2 - “All the Bloody Paraphernalia of Slavery”

Summary

Chapters 2 and 3 focus on Frederick Douglass’ transatlantic journey to Britain between 1845 and 1847. Douglass epitomized the successful exploitation of adaptive resistance and showed that his employment of each triad’s element simultaneously could court significant fame. He recognized the essential importance of print culture, however, and as a result altered his relationship with that triad to place it center stage. Hence, Chapter 2 discusses Douglass’ performative strategies and his relationship with print culture. He incorporated both favorable and negative reviews of his lectures into his repertoire, and courted endless debate in the press. His invocation of strategic anglophilia was balanced with a chastisement of British policy that championed liberty without actively seeking to help the enslaved in America. Unlike Roper, Douglass was a virtuoso who could balance assimilationist and dissonant language effectively. As a result, Douglass caused a furor toward slavery that was unrivaled by any other African American within a similar time period.