The Patriot Post® · Frederick Douglass: From Slavery to Bravery

Today, the new slave plantation does similar things as those of the past. The slave plantation provided housing, food, and miseducation for the slave. Sounds familiar? If you’re paying any attention to what’s going on around you, then you see where I’m going. The new slave plantation is the reflection of the old one.

The old plantation was run by slave-driving Democrat white men who wanted the United States of America to be a slave nation. These same white men seceded from the Union as soon as one thing was done: a Republican president named Abraham Lincoln was elected. These white men (Southern Democrats) felt threatened by another white man (Republican president) not because of his skin color, but because they knew that a shift of power would soon become a reality during his presidency.

They feared the political repercussions of their love of money and the power it yielded.

The Southern states proved their fear by abruptly leaving the Union to start their own form of government through the Confederacy. All of these white men were Democrats and wanted nothing to do with a Republican president who would not run business as usual but ruin business as usual. This “business model” had afforded them a vast operation with all the perks of owning their own “company.” Unbeknownst to them, there was also a black man who was advising the 16th president at the time. He was born a slave. He never knew his father and was purposely separated from his mother at age seven in a widely used tactic to force dependency on the slave master.

His name was Frederick Douglass.

Timothy Sandefur, author of Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, relays this story:

As a teenager, he taught himself to read. This created a desire for freedom. When his owner discovered this disturbing development, he sent him to live with a local farmer, Edward Covey, who made extra money breaking the will of unruly slaves.

Covey beat Douglass every week for six months, often for no reason. And it worked. Soon young Frederick gave up all hope of being free. “The dark night of slavery closed in upon me,” he later wrote.

That all changed one hot August day in 1835. When Covey struck him, Douglass fought back. Where he found the courage, he couldn’t say. The two men struggled until Covey stumbled away exhausted. Covey never laid a hand on Douglass again.

The teenage slave had stood up for himself. He considered this the most important lesson of his life. Years later, he would tell this story when urging black men to enlist in the Union Army to fight the Confederacy. “You owe it to yourself,” he said. “You will stand more erect … and be less liable to insult. … You [will be] defending your own liberty, honor, manhood, and self-respect.”

Frederick Douglass gives the modern day black population the blueprint to American freedom.

Douglass later joined the Abolitionist movement and as he watched the movement’s leader, William Lloyd Garrison, burning the Constitution, he did not agree. Garrison viewed the Constitution as being a legal protection of slavery, but Douglass believed the opposite. “Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document,” he insisted. A former slave admired the Constitution even before the 13th, 14th, or 15th Amendment? Douglass said of himself, “I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.”

Pop-Quiz:

What did Frederick Douglass, a man born a slave, do in the face of real racism?

A. Point the finger at “white privilege”
B. Become a victim of his circumstances
C. Get off the plantation as a runaway slave, teach himself to read, beat his “slave breaker,” become a Christian Abolitionist, speaker, writer, author, and adviser to four American presidents
D. Allow Democrats to dictate his future

The answer, of course, is C. Is the African-American taking notes? Is he studying to get an education; something that was legally forbidden of Frederick Douglass? Is he running away from systemic slavery, something that Douglass would no longer stand for? Is he speaking up for the truly oppressed and writing about it? Is he using his platform to advise his own community? How has the modern-day plantation held him in check?

Many African-American people today claim to “fight the power” or that they’re “being down for the cause,” but the one thing they haven’t done is run! Run away from the chains that keep them in bondage.

I find it odd and rather flabbergasting that of the modern African-American population some 90+ percent would favor the exact same group of Democrat white men (and women) who have historically sought to keep them in chains. Blacks have yet to realize the Art of Slavery. The Art of Slavery goes like this: Brainwash a group of people by manipulating them to believe you are giving them something free of responsibility, work, and effort. Repeat this cycle of brainwashing long enough and every generation will repeat this dysfunction for hundreds of years afterwards.

Douglass leaves no stones unturned as to what it takes to enjoy American freedoms. Even 30 years after the Civil War, when Jim Crow was the law and lynching was prevalent, Douglass’s advice was: “Freedom depended on three boxes: the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box.” Policies and politics. Law and order. Guns and protection.

Hard work and education are the pillars to success of all Americans, including blacks. There is no exception to this rule. Douglass wrote convincingly, “There can be no independence without a large share of self-dependence. This virtue [cannot] be bestowed. It must be developed from within.” Personal responsibility is the key ingredient.

Douglass wasn’t so much concerned about the “black man” as about the man who was black. He wrote, “My cause was and is that of the black man; not because he is black, but because he is a man.” Frederick Douglass was before his time. Now is the time to utilize his unique and brilliant pathway to freedom.