Stranger Than Fiction: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

 So near the end of each semester, I would teach a short excerpt from "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave," the autobiography of a slave turned abolitionist pre-Civil War.  I assigned the part where a young Frederick has been rented out for a year to Mr. Covey, a particularly brutal farmer known for being a "slave-breaker."  But for once, his brutality backfires: Frederick finally snaps, and starts beating Mr. Covey for 2 hours straight; he even has a moment straight out of Hollywood wherein he grabs Covey by the throat and raises him into the air (serious, why isn't this book a movie?).

 After this incident, Covey never whips him again.  Frederick Douglass highlights this fight as a "turning point" in his "career as a slave," for "it rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free."  And indeed, 4 years later, he did finally make his thrilling escape North.

 So here's my sincere question that I always posed to my students: why didn't Mr. Covey just straight up murder Frederick after their fight?  Just go grab his rifle and be done with it?  Legally in the state of Maryland, he would have been completely within his rights to do so.  In fact, earlier in his autobiography, Frederick recalls seeing a slave, after a particularly brutal whipping, head straight to the river to soak his back; the overseer gallops over, orders the man back to the fields, but the slave ignores him.  So the overseer simply unslings his rifle, takes aim, and stone-cold murders the man right there and then, letting the body float down river as an example to others, without any legal repercussions.  And that was a slave that was merely passively disobedient, not one actively attacking his overseer!

In fact, the behavior of slaves like Frederick Douglass is exactly what Southern whites feared more than anything at the time; the slave revolt in Haiti had practically transformed Dixie into a police state, what with spies and informants everywhere and the postal service reading everyone's mail to prevent a similar uprising in North America; Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831 and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 likewise freaked out the entire South.  A panicked Mr. Covey could have easily ran straight into town after his brawl with Frederick and been back with a lynch mob in 10 minutes flat.  So why didn't he?

My students and I have brainstormed a number of possibilities: Maybe it was a pride thing, Covey didn't want to lose his reputation as a "slave-breaker"; maybe it was economic, no one would rent slaves to him anymore if word got out that he couldn't control them; maybe Frederick actually won Covey's begrudging respect after that fight; maybe all of those, maybe none of those, who knows.

Cause here's the thing: if this episode had happened in fiction, I would have just dismissed it as a nice thought but totally unrealistic, as pure Hollywood, a Django Unchained-esque vengeance wish-fulfillment fantasy that nevertheless would've never happened in real life.  But it did happen in real life!  That's the incredible, wonderful thing!  This book is autobiography, non-fiction, "just the facts, ma'am."  I'm glad Frederick wasn't murdered, and even more glad that he escaped to freedom, but why was he able to?  That's the question I find so fascinating!

Now, it's not exactly a surprise to me anymore to learn that reality is always stranger than fiction; but the fact never ceases to astound me, either--and that real life can be at once far worse and far better than we can imagine.  Just why didn't Covey kill Frederick?  Thoughts?  I'm sincerely asking.