Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1881

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Part 2, Chapters 16-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Second Part”

Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary: “Time Makes All Things Even”

The events described in this chapter “might well be dramatized for the stage” (372). In 1877, Douglass returns to St. Michaels and visits with Captain Thomas Auld, his former master, the man who once sent him to Edward Covey to be “broken” as a field-hand. With Auld nearing the end of his life, “conditions were favorable for remembrance of all his good deeds, and generous extenuation of all his evil ones” (373). For his part, Auld tells Douglass that he was “too smart to be a slave” and that he did right in running away (374). Several years later, Douglass gives a speech at the courthouse in Easton, where he and his co-conspirators were imprisoned for the crime of plotting their escape from slavery.

Douglass also visits the Lloyd plantation, where he meets the great grandson of Colonel Edward Lloyd, the man who once owned more than a thousand slaves. Seeing the kitchen attached to the home of his “Old Master,” Captain Aaron Anthony, Douglass recalls it as the last place he was his mother. He then “went round to the window at which Miss Lucretia used to sit with her sewing, and at which I used to sing when hungry, a signal which she well understood, and to which she readily responded with bread” (378). The family burial ground now includes the tomb of Colonel Lloyd’s son-in-law, Admiral Franklin Buchanan, who commanded the ironclad CSS Virginia, also known as the Merrimac, during its world-changing battle with the USS Monitor. Finally, Douglass visits Admiral Buchanan’s widow, Ann Catherine Lloyd Buchanan, daughter of Colonel Lloyd. Douglass converses with Mrs. Buchanan for an hour and then, when he leaves, “a beautiful little granddaughter of hers, with a pleasant smile on her face, handed me a bouquet of many-colored flowers” (380). This kind gesture, from such an innocent source, gives Douglass hope for the future.

Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary: “Incidents and Events”

To illustrate the shameful treatment he has often experienced on account of color prejudice, Douglass shares a series of anecdotes, “some painful and melancholy, some ridiculous and amusing,” all of which “expose the absurdity of this spirit of caste and in some measure help to emancipate men from its control” (384). One such incident occurs on a steamship from Cleveland to Buffalo. At dinner, Douglass takes a seat across from a “well-dressed” man with “golden hair.” The steward approaches, followed by two Black employees, and threatens to remove Douglass by force, but the golden-haired passenger yells, “Let the gentleman alone! I am not ashamed to take my tea with Mr. Douglass” (385). The good man across the table turns out to be Congressman Edward Marshall of California, formerly of Kentucky, and a Democrat. After dinner, Marshall and Douglass “passed several hours in conversation with each other” (386).

On another occasion, traveling by steamer down the Hudson River, Douglass appears for dinner but is forcibly removed from the cabin. His disgusted friends leave the cabin with him rather than take their dinners under such appalling conditions. Other passengers could have done likewise, “but there was no Edward Marshall among them to defend the weak and rebuke the strong” (390). Through it all, Douglass remains cheerful: “If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness. If cast down, I have been exalted, and the latter experience has, after all, far exceeded the former” (393).

Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary: “Honor to Whom Honor”

Douglass uses this chapter to identify friends and benefactors in the anti-slavery movement and to thank as many of them as possible. This “circle” of “courageous” abolitionists includes famous white leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. It also includes “intelligent men of color” such as David Ruggles and Nathan Johnson (396-97).

Most important of all, perhaps, it includes “honorable women” such as Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria Child, and Abby Kelley, all of whom deserve gratitude, “for the cause of the slave has been peculiarly woman’s cause” (397). Douglass closes this chapter with an appeal for women’s suffrage: “I have never yet been able to find one consideration, one argument, or suggestion in favor of a man’s right to participate in civil government which did not equally apply to the right of woman” (402).

Part 2, Chapter 19 Summary: “Retrospection”

This brief chapter includes Douglass’s introductory remarks at a memorial for the slain President James A. Garfield, a tragedy fresh in Douglass’s memory at the time he wrote this book.

What is the life of man? What are all his plans, purposes, and hopes? What are the shouts of the multitude, or the pride and pomp of this world? How vain and unsubstantial, in the light of this sad and shocking experience, do they all appear! Who can tell what a day or an hour will bring forth? Such reflections inevitably present themselves as most natural and fitting on an occasion like this (404).

In the same spirit of reflection, Douglass concludes his life story, not knowing that in 10 years he will resume the task. For the moment, he believes his work is done, his purpose fulfilled: “My part has been to tell the story of the slave. The story of the master never wanted for narrators” (406).

Part 2, Chapters 16-19 Analysis

For readers disinclined to believe in the divinely ordered possibilities of forgiveness and redemption, Chapter 16 might inspire faith. In the span of four years, from 1877 to 1881, Douglass returns to St. Michaels for a cordial meeting with his former master Thomas Auld; gives a speech at the courthouse in Easton where he once was imprisoned for plotting his escape from slavery; walks the grounds of the old Lloyd plantation; enjoys a pleasant, hourlong conversation with Mrs. Ann Buchanan, whom he last saw when he was a slave and she was the 18-year-old daughter of Colonel Lloyd; and delivers an oration in memory of John Brown at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, now part of West Virginia. Douglass himself believes these events “poetic” and that they “might well enough be dramatized for the stage” (372).

Douglass fills the remaining chapters in the part with sad vignettes of prejudice and proscription but also with expressions of gratitude and optimism. All things considered, circumstances in 1881 seemed to justify Douglass’s hopeful outlook.