Frederick Douglass

Although Frederick Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life in slavery and had only a modest education, he became one of America's most respected abolitionists (reformers who worked to eliminate slavery) and one of its greatest orators and statesmen.

Born into slavery

Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey on the eastern shore of Maryland in February of 1818. He never knew his father, a white man, and he was separated at an early age from his mother, a slave named Harriet Bailey. Douglass's early childhood lacked the warmth of family attachments. Like other slaves around him, he was forced to do hard work and witnessed many acts of cruelty on the Maryland plantation.

In 1825, Douglass's masters sent him to Baltimore to work as a house slave. The mistress of the household, a Northerner, taught Douglass a few basics of reading and writing before her husband stopped her. With this background, he began his self-education.

After numerous ownership disputes and an escape attempt, Douglass's slave owners put him to work in the Baltimore shipyards. There, in 1838, he borrowed an African American sailor's papers and escaped to New York . He took the name Douglass and married a free African American woman. They settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts .

Lectures in the antislavery movement

In New Bedford, Douglass quickly became involved in the growing abolition movement of the North. At an antislavery meeting in Massachusetts in 1841, he delivered a moving speech about his experiences as a slave. A forceful speaker, he caught the attention of William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), the uncompromising abolitionist and leader of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. The Society asked Douglass to go on a four-year lecture tour of the North. In his first lectures, Douglass simply related his experiences as a slave, but later he lectured about the evils of slavery. His audiences were primarily white.

Writes autobiography

Douglass was an accomplished writer as well as an orator. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, his autobiography, was published in 1845. The book, still widely read today, was so popular that he wrote and published several longer versions through the years.

The 1845 publication of his autobiography announced to the country that Douglass was a fugitive slave. No laws protected him from being returned into slavery, so he fled to Britain. He remained there from 1845 to 1847, speaking to fascinated audiences.

Founds abolitionist newspaper

Douglass made such a deep impression in England that his supporters there raised money for him to purchase his freedom. Douglass returned to the United States a free man and settled in Rochester, New York. There, he started publishing his abolitionist newspaper, North Star. Besides publishing a newspaper, the North Star offices served as a station on the Underground Railroad (the secret network of people, routes, and safe houses that helped escaped slaves find their way to freedom). In a ten-year span, Douglass assisted close to four hundred fugitives by providing them with food and shelter on their journey to Canada.

Douglass developed close relationships with almost every known reformer in the United States, working with both black and white activists. He was a true reformer, a committed opponent of slavery who abhorred all forms of oppression, particularly against women. Douglass attended the first Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention in New York, in July 1848, and held a lifelong commitment to women's rights. He also campaigned against Northern discrimination that kept African Americans out of jobs as skilled laborers. He encouraged free blacks to adopt the middle-class values of industry, thrift, and temperance (not drinking alcohol) as the path to American success.

The 1850s

As the division between North and South grew stronger in the decade leading to the American Civil War (1861–65), Douglass became more active in his fight to abolish slavery. For years, he had followed Garrison and the Anti-Slavery Society in using only peaceful, moral persuasion. In the 1850s, Douglass came to support violent resistance to enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required citizens of free states to return runaway slaves to their slave owners. He joined the Republican Party , splitting with Garrison.

Among the reformers Douglass had come to know in his career was abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859). Brown stayed in Douglass's home in February 1858 while perfecting plans to raid the federal arsenal (place where weapons are stored) at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now part of West Virginia ), in October 1859. Brown invited Douglass to participate in the violent attack, but Douglass refused. The unsuccessful Harpers Ferry raid ended in Brown's capture. Douglass fled to England to escape federal charges of aiding Brown.

Civil War and Reconstruction

Back in the United States in 1860, Douglass campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; served 1861–1865). When the South seceded (separated) from the Union the next year, Douglass welcomed the Civil War as the only way to end slavery. During the war years, Douglass was an enthusiastic recruiter for black troops for the Union army. Douglass helped Lincoln with his 1864 reelection campaign and attended the inaugural ball. He deeply mourned the assassination of the president in 1865.

Douglass hoped his days as an activist had ended with the war, but it was soon clear that the United States was not providing justice and equality to African Americans. Douglass took to the lecture circuit again, and in 1870 he and his sons began publishing another weekly newspaper. He held several prominent governmental posts in his later career. On February 25, 1895, he died of a heart attack on his estate overlooking Washington, D.C. , having just returned from a convention supporting the women's suffrage movement (right to vote).