Crux: Escape

Enslaved black people who claimed they were content might have just been showing white people what they knew they wanted to see. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a duplicitous character named Bledsoe castigates the narrator for taking a white university donor to a poor, black section of a southern town, and says “Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie!” If Douglass is describing black people who had the same belief as Ellison’s character, this may explain why white people received reports that confirmed their beliefs about black peoples’ supposed acceptance of slavery.

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs refers sarcastically to the idea of enslaved peoples’ supposed contentment as she describes the tumult that passed through her town because of Nat Turner’s insurrection. Jacobs suggests that if white people truly believed their slaves were happy, they wouldn’t have been so worried about a revolt.

Douglass suggests that there was an inverse correlation between his desire to read and his master’s desire for him to remain ignorant, and that his master’s opposition made him even more convinced that reading could be useful to him. While it seems evident that one purpose Douglass had in mind was to use the skill to make progress in the material world, and obtain his freedom, in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs tells the story of a pious, older black man who was willing to assume the risk of learning to read illegally so he could decipher the words of the bible.

These two examples are relevant to the debate surrounding the “Gateway of Death” theory, or the disagreement about whether or not black people sang songs that seemed to be about spiritual matters– but were actually coded references to, and sometimes directions for, escaping from enslavement on earth–or if the references to freedom in black spirituals actually had to do with the freedom they expected to feel when they were released from their lives, into heaven.

Winifred Morgan writes “In fact, by contravening Auld’s insistence that he live out his existence as a thoughtlessly contented slave, by making every effort to achieve literacy, and finally by becoming quite unmanageable, Douglass showed how well he understood Auld’s dictates” (78). Morgan says this connects to Auld’s “inadvertent lesson,” that “there would be no keeping” the slave who learned to read.

Morgan discusses the secret testimony that results in the discovery of their escape plan as an example of the experiences that undermine Douglass’s feeling of community with others, writing, “Douglass’s first attempt to flee North with two other slaves by using the passes he has written almost ends in disaster because someone, presumably another slave, has warned the owners. The Narrative thus gives the impression that neither slaves nor whites can be trusted” (80). While this is true, Morgan’s more general conclusion that Douglass “and the other slaves in the Narrative live isolated and mistrustful lives” seems to be at odds with the description of camaraderie between him and the men he tries to escape with. Douglass writes “The fact was, we cared but little where we went, so we went together. Our greatest concern was about separation. We dreaded that more than any thing this side of death.”

Commenting on Robert Stepto’s opinion that Douglass’s omission of the details surrounding his escape serves to authenticate his tale, Lucinda MacKethan asserts that this omission also gives the narrative greater religious significance. (As MacKethan notes, Stepto’s comments to this effect appear on p. 25 of From Behind the Veil). MacKethan writes “Although this is a perceptive interpretation of Douglass’s intentions, we might also infer that, in terms of the organizing principles of the conversion narrative paradigm, the actual physical removal would not have the inner spiritual significance of certain other events” (66).

This reference to the wariness of a black person “when speaking to an untried man” is echoed later in the text, in Chapter Seven, when Douglass describes his interaction with two Irish men who advise him to run away. Douglass pretends he doesn’t understand what the men are saying. Because he doesn’t know who they are and he thinks there’s a chance that they “might be treacherous,” he guards against the prospect that they could encourage him to run just so they’re able to catch him and exploit him. Similarly, Douglass characterizes himself and other enslaved black people as hesitant to be forthright with a white person who asked how they were treated by a master, because there was always a chance that their words could be used against them.

William McFeely associates Sandy’s decision to abandon the escape plan with superstition. He writes “Sandy Jenkins, however, was not free of the superstitious power of a misread Bible, a well-rubbed root, or a dream” (52). McFeely then goes on to discuss a dream that Sandy apparently regarded as a warning that Douglass should be cautious.

In his discussion of what he characterizes as Douglass’s complicated relationship with the Aulds, William McFeely writes “By separating the boy from his relatives, the two had unwittingly seen to it that he had no family ties strong enough to keep him from trying to escape from slavery” (39). This relates to remarks Douglass makes early on in his narrative about “The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes” being suspended for him, and the fact that the absence of his mother and the distance from his grandmother kept him from feeling close to his brother and sisters. McFeely’s observation contrasts Douglass’s experience with that of Harriet Jacobs, about whom Winifred Morgan wrote “Jacobs fears that if she runs away, the Flints, as retribution, would sell her children; yet she takes a chance on breaking the cycle of slavery because she fears even more having Ellen grow up and repeat her humiliation” (87). There don’t appear to be as many comparable bonds for Douglass.

Douglass’s reading lessons are supported by his observation of how the pieces of a ship are labelled. If we consider the role that sea vessels played with regard to bringing black people to captivity in the New World–the start of their slavery–it’s worth noting that the ships referenced here are relevant to the end of Douglass’s slavery, which is intertwined with his learning to read.