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Frederick Douglass is often portrayed in a positive manner to the general public in historical thought, as he experienced slavery first hand and after he found freedom he became an ardent activist for abolition and African American rights. He wrote extensively about his opinions and himself, as David W. Blight demonstrated he wrote at least three autobiographies. Through these writings, however, Blight was able to uncover a Frederick Douglass who was stingy and hypocritical. Blight demonstrates on two occasions the hypocrisy of Douglass: his strong support of the Republican party which often abandoned black and while attacking individualistic northerners who wished to forget was issues while preaching self reliance to African Americans.
Both examples of hypocrisy are in direct relation to Douglass’ desire to remember the civil war, and provide no aid to the south in Reconstruction. He was appalled by the idea of helping the south recover and the adoration of southern war heroes. Douglass felt that forgetting the war meant forgetting its ideals, as he felt that the northern cause was primarily against slavery; or at least he wanted everyone to think it was. His goals put him in a difficult position, as the Republican Party led the Union War movement he wished to remember, but they did not do much for the African American cause.
In the issue of individualistic northerners, a characteristic he agreed with, and their desire to forget the war, which he opposed, we see the issue brought up in class last week in our discussion of women where a disagreement with one characteristic of society did not mean disagreement with the society as a whole. Douglass did not want to change all of society; he just wanted African Americans to achieve equal footing. His desire to celebrate the union victory proves this, as historically the victors of war are praised while the losers regarded in a negative fashion. The sentiment after the civil war to “forgive and forget,” however, was a more revolutionary sentiment. Douglass vouched for a more conventional view of war in hopes to aid his desire to change society.
In AJ’s post, he raised the question of Douglass’ credibility, asking if he would be more credible if he had participated in the physical conflict of the war. While this is a possibility, the bind he found himself in after the Civil War, as Blight puts it, “between the country’s historic racism and his own embrace of individualism.” This predicament led him to portray hypocritical tendencies, both real and perceived, that discredited him more than fighting in the war would have improved his credibility.