Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave

Frederick Douglass tells his own story in this remarkable narrative-remarkable not only for the life it chronicles but also for its eloquence. Born into a system which forbade learning even the basics of reading and writing, the author discovers ingenious methods for teaching himself. Sent from master to master, place to place, he experiences the life of the house slave and the field slave in virtually all their degrees. He is fed reasonably well and starved, treated reasonably well and flogged. From the tobacco farms and comfortable city dwellings near the Mason-Dixon Line to the cotton plantation fields further south, he witnesses and experiences first-hand the evils of the South's degrading "peculiar institution." Finally fleeing to the North after nineteen years of forced labor, he is discovered to be a remarkably gifted voice for the enslaved masses in the South and for the struggling, often persecuted and hunted, free black men and women in the northern states.This edition includes the entire original manuscript. It is especially designed for use in secondary social studies and English classrooms. Editor's notes, images, and numbered footnotes have been added to facilitate learning. Higher-level vocabulary words are identified and defined. Douglass's detailed description of his escape-purposely left out of the original manuscript, written before slavery had ended-is included at the end.