OPINION: A man of many parts

Ever since we moved to Talbot County 30 years ago, I've been trying to learn all I can about its most famous native son, Frederick Douglass. But every time I think I've gotten a fix on the man, have some notion of who and what he was, he slips away, assumes a new form, and I'm force to admit, again, that the whole man may ultimately be beyond me. There's the small boy who lived on the Tuckahoe and, as I did as a child, fished and caught crawdads. Our childhood never really goes away, does it, affecting us and coloring our thoughts even as we mature and grow old? Wanting to know more about Douglass's, I recently visited the place where he spent the first years of his life—the newly created Frederick Douglass Park on Lewistown Road—and found a patch of wild paw-paws growing there. An archaeologist once told me paw-paw patches on the Eastern Shore are long-lived, inevitably revealing evidence of use by Native Americans and early colonists. So I think it's safe to assume that, when Douglass and his grandmother lived there, they would have picked paw-paws from this patch. I like to picture the little boy as he must have been in those days, lively and carefree, enjoying Talbot County's bounteous nature as we all do. What a contrast those first years must have provided with the years of bondage that were to come. At the tender age of six, little Frederick Douglass (then Bailey) was abruptly removed from his idyllic, streamside existence and dropped into the unfriendly world of a large Southern plantation, all his freedoms, all his creature comforts, at an end. But there must have been something already present in Douglass that fought back against such tyranny, for he would go on to teach himself to read and write, would fight and defeat a notorious 'slave-breaker,' become a devout, proselytizing Christian, and, finally, escape slavery altogether. From that point forward the Frederick Douglasses multiply at a dizzying clip. There's the ship-caulker, the budding abolitionist, the public speaker, the politician, the world-traveler, the famous author, the newspaper editor, the musician, the conductor on the Underground Railroad, the army recruiter, the adviser to presidents, the proponent of women's suffrage, and the ambassador to Haiti— to say nothing of the husband and father who, throughout it all, maintained a rich and loving family life. But recently, reading Damon Root's 'A Glorious Liberty,' I've come to realize even this list is incomplete. It turns out that Douglass, the autodidact, managed, on top of everything else, to teach himself that most consequential and arcane of subjects: constitutional law. As a result, he would take on and best some of the country's greatest minds in the debate then raging in mid-nineteenth century America: Did the Founding Fathers enshrine the concept of slavery in the U.S. Constitution or, in fact, render it legally indefensible? One of the many pleasures to be found in Damon Root's book is the mini-biographies of the movers and shakers that played important roles in this existential debate, men like Salmon Chase, John C. Calhoun, Stephen Douglas, Roger Taney, and, of course, Abraham Lincoln. In Douglass's formative years as an abolitionist, the most significant of these was William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison launched his own abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator, at the tender age of 26 and never looked back. He would prove a tireless and uncompromising opponent of slavery. But the man's native abilities sometimes got the better of him. It was said of Garrison that, in a meeting billed as a free exchange of ideas, he was 'rather too apt … to do all the talking himself.' Garrison's primary hobby horse was his belief that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document, that its many clauses and circumlocutions were intentionally designed to protect and preserve the institution of slavery. In 1854, Garrison scandalized the country by publicly burning a copy of the document, calling it 'a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.' As Garrison's protégé and disciple, Douglass initially accepted this line of reasoning. But as time went on and Douglass studied the issue more closely, he began to see in the Constitution all the tools required to declare slavery an abomination, one that clearly contradicted the ideals professed in the text of the nation's governing document. In 1851, at a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass stood and, facing his mentor, publicly proclaimed his apostasy. The U.S. Constitution, he avowed, was a weapon that 'should be wielded in behalf of emancipation.' Garrison never forgave him, but Douglass's skills as a writer and speaker soon attracted support in the abolitionist movement. Eventually, even Abraham Lincoln rallied to Douglass's position, and the Emancipation Proclamation followed soon thereafter. In 'A Glorious Liberty,' Damon Root makes the arguments involved in this national debate both interesting and easy to follow (no small task). And in doing so, he brings the epic events following in those arguments' train to life. His depiction of the 54th Massachusetts' attack on Fort Wagner for instance—so magnificently portrayed in the movie 'Glory'—goes one better than the film, providing the reader with a more accurate and chilling description of that hopeless assault (in which Douglass's son Lewis was grievously wounded). Damon Root will give the keynote address at this year's Frederick Douglass Day, Sept. 26, speaking at 1 p.m. in the Easton branch of the Talbot County Free Library. The festival will include a parade, a welcome ceremony on the courthouse lawn, the ever-popular Children's Village, an entertainment stage, and food vendors, but I am especially looking forward to Root's presentation. You also won't want to miss 'Anna Murray & Annie Douglass: Sharing a Mother & Daughter's Life Stories' at 1 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24, in the Easton library. This lecture by Professors Celeste-Marie Bernier (University of Edinburgh) and Nicole King (Oxford University) will explain the essential roles played by Douglass's family in his work. Get any of our free email newsletters.