2

xiv INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE

dent and complete work; the stories they relate, though similar, are not iden-
tical. The differences among the autobiographies reveal the development of
Douglass's character, intellect, and thought during the forty-eight years he
engaged in self-narrative. Douglass occasionally revised his earlier interpre-
tations of certain life incidents in later books. For example, the young
Douglass of the Narrative interpreted his abilities and unusual opportunities
as evidence that he had been selected by Providence to transcend the circum-
stances of his birth. In his later life writings, Douglass attributed his suc-
cesses to causes more mundane: the opportunities afforded him by members
of his masters' families, his friendships with white boys during his sojourn
in Baltimore, and the frequent unaccountable strokes of luck that allowed
him the time and privacy to educate himself.³ In Life and Times, Douglass
revealed for the first time the details of his harrowing escape from slavery in
September 1838.

All of Douglass's autobiographical writings concluded with expressions
of hope for future full freedom and racial equality for African Americans.
None of the conclusions promised a sequel, although apparently Douglass
could not resist adding a third part when he expanded and revised the 1882
second edition in 1892, explaining to his readers, "When the first part of this
book was written, I was, as before intimated, already looking towards the
sunset of human life and thinking that my children would probably finish the
recital of my life, or that possibly some other persons outside of family ties
to whom I am known might think it worth while to tell what he or she might
know of the remainder of my story. I considered, as I have said, that my work
was done. But friends and publishers concur in the opinion that the unity and
completeness of the work require that it shall be finished by the hand by
which it was begun" (377). Likely the former slave, who began authoring his
own life a mere seven years after attaining freedom and who chose the name
under which he published his autobiographies, felt considerable ambiva-
lence about ceding the self he had created to other writers, even to his chil-
dren or trusted friends. To the end, he embodied his oft-invoked character,
the self-made man he so deeply respected.

Douglass wrote his first full autobiography at the age of twenty-seven.
Published under the aegis of William Lloyd Garrison's American Anti-
Slavery Society, Douglass's Narrative authenticated his status as a fugitive
slave for white audiences who doubted that the eloquent orator spent his first

^{33. Waldo E. Martin, Jr., points out, "His [Douglass's] ascension to the role [of race leader] betrayed the necessary conjunction of ability, ambition, and fortuitous circumstance." Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 55.}