My Bondage and My Freedom

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass' second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, significantly revises key portions of his original 1845 Narrative and extends the story of his life to include his experiences as a traveling lecturer in the United States as well as England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Douglass also frames his second autobiography differently, replacing the prefatory notes by white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips with an introduction by the prominent black abolitionist Dr. James M'Cune Smith. While the appendix to his first autobiography serves primarily as a clarification about Douglass' views on religion, the appendix to My Bondage and My Freedom includes a letter to a former master, Thomas Aulda ship captainand various excerpts from Douglass' abolitionist lectures. These prefaces and appendices provide the reader with a sense of the larger historical movement(s) in which Douglass plays an important part. Douglass later expanded and republished this autobiography twice more, in 1881 and 1892, both under the title Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

Table of contents

• Note
• Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• I. Childhood
• II. Removed From My First Home
• III. Parentage
• IV. A General Survey Of The Slave Plantation
• V. Gradual Initiation To The Mysteries Of Slavery
• VI. Treatment Of Slaves On Lloyd’s Plantation
• VII. Life In The Great House
• VIII. A Chapter Of Horrors
• IX. Personal Treatment
• X. Life In Baltimore
• XI. “A Change Came O’er The Spirit Of My Dream”
• XII. Religious Nature Awakened
• XIII. The Vicissitudes Of Slave Life
• XIV. Experience In St. Michael’s
• XV. Covey, The Negro Breaker
• XVI. Another Pressure Of The Tyrant’s Vice
• XVII. The Last Flogging
• XVIII. New Relations And Duties
• XIX. The Run-Away Plot
• XX. Apprenticeship Life
• XXI. My Escape From Slavery
• XXII. Liberty Attained
• XXIII. Introduced To The Abolitionists
• XXIV. Twenty-One Months In Great Britain
• XXV. Various Incidents
• Reception Speech. At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846
• Dr. Campbell’s Reply
• Letter To His Old Master. To My Old Master, Thomas Auld
• The Nature Of Slavery. Extract From A Lecture On Slavery, At Rochester, December 1, 1850
• Inhumanity Of Slavery. Extract From A Lecture On Slavery, At Rochester, December 8, 1850
• What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?. Extract From An Oration, At Rochester, July 5, 1852
• The Internal Slave Trade. Extract From An Oration, At Rochester, July 5, 1852
• The Slavery Party. Extract From A Speech Delivered Before The A. A. S. Society, In New York, May, 1853
• The Anti-Slavery Movement. Extracts From A Lecture Before Various Anti-Slavery Bodies, In The Winter Of 1855