The Lives of Frederick Douglass by Robert S. Levine (review)

One of the foremost scholars of early African American literature, Robert S. Levine, has written a nuanced and careful analysis of Frederick Douglass's iconic autobiographies or, as he calls it, Douglass's many lives. The introduction, a survey of the historical literature and the publication histories of Douglass's autobiographies, is in itself worth the price of entrance. Levine not only delineates the content of these books, comparing them with Douglass's contemporaneous speeches and letters, but also frames his book around Douglass's relationship with pivotal figures of his times, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and his erstwhile master, Thomas Auld. The result is a book that explodes conventional wisdom on not just Douglass but also his fraught relationships with these men.

In perhaps one of the most original chapters of the book, Levine argues that the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass's first autobiography, published in 1845, was the product of a close collaboration between Garrisonian abolitionists and Douglass. Dispensing with the tired argument that white abolitionists simply co-opted the stories of fugitive slaves, Levine reveals the manner in which Garrison's introduction resonates with themes in Douglass's narrative. He provocatively designates the narrative the "Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Narrative." Douglass was of course a star lecturing agent of the society and, as Levine acknowledges, perfected the telling of his autobiography on the lecture circuit before he put pen to paper. Levine challenges Douglass's later claim that Garrisonians insisted that he only tell his story and restrict his analysis of slavery. But according to him, Douglass reclaimed his narrative when he published it in two editions in Ireland with the help of the Irish abolitionist Richard Webb. This argument may be overstated, considering that Webb, who ushered the Dublin editions of the Narrative into production, was a staunch Garrisonian and not very fond of Douglass. And most of the changes in the Narrative were designed to appeal to an English market, though clearly Douglass's tour abroad, as most of his biographers have noted, helped him to emerge as an independent abolitionist leader.

Levine reads Douglass's second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, published after his rancorous break with Garrison, in light of his novella The Heroic Slave. The novella was based on the 1841 shipboard slave revolt on the Creole led by Madison Washington. Levine deftly illustrates how the figures of Washington and Douglass himself merge in his writings. This iteration of Douglass's life story, Levine contends, marks his emergence not only as a political abolitionist but also as one who discards Garrisonian moral suasion for a more resistant posture against slavery. But Garrison, as Levine also shows, never hesitated to justify slave resistance and rebellion, despite his formal commitment to nonviolence. While James McCune Smith's introduction to the new autobiography evokes black artistry and depicts Douglass as the representative black man, Douglass's effusive dedication to Gerrit Smith, which Levine reproduces, reveals that interracialism or building alliances with whites remains important for Douglass. It is somewhat surprising then that Levine does not examine Douglass's relationship with Smith, which John Stauffer sees as pivotal in his book The Black Hearts of Men. Levine's earlier volume on the relationship between Douglass and Martin Delany, the black emigrationist, is one of the best on the subject.

Levine does spend considerable time on Douglass's relationship with two major white figures, John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. He convincingly reveals that until the end of his life Douglass saw Brown and the abolitionists as more heroic figures than the Great Emancipator. Levine argues for Douglass's changing evaluations of Lincoln, from harsh critic to one who sought to use the mantle of Lincoln for the continuing struggle for black rights. Levine is particularly good at comparing Douglass's contemporary criticisms of the president with his retrospective accounts of his meetings with Lincoln in...