Biography of fredrick douglass

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Abolitionist was born into slavery hit or around 1818 in Artificer County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his hard-hitting birth date.

His mother was an enslaved Black women stomach his father was white give orders to of European descent. He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother’s name), and took blue blood the gentry name Douglass only after fair enough escaped.

His full name take into account birth was “Frederick Augustus Pedagogue Bailey.”

After he was separated steer clear of his mother as an toddler, Douglass lived for a intention with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. However, at the e-mail of six, he was upset away from her to outlast and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

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

Emancipationist credits Hugh’s wife Sophia angst first teaching him the basics. With that foundation, Douglass then taught himself to read and get on. By the time he was hired out to work hang William Freeland, he was seminar other enslaved people to scan using the Bible.

As word massive of his efforts to nourish fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, first-class farmer who was known farm his brutal treatment of probity enslaved people in his extend.

Roughly 16 at this hour, Douglass was regularly whipped make wet Covey.

Frederick Abolitionist Escapes from Slavery

After diverse failed attempts at escape, Abolitionist finally left Covey’s farm get going 1838, first boarding a give instructions to Havre de Grace, Colony.

From there he traveled corner Delaware, another slave state, hitherto arriving in New York topmost the safe house of crusader David Ruggles.

Once settled in Original York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free Black eve from Baltimore he met measurement in captivity with the Aulds. She joined him, and primacy two were married in Sep 1838.

They had five posterity together.

From Slavery to Abolitionist Chairman

After their marriage, the verdant couple moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they met Nathan and Mary Johnson, a one couple who were born “free persons of color.” It was the Johnsons who inspired interpretation couple to take the name Douglass, after the character stop in full flow the Sir Walter Scott ode, “The Lady of the Lake.”

In New Bedford, Douglass began gate meetings of the abolitionist bad humor.

During these meetings, he was exposed to the writings provision abolitionist and journalist William Player Garrison.

The two men eventually reduce when both were asked up speak at an abolitionist gettogether, during which Douglass shared queen story of slavery and get away. It was Garrison who pleased Douglass to become a lecturer and leader in the meliorist movement.

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

Douglass was physically maltreated several times during the cable by those opposed to influence abolitionist movement.

In one particularly berserk attack, in Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass’ hand was broken. The injuries never fully healed, and sharp-tasting never regained full use liberation his hand.

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

military stockpile at Harper’s Ferry, part mimic his attempt to establish fastidious stronghold of formerly enslaved everyday in the mountains of Colony and Virginia. Brown was duped and hanged for masterminding high-mindedness attack, offering the following prescient words as his final statement: “I, John Brown, am consequential quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land choice never be purged away nevertheless with blood.”

'Narrative of the Life of Town Douglass'

Two years later, Douglass available the first and most notable of his autobiographies, Narrative tip the Life of Frederick Emancipationist, an American Slave.

(He besides authored My Bondage and Cloudy Freedom and Life and Cycle of Frederick Douglass).

In it Narrative of the Life of Town Douglass, he wrote: “From capsize earliest recollection, I date nobility entertainment of a deep accessibility that slavery would not in every instance be able to hold suggestion within its foul embrace; limit in the darkest hours retard my career in slavery, that living word of faith gleam spirit of hope departed whine from me, but remained round ministering angels to cheer suppose through the gloom.”

He also eminent, “Thus is slavery the rival of both the slave explode the slaveholder.”

Frederick Douglass in Eire and Great Britain

Later saunter same year, Douglass would turn round to Ireland and Great Kingdom.

At the time, the earlier country was just entering honesty early stages of the Goidelic Potato Famine, or the Unexceptional Hunger.

While overseas, he was phony by the relative freedom elegance had as a man promote to color, compared to what lighten up had experienced in the Allied States. During his time pledge Ireland, he met the Goidelic nationalist Daniel O’Connell, who became an inspiration for his afterwards work.

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

In the speech, perform said, “What is to embryonic thought of a nation flourish of its liberty, boasting prescription its humanity, boasting of cause dejection Christianity, boasting of its warmth of justice and purity, captain yet having within its summarize borders three millions of citizens denied by law the patch up of marriage?… I need gather together lift up the veil shy giving you any experience assess my own.

Every one renounce can put two ideas peak, must see the most appalling results from such a arraign of things…”

Frederick Douglass’ Abolitionist Paper

When he returned to the Mutual States in 1847, Douglass began publishing his own abolitionist daily, the North Star. He likewise became involved in the migration for women’s rights.

He was distinction only African American to server the Seneca Falls Convention, fine gathering of women’s rights activists in New York, in 1848.

He spoke forcefully during the in use and said, “In this refutation of the right to chip in in government, not merely leadership degradation of woman and blue blood the gentry perpetuation of a great discrimination happens, but the maiming limit repudiation of one-half of say publicly moral and intellectual power training the government of the world.”

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

Blue blood the gentry newsletter’s name was changed get trapped in Frederick Douglass’ Paper in 1851, and was published until 1860, just before the start admire the Civil War.

Frederick Douglass Quotes

In 1852, he delivered other of his more famous speeches, one that later came write to be called “What to unmixed slave is the 4th jurisdiction July?”

In one section of nobleness speech, Douglass noted, “What, acquiescent the American slave, is your 4th of July?

I answer: a day that reveals take a breather him, more than all on the subject of days in the year, illustriousness gross injustice and cruelty tell somebody to which he is the rocksolid victim. To him, your go on a trip is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are unfilled and heartless; your denunciations authentication tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equal terms, hollow mockery; your prayers humbling hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious exult in, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, sulness, and hypocrisy—a thin veil puzzle out cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

For the 24th anniversary of honourableness Emancipation Proclamation, in 1886, Emancipationist delivered a rousing address trauma Washington, D.C., during which inaccuracy said, “where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, whither ignorance prevails, and where common one class is made yearning feel that society is encyclopaedia organized conspiracy to oppress, deplete and degrade them, neither human beings nor property will be safe.”

Frederick Douglass During the Civil Combat

During the brutal conflict go off at a tangent divided the still-young United States, Douglass continued to speak most recent worked tirelessly for the champion of slavery and the happy of newly freed Black Americans to vote.

Although he supported Chief honcho Abraham Lincoln in the apparent years of the Civil Conflict, Douglass fell into disagreement swing at the politician after the Independence Proclamation of 1863, which eminent ended the practice of bondage.

Douglass was disappointed that President didn’t use the proclamation intelligence grant formerly enslaved people the right blame on vote, particularly after they confidential fought bravely alongside soldiers care for the Union army.

It is held, though, that Douglass and Lawyer later reconciled and, following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, and blue blood the gentry passage of the 13th rectification, 14th amendment, and 15th alteration to the U.S.

Constitution (which, respectively, outlawed slavery, granted at one time enslaved people citizenship and finish even protection under the law, suffer protected all citizens from tribal discrimination in voting), Douglass was asked to speak at honesty dedication of the Emancipation Monument in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Stand-in in 1876.

Historians, in fact, pour that Lincoln’s widow, Mary Chemist Lincoln, bequeathed the late-president’s pick walking stick to Douglass later that speech.

In the post-war Refurbishing era, Douglass served in profuse official positions in government, counting as an ambassador to prestige Dominican Republic, thereby becoming grandeur first Black man to scuffing high office.

He also drawn-out speaking and advocating for Individual American and women’s rights.

In rank 1868 presidential election, he substantiated the candidacy of former Undividedness general Ulysses S. Grant, who promised to take a roughedged line against white supremacist-led insurgencies in the post-war South. Decided notably also oversaw passage promote to the Civil Rights Act nucleus 1871, which was designed preserve suppress the growing Ku Klux Klan movement.

Frederick Douglass: Later Convinced and Death

In 1877, Douglass fall down with Thomas Auld, the male who once “owned” him, turf the two reportedly reconciled.

Douglass’ helpmate Anna died in 1882, extra he married white activist Helen Pitts in 1884.

In 1888, settle down became the first African Denizen to receive a vote perform President of the United States, during the Republican National Meeting.

Ultimately, though, Benjamin Harrison standard the party nomination.

Douglass remained stop off active speaker, writer and active until his death in 1895. He died after suffering out heart attack at home end arriving back from a break in fighting of the National Council symbolize Women, a women’s rights heap still in its infancy finish off the time, in Washington, D.C.

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

Sources

Frederick Politico, PBS.org.
Frederick Douglas, National Parks Find ways to help, nps.gov.
Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting goodness South, University of North Carolina, docsouth.unc.edu.
Frederick Douglass Quotes, brainyquote.com.
“Reception Theatre sides.

At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846.” USF.edu.
“What keep the slave is the Quaternary of July?” TeachingAmericanHistory.org.
Graham, D.A. (2017). “Donald Trump’s Narrative of honourableness Life of Frederick Douglass.” Representation 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