In his biography of Douglass, William McFeely says a historian named Dickson Preston determined “from an inventory of his master’s slaves the time of Frederick’s birth–February 1818 (a year later than the date that Douglass himself calculated)” (8).
McFeely suggests that Douglass’s speculation about the race of his father was probably founded on gossip he heard in his grandmother’s cabin, “as people accounted for his difference in color from his brothers and sisters.” This talk related to the fact that Douglass was “‘yellow,'” and that he “had a muted, dull complexion” that was lighter than those of his relatives. (8)
Although William McFeely says Douglass “placed the blame squarely on slavery” for the fact that he wasn’t close to his mother (6), the historian also cites a reason for Douglass to resent her. McFeely writes, “To be sure, even frequent visits would have been a poor substitute for the constancy of a daily life together, but Harriet did not make them at all” (7).
Douglass lived on the plantation of a man named Edward Lloyd, a successful farmer and planter who served as both governor of Maryland and a senator. In his biography of Douglass, William McFeely writes “Douglass never explicitly said whom he most suspected to have been his father, but late in life he was still intrigued by the story of a slave son of Edward Lloyd’s who was bitterly resented by a half brother whom he clearly resembled.” McFeely also noted that during moments of passion in the midst of a speech, Douglass had been known to allege that Lloyd was his father. (13-14) This prospect corresponds with Douglass’s comment about “the double relation of master and father.”
In his biography of Douglass, William McFeely indicates that the man referred to as “Captain Anthony” is Aaron Anthony, who was “hired to be [Lloyd’s] chief lieutenant” and ranked just above the overseers in the plantation hierarchy. (14)
Immediately prior to his own quotation from this scene in the autobiography, William McFeely writes “Frederick Douglass was too young when he lived at Wye House to generalize as he would later about the nature of the slave system, but he was precisely the right age for individual acts of physical brutality to become indelibly recorded in his memory.” McFeely contends that the whip was typically used not to promote work but, instead, as a means for white people to express emotions like “anger, frustration” and “jealousy” (17).
McFeely writes that even though the Lloyd family had made its fortune on tobacco, the plantation–which was “self-sufficient” and a “complex economic entity”–was abandoning the crop for wheat when Frederick came to live at its main house, in about 1824. (14-15)
In keeping with Douglass’s account of the bare necessities that were provided for enslaved people, McFeely suggests that comforts were withheld intentionally to make black people work harder, writing “food and clothing were kept sparse” because “those who have little work to survive” (15).
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.