Young Frederick Douglas: The Maryland Years Book

Dickson Preston's Young Frederick Douglass is a very fine biographical work. As the subtitle, The Maryland Years, indicates, Preston focuses on Frederick Douglass's childhood and young adulthood on Maryland's Eastern Shore and in the Fell's Point area of Baltimore. The author, a veteran Eastern Shore journalist, provides a well-written account of Mr. Douglass's birth, his upbringing in slaveholding antebellum Maryland, his successful escape north from Baltimore, and his triumphant post-Civil War return to Baltimore and to the Eastern Shore. Additionally, this book provides an incisive examination of the ultra-conservative and class-ridden qualities of Eastern Shore society, both in Mr. Douglass's time and now. In a fascinating afterword, Preston notes how, while Mr. Douglass is far and away the most famous person ever to come out of Talbot County, Maryland, Talbot County has been slow to embrace his legacy. Plans are now in place to put a memorial to Mr. Douglass in front of the Talbot County courthouse in Easton, Maryland; but in contrast to Baltimore (where the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park is a prominent feature of the Fell's Point waterfront), Talbot County has not yet done anything official to honor the county's most illustrious resident. It would be a fine postscript to Preston's excellent biography for Talbot County to do the right thing and officially honor Frederick Douglass.