The Mind of Frederick Douglass (review)

BOOK REVIEWS177 the argument, and it raises some problems. Charlestonians did not reject all prospects for change and progress, but their schemes failed more frequently , often because they were overly ambitious, as with the grand dream of the a trans-Appalachian railroad. One suspects it was the failure to effect change that encouraged the conservative tone of Charleston's business community, for that tendency continued long after the emancipation . Don H. Doyle Vanderbilt University The Mind ofFrederick Douglass. By Waldo E. Martin, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Pp. xii, 333. $27.50.) Both the reality and the symbolism ofFrederick Douglass's life have always fascinated American historians. His mind, on the other hand, has received much less attention. With the Mind of Frederick Douglass, Waldo E. Martin has written the first intellectual biography of the black leader. Despite his lack of formal education, as a thinker, Douglass has long deserved this kind of treatment. Martin has done the subject justice. His work is a comprehensive, meticulously researched, and highly critical look at Douglass's complex and gifted mind. According to Martin, the "grand organizing principles" of Douglass's thought were his inveterate optimism, his egalitarian humanism, and his unbending resistance to slavery and racism. These were the constants in an intellectual odyssey that spanned from Garrisonian abolitionism in the 1840s to the lynchings and disfranchisement ofthe 1890s. Martin succeeds in demonstrating how a fugitive slave with very little formal education could emerge as an insightful though rarely original thinker in nineteenthcentury America. Though black, and often a radical outsider who challenged his country's institutions, Douglass was a direct product of die intellectual traditions of Protestant Christianity, romanticism, and the Enlightenment. While Martin may underestimate religion—especially millennialism—in Douglass's thought, he does stress the black leader's espousal of the doctrine of progress, the notion of a common and perfectible human nature, and the beliefin America's providential destiny. Perhaps more than most intellectuals ofhis time (though typical ofblack thinkers), Douglass's ideas were forged by his own unique experience. Though Martin shies away from bold, singular conclusions about Douglass 's resolution of his racial identity, we do get a thorough assessment of the many dualisms in the black leader's life: his mulatto status and lost patrimony; the conflicting extremes in his two marriages (the first to an illiterate black woman and the second to a cultured white woman); his race consciousness vs. his staunch American nationalism; and his assimilationism vs. his role as a radical black leader and social reformer. As Martin 178CIVIL WAR HISTORY contends, Douglass's life and thought "spoke profoundly to the dilemma of being black in nineteenth century America." Martin is at his best when exposing the contradictions and weakness in Douglass's views. Martin shows how Douglass's unquestioned acceptance ofcapitalism and individualism limited his ability to fully comprehend the economic oppression ofhis people in the post-emancipation era. He demonstrates how Douglass's stalwart Republicanism after the Civil War narrowed his vision and rendered his leadership more emblematic than real. He points to Douglass's own male biases as a stumbling block to his sincere commitment to feminism. Moreover, Martin contends that Douglass did not fully appreciate the depth ofAfro-American culture (even to the extent of accepting black cultural inferiority) in his overriding quest for black assimilationism. The best chapters in the book are perhaps the final three where Martin discusses Douglass's dream of a "composite nationality"—a "blended race" produced through open and aggressive miscegenation; his contribution to the nineteenth-century debate over ethnology (the origins of race); and his thoroughgoing espousal of American's "self-made man" myth. Here Douglass is shown to be much more than a spokesman for abolition, racial uplift, and black equality. Frequently, the most difficult task in intellectual biography is to keep ideas rooted in historical context. This is especially true ofa social reformer like Douglass whose ideas were so influenced by history and experience. Martin uses a topical rather than a chronological approach, which is probably the best way to organize a complete intellectual biography. At times, though, one does lose a sense of context in...