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A review by lewismillholland
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
3.0
It's been a fortuitous reading pattern lately -- *Heirs of the Founders* got me up until the 1850s, and *Lincoln as a Writer* got me through the early 1860s, and that Bruce Canton history I read a few months ago gave me a baseline context for the war. *Lincoln in the Bardo*, even though it's fiction, gave me the emotional understanding of Lincoln. It also gave me the reason I like him so much -- his intelligence, his depression, his doubts, his concern for his legacy and constant questioning of *why* the Union has to exist. Lincoln wasn't perfect and despite the fact that he's become perfect in martyrdom he himself, according to that one biography and that one novel, knew he wasn't perfect.
*Douglass* sort of wraps up the impromptu tetralogy. He met Lincoln and proudly referenced this meeting between a wartime President of the United States of America and a black man, a former slave. My biggest qualm with this book was how basically good of a person Douglass was. He cheated, sure, albeit in long-term affairs rather than spur-of-the-moment couplings. He funded his adult children through their failures and worked his body hard on the lecture circuit to provide for those back in Rochester and D.C. For all his internecine quibbling he catalyzed real change in the nation.
The research is wonderful but I never fell in love with Douglass.
*Douglass* sort of wraps up the impromptu tetralogy. He met Lincoln and proudly referenced this meeting between a wartime President of the United States of America and a black man, a former slave. My biggest qualm with this book was how basically good of a person Douglass was. He cheated, sure, albeit in long-term affairs rather than spur-of-the-moment couplings. He funded his adult children through their failures and worked his body hard on the lecture circuit to provide for those back in Rochester and D.C. For all his internecine quibbling he catalyzed real change in the nation.
The research is wonderful but I never fell in love with Douglass.