establish an independent newspaper in Rochester.