Overview
Edited by Pulitzer Prizeāwinning biographer David W. Blight, this Library of America edition is the largest single-volume selection of Frederick Douglassās writings ever published, presenting the full texts of thirty-four speeches and sixty-seven pieces of journalism. (A companion Library of America volume, Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies, gathers his three memoirs.) With startling immediacy, these writings chart the evolution of Douglassās thinking about slavery and the U.S. Constitution; his eventual break with William Lloyd Garrison and many other abolitionists on the crucial issue of disunion; the course of his complicated relationship with Abraham Lincoln; and his deep engagement with the cause of womenās suffrage.
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Here are such powerful works as āWhat to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,ā Douglassās incandescent jeremiad skewering the hypocrisy of the slaveholding republic; āThe Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,ā a full-throated refutation of nineteenthcentury racial pseudoscience; āIs it Right and Wise to Kill a Kidnapper?,ā an urgent call for forceful opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act; āHow to End the War,ā in which Douglass advocates, just days after the fall of Fort Sumter, for the raising of Black troops and the military destruction of slavery; āThere Was a Right Side in the Late War,ā Douglassās no-holds-barredĀ attack on the āLost Causeā mythology of the Confederacy; and āLessons of the Hour,ā an impassioned denunciation of lynching and disenfranchisement in the emerging Jim Crow South.
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As a special feature the volume also presents Douglassās only foray into fiction, the 1853 novella āThe Heroic Slave,ā about Madison Washington, leader of the real-life insurrection on board the domestic slave-trading ship Creole in 1841 that resulted in the liberation of more than a hundred enslaved people. Editorial features include detailed notes identifying Douglassās many scriptural and cultural references, a newly revised chronology of his life and career, and an index.
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This book title, Frederick Douglass: Speeches & Writings (LOA #358), ISBN: 9781598537222, by Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight, published by Library of America (May 3, 2022) is available in hardcover. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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