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American history, biographies, book reviews, David Blight, Frederick Douglass, Pulitzer Prize, slavery
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
by David W. Blight
769 pages
Simon & Schuster
Published: October 2018
David Blight’s “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” was published in 2018 and received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2019. Blight is Professor of American History at Yale University and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. He has written a half-dozen books focused on the Civil War and its aftermath.
Blight’s biography was catalyzed by the author’s lifelong interest in Douglass and his access to a collection of privately-held documents covering the last decades of his subject’s life. What resulted is a weighty, thorough, meticulously thoughtful and incredibly penetrating analysis of Frederick Douglass’s life and times.
Readers expecting a colorful and carefree journey through Douglass’s life are likely to be disappointed, however. This book is far more history than biography and the 764-page narrative demands an uncommon degree of focus and perseverance. Readers hoping to encounter the vibrant scene-setting often found in biographies by McCullough or Chernow will discover that this author’s style is more reminiscent of a relatively concise Robert Caro.
Blight’s account of Douglass’s early life as a slave and his escape to freedom at the age of twenty-one will capture the attention of everyone, however. And throughout this thirty-one chapter epic there are countless gripping moments certain to fascinate, illuminate and enlighten.
Of particular note: accounts of Douglass’s interactions with John Brown (and the aftermath of his raid on Harpers Ferry), insights into Douglass’s perspective on the Civil War as well as his attitude towards Lincoln’s war-time actions and Douglass’s memorable White House encounter with Andrew Johnson. Also noteworthy are Blight’s observations regarding Douglass’s relationships with his wife, Julia Griffiths and a German immigrant-journalist named Ottilie Assing.
But for all that this author was able to uncover as a result of his access to unpublished documents, there is much about Douglass’s personal life – and a non-trivial amount of his public life – that remains a mystery. Blight is careful to note where facts are uncertain, but some readers will grow weary of the narrative’s frequent speculation or heding, often accompanied by caveats such as “probably,” “likely,” and “may have.”
In addition, because Douglass was a prolific public speaker, much of the narrative is devoted to the details of his speaking tours. Over the course of several lecture circuits and countless speeches, these logistical recitations can grow tedious. Finally, for all the charm, heroism and inspiration that pervades Douglass’s story, this book is essentially the carefully reconstructed context of a man and his cause. Only rarely does it feel like the eloquently-told story of an intolerant world as seen through the eyes of an uniquely inspirational person.
As history, David Blight’s “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” is superb; it is comprehensive in scope, exhaustive in detail, scrupulously thoughtful in its analyses and notably revealing of Douglass’s travels and travails. But as a biography it is often underwhelming – dense, dry, inconsistently engaging and frequently exhausting. As a result, as historically meritorious as this book proves to be, readers seeking a colorful, engaging biography are likely to find it disappointing.
Overall rating: 3½ stars
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Thank you very much for this, Steve, your take is very helpful as I decide where to go beyond Douglases own accounts.
Hmm… I felt differently about this book. I thought it was terrific. I actually prefer it when a biography contains substantial context and history about the times. And I don’t really know how a good biography of Douglass could be “carefree.” I would also prefer that a biographer be honest when facts are uncertain or unclear.
Hmm… I felt differently about this book. I thought it was terrific. I actually prefer it when a biography contains substantial context and history about the times. And I don’t really know how a good biography of Douglass could be “carefree.” I would also prefer that a biographer be honest when facts are uncertain or unclear.
Fair points, all. I was not looking for a “carefree” bio of Douglass, however, just one that allowed me to see and feel the world through his eyes. But even after finishing this book he remained a largely theoretical figure to me and unlike someone whose life I had just experienced first-hand. For all the praise it has received, I still consider this a magnificent work of history but sub-par as biography.
I must preface this review with what I brought to my reading of this book which will be atypical for the average reader who reads Blight as the initial entry to Douglass. I had read all three of Douglass’s autobiographies*, as well as the defining biography of John Brown by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois (1909). The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. Vol. I & II. And a number of Douglass’s speeches, and researched “Bleeding Kansas”.
It is generally agreed that Frederick Douglass is exceptional, perhaps genius, certainly inspirational, and the most famous and important Negro in 19th century America. His writings and speeches provide excellent insight into the condition of slavery, and into who Douglass is as a person. Therefore it is a high bar for any modern biographer of him to improve on this. In the first two chapters Blight falls flat. And let me be clear, Blight is the leading expert on Douglass and slavery in the United States as Professor of American History at Yale University and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale.
In chapter 3 he finally has some ‘value added’ background about The Columbian Orator. Nevertheless, this biography seems more like an annotated version of Douglass’s autobiography. Blight repeatedly quotes from Douglass’s autobiography with prefaces like “Douglass then captured slavery and freedom with artistry unparalleled in the genre of slave narratives”. The reader might be better off going to the source and just read the autobiography.
At his point I refer back to Steve’s review of Blight’s book, and find myself again agreeing with his analysis (except that he doesn’t back up his review with a low enough score, Steve has always been generous). For example, in Chp 7 Blight gives good background on the abolitionist movement and William Lloyd Garrison. Yet it adds little additional insight into the person of interest in the biography – Frederick Douglass.
I pushed through Blight’s book because I wanted to extract every and any additional tidbit on Douglass. It was the notes and perspectives from Walter Evans collection of Douglass materials that held promise. By chp 9 I had become accustom to reading about Douglass in the third person. Blight was finally hitting his stride as his extensive inventory of articles, books, letters and Douglass papers began to embellish the story. Still, Douglass (like many great people whom biographers grapple with) has not left history with many intimate writings about his inner thoughts. And so Blight is left with telling us what he thinks Douglass might be thinking, or telling us what Douglass’s contemporaries wrote about him. It sounds more like editorializing and projection. Blight uses Douglass as the vehicle to espouse his own interpretation on the times and the American slavery condition. As Blight tells in his introduction, this biography is the culmination of his life’s work, his magnum opus.
Halfway through the 800 pages of text the book now reads like a great biography, not a laundry list of events, but a life-giving tribute. Blight has dug deep into old newspapers, government documents and private letters from Douglass’s friends, enemies and possible lovers.
So the question might be whether one should read Blight’s bio or Douglass’s autobio. They really are quite different. If one MUST choose to read only one book, then the clear answer is Douglass. But to read both will provide the best balance to understand Douglass.
*
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)
That a review of David Blight’s Frederick Douglass Prophet of Freedom award it anything less than five stars is preposterous. And five stars cannot even begin to do it justice. And that a biographer modifies a statement with ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’ reflects frankness and honesty that is respectful of both the reader and Douglass himself, and should be commended rather than destained.
Any book, whether fiction or non-fiction is a conversation between author and reader, and of course in biography there is a third party, the subject of the biography. Many authors, even good authors, neglect to care for the reader, and do not concern themselves with the effect their book has on their reader’s morale; such books are not great literature, not even if they have garnered a Nobel prize for their author (as sometimes happens). And if a book leaves it’s reader jaded, depressed, despairing, then it is a pernicious book, better not to have been written; and certainly better not to have been read. And there are books by highly lauded authors that fall into this category .
David Blight takes care of every person he encounters, whether on the page or meeting them in person; never failing in courtesy even arguing with a heckler; and wrapping his warmth, kindness and appreciation around students, colleagues, readers, and mere acquaintances. And as a biographer, his carefully chosen quotes from Frederick Douglass give us a rich, generous, invigorating, heart-stirring, compassionate, robust portrait that clearly evidences what a brilliant, penetrating, witty, humanistic writer and orator Frederick Douglass was. And David Bright’s own comments, though less Shakespearean in wording, are generously and tactfully supportive of the tremendous struggles Douglass and the people he was struggling to raise up had to undergo on a daily basis; this without lionizing him or overlooking his faults; “beautifully human” as he describes him. Take this sentence about Frederick Douglass’ marriage to Anna, who remained illiterate, to some extent by her own choice, all her life.: “That their marriage survives is a testament not only to the rarity of divorce in the nineteenth century, but especially to Anna’s utter lack of options and to Douglass’ own lifelong craving for a sense of “home,” about which he wrote so compellingly in “Bondage and Freedom.”
Anyone who reads the final chapter of “Prophet of Freedom” and particularly if they go on to read the Acknowledgements will understand what great care David Blight took to make his readers feel warned, supported, grateful and uplifted; and those who assisted him in his endeavors researching and writing this book over a ten year period. And anyone who looks at pictures of David Blight interacting with fans at book-signings – or interacting with students – will readily feel the warmth he showers upon them.