The Heroic Slave by Frederick Douglass (1853)

A slave escapes from Virginia and travels through Ohio on his way to sanctuary in Canada, and that's only the beginning.

Book Review: The Heroic Slave is the only work of fiction written by the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. Who knew? My reading of this was inspired by reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' first novel, The Water Dancer. The Heroic Slave is more short story than novella and more advocacy than story, but an interesting rarity nonetheless. As might be expected of a first piece of fiction, it relies on unbelievable coincidences, but the periodic willing suspension of disbelief is required calisthenics these days, anyway. Although fiction, this is also a slave narrative, with the climax of the story based on an actual but generally unknown event from 1841. The story, however, comes second to the more didactic points Douglass wants to make in The Heroic Slave. He makes clear to those who might fail to understand (this was America in 1853), that slaves were human beings: "children of a common Creator -- guilty of no crime -- men and women ... chained ...humanity converted into merchandise ... all to fill the pockets of men ... who gain their fortune by plundering the helpless." He exposes the hypocrisy of slavery existing in a country that not long before had fought for its freedom, but when slaves did the same labeled them criminals. A white character says, "Our difference of color was the only ground of difference ... it was not that his principles were wrong ... for they are the principles of 1776." To reinforce that point Douglass names his mighty and "noble protagonist" Madison Washington. Reminding his readers that in America the proper response to tyranny is revolt. Having escaped slavery in 1838 at age 20, Douglass later became a leading abolitionist voice and publisher. He was an adviser to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, also serving as an ambassador to the Dominican Republic and consul-general in Haiti. Douglass was an early supporter of the women's right movement, attending the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Although The Heroic Slave is brief and perhaps not great literature, it's an authentic voice of the times and an insight into the American past that is not even past.  [3★]