'Frederick Douglass' Is An Extended Meditation On The Legend's Self-Invention

Frederick Douglass continues to be an irresistible subject for biographers because all of the nation's difficult, miraculous, unresolved creation myths seem to collapse into the single story of his life.

The scourge of slavery; the grace of individual liberty; the sanctity of the Constitution, women's suffrage; the transformative power of equal opportunity; the moral decency of the America experiment: All of this mythology threads its way through Douglass's life in contentious and illuminating ways that reflect the racial and political tensions that consumed the country then.

That so many of the problems Douglass identified and confronted 150 years ago remain difficult, urgent and unresolved today only adds to the allure of the story.

In , author and historian David W. Blight does not hide his admiration for his subject: "There is no greater voice of America's transformation from slavery to freedom than Douglass's," he writes in the early pages.