private home. his name is donald rumsfeld, and he was at the time, the summer of 2006, struggling to the end of his disastrous tenure as secretary of defense under the george w. bush administration. he lived at the time at mount misery. he bought the place in 2003 as he was leading the nation into the invasion of iraq. that was where he went to get away from washington while running two disastrous wars. he would like to have the chinock helicopter drop him off at the slave breaker s home where douglass was tortured to death. he could relax there. donald rumsfeld died today at the age of 88. he had a singular career. he made gazillions of dollars in business running companies that invented knewtry sweet and tvs.
douglass account of his own life in that lowest period in his own life. and that written account did more than any other to galvanize the american abolitionist movement to bring an end to slavery. of course, it was not fiction. it really happened and it happened as frederick douglass said it did, and edward covey was a real person who operated a slave-breaking operation at his farm to which frederick douglass was sent. now, if you go back to that initial description, dug laz douglass describes covey s farm as being on the bay side.
important, brilliant, inspiring, incredible figure, unparalleled figure in american history, because of what we know he is capable of, because of what we know what his mind was capable of and what he did for his country in his life, when he recounts what happened to him at the hands of edward covey, it is the most dispiriting and desolate and miserable thing that douglass writes about. he said, i shall never be able to narrate the mental experience through which it was my lot to pass during my stay. i was completely wrecked, changed, and bewildered, goaded almost to madness at one time and at another, reconciling myself to my researched condition. i suffered bodily as well as mentally, he says. the overwork and brutal chastises of which i was the victim, combined with that ever gnawing and soul-devouring thought, i am a slave, a slave for life, it rendered me a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness. that was frederick