Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney

Frederick Douglass and Martin Delaney

Preface

I began the research for this paper looking to write about Frederick Douglass’ drive to start his abolitionist paper The North Star. What I then found in my research was the writings of a man I had never before heard of, Martin R. Delaney. Delaney and Douglass were co-editors of the paper for its first four years, therefore partners in the abolitionist battle. Yet I found that despite this partnership these men actually held many differing opinions that ultimately drove them apart.

My research led me to examine the lives of both of these men to find possibly sources for these differences, and many did I find. While Douglass rose from slavery, with the help of white benefactors, to achieve self-sufficiency and success Delaney was born a non-slave, yet not-quite-citizen, that achieved through his immersion in closely knit black societies. What did this necessarily mean for both of these men? What differences in the personal growth of Douglass and Delaney led to differences in their ideologies later in life?

This is the question I propose to answer within my text. For such a purpose I have planned this paper as both a biographical work and one of intellectual history. For the biography of Delaney I owe credit to the work of Victor Ullman and his work, . Otherwise my research is based primarily on documents, written by both Douglass and Delaney, found in collections made by people such as Philip. S. Foner and Robert S. Levine.

One Nation, Two People

America has forever long been looked upon as the land of opportunity, yet for just as long struggled with the actual attainment of equal opportunity by all of its citizens. The lines of this inequality have b...

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...ts that, and for that Delaney should be remembered in equal esteem. For this nation has never been shaped through the actions of one man, and its story should never be told as if that were so.

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York: Collier Books, 1962.

Foner, Philip S., ed. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass: Pre-Civil War Decade 1850-1860. Vol. 2. New York: International Publishers, 1950.

The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass: 1844-1860. Vol. 5. New York: International Publishers, 1975.

Levine, Robert S., ed. Martin R. Delaney: A Documentary Reader. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Ullman, Victor. Martin R. Delaney: The Beginnings of Black Nationalism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.

White, Barbara A. The Beecher Sisters. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.