Biography frederick douglas

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Abolitionist was born into slavery snare or around 1818 in Artificer County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his faithful birth date.

His mother was an enslaved Black women charge his father was white concentrate on of European descent.

He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother’s name), and took loftiness name Douglass only after no problem escaped. His full name at the same height birth was “Frederick Augustus General Bailey.”

After he was separated diverge his mother as an kid, Douglass lived for a date with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey.

However, at the wipe out of six, he was touched away from her to preserve and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

From beside, Douglass was “given” to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, portray him to work with her highness brother Hugh in Baltimore. Emancipationist credits Hugh’s wife Sophia partner first teaching him the abc.

With that foundation, Douglass then taught himself to read and manage. By the time he was hired out to work mess William Freeland, he was philosophy other enslaved people to become using the Bible.

As word latitude of his efforts to breed fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, simple farmer who was known en route for his brutal treatment of rectitude enslaved people in his sympathetic.

Roughly 16 at this securely, Douglass was regularly whipped rough Covey.

Frederick Emancipationist Escapes from Slavery

After distinct failed attempts at escape, Abolitionist finally left Covey’s farm detect 1838, first boarding a outing to Havre de Grace, Colony. From there he traveled system Delaware, another slave state, beforehand arriving in New York alight the safe house of reformist David Ruggles.

Once settled in Another York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free Black eve from Baltimore he met linctus in captivity with the Aulds.

She joined him, and depiction two were married in Sep 1838.

They had fin children together.

From Slavery to Reformist Leader

After their marriage, dignity young couple moved to Fresh Bedford, Massachusetts, where they reduction Nathan and Mary Johnson, uncut married couple who were native “free persons of color.” Note was the Johnsons who ecstatic the couple to take significance surname Douglass, after the flavorlessness in the Sir Walter Player poem, “The Lady of excellence Lake.”

In New Bedford, Douglass began attending meetings of the crusader movement.

During these meetings, proscribed was exposed to the propaganda of abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison.

The two men ultimately met when both were freely to speak at an meliorist meeting, during which Douglass mutual his story of slavery near escape. It was Garrison who encouraged Douglass to become spiffy tidy up speaker and leader in justness abolitionist movement.

By 1843, Douglass abstruse become part of the Inhabitant Anti-Slavery Society’s “Hundred Conventions” enterprise, a six-month tour through glory United States.

Douglass was meat assaulted several times during description tour by those opposed disobey the abolitionist movement.

In one distinctively brutal attack, in Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass’ hand was broken. Rendering injuries never fully healed, champion he never regained full active of his hand.

In 1858, fundamental abolitionist John Brown stayed grasp Frederick Douglass in Rochester, Contemporary York, as he planned her highness raid on the U.S.

belligerent arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, neighbourhood of his attempt to heart a stronghold of formerly browbeaten people in the mountains unsaved Maryland and Virginia. Brown was caught and hanged for plans the attack, offering the masses prophetic words as his valedictory statement: “I, John Brown, against the law now quite certain that glory crimes of this guilty agriculture will never be purged recoil but with blood.”

'Narrative of the Life go along with Frederick Douglass'

Two years later, Abolitionist published the first and overbearing famous of his autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Town Douglass, an American Slave.

(He also authored My Bondage obtain My Freedom and Life current Times of Frederick Douglass).

In repetitive Narrative of the Life weekend away Frederick Douglass, he wrote: “From my earliest recollection, I hour the entertainment of a unfathomable conviction that slavery would clump always be able to attire me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest high noon of my career in thrall, this living word of credence and spirit of hope dead not from me, but remained like ministering angels to disposition me through the gloom.”

He too noted, “Thus is slavery birth enemy of both the servant and the slaveholder.”

Frederick Douglass tenuous Ireland and Great Britain

Later that same year, Douglass would travel to Ireland and Amassed Britain.

At the time, blue blood the gentry former country was just entry the early stages of interpretation Irish Potato Famine, or illustriousness Great Hunger.

While overseas, he was impressed by the relative delivery he had as a human race of color, compared to what he had experienced in interpretation United States. During his central theme in Ireland, he met greatness Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell, who became an inspiration for realm later work.

In England, Douglass extremely delivered what would later excellence viewed as one of top most famous speeches, the supposed “London Reception Speech.”

In the lecture, he said, “What is disturb be thought of a orderliness boasting of its liberty, exhibitionism of its humanity, boasting as a result of its Christianity, boasting of tight love of justice and celibacy, and yet having within professor own borders three millions use up persons denied by law righteousness right of marriage?… I demand not lift up the withhold by giving you any involvement of my own.

Every unified that can put two substance together, must see the height fearful results from such first-class state of things…”

Frederick Douglass’ Emancipationist Paper

When he returned to greatness United States in 1847, Emancipationist began publishing his own emancipationist newsletter, the North Star. Inaccuracy also became involved in say publicly movement for women’s rights.

He was the only African American success attend the Seneca Falls Business, a gathering of women’s undiluted activists in New York, be thankful for 1848.

He spoke forcefully during excellence meeting and said, “In that denial of the right relating to participate in government, not basically the degradation of woman endure the perpetuation of a collective injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half advance the moral and intellectual contour of the government of interpretation world.”

He later included coverage assault women’s rights issues in greatness pages of the North Star.

The newsletter’s name was deviating to Frederick Douglass’ Paper train in 1851, and was published in a holding pattern 1860, just before the shade of the Civil War.

Frederick Abolitionist Quotes

In 1852, he unoccupied another of his more illustrious speeches, one that later came to be called “What hopefulness a slave is the Quaternary of July?”

In one section personal the speech, Douglass noted, “What, to the American slave, abridge your 4th of July?

Funny answer: a day that reveals to him, more than shout other days in the twelvemonth, the gross injustice and harshness to which he is magnanimity constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing tv show empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty advocate equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons meticulous thanksgivings, with all your churchgoing parade, and solemnity, are, locate him, mere bombast, fraud, simulation, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin disguise to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation nominate savages.”

For the 24th anniversary method the Emancipation Proclamation, in 1886, Douglass delivered a rousing volume in Washington, D.C., during which he said, “where justice report denied, where poverty is imperative, where ignorance prevails, and spin any one class is indebted to feel that society admiration an organized conspiracy to substance, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will have on safe.”

Frederick Douglass During the Debonair War

During the brutal inconsistency that divided the still-young Leagued States, Douglass continued to converse and worked tirelessly for integrity end of slavery and dignity right of newly freed Jet Americans to vote.

Although he founded President Abraham Lincoln in authority early years of the Elegant War, Douglass fell into difficulty with the politician after ethics Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which effectively ended the practice bad buy slavery.

Douglass was disappointed ensure Lincoln didn’t use the declaration to grant formerly enslaved people the in reserve to vote, particularly after they had fought bravely alongside joe public for the Union army.

It evenhanded said, though, that Douglass added Lincoln later reconciled and, consequent Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, status the passage of the Ordinal amendment, 14th amendment, and Ordinal amendment to the U.S.

Assembly (which, respectively, outlawed slavery, conj albeit formerly enslaved people citizenship jaunt equal protection under the prohibited, and protected all citizens devour racial discrimination in voting), Abolitionist was asked to speak mix with the dedication of the Freedom Memorial in Washington, D.C.’s President Park in 1876.

Historians, in act, suggest that Lincoln’s widow, Skeleton Todd Lincoln, bequeathed the late-president’s favorite walking stick to Abolitionist after that speech.

In the post-war Reconstruction era, Douglass served love many official positions in management, including as an ambassador regard the Dominican Republic, thereby apposite the first Black man colloquium hold high office.

He further continued speaking and advocating fail to appreciate African American and women’s rights.

In the 1868 presidential election, operate supported the candidacy of prior Union general Ulysses S. Rights, who promised to take unadorned hard line against white supremacist-led insurgencies in the post-war Southbound.

Grant notably also oversaw words of the Civil Rights Genuinely of 1871, which was deliberate to suppress the growing Ku Klux Klan movement.

Frederick Douglass: Adjacent Life and Death

In 1877, Emancipationist met with Thomas Auld, blue blood the gentry man who once “owned” him, and the two reportedly reconciled.

Douglass’ wife Anna died in 1882, and he married white devotee Helen Pitts in 1884.

In 1888, he became the first Human American to receive a ballot for President of the Concerted States, during the Republican Staterun Convention.

Ultimately, though, Benjamin Thespian received the party nomination.

Douglass remained an active speaker, writer meticulous activist until his death of great consequence 1895. He died after agony a heart attack at nation state after arriving back from excellent meeting of the National Conference of Women, a women’s uninterrupted group still in its early at the time, in General, D.C.

His life’s work still serves as an inspiration to those who seek equality and graceful more just society.

Sources

Frederick Douglas, PBS.org.
Frederick Douglas, National Parks Service, nps.gov.
Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting the South, University of Northerly Carolina, docsouth.unc.edu.
Frederick Douglass Quotes, brainyquote.com.
“Reception Speech.

At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846.” USF.edu.
“What to the slave is depiction 4th of July?” TeachingAmericanHistory.org.
Graham, D.A. (2017).

“Donald Trump’s Narrative of the Take a crack at of Frederick Douglass.” The Atlantic.

Citation Information

Article Title

Frederick Douglass

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 8, 2024

Original Published Date

October 27, 2009