This book consolidates the three autobiographies written by Frederick Douglass and information from other sources to provide a complete and authoritative biography of his early years. The author critically examines the differences between the autobiographies both in an effort to understand the reasons for the differences and to provide a more complete and definitive story. The result is a book that may give the reader a broader, more insightful understanding of the young Frederick Douglass than can be obtained from parsing through the individual autobiographies. ( )

Frederick Douglass wrote three biographies, or rather, he wrote his biography three times in different periods of life, each time recounting the story of his youth and escape from slavery, and then bringing the account forward to the date of writing. They are Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). Of the three Bondage and Freedom is the most detailed and reliable account of his early slave years. Life and Times smoothed out some passages. While Bondage and Freedom is the most reliable of his accounts it remains the least read, the tendency is to read Narrative first and then for those wanting more detail to skip to Life and Times.

Douglass' 1845 Narrative was probably the single most influential American slave narrative ever written, it was widely read and well known in the decades leading up to the Civil War. However from its first publication many contested its veracity, in particular Douglass' former owners on the Eastern Short of Maryland. For the most part historians have taken Douglass at his word, or excused certain things in light of the context that he was trying to raise sympathy for the cause of abolition. It was not until 1980 that historian Dickson Preston, who lived in Talbot County, Maryland, did a more scientific study of Douglass' early years in slavery, going back through the records and seeing what could be verified, what made sense. Because Dickson is not black he had trouble finding a publisher since it was thought at the time any new biography of Douglass should be written by a black scholar, but with the help of James A. Michener (who was also living in Talbot County at the time working on his book Chesapeake) they found someone to publish this excellent objective historical investigation.

Dickson says in the Preface "this book began as an adventure in what might be called historical detective work. I had read his vividly written first autobiography.. and had been deeply moved by its stark recital of the grimmer side of Eastern Shore slavery. I had also read - and heard, for they are still spoken on the Eastern Shore - the denials, the insistence that Douglass was a charlatan who had made up most of his life story or had it written for him by his norther white benefactors. But what were the facts?" The book then is a re-telling of Douglass' narrative using supporting facts and logical conclusions to determine the accuracy and probable truths. Through this process we are afforded a much richer and deeper glimpse into Douglass' life.

The main thing Dickson discovers is that Douglass for the most part was telling the truth, but that he tended to overplay his trials and tribulations through the sin of omission - he tells the bad things but not the good. Of course this is understandable given the context of the books dual purpose as a weapon in the war against slavery. Far from being a deprived child Douglass was, at major transition points in his life, given opportunities of advancement by his white owners, he was clearly an exceptional child and not the typical downtrodden field-hand. This is not to say he was not a self-made man because he really was gifted, but others saw in him early on his great potential and he was given privileged and room to grow very few other slaves had. In the end we get a more balanced and full view of not only Douglass but the whites in his life and ultimately slave culture in Maryland as a whole, the good and the bad.

I found Young Frederick Douglass to be essential to understanding who Douglass was and how he came to be. Douglass' narrative is gripping but leaves a lot of open questions - Dickson's research helps shed substantial light on what was happening behind the scenes, for anyone wishing to learn more about Douglass after reading Narrative it would be hard to go wrong with Young Frederick Douglass.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd ( )