Injuring Justice (History Week something or other authors intent post)

The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass is one of many pieces of literature written in the mid-eighteen hundreds, it does however stick out from the multitude of other work in a few regards: It was written by a former slave, it was crafted with the hope of changing the world, and it held actual horrid experiences told from the point of view of the one that was subjected to them. In order for these things to have actually come together and become a well read piece of literature takes quite a bit of luck, along with determination from the people involved in its conception. What drove that determination is more complex then it would seem at first.

On the most basic of levels, Fredrick Douglass was writing to fulfill the wishes of his newly met abolitionist friends in the north; to create propaganda which would further the abolitionist cause, and set the nation forth on a road which would lead to the eventual demise of the human slave trade. Quite obviously the Narrative of his life was Fredrick Douglass’ attempt to help those who were still in the bondage that he had recently escaped from, but truly one of the biggest pieces that had to come together for him to write his story were people like Lloyd Garrison telling him what his writings could potentially accomplish. It was both, his own, and his supporter’s belief in what his story could do to help other people being known as property which was the reason why Douglass wrote his narrative.

Digging deeper into speculation, a case can also be made that Douglass wrote his Narrative as a sort of personal reflection on his time, and what he had gone through, in essence a sort of final vent, his final act of throwing of the chains of his oppressors. He writes directly to the reader, as if telling a story in conversation, yet through reading a sense that he was recording his experiences in order to help with putting to rest his own personal feelings towards those that had caused him to suffer, in order to maximize the amount of help he could provide to those that were still slaves by focusing on he institution as a whole, and not just being fueled by personal vendettas with specific people. A bridge was being made between these two things by him with turning his anger at his previous owners, to anger at what held all of the slave holders together; their pretense of Christianity. Douglass needed his writing to refocus his intentions, to create the most good in the future he possibly could.

Fredrick Douglass’ Narrative did exactly what the abolitionists of the North had wanted it to; it created a stir within the nation that helped strengthen the notion throughout the opinion of the general public that slavery was an injustice which human beings could never rightfully be subjected to. Douglass shed light onto the brutal details of the experiences of those in slavery which most northerners had previously been ignorant of. His Narrative created a stir simply because it opened the curtain on atrocities being committed in real life to people not very far away from its northern readers. It also called into question the lack of intellect which Africans had been pegged with as an excuse to validify the slave trade. Wit all of that came the opposition in the doubt that the previous consensus as to the intelligence level of Africans was incorrect, the stance was raised that the Narrative must have been fake, because a black man could not have possibly written such a well put together piece of literature. Ultimately however, even with those small pieces of opposition, Douglass enhanced the cause of the abolitionists and just might have been a deciding factor in the eventual emancipation of slavery in the United States.

It will never be known without a doubt how the rest of history would have been affected if Fredrick Douglass had never told his story to the masses; that is an “if, then” question, and those can only ever be mused upon, but will never be answered. It can be reasonably inferred however that Douglass and those with him in his goals for the abolition of slavery attained their goal in writing this Narrative, and helped to ease the lives of innumerable human beings in America. Douglass set out to help himself help others. Douglass’ goals were met. The world benefited from his work.