Uncertain of his date of birth or the identity of his father, Frederick Douglass came into the world with one surety: he was born a slave, and would die a slave. But as he grew up, Douglass determined that he would teach himself to read and write, and that one day he would be free from slavery.
In 1832, Douglass was sent to a plantation in St. Michael's, where he would live and work as a field hand for more than seven years. According to Douglass, this life was so dispiriting and exhausting, that at times thoughts of freedom all but disappeared from his mind. His journey out of bondage was mental, as well as physical. Douglass would go on to be one of the abolition movement's most persuasive speakers, and would eventually become a strong proponent for women's rights. His famous autobiography, the Narrative, reads like the impassioned plea of an abolitionist tract, compelling in its honest and forceful eloquence.
Later Douglass would serve as minister to Haiti and would fight against the southern practice of lynching without benefit of trial by jury. After his first wife's death, he would startle his associates and friends by marrying a white woman, one of the most publicized interracial marriages in America. Douglass died in 1895. He was buried in Rochester, New York.
About the Author
Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to a slave woman and an unknown white man in either 1817 or 1818. He was enslaved in Baltimore and Maryland for twenty years, first as a servant and then as a farm hand. He escaped in 1838, married, and settled in Massachusetts where he began work as an anti-slavery crusader.
Following a fantastically eloquent speech at an anti-slavery convention Douglass was hired by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to lecture about his life as a slave. He was such a brilliantly gifted public speaker that many doubted he had ever been a slave, and this stereotype – that a slave couldn’t be intelligent or articulate – was something he fought ardently against. He wrote his autobiography partly to address this – it became an instant bestseller on publication.
After the outbreak of the civil war Douglass successfully persuaded President Lincoln to allow black soldiers to enlist. He was, at various times, Federal Marshall of the District of Columbia, President of the Freedman’s Bank, United States Minister to Haiti, and charge d’affaires for the Dominican Republic. He died in 1895 shortly after delivering a speech at a women’s rights rally.
