He was one of the most revered Americans of the 19th century. His story of personal triumph—humble origins to national prominence—is equal to or greater than that of Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, or Ulysses Grant. He never became a politician, but he spoke to presidents as an equal.
他是 19 世纪最受尊敬的美国人之一。他的个人成功故事——出身寒微到举国知名——不亚于甚至胜过安德鲁·杰克逊，亚伯拉罕·林肯或尤利西斯·格兰特的故事。他从未成为政客，但他以平等的身份与总统对话。
His name is Frederick Douglass.
他的名字是弗里德里克·道格拉斯。
Born a slave, Douglass never knew the exact date of his birth, never knew his father, never saw his mother after the age of seven. This wasn’t uncommon at the time. Slave owners often made a point of separating families. Breaking family bonds increased dependence on the slave owner.
道格拉斯一出生就是奴隶，他从不知道自己的确切出生日期，从不知道他的父亲，七岁以后再也没见过他的母亲。这在当时并不罕见。奴隶主经常故意拆散家庭。破坏家庭纽带增进了对奴隶主的依赖。
Discipline was maintained through simple fear and destroying self-esteem. A slave could be punished for not working hard enough, but also for working too hard—or even for suggesting labor-saving ideas. Douglass experienced all of this and rebelled against it.
纪律的维持靠的是单纯的恐惧与摧毁自尊。一个奴隶受罚，可能是因为工作不够努力，但也可能是因为工作太努力——甚至是因为提出节省劳力的主意。这些道格拉斯都经历过，也发起过反抗。
As a teenager, he taught himself to read. This created a desire for freedom. When his owner discovered this disturbing development, he sent him to live with a local farmer, Edward Covey, who made extra money breaking the will of unruly slaves.
青少年时，他自学阅读。这使他萌生对自由的渴望。当他的主人发现了这种恼人的发展时，他把他送去和当地农民爱德华·科威住，这个人专靠摧毁不听话奴隶的意志挣外快。
Covey beat Douglass every week for six months, often for no reason. And it worked. Soon young Frederick gave up all hope of being free. “The dark night of slavery closed in upon me,” he later wrote.
科威六个月以来每周都揍道格拉斯，常常是无缘无故的。这招奏效了。很快年轻的费雷德里克放弃了对自由的一切希望。他后来写道，「奴役的黑夜向我笼罩。」
That all changed one hot August day in 1835. When Covey struck him, Douglass fought back. Where he found the courage, he couldn’t say. The two men struggled until Covey stumbled away exhausted. Covey never laid a hand on Douglass again.
这一切在 1835 年八月一个炎热的日子改变。当科威揍他，道格拉斯反击了。他不知道自己从哪来的勇气。两个男人扭打起来，直到科威精疲力竭蹒跚着走开了。科威再也没对道格拉斯动过手。
The teenage slave had stood up for himself. He considered this the most important lesson of his life. Years later, he would tell this story when urging black men to enlist in the Union Army to fight the Confederacy. “You owe it to yourself,” he said. “You will stand more erect . . . and be less liable to insult. . . . You [will be] defending your own liberty, honor, manhood, and self-respect.”
这名年轻的奴隶为自己奋起反击了。他认为这是他人生中最重要的一课。几年以后，他会再次讲述这个故事，呼吁黑人参加联邦军队抵抗邦联。他说，「这是为了你们自己，你们将更能挺起胸膛，更不容易受侮辱……你们[将]捍卫自己的自由，荣誉，人格和自尊。」
Douglass made his escape from slavery in 1838, slipping into the North disguised as a U.S. Navy sailor. At any point along the rail journey, his flimsy cover could have been blown. Displaying a confidence he didn’t actually feel, he bluffed his way past suspicious conductors and runaway-slave hunters.
道格拉斯在 1838 年逃脱了奴役，伪装成美国海军水手溜进了北方。在铁路旅途中的任何时刻，他拙劣的掩饰都可能被识破，他表现出一种连自己都没怎么意识到的自信，成功唬过了多疑的列车员和逃跑奴隶猎人。
Once in the North, he joined the radical abolitionist movement and was quickly recognized as a powerful speaker and writer. The movement’s leader, William Lloyd Garrison, burned the Constitution at his July 4th speeches. In Garrison’s view, it legally protected slavery and was therefore irredeemable.
一到北方，他就加入了激进的废奴运动并很快成为一名有影响力的演讲家和著作家。运动的领导人，威廉·劳埃德·加里森，在他的 7 月 4 日演讲中焚烧了美国宪法。在加里森看来，它在法律上保护奴隶制因此是无可救药的。
But Douglass came to reject that. He believed that the Constitution was fundamentally opposed to slavery. “Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted,” Douglass said, “the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.”
但道格拉斯否认这个观点。他相信《美国宪法》从根本上反对奴隶制。道格拉斯说，「按它应该的那样来理解，」「《美国宪法》是光荣的自由文件。」
Not surprisingly, Douglass was a strong supporter of the Republican Party—the new anti-slavery party—and of the Union cause in the Civil War.
毫不奇怪，道格拉斯坚定支持共和党——这一新兴的反奴隶制政党——还有联邦在南北战争中的目标。
Initially, he had doubts about Abraham Lincoln. He didn’t think Lincoln was truly committed to ending slavery. But he warmed up to the Great Emancipator as the conflict wore on. Lincoln, on the other hand, always admired Douglass. “Here comes my friend Douglass,” Lincoln said when he saw him at his second inaugural in 1865.
最初，他对亚伯拉罕·林肯有所怀疑。他不认为林肯真心致力于结束奴隶制。但随着冲突继续，他认可了这位伟大的解放者。另一方面，林肯一直钦佩道格拉斯。「我的朋友道格拉斯也来了，」林肯在他 1865 年第二次就职演讲上看到他时说。
The Union victory ended slavery. But as the Democratic Party re-established itself in the South in the 1870s and ‘80s, a new kind of racial oppression arose in the form of Jim Crow laws and, even worse, widespread lynching.
联邦的胜利结束了奴隶制。但随着民主党 1870 年代和 80 年代在南方重整旗鼓，一种新的种族压迫形式兴起，如吉姆·克劳法和更糟糕的，广泛的私刑。
This was a bitter pill for Douglass to swallow. But he never gave up the struggle and spent the last three decades of his life agitating for civil rights. “Freedom,” he was fond of saying, “depended on three boxes: the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box.”
这对于道格拉斯是一枚难以下咽的苦果。但他从未放弃斗争，用他人生最后的三十年鼓动民权。「自由，」他很喜欢说，「取决于三个箱：投票箱，陪审厢和子弹箱。」
For Douglass, it was self-evident that black Americans, as citizens, were entitled to full freedom and full legal protection. At a speech in 1893, when white hecklers began booing him, Douglass set his speech aside and spoke extemporaneously. “There is no Negro problem,” he roared. “The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own Constitution.”
在道格拉斯看来不言自明的是，美国黑人作为公民，有权拥有充分的自由和充分的法律保护。在 1893 年的一次演讲中，当白人捣乱者开始嘘他，道格拉斯放下了演讲，即兴发挥起来。他吼道：「并没有什么黑人问题，问题在于美国人民是否足够诚实，足够忠诚，足够荣誉，足够爱国，以兑现他们自己的宪法。」
He also believed that true liberty would only come for black Americans—as it comes for anyone—when they took full responsibility for their own fate. Ultimately, hard work and education would secure blacks the rights they deserved.
他同样相信，美国黑人要获得真正的自由只有——就像其他任何人——当他们对自己的命运担起全部的责任。最终，辛勤工作和教育将为黑人挣得他们应得的权利。
“There can be no independence without a large share of self-dependence.… This virtue cannot be bestowed. It must be developed from within,” he declared in his most popular lecture, appropriately titled “Self-Made Men.”
「没有大部分人的自立就不会有独立……这一美德无法被赋予。它只能发展自个人内心，」他在他最受欢迎的演讲中如是说，这次演讲恰如其分地被名为《白手起家的人》。
Douglass defended equality and freedom until the day he died—literally. He passed away in 1895, on his way to a political convention. He had well understood the deep prejudice that existed, but he never accepted it as an inherent part of American culture. “My cause,” he wrote, “was and is that of the black man; not because he is black, but because he is a man.”
道格拉斯捍卫平等与自由直至他死去的那天——并无夸大。他逝世于 1895 年，在参加一次政治会议的路上。他十分清楚深刻偏见的存在，但他从不承认它是美国文化固有的一部分。「我的事业，」他写道，「过去是，现在也是为了黑人；并非因为他是黑人，而是因为他是一个人。」
I’m Timothy Sandefur, author of Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, for Prager University.
我是提摩西·桑德福，《弗雷德里克·道格拉斯：白手起家的人》的作者，为 PragerU 制作。
译校：FungChuh
联系客服
