Women in the World of Frederick Douglass

by Leigh Fought

Overview

In his extensive writings, Frederick Douglass revealed little about his private life. His famous autobiographies present him overcoming unimaginable trials to gain his freedom and establish his identity-all in service to his public role as an abolitionist. But in both the public and domestic spheres, Douglass relied on a complicated array of relationships with women: white and black, slave-mistresses and family, political collaborators and intellectual companions, wives and daughters. And the great man needed them throughout a turbulent life that was never so linear and self-made as he often wished to portray it.

In Women in the World of Frederick Douglass, Leigh Fought illuminates the life of the famed abolitionist off the public stage. She begins with the women he knew during his life as a slave: his mother, from whom he was separated; his grandmother, who raised him; his slave mistresses, including the one who taught him how to read; and his first wife, Anna Murray, a free woman who helped him escape to freedom and managed the household that allowed him to build his career. Fought examines Douglass's varied relationships with white women-including Maria Weston Chapman, Julia Griffiths, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Ottilie Assing—who were crucial to the success of his newspapers, were active in the antislavery and women's movements, and promoted his work nationally and internationally. She also considers Douglass's relationship with his daughter Rosetta, who symbolized her parents' middle class prominence but was caught navigating between their public and private worlds. Late in life, Douglass remarried to a white woman, Helen Pitts, who preserved his papers, home, and legacy for history.

By examining the circle of women around Frederick Douglass, this work brings these figures into sharper focus and reveals a fuller and more complex image of the self-proclaimed "woman's rights man."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190053833
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 5.60(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Leigh Fought is Associate Professor of History at LeMoyne College. She is the author of Southern Womanhood and Slavery: A Biography of Louisa S. McCord and an editor of The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series Three: Correspondence, Volume 1: 1842-1852.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: "A True Mother's Heart"
Chapter 2: Anna Murray, Mrs. Frederick Douglass, 1810-1848
Chapter 3: "The Cause of the Slave Has Been Peculiarly Woman's Cause," 1841-1847
Chapter 4: "The Pecuniary Burdens," 1847-1853
Chapter 5 "I Wont Have Her in My House," 1848-1858
Chapter 6: The Woman's Rights Man and his Daughter, 1848-1861
Chapter 7: Principle and Expediency, 1861-1870
Chapter 8: "Her True Worth," 1866-1883
Chapter 9: Helen Pitts, Mrs. Frederick Douglass, 1837-1890
Chapter 10: Legacies, 1891-1895
Epilogue: Afterlife, 1895-1903
Appendix: Family Trees
Abbreviations Used in Notes
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"[Douglass's] life, argues the author persuasively, was shaped by women... A fresh and insightful perspective on a major historical figure."—Kirkus

"[Frederick Douglass was] one of the age's most passionate male feminists, as Leigh Fought shows in Women in the World of Frederick Douglass, a fresh and surprising account of Douglass's life."—Fergus M. Bordewich, Wall Street Journal

"This is a fascinating account of an impressive man and the equally accomplished women who supported his monumental efforts to secure freedom and rights for blacks and women."—Booklist, Starred Review

"By making its focus those indomitable and sometimes troubling women, Fought has written an engaging book that is compelling, sometimes even fierce, and extremely relevant."—Arts Fuse

"[T]horoughly researched....Although the complex nature of Douglass's relationships with women will never be fully understood, Fought unveils how women were attracted to Douglass and how he equated the servitude of race to that of gender."—John David Smith, The North Carolina Historical Review

"For anyone interested in women's history, this book—well-researched and well-written—is a compelling read."—Civil War News

"Historian Leigh Fought has written a path-breaking, biographical account of Frederick Douglass through the eyes of the women who influenced him. Fought, a skillful researcher and gifted writer, has been working on the book for years and the final product does not disappoint."—Eric J.Chaput, Providence Journal

"Leigh Fought reimagines Douglass's life by placing women at the center of the narrative. She offers vivid portraits of the relatives, friends, and sister activists-enslaved and free, black and white, American and British—who provided Douglass with critical emotional, material, intellectual, and political support. These women helped shape and sustain Douglass throughout his life and ensured his legacy for future generations; their legacy, too, is now ensured in this lively and lucid book." - Nancy A. Hewitt, author of No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism

"In this well-researched and richly textured book, Leigh Fought gives us a fascinating new view into the life and times of one our most famous and revered figures: Frederick Douglass. As he freely acknowledged, women helped make Douglass the man he became. So we, too, are in debt to the women whose stories come so vividly alive in these pages." - Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

"Fought's book takes us into the Douglass households and makes them come alive. Two wives, two intimate European friends, a grandmother, a fascinating daughter, many granddaughters, as well as fictive sisters and other kin all inhabit this work of deep scholarship. Fought is an intrepid researcher and lucid writer with superb judgment. The women and Douglass himself come alive anew through these crucial relationships; the man who expressed so little about his private life is here brought under a bright light, not with prurience, but with analytical understanding and keen sympathy. This is the most important Douglass book in many years." - David W. Blight, Yale University

"With meticulous research and judicious analysis, Leigh Fought resurrects the women who until now lay hidden in the shadows of Frederick Douglass's storied life. Whether one agrees with her or not, this book is well worth the read." - Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition

Finalist, Harriet Tubman Prize of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery

From the Publisher

2017-02-06
Scrupulous research informs a new biography of the charismatic and influential African-American abolitionist.Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) has been the subject of many fine biographies, as Fought (History/LeMoyne Coll.; A History of Mystic Connecticut: From Pequot Village to Tourist Town, 2007, etc.) acknowledges, but none examines as intimately Douglass' relationships with women: his mother, slave mistresses, wives, daughters, and especially the white women who supported his causes throughout his career. His life, argues the author persuasively, was shaped by women. The first was Sophia Auld, his slave master's wife, who spent a year teaching the young Frederick Johnson to read, until her husband forbade it. Nevertheless, "the subversive power of literacy" changed the boy's life. He fled from enslavement to marry Anna Murray, a free woman, who shared his aspirations to move into the middle class; when they married in New York, both took the surname Douglass, hoping it would distinguish them from the many Johnsons who were sought by slave-catchers. Anna was illiterate, and although Fought portrays her as a source of strength for her husband, she could not offer the intellectual companionship and worldliness of other women who gravitated to him. At anti-slavery meetings, abolitionist societies, and women's rights organizations, many participants were drawn to Douglass, a man some called the African Prince, "conscious of his dignity and power, grand in his physical proportions, majestic in his wrath." Fought focuses on the British abolitionist Julia Griffiths and the German reformer Ottilie Assing, with whom Douglass could discuss politics, literature, and religion. For a time, he brought both women to live in his household, where he and his guests would retire for hours to his study, generating "marital disagreement" and slanderous gossip. Because Griffiths and Assing were white, Douglass' critics took an opportunity to attack his morality, a campaign that intensified after the widowed Douglass married a white woman. Fought highlights ferocious in-fighting among anti-slavery groups, the Douglass family's close ties to John Brown, and Douglass' evolving political views. A fresh and insightful perspective on a major historical figure.

Kirkus Reviews