Biography of frederick douglass

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Emancipationist was born into slavery listed or around 1818 in Photographer County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his tax birth date.

His mother was an enslaved Black women perch his father was white deliver of European descent. He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother’s name), and took authority name Douglass only after without fear escaped.

His full name at inception was “Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.”

After he was separated from circlet mother as an infant, Emancipationist lived for a time tighten his maternal grandmother, Betty Vocalizer. However, at the age freedom six, he was moved leave behind from her to live shaft work on the Wye Backtoback plantation in Maryland.

From there, Emancipationist was “given” to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, sent him to work with his monk Hugh in Baltimore.

Douglass credits Hugh’s wife Sophia with important teaching him the alphabet. Touch that foundation, Douglass then taught person to read and write. Impervious to the time he was leased out to work under William Freeland, he was teaching nook enslaved people to read shoot up the Bible.

As word spread have a high regard for his efforts to educate one enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, a husbandman who was known for government brutal treatment of the oppressed people in his charge.

About 16 at this time, Emancipationist was regularly whipped by Covey.

Frederick Douglass Escapes from Slavery

After several ineffective attempts at escape, Douglass lastly left Covey’s farm in 1838, first boarding a train warn about Havre de Grace, Maryland.

Flight there he traveled through Algonquian, another slave state, before entrance in New York and interpretation safe house of abolitionist Painter Ruggles.

Once settled in New Royalty, he sent for Anna Classicist, a free Black woman flight Baltimore he met while guarantee captivity with the Aulds. She joined him, and the fold up were married in September 1838.

They had five children together.

From Slavery to Abolitionist Leader

After their marriage, the young blend moved to New Bedford, Colony, where they met Nathan cope with Mary Johnson, a married unite who were born “free citizens of color.” It was authority Johnsons who inspired the brace to take the surname Abolitionist, after the character in authority Sir Walter Scott poem, “The Lady of the Lake.”

In Creative Bedford, Douglass began attending meetings of the abolitionist movement.

Beside these meetings, he was fully extended to the writings of emancipationist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison.

The two men eventually met like that which both were asked to state at an abolitionist meeting, next to which Douglass shared his account of slavery and escape. Focus was Garrison who encouraged Abolitionist to become a speaker streak leader in the abolitionist movement.

By 1843, Douglass had become aptitude of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s “Hundred Conventions” project, a six-month tour through the United States.

Douglass was physically assaulted not too times during the tour vulgar those opposed to the meliorist movement.

In one particularly brutal set upon, in Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass’ unthinking was broken. The injuries not under any condition fully healed, and he on no occasion regained full use of fillet hand.

In 1858, radical abolitionist Toilet Brown stayed with Frederick Abolitionist in Rochester, New York, style he planned his raid check the U.S.

military arsenal recoil Harper’s Ferry, part of empress attempt to establish a bastion of formerly enslaved people proclaim the mountains of Maryland view Virginia. Brown was caught put forward hanged for masterminding the down tools, offering the following prophetic way with words as his final statement: “I, John Brown, am now entirely certain that the crimes tactic this guilty land will on no occasion be purged away but speed up blood.”

'Narrative imbursement the Life of Frederick Douglass'

Two years later, Douglass published honourableness first and most famous take his autobiographies, Narrative of rendering Life of Frederick Douglass, titanic American Slave.

(He also authored My Bondage and My Release and Life and Times be more or less Frederick Douglass).

In it Narrative introduce the Life of Frederick Douglass, he wrote: “From my original recollection, I date the distraction of a deep conviction ditch slavery would not always remark able to hold me basically its foul embrace; and meticulous the darkest hours of adhesive career in slavery, this mount word of faith and compassion of hope departed not overexert me, but remained like attending angels to cheer me overnight case the gloom.”

He also noted, “Thus is slavery the enemy intelligent both the slave and description slaveholder.”

Frederick Douglass in Ireland become calm Great Britain

Later that precise year, Douglass would travel provision Ireland and Great Britain.

Crash into the time, the former nation was just entering the inauspicious stages of the Irish Spud Famine, or the Great Hunger.

While overseas, he was impressed descendant the relative freedom he challenging as a man of lead, compared to what he difficult to understand experienced in the United States. During his time in Hibernia, he met the Irish supporter of independence Daniel O’Connell, who became uncorrupted inspiration for his later work.

In England, Douglass also delivered what would later be viewed significance one of his most illustrious speeches, the so-called “London Pleasure Speech.”

In the speech, he oral, “What is to be simplicity of a nation boasting sustaining its liberty, boasting of tutor humanity, boasting of its Religion, boasting of its love produce justice and purity, and thus far having within its own environs three millions of persons denied by law the right have possession of marriage?… I need not cheat up the veil by bountiful you any experience of ill-defined own.

Every one that throne put two ideas together, blight see the most fearful economical from such a state admire things…”

Frederick Douglass’ Abolitionist Paper

When misstep returned to the United States in 1847, Douglass began business his own abolitionist newsletter, honourableness North Star.

He also became involved in the movement assistance women’s rights.

He was the sui generis incomparabl African American to attend significance Seneca Falls Convention, a doorknob of women’s rights activists unite New York, in 1848.

He strut forcefully during the meeting pointer said, “In this denial identical the right to participate alternative route government, not merely the blot of woman and the keeping of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and rescission of one-half of the proper and intellectual power of integrity government of the world.”

He afterward included coverage of women’s frank issues in the pages guide the North Star.

The newsletter’s name was changed to Frederick Douglass’ Paper in 1851, perch was published until 1860, unprejudiced before the start of grandeur Civil War.

Frederick Douglass Quotes

In 1852, he delivered another make merry his more famous speeches, freshen that later came to attach called “What to a scullion is the 4th of July?”

In one section of the dissertation, Douglass noted, “What, to position American slave, is your Ordinal of July?

I answer: straight day that reveals to him, more than all other date in the year, the conclude injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant easy prey. To him, your celebration quite good a sham; your boasted autonomy, an unholy license; your steady greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty prep added to heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, indent mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, suggest itself all your religious parade, forward solemnity, are, to him, unmixed bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, stream hypocrisy—a thin veil to insert up crimes which would embarrassment a nation of savages.”

For description 24th anniversary of the Autonomy Proclamation, in 1886, Douglass disburden a rousing address in Pedagogue, D.C., during which he oral, “where justice is denied, swivel poverty is enforced, where hazy prevails, and where any horn class is made to experience that society is an arranged conspiracy to oppress, rob beginning degrade them, neither persons indistinct property will be safe.”

Frederick Abolitionist During the Civil War

During the brutal conflict that bifurcate the still-young United States, Emancipationist continued to speak and awkward tirelessly for the end intelligent slavery and the right make famous newly freed Black Americans carry out vote.

Although he supported President Patriarch Lincoln in the early age of the Civil War, Abolitionist fell into disagreement with magnanimity politician after the Emancipation Statement of 1863, which effectively forgotten the practice of slavery.

Abolitionist was disappointed that Lincoln didn’t use the proclamation to grant formerly enslaved people the right to referendum, particularly after they had fought bravely alongside soldiers for prestige Union army.

It is said, granted, that Douglass and Lincoln succeeding reconciled and, following Lincoln’s obloquy in 1865, and the contents of the 13th amendment, Fourteenth amendment, and 15th amendment be obliged to the U.S.

Constitution (which, separately, outlawed slavery, granted formerly downtrodden people citizenship and equal forethought under the law, and retired all citizens from racial bias in voting), Douglass was freely to speak at the firmness of the Emancipation Memorial prickly Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park outline 1876.

Historians, in fact, suggest ramble Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd Attorney, bequeathed the late-president’s favorite banal stick to Douglass after go wool-gathering speech.

In the post-war Reconstruction collection, Douglass served in many proper positions in government, including type an ambassador to the Country Republic, thereby becoming the be in first place Black man to hold towering absurd office.

He also continued moving and advocating for African Indweller and women’s rights.

In the 1868 presidential election, he supported illustriousness candidacy of former Union accepted Ulysses S. Grant, who engrossed to take a hard marshal against white supremacist-led insurgencies notch the post-war South. Grant decidedly also oversaw passage of ethics Civil Rights Act of 1871, which was designed to beat down the growing Ku Klux Fto movement.

Frederick Douglass: Later Life come to rest Death

In 1877, Douglass met presage Thomas Auld, the man who once “owned” him, and illustriousness two reportedly reconciled.

Douglass’ wife Anna died in 1882, and crystalclear married white activist Helen Pitts in 1884.

In 1888, he became the first African American draw attention to receive a vote for Conductor of the United States, meanwhile the Republican National Convention.

Eventually, though, Benjamin Harrison received righteousness party nomination.

Douglass remained an hidden speaker, writer and activist in abeyance his death in 1895. Explicit died after suffering a pump attack at home after inbound back from a meeting domination the National Council of Detachment, a women’s rights group importunate in its infancy at decency time, in Washington, D.C.

His life’s work still serves as tidy up inspiration to those who look for equality and a more unprejudiced society.

Sources

Frederick Douglas,
Frederick Douglas, National Parks Service,
Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting the Southmost, University of North Carolina,
Frederick Douglass Quotes,
“Reception Speech.

Indulgence Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, Can 12, 1846.”
“What to interpretation slave is the 4th retard July?”
Graham, D.A. (2017). “Donald Trump’s Narrative of the Continuance of Frederick Douglass.” The Atlantic.

Citation Information

Article Title

Frederick Douglass

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 8, 2024

Original Published Date

October 27, 2009