Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

by Frederick Douglass Narrated by Lee Smalley

Overview

Frederick Douglass published his highly acclaimed third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, in 1881 and revised it in 1892. The emancipation of American slaves during and following the American Civil War enabled him to relate in this volume more details of his life as a slave and his escape from slavery than he could in his two previous autobiographies, which would have put him and his family in danger. It is the only Douglass autobiography to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, his encounters with several American presidents including Lincoln and Garfield, his account of the ill-fated "Freedman's Bank", and his service as the United States Marshall of the District of Columbia and as U. S. Minister to Haiti. This masterfully written book is all the more remarkable because it is the product of one who as a slave was denied the right to any schooling. ~ Adapted from Wikipedia by Lee Smalley

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169277104
Publisher:	LibriVox
Publication date:	08/25/2014
Sales rank:	347,531

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER III. TROUBLES OF CHILDHOOD. Col. Lloyd's plantation—Aunt Katy—Her cruelty and ill-nature—Capt. Anthony's partiality to Aunt Katy—Allowance of food—Hunger—Unexpected rescue by his mother—The reproof of Aunt Katy—Sleep—A slave - mother's love—His inheritance—His mother's acquirements—Her death. ONCE established on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd—I was with the children there, left to the tender mercies of Aunt Katy, a slave woman who was to my master, what he was to Col. Lloyd. Disposing of us in classes or sizes, he left to Aunt Katy all the minor details concerning our management. She was a woman who never allowed herself to act greatly within the limits of delegated power, no matter how broad that authority might be. Ambitious of old master's favour, ill-tempered and cruel by nature, she found in her present position an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities. She had a strong hold upon old master, for she was a first-rate cook, and very industrious. She was therefore greatly favoured by him—and as one mark of his favour she was the only mother who was permitted to retain her children around her, and even to these, her own children, she was often fiendish in her brutality. Cruel, however, as she sometimes was to her own children, she was not destitute of maternal feeling, and in her instinct to satisfy their demands for food, she was often guilty of starving me and the other children. Want of food was my chief trouble during my first summer here. Captain Anthony, instead of allowing a given quantity of food to each slave, committed the allowance for all to Aunt Katy, to be divided byher, after cooking, amongst us. The allowance consisted of coarse corn meal, not very abundant, and which by passing through Aunt Katy's hands, became more slender s...

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