Ending an era...changing the World...charting new courses in humanity...
It's not the first slave narrative, it's not the longest,
it's not the most horrific...but it is the one that received the most
recognition...and inspired the movement to end American Slavery...
Frederick Douglass was a slave in Maryland...until he
escaped. He remained a free man for the
rest of his life, and he capitalized on the experience. Born around 1818 into bondage, he was fortunate
enough to complete his journey to freedom in 1838 by jumping aboard a train
heading north. Self-educated, articulate
and lettered, Douglas penned his first book about his early life in chains. It became a worldwide bestseller, with 11,000
selling in the United States in its first three years of publication. One would chance to guess that these sales
were predominately in the North...the slaveholding South probably being a bit
of a tougher market....
Here is a first edition copy of Douglass' narrative. For a first book, it is surprisingly good...he
is a natural writer...and you can defiantly see how this book became what it
did...and how it's influence lit the spark of change...