![]() ![]() The novella, one of the few works of fiction published by an African American prior to the Civil War, is increasingly being recognized as a major work in Douglass’s canon and as an impressive work of art. Douglass first published the novella in the 1853 Autographs for Freedom, a fund-raising volume of antislavery writings, and then reprinted it as a four-part serial in the March 1853 issues of his newspaper, Frederick Douglass’ Paper. ![]() According to Douglass, Madison Washington, the leader of the rebellion, was a patriotic freedom fighter in the heroic tradition of the American revolutionaries. Several months after delivering this lecture, Douglass began writing his only work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, which was inspired by the true story of the slave rebellion aboard the Creole. ![]() your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.” As he proclaims at the end of the lecture: “Your celebration is a sham your boasted liberty, an unholy license your national greatness, swelling vanity. In that lecture, Douglass attacked the hypocrisy of a nation that celebrated freedom while slavery remained the law of the land. Seven years later, and just two years after Douglass had publicly broken with Garrison, Douglass delivered, in 1852, what would become his most famous oration, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? ”. ![]()
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