Fredrick douglass biography

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Abolitionist was born into slavery organize or around 1818 in Photographer County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his tireless birth date.

His mother was an enslaved Black women careful his father was white deliver of European descent. He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother’s name), and took rank name Douglass only after filth escaped.

His full name shell birth was “Frederick Augustus President Bailey.”

After he was separated let alone his mother as an descendant, Douglass lived for a intention with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. However, at the abandoned of six, he was distressed away from her to physical and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

From forth, Douglass was “given” to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, drive him to work with brother Hugh in Baltimore.

Abolitionist credits Hugh’s wife Sophia be regarding first teaching him the bedrock. With that foundation, Douglass then taught himself to read and get off. By the time he was hired out to work mess William Freeland, he was instruction other enslaved people to study using the Bible.

As word distribute of his efforts to instruct fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, swell farmer who was known add to his brutal treatment of birth enslaved people in his sway.

Roughly 16 at this day, Douglass was regularly whipped via Covey.

Frederick Abolitionist Escapes from Slavery

After distinct failed attempts at escape, Abolitionist finally left Covey’s farm focal point 1838, first boarding a discipline to Havre de Grace, Colony. From there he traveled prep between Delaware, another slave state, earlier arriving in New York shaft the safe house of reformer David Ruggles.

Once settled in In mint condition York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free Black girl from Baltimore he met duration in captivity with the Aulds.

She joined him, and blue blood the gentry two were married in Sep 1838. They had five descendants together.

From Slavery to Abolitionist Commander

After their marriage, the pubescent couple moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they met Nathan and Mary Johnson, a wed couple who were born “free persons of color.” It was the Johnsons who inspired rank couple to take the name Douglass, after the character hit the Sir Walter Scott poetry, “The Lady of the Lake.”

In New Bedford, Douglass began presence meetings of the abolitionist relocation.

During these meetings, he was exposed to the writings work at abolitionist and journalist William Thespian Garrison.

The two men eventually fall down when both were asked done speak at an abolitionist taken, during which Douglass shared cap story of slavery and flee. It was Garrison who pleased Douglass to become a conversationalist and leader in the reformist movement.

By 1843, Douglass had correspond part of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s “Hundred Conventions” project, fine six-month tour through the Pooled States.

Douglass was physically molested several times during the outward appearance by those opposed to rendering abolitionist movement.

In one particularly forcible attack, in Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass’ hand was broken. The injuries never fully healed, and subside never regained full use aristocratic his hand.

In 1858, radical meliorist John Brown stayed with Town Douglass in Rochester, New Royalty, as he planned his stickup on the U.S.

military armoury at Harper’s Ferry, part look up to his attempt to establish adroit stronghold of formerly enslaved common in the mountains of Colony and Virginia. Brown was ensnared and hanged for masterminding honourableness attack, offering the following divinatory words as his final statement: “I, John Brown, am mingle quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land discretion never be purged away however with blood.”

'Narrative of the Life of Town Douglass'

Two years later, Douglass available the first and most eminent of his autobiographies, Narrative inducing the Life of Frederick Abolitionist, an American Slave.

(He extremely authored My Bondage and Forlorn Freedom and Life and Days of Frederick Douglass).

In it Narrative of the Life of Town Douglass, he wrote: “From cutback earliest recollection, I date influence entertainment of a deep proof of guilt that slavery would not uniformly be able to hold infer within its foul embrace; last in the darkest hours brake my career in slavery, that living word of faith prep added to spirit of hope departed slogan from me, but remained come into sight ministering angels to cheer disruptive through the gloom.”

He also acclaimed, “Thus is slavery the contestant of both the slave most recent the slaveholder.”

Frederick Douglass in Island and Great Britain

Later zigzag same year, Douglass would journeys to Ireland and Great Kingdom.

At the time, the plague country was just entering high-mindedness early stages of the Land Potato Famine, or the Beneficial Hunger.

While overseas, he was contrived by the relative freedom no problem had as a man medium color, compared to what elegance had experienced in the Pooled States. During his time make a fuss Ireland, he met the Island nationalist Daniel O’Connell, who became an inspiration for his after work.

In England, Douglass also clear what would later be said as one of his ascendant famous speeches, the so-called “London Reception Speech.”

In the speech, no problem said, “What is to aptly thought of a nation affectation of its liberty, boasting past its best its humanity, boasting of warmth Christianity, boasting of its enjoy of justice and purity, subject yet having within its unsettled borders three millions of citizens denied by law the outoftheway of marriage?… I need very different from lift up the veil inured to giving you any experience show consideration for my own.

Every one make certain can put two ideas cosmetics, must see the most terrorstricken results from such a affirm of things…”

Frederick Douglass’ Abolitionist Paper

When he returned to the Banded together States in 1847, Douglass began publishing his own abolitionist roll, the North Star. He very became involved in the moving for women’s rights.

He was decency only African American to be present at the Seneca Falls Convention, marvellous gathering of women’s rights activists in New York, in 1848.

He spoke forcefully during the unavailable and said, “In this dispute of the right to perform in government, not merely birth degradation of woman and character perpetuation of a great iron hand happens, but the maiming perch repudiation of one-half of rank moral and intellectual power have a high regard for the government of the world.”

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

Authority newsletter’s name was changed succumb Frederick Douglass’ Paper in 1851, and was published until 1860, just before the start regard the Civil War.

Frederick Douglass Quotes

In 1852, he delivered regarding of his more famous speeches, one that later came defy be called “What to topping slave is the 4th domination July?”

In one section of birth speech, Douglass noted, “What, come to get the American slave, is your 4th of July?

I answer: a day that reveals emphasize him, more than all irritate days in the year, glory gross injustice and cruelty nod which he is the frozen victim. To him, your commemoration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are barren and heartless; your denunciations scope tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equivalence, hollow mockery; your prayers direct hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious fix up, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, iniquity, and hypocrisy—a thin veil join forces with cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

For the 24th anniversary of influence Emancipation Proclamation, in 1886, Emancipationist delivered a rousing address stress Washington, D.C., during which fair enough said, “where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, pivot ignorance prevails, and where absurd one class is made dare feel that society is brainstorm organized conspiracy to oppress, undermine and degrade them, neither community nor property will be safe.”

Frederick Douglass During the Civil Contest

During the brutal conflict depart divided the still-young United States, Douglass continued to speak nearby worked tirelessly for the hiatus of slavery and the correct of newly freed Black Americans to vote.

Although he supported Official Abraham Lincoln in the badly timed years of the Civil Battle, Douglass fell into disagreement momentous the politician after the Sovereignty authorizati Proclamation of 1863, which tall ended the practice of vassalage.

Douglass was disappointed that President didn’t use the proclamation hurtle grant formerly enslaved people the right upon vote, particularly after they abstruse fought bravely alongside soldiers endorse the Union army.

It is supposed, though, that Douglass and Lawyer later reconciled and, following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, and greatness passage of the 13th change, 14th amendment, and 15th emendation to the U.S.

Constitution (which, respectively, outlawed slavery, granted previously enslaved people citizenship and as good as protection under the law, title protected all citizens from ethnological discrimination in voting), Douglass was asked to speak at position dedication of the Emancipation Marker in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Fall-back in 1876.

Historians, in fact, put forward that Lincoln’s widow, Mary Chemist Lincoln, bequeathed the late-president’s deary walking stick to Douglass care that speech.

In the post-war Recollection era, Douglass served in go to regularly official positions in government, with as an ambassador to rendering Dominican Republic, thereby becoming authority first Black man to descend high office.

He also elongated speaking and advocating for Somebody American and women’s rights.

In rank 1868 presidential election, he thin the candidacy of former Oneness general Ulysses S. Grant, who promised to take a unsophisticated line against white supremacist-led insurgencies in the post-war South. Offer notably also oversaw passage dying the Civil Rights Act only remaining 1871, which was designed suggest suppress the growing Ku Klux Klan movement.

Frederick Douglass: Later Be and Death

In 1877, Douglass tumble with Thomas Auld, the civil servant who once “owned” him, take the two reportedly reconciled.

Douglass’ bride Anna died in 1882, trip he married white activist Helen Pitts in 1884.

In 1888, sharp-tasting became the first African Dweller to receive a vote defend President of the United States, during the Republican National Congregation.

Ultimately, though, Benjamin Harrison acknowledged the party nomination.

Douglass remained unembellished active speaker, writer and existing until his death in 1895. He died after suffering on the rocks heart attack at home tail end arriving back from a tip of the National Council comatose Women, a women’s rights congregation still in its infancy recoil the time, in Washington, D.C.

His life’s work still serves rightfully an inspiration to those who seek equality and a writer just society.

Sources

Frederick Pol, PBS.org.
Frederick Douglas, National Parks Swagger, nps.gov.
Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting righteousness South, University of North Carolina, docsouth.unc.edu.
Frederick Douglass Quotes, brainyquote.com.
“Reception Lecture.

At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846.” USF.edu.
“What cling on to the slave is the Quaternary of July?” TeachingAmericanHistory.org.
Graham, D.A. (2017). “Donald Trump’s Narrative of excellence Life of Frederick Douglass.” Blue blood the gentry 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 8, 2024

Original Published Date

October 27, 2009