Frederick Douglass’ short novel, The Heroic Slave (1853), used American nostalgia as references to Americanize the slaves. Douglass also uses the references to the American Revolution and the Forefathers to establish motive for the slave rebellion and the abolition movement. The Forefathers and slaves were fighting for the same thing: liberty. Douglass’ hero is named after two Forefathers of the Constitution; James Madison and George Washington. The story takes place in Virginia, birthplace of the aforementioned. The description of the tavern that Mr. Listwell, the abolitionist in the fictional account, visits is used to parallel the United States at that time.

Slavery was legal in the South, an issue the South was willing to secede from the nation over. Douglass uses the description of the dilapidated tavern as a metaphor for the plight in America. Black Americans were treated poorly; beaten, lashed, raped, and killed. If a slave was to escape, or even ponder escaping, that “rascal” would be flogged. America was in the middle of a moral crisis. Many Americans felt they were superior to African Americans and Native Americans. The nation had rotted away, from the very foundation the country was built on, and Douglass relates that with the decayed building.

“…there stands a somewhat ancient and famous public tavern, quite notorious in its better days… This old rookery, the nucleus of all sorts of birds, mostly those of ill omen, has, like everything else peculiar to Virginia, lost much of its ancient consequence and splendor…”

Douglass is using Virginia as a means to describe the United States. This is the state the great men of the past were born; here is where they lived and owned slaves themselves. And there are laws outlawing men to aid in the rescue and freedom of captured slaves, who are forced to work for a white man, because the whites have a superiority complex. Madison Washington was a slave tired of the wretched life he was forced to fight through. The glorification of the slave can be seen with the language Madison uses. Douglass gives the racist characters poor English dialect to combat the stereotype of the Black Americans. Furthermore, Madison speaks not only well and eloquent, but proper and polite, shocking many of his acquaintances. This is the reason Mr. Listwell, overhearing Madison’s soliloquy, stayed because he was intrigued by such voice and character.

“The speech of Madison rung through the chambers of his soul, and vibrated through his entire frame.”

Mr. Listwell is so moved by the divulgence, he instantly converts to an abolitionist, a truly sentimental moment during this hate-filled time period.

“Here is indeed a man…guilty of no crime but the color of his skin… From this hour I am an abolitionist. I have seen enough and heard enough…”

When Tom Grant threatened Madison with his life, Madison did not attack as he could have as he pointed out to Tom Grant, but instead calmly, but sternly, replied:

“Sir…your life is in my hands… You call me a black murderer. I am not a murderer. God is my witness that LIBERTY, not malice, is a motive for this night’s work… We have struck for our freedom, and if a true man’s heart be in you, you will honor us for the deed. We have done that which you applaud your fathers for doing, and if we are murderers, so are they.”

Who thinks of the patriots as “murderers”? Douglas refers to the founders of the United States and claims that the freedom the Black Slaves and abolitionists were fighting for, is as American as the freedom the Forefathers fought for.

Madison Washington’s soliloquy on how the African Americans were being treated, sold and traded as property, spills out emotions that “captures” Mr. Listwell’s heart. Madison speaks of the rights of the free, the freedoms the white American heroes worked hard to accomplish for all men, and the freedoms the slaves were yearning.

“If I get clear, (as something tells me I shall,) liberty, the inalienable birth-right of every man, precious and priceless, will be mine. My resolution is fixed. I shall be free.”

Over one hundred years later on the steps of the Washington Monument, a great American declared: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty. We are free at last!”