Douglass, Frederick

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Frederick Douglass

Born c. February 1817
Easton, Maryland

Died February 20, 1895
Washington, D.C.

Writer and activist

"Rebellion has been subdued, slavery abolished, and peace proclaimed, and yet our work is not done.… We are face to face with the same old enemy of liberty and progress."

Frederick Douglass was an eloquent spokesperson for abolition (the end of slavery) and equality. He persevered through an early life of slavery to become a celebrated speaker and writer. Relating his experiences as a victim of cruelty, Douglass maintained a strongly moral conviction in undoing the evil of slavery and establishing equality for people of both sexes and all races. He wrote celebrated autobiographical works, beginning with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), and founded newspapers, including the North Star in 1847. The masthead of the North Star featured the motto, "Right is of no sex. Truth is of no color. God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren." During the Reconstruction era (1865–77), Douglass was a leader in supporting passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which extended voting rights to African American males, and the efforts of Congress to ensure protection of the rights of freedmen.

Born into slavery

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery with the name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. His birth is generally considered to have occurred in February 1817. He took the surname Douglass (after a character in Sir Walter Scott's poem "Lady of the Lake") following his escape from slavery. Born on a farm near Easton, Maryland, Douglass was the son of a slave, Harriet Bailey, and an unidentified white man. He had a difficult childhood, separated from his mother and victimized by the cruelty of a violent slave master, Captain Anthony. Upon Anthony's death, ownership of Douglass fell to Anthony's daughter and son-in-law, Lucretia and Thomas Auld. When he was nine, Douglass was sent to Baltimore, Maryland, to be a house servant to Thomas Auld's brother, Hugh Auld, and his wife Sophia.

Douglass's main responsibility in the Hugh Auld home was to care for their child, Tommy. Sophia Auld read aloud from the Bible, and Douglass asked her to teach him to read. Sophia was enthused about teaching Douglass, but when Hugh Auld learned what his wife was doing he immediately made her stop. It was unlawful to teach a slave to read, and Auld believed that keeping slaves from reading and writing was a way to maintain power over them. Douglass realized that reading and writing was a way to freedom. He continued his education through interaction with people—by questioning and listening to them—and by reading anything he could. Sometimes he traded his food for a newspaper or a book. By age thirteen, he was reading abolitionist newspapers.

Douglass was returned to the farm at age fifteen, and he was again subjected to cruelty and beatings. At sixteen, he fought back against a whipping and earned a measure of power. He plotted an escape with a group of slaves when he was nineteen, but their plans were exposed and the slaves were jailed. Douglass returned to the Auld household in Baltimore, where he trained as a caulker (one who seals the hull of a boat to keep water from seeping in). After Douglass was beaten by white workers, Auld transferred him to his own shipbuilding business, where Douglass earned regular wages.

In his little spare time from work, Douglass met with a group of free and educated African Americans and was admitted by them to the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. During meetings of this organization, Douglass learned how to be a political debater and met a free African American woman named Anna Murray. They were engaged in 1838.

Determined to win his freedom above all else, Douglass risked everything he had by traveling in disguise by train from Baltimore to Philadelphia and on to New York City. If caught, he could be jailed, killed, or sold to slave masters. On September 4, 1838, he reached New York City safely.

Famous speaker and writer

After roaming New York City streets for a few days, Douglass met an African American sailor, who introduced him to a member of the Underground Railroad—a secret group of Northerners who helped runaway slaves escape to safety. Anna Murray joined Douglass in New York and they were married on September 15, 1838. They moved to a safe haven in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and lived for a time in the home of a prosperous African American family. Douglass resumed work as a caulker.

Douglass quickly became involved with abolitionist groups and read the Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879). "The paper became my meat and drink," Douglass once recalled. "My soul was set all on fire." He attended a convention of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1841, and was invited to speak. His skills as an orator were so well received that he was invited to become an activist with the group. He met Garrison, who employed him as a speaker to tell his life story and help sell copies of the Liberator. In 1843, Douglass participated in the Hundred Conventions project, the American Anti-Slavery Society's six-month tour of meeting halls throughout the west. During travels to towns and cities from Maine to Indiana, Douglass suffered mistreatment and inequality, but persevered to get his message across.

Ironically, Douglass was so eloquent that increasing numbers of people began to question whether he had actually experienced the incidents he related. Such responses, in part, motivated Douglass to write his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Recounting Douglass's life experiences in a strong moral tone against the evils of slavery on victim and victimizer, the book was an instant sensation. Widely popular in the North and in Europe, the Narrative also put Douglass in danger: As a fugitive slave, he had no legal protection if slave owner Thomas Auld were to seize him as Auld's property. Douglass decided to travel to England, which had emancipated (freed) all slaves within the British Empire.

Douglass enjoyed traveling for nearly two years in Britain. Friends in England collected money to buy him out of slavery from Thomas Auld. Although Douglass did not agree with the action—since he did not believe one man could own another, he should not pay for his freedom—he accepted the offer. He returned to the United States in 1847 to his wife and four children, and the family moved to Rochester, New York, where Douglass bought a house. He set up a printing shop and started his own newspaper, the North Star. Featuring articles on abolition and equality, the North Star was published under the motto, "Right is of no sex. Truth is of no color. God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren." Meanwhile, as a participant of the Underground Railroad, he helped more than four hundred slaves reach freedom through his printing shop.

Douglass also became politically active in his fight for equality and the abolishment of slavery. He campaigned against labor discrimination and racial segregation on public transportation; attended the landmark Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and signed the first Declaration of Women's Rights, which was drafted at the convention; and he angrily opposed the Compromise of 1850, a series of bills that included the Fugitive Slave Law, which provided strong legal support for slave owners to pursue runaway slaves in nonslave states. In 1854, Douglass supported the formation of the Republican Party to oppose frequent compromises made by Congress to powerful Southern legislators on issues related to slavery.

Douglass's increasing activism put him at odds with his longtime friend, William Lloyd Garrison, who preferred a more peaceful means for ending slavery. Douglass met on several occasions with John Brown (1800–1859), an abolitionist who preached violence against slave owners. When Brown and a small band of followers were captured in an assault on an arsenal (collection of weapons) in Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), hoping to take weapons and use them to arm slaves, Douglass was accused by Virginia governor Henry A. Wise (1806–1876) of being a conspirator. Douglass fled to Canada and then returned to Great Britain, where he enjoyed a successful lecture tour.

After returning to the United States, Douglass threw his support in the election of 1860 to Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; served 1861–65). When the Civil War (1861–65) began shortly after Lincoln took office, Douglass was disappointed that Lincoln's first priority in ending the war was to save the Union, not to abolish slavery (though Lincoln was against slavery). Douglass's political activism focused on two goals: emancipation of slaves and inclusion of African Americans in the Union army. The Emancipation Proclamation announced by Lincoln in 1863 was a major step toward ending slavery and it opened up military opportunities for African Americans. Douglass's sons, Lewis and Charles, were among the first African Americans to enlist in the Union army, and Douglass actively recruited African Americans for the Union cause. He stopped recruiting, however, because segregation was being practiced by the military.

More battles after the war

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, became law in 1865, but Douglass's life work was not complete. "Slavery is not abolished," he said, "until the black man has the ballot." He focused on voting rights and civil rights throughout the Reconstruction era, speaking around the country in late 1865 and then again beginning in the spring of 1866. In February 1866, Douglass met with President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875; served 1865–69; see entry), but Johnson dominated the discussion by insisting he would not use his federal powers to pursue voting rights or interfere with states in civil rights issues. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, granting citizenship to all people born in the United States.

In 1870, Douglass and his sons began publishing a weekly newspaper, New National Era, that supported President Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885; served 1869–77; see entry) and the aggressive protection of African American rights by many Republicans in Congress. That same year, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, extending voting rights to African American males. Section 1 of the amendment stated, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The following year, Grant appointed Douglass assistant secretary of the commission of inquiry to Santo Domingo (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Douglass toured Santo Domingo from January through March 1871 and defended the president's failed attempt to annex the island. Douglass moved to Washington, D.C., in 1872 after his Rochester home was destroyed by fire. Copies of his newspapers and personal letters were lost in the blaze, and Douglass suspected arson.

Frederick Douglass on Reconstruction

The excerpt below is taken from "Reconstruction," an article written by Frederick Douglass and published in the December 1866 issue of Atlantic Monthly magazine. The article was timed with the return of Congress to session. Douglass wanted Congress to act on Reconstruction in much more forceful ways than President Andrew Johnson. Johnson is mentioned in the final paragraph of the excerpt.

Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom, manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South; and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every crossroad. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for his protection.…
Spite of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists—poured out against slavery during thirty years—even they must confess, that, in all the probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth century but for the Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been suppressed.
It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been taught to our cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic. At any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire purification Congress must now address Itself, with full purpose that the work shall this time be thoroughly done.…
If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the requisite materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now before it. Whether its members look at the origin, the progress, the termination of the war, or at the mockery of a peace now existing, they will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President stood in the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an apostasy [defection] which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. It was natural that they should seek to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to the side of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows now that it must go on without his aid, and even against his machinations.

In March 1874, Douglass assumed the presidency of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company. He had been offered the position back in July 1867 by President Johnson, but Douglass was concerned about being associated with Johnson, who showed little interest in causes for which Douglass fought. The Freedman's Bureau was founded to help freedmen with their savings and to provide loans. By 1874, the bank was in financial trouble and Douglass, despite infusing some of his own money, was not able to save it. Douglass returned to the lecture circuit, advocating further support and extension of civil rights, campaigning for Republicans, and introducing other topics that interested him, including Scandinavian folklore. He often encountered discrimination in restaurants and while lodging and using mass transportation, and always followed up with a letter of protest to local newspapers describing each incident.

After the Reconstruction era

When Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893; served 1877–81; see entry) became president in March 1877, he appointed Douglass as U.S. marshal of Washington, D.C., a first for an African American. He enjoyed working in city administration and purchased a 15-acre estate in the area. Douglass called it Cedar Hill and frequently entertained family members and friends. In 1881, Douglass was appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C., by President James A. Garfield (1831– 1881; served 1881). Later that year, Douglass published The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, an expanded version of his autobiography.

Douglass's wife, Anna, died in 1882. Two years later, he married Helen Pitts, his secretary. Pitts was white, and the interracial marriage was controversial to many whites and African Americans. Douglass countered that his marriage was an example that the races could coexist peacefully. The couple went on a lengthy honeymoon in Europe. Douglass campaigned for the election of Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901; served 1889–93) in 1888 and was appointed minister and counsel general to Haiti when Harrison took office. Douglass left the position in 1891 and lived in semiretirement. He still spoke out on causes he believed in and emphasized the power of voting as a means for effective change. After giving a speech on February 20, 1895, at the National Council of Women, Douglass suffered a heart attack later that evening and died at the age of seventy-seven.

Mourners gathered at a church in Washington, D.C., where he lay in state, and black public schools closed for the day. Douglass's body was taken back to Rochester, where he was laid to rest.

For More Information

Books

Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

Douglass, Frederick. Escape from Slavery. Edited by Michael McCurdy. New York: Knopf, 1994.

Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Hartford, CT: Park Publishing, 1881. Reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Candace Press, 1996.

Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1855. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Boston: Anti-slavery Office, 1845. Reprint, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997.

McFeeley, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, 1991.

Russell, Sharman. Frederick Douglass. New York: Chelsea House, 1992.