In what ways is Douglass’s Narrative a work of abolitionist propaganda? In what ways is it a historical source on the nature and arguments of the...

Frederick Douglass's Narrative is one of the best known slave narratives. New England abolitionists, particularly William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, encouraged Douglass to tell his story of life on a Maryland plantation in an effort to end slavery.

Because the narrative is based on the actual events of Douglass's life, it serves as a historical source. It is a key piece of abolitionist propaganda because the tales of...

Frederick Douglass's Narrative is one of the best known slave narratives. New England abolitionists, particularly William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, encouraged Douglass to tell his story of life on a Maryland plantation in an effort to end slavery.

Because the narrative is based on the actual events of Douglass's life, it serves as a historical source. It is a key piece of abolitionist propaganda because the tales of Douglass's suffering gave credence to abolitionists' insistence on the evils of slavery. 

Douglass was the product of rape, like many slave children. His mother, also a slave, had been raped by an unknown white man. He witnessed brutal whippings, including the brutalization of his aunt, and he suffered periods of starvation and cold. 

After spending several comfortable years in Baltimore with the ship carpenter, Hugh Auld, where he had learned to read, he was sent to work on a farm in Maryland. There, he came under the control of the slave-breaker, Edward Covey. "Slave-breaking" involved daily beatings, starvation, and, sometimes, more creative methods of cruelty. Covey's treatment left Douglass "broken" spiritually.

It is possible that if not for his literacy, which allowed him to access a world beyond that of cruelty, Douglass might not have escaped to the North to become not only an abolitionist but a living example of resilience.