Frederick Douglass

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• Born: February 1818
• Birthplace: Near Easton, Maryland
• Died: 20 February 1895 (heart attack)
• Best Known As: Former slave turned anti-slavery leader

Name at birth: Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey

Frederick Douglass was a former slave who became one of the great American anti-slavery leaders of the 1800s. Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland but in 1838, at age 20, he escaped to freedom in New York. A few years later he went to work for abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, travelling and speaking on behalf of Garrison's paper The Liberator. Douglass published his memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in 1845. Eloquent, smart and determined, Douglass gained fame as a speaker, began his own anti-slavery publications and became a 'conductor' on the Underground Railroad. In later years he became a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln and helped persuade Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He also was a strong supporter of women's rights. He is often described as the founder of the American civil rights movement.

After his escape from slavery, Douglass chose his new last name from a character in the Sir Walter Scott book The Lady of the Lake... Douglass married Anna Murray, a free black woman, shortly after his escape from slavery in 1838. They had four children: Rosetta (b. 1839), Lewis (b. 1840), Frederick Jr. (b. 1842) and Charles (b. 1844). Anna Douglass died in 1882, and two years later Douglass married Helen Pitts, a white woman who had been his secretary.

Douglass, Frederick (1818–1895), orator, journalist, editor, and autobiographer. Frederick Douglass, author of the most influential African American text of his era, rose through the ranks of the antislavery movement in the 1840s and 1850s to become the most electrifying speaker and commanding writer produced by black America in the nineteenth century. From the outbreak of the Civil War until his death, Douglass was generally recognized as the premier African American leader and spokesman for his people. Douglass's writing was devoted primarily to the creation of a heroic image of himself that would inspire in African Americans the belief that color need not be a permanent bar to their achievement of the American dream, while reminding whites of their obligation as Americans to support free and equal access to that dream for Americans of all races.

The man who became internationally famous as Frederick Douglass was born on Maryland's Eastern Shore in February 1818, the son of Harriet Bailey, a slave, and an unknown white man. Although he recalls witnessing as a child the bloody whipping of his Aunt Hester by his master, Douglass says in his autobiographies that his early experience of slavery was characterized less by overt cruelty than by deprivations of food, clothing, and emotional contact with his mother and grandmother. Sent to Baltimore in 1826 by his master's son-in-law, Thomas Auld, Frederick spent five years as a servant in the home of Thomas Auld's brother, Hugh. At first, Hugh's wife Sophia treated the slave boy with unusual kindness, giving reading lessons to Frederick until her husband forbade them. Rather than accept Hugh Auld's dictates, Frederick took his first rebellious steps toward freedom by teaching himself to read and write.

In 1833 a quarrel between the Auld brothers brought Frederick back to his home in Saint Michaels, Maryland. Tensions between the recalcitrant black youth and his owner convinced Thomas Auld to hire Frederick out as a farm worker under the supervision of Edward Covey, a local slave breaker. After six months of unstinting labor, merciless whippings, and repeated humiliations, the desperate sixteen-year-old slave fought back, resisting one of Covey's attempted beatings and intimidating his tormentor sufficiently to prevent future attacks. Douglass's dramatic account of his struggle with Covey would become the heroic turning point of his future autobiographies and one of the most celebrated scenes in all of antebellum African American literature.

In the spring of 1836, after a failed attempt to escape from slavery, Frederick was sent back to Baltimore to learn the caulking trade. With the aid of his future spouse, Anna Murray, and masquerading as a free black merchant sailor, he boarded a northbound train out of Baltimore on 3 September 1838 and arrived in New York City the next day. Before a month had passed Frederick and Anna were reunited, married, and living in New Bedford, Connecticut, as Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Douglass, the new last name recommended by a friend in New Bedford's thriving African American community. Less than three years later Douglass joined the radical Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement as a full-time lecturer.

After years of honing his rhetorical skills on the antislavery platform, Douglass put his life's story into print in 1845. The result, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, sold more than thirty thousand copies in the first five years of its existence. After a triumphal twenty-one-month lecture tour in England, Ireland, and Scotland, Douglass returned to the United States in the spring of 1847, resolved, against the advice of many of his Garrisonian associates, to launch his own newspaper, the North Star. Authoring most of the articles and editorials himself, Douglass kept the North Star and its successors, Frederick Douglass's Paper and Frederick Douglass's Monthly, in print from 1847 to 1863. One of the literary highlights of the newspaper was a novella, “The Heroic Slave,” which Douglass wrote in March 1853. Based on an actual slave mutiny, “The Heroic Slave” is regarded as the first work of long fiction in African American literature.

A rupture of the close relationship between Douglass and Garrison occasioned a period of reflection and reassessment that culminated in Douglass's second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Although he had befriended and advised JohnBrown in the late 1850s, Douglass declined Brown's invitation to participate in the Harpers Ferry raid but was forced to flee his Rochester, New York, home for Canada in October 1859 after he was publicly linked to Brown. Applauding the election of Abraham Lincoln and welcoming the Civil War as a final means of ending slavery, Douglass lobbied the new president in favor of African American recruitment for the Union Army. When the war ended, Douglass pleaded with President Andrew Johnson for a national voting rights act that would give African Americans the franchise in all the states. Douglass's loyalty to the Republican Party, whose candidates he supported throughout his later years, won him appointment to the highest political offices that any African American from the North had ever won: federal marshal and recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia, president of the Freedman's Bureau Bank, consul to Haiti, and chargé d’affaires for the Dominican Republic.

The income Douglass earned from these positions, coupled with the fees he received for his popular lectures, most notably one entitled “Self-Made Men,” and his investments in real estate, allowed Douglass and his family to live in comfort in Uniontown, just outside Washington, D.C., during the last two decades of his life. His final memoir, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, first published in 1881 and expanded in 1892, did not excite the admiration of reviewers or sell widely, as had his first two autobiographies. But the Life and Times maintained Douglass's conviction that his had been a “life of victory, if not complete, at least assured.” Life and Times shows Douglass dedicated to the ideal of building a racially integrated America in which skin color would cease to determine an individual's social value and economic options. In the last months of his life Douglass decried the increasing incidence of lynching in the South and disputed the notion that by disenfranchising the African American man a more peaceful social climate would prevail throughout the nation. Yet Douglass never forsook his long-standing belief that the U.S. Constitution, if strictly and equally enforced, remained the best safeguard for African American civil and human rights.

In the history of African American literature, Douglass's importance and influence are virtually immeasurable. His Narrative and My Bondage and My Freedom gave the world the most compelling and sophisticated renditions of an African American selfhood seen in literature up to that time. Douglass's artistry invested this model of selfhood with a moral and political authority that subsequent aspirants to the role of African American culture hero-from the conservative Booker T. Washington to the radical W. E. B. Du Bois—would seek to appropriate for their own autobiographical self-portraits. In twentieth-century African American literature, from Paul Laurence Dunbar's brooding poetic tribute “Douglass” (1903) to the idealistic characterization of Ned Douglass in Ernest J. Gaines's novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), the criterion for an African American male heroism that uses words as a weapon in the struggle for self- and communal liberation remains the example set by Frederick Douglass.

Bibliography

• Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 1948.
• Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 1950–1975.
• John W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers, 1979-.
• Dickson J. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 1980.
• Waldo E. Martin, The Mind of Frederick Douglass, 1984.
• William L. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865, 1986.
• William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 1990.
• Eric Sundquist, ed., Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, 1990.
• William L. Andrews, ed., Critical Essays on Frederick Douglass, 1991.
• John Ernest, Resistance and Reformation in Nineteenth-Century African-American Literature, 1995.
• Robert S. Levine, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity, 1997

William L. Andrews

(click to enlarge)
Frederick Douglass. (credit: Courtesy of the Holt-Messer Collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

(born February 1818?, Tuckahoe, Md., U.S. — died Feb. 20, 1895, Washington, D.C.) U.S. abolitionist. The son of a slave mother and a white father, he was sent to work as a house servant in Baltimore, where he learned to read. At age 16 he was returned to the plantation; later he was hired out as a ship caulker. In 1838 he fled to New York City and then to New Bedford, Mass., changing his name to elude slave hunters. His eloquence at an 1841 antislavery convention propelled him into a new career as an agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, in which capacity he endured frequent insults and violent personal attacks. In 1845 he wrote his autobiography, now regarded as a classic. To avoid recapture by his owner, whose name he had given in the narrative, he embarked on a speaking tour of England and Ireland (1845 – 47), returning with enough money to buy his freedom and to start an antislavery newspaper North Star, which he published until 1860 in Rochester, N.Y. In 1851 he split with the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and allied himself with moderates led by James Birney. In the American Civil War he was a consultant to Pres. Abraham Lincoln. During Reconstruction he fought for full civil rights for freedmen and supported women's rights. He served in government posts in Washington, D.C. (1877 – 86), and as U.S. minister to Haiti (1889 – 91).

For more information on Frederick Douglass, visit Britannica.com.

Born in bondage on the eastern shore of Maryland, Douglass worked for several different slaveholders in both eastern Maryland and Baltimore between 1818 and 1838. During his youth, Douglass became proficiently literate by reading the Bible and classic orations and listening to the sermons of antislavery black preachers and Quakers. These experiences later contributed to his unyielding abolitionism and fierce egalitarianism. In 1838, while a ship caulker's apprentice, Douglass acquired free seaman papers and escaped to New York City. He then moved to Massachusetts and became involved in antislavery activism, under the tutelage of William Lloyd Garrison. Eventually rejecting the apolitical nature of Garrisonian abolitionism, Douglass moved to Rochester, New York, and founded his own abolition journal, The North Star. Between 1847 and 1863, he edited that journal and subsequently the Douglass Monthly.

A tireless abolitionist, Douglass campaigned for the Liberty, Free Soil, and Republican parties in the 1840s and 1850s, although he opposed a nonextension, gradualist approach to slavery. His activist approach to abolition contributed to his hawkish position once the slaveholding states seceded in 1860 and 1861. Douglass stressed the importance of black loyalty during the Civil War and actively recruited Northern blacks—including his two sons, who volunteered for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry—for the Union effort. His egalitarianism, however, led to his criticism of the discriminatory pay and promotion practices of the Federal army. Nevertheless, Douglass's investment in assimilation through self‐help and racial uplift undergirded his conviction that the rights of citizenship would accompany black military participation—a rationale that, according to one of his intellectual biographers, anticipated W. E. B. Du Bois's “Close Ranks” argument concerning World War I and the “Double Victory” campaign of the black press during World War II.

[See also Colored Troops, U.S.]

Bibliography

• David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass' Civil War, 1989.
• William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 1991

The foremost African American abolitionist in antebellum America, Frederick Douglass (ca. 1817-1895) was the first African American leader of national stature in United States history.

Frederick Douglass was born, as can best be determined, in February 1817 (he took the 14th as his birthday) on the eastern shore of Maryland. His mother, from whom he was separated at an early age, was a slave named Harriet Bailey. She named her son Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; he never knew or saw his father. (Frederick adopted the name Douglass much later.) Douglass's childhood, though he judged it in his autobiography as being no more cruel than that of scores of others caught in similar conditions, appears to have been extraordinarily deprived of personal warmth. The lack of familial attachments, hard work, and sights of incredible inhumanity fill the text of his early remembrances of the main plantation of Col. Edward Lloyd. In 1825 his masters decided to send him to Baltimore to live with Hugh Auld.

Mrs. Auld, Douglass's new mistress and a Northerner unacquainted with the disciplinary techniques Southern slaveholders used to preserve docility in their slaves, treated young Douglass well. She taught him the rudiments of reading and writing until her husband stopped her. With this basic background he began his self-education.

Escape to Freedom

After numerous ownership disputes and after attempting to escape from a professional slave breaker, Douglass was put to work in the Baltimore shipyards. There in 1838 he borrowed a African American sailor's protection papers and by impersonating him escaped to New York. He adopted the name Douglass and married a free African American woman from the South. They settled in New Bedford, Mass., where several of their children were born.

Douglass quickly became involved in the antislavery movement, which was gaining impetus in the North. In 1841, at an abolitionist meeting in Nantucket, Mass., he delivered a moving speech about his experiences as a slave and was immediately hired as a lecturer by the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. By all accounts he was a forceful and even eloquent speaker. His self-taught prose and manner of speaking so inspired some Harvard students that they persuaded him to write his autobiography. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published in 1845. (Ten years later an enlarged autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, appeared. His third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, was published in 1881 and enlarged in 1892.) The 1845 publication, of course, meant exile for Douglass, a fugitive slave.

Fearing capture, Douglass fled to Britain, staying from 1845 to 1847 to speak on behalf of abolition and to earn enough money to purchase his freedom when he returned to America. Upon his return Douglass settled in Rochester, N.Y., and started publishing his newspaper, North Star (which continued to be published under various names until 1863).

In 1858, as a consequence of his fame and as unofficial spokesman for African Americans, Douglass was sought out by John Brown as a recruit for his planned attack on the Harpers Ferry arsenal. But Douglass could see no benefit from what he considered a futile plan and refused to lend his support.

Civil War and Reconstruction

The Civil War, beginning in 1861, raised several issues, not the least of which was what role the black man would play in his own liberation - since one of the main objectives of the war was emancipation of the slaves. Douglass kept this issue alive. In 1863, as a result of his continued insistence (as well as of political and military expediency), President Abraham Lincoln asked him to recruit African American soldiers for the Union Army. As the war proceeded, Douglass had two meetings with Lincoln to discuss the use and treatment of African American soldiers by the Union forces. In consequence, the role of African American soldiers was upgraded each time and their military effectiveness thereby increased.

The Reconstruction period laid serious responsibilities on Douglass. Politicians differed on the question of race and its corresponding problems, and as legislative battles were waged to establish the constitutional integrity of the slaves' emancipation, Douglass was the one African American with stature enough to make suggestions.

In 1870 Douglass and his sons began publishing the New National Era newspaper in Washington, D.C. In 1877 he was appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes to the post of U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia. From this time until approximately 2 years before his death Douglass held a succession of offices, including that of recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia and minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti, as well as chargé d'affaires to Santo Domingo. He resigned his assignments in Haiti and Santo Domingo when he discovered that American businessmen were taking advantage of his position in their dealings with the Haitian government. He died in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 20, 1895.

Further Reading

Douglass's writings can be found in The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, edited by Philip S. Foner (4 vols., 1950-1955). Frederick Douglass, edited by Benjamin Quarles (1968), contains excerpts from Douglass's writings, portrayals of him by his contemporaries, and appraisals by later historians.

Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (1948), is a well-written, scholarly biography. See also Philip S. Foner, Frederick Douglass: A Biography (1964), and Arna Bontemps, Free at Last: The Life of Frederick Douglass (1971). There is a biographical sketch of Douglass in William J. Simmons, Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising (1887; repr. 1968). Works that discuss Douglass at length are John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes (1947; 3d ed. 1967); Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830-1860 (1960); and Martin Duberman, ed., The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists (1965).

(1818-1895), abolitionist, writer, and orator. Douglass was the most important black American leader of the nineteenth century. Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he was the son of a slave woman and, probably, her white master. Upon his escape from slavery at age twenty, he adopted the name of the hero of Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake. Douglass immortalized his years as a slave in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). This and two subsequent autobiographies, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), mark his greatest contributions to American culture. Written as antislavery propaganda and personal revelation, they are regarded as the finest examples of the slave narrative tradition and as classics of American autobiography.

Douglass's life as a reformer ranged from his abolitionist activities in the early 1840s to his attacks on Jim Crow and lynching in the 1890s. For sixteen years he edited an influential black newspaper and achieved international fame as an orator and writer of great persuasive power. In thousands of speeches and editorials he levied an irresistible indictment against slavery and racism, provided an indomitable voice of hope for his people, embraced antislavery politics, and preached his own brand of American ideals. In the 1850s he broke with the strictly moralist brand of abolitionism led by William Lloyd Garrison; he supported the early women's rights movement; and he gave direct assistance to John Brown's conspiracy that led to the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.

Rhetorically, Douglass was a master of irony, as illustrated by his famous Fourth of July speech in 1852: "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn," he declared. Then he accused his unsuspecting audience in Rochester, New York, of mockery for inviting him to speak and quoted Psalm 137, where the children of Israel are forced to sit down "by the rivers of Babylon," there to "sing the Lord's song in a strange land." For the ways that race have caused the deepest contradictions in American history, few better sources of insight exist than Douglass's speeches. Moreover, for understanding prejudice, there are few better starting points than his timeless definition of racism as a "diseased imagination."

Douglass welcomed the Civil War in 1861 as a moral crusade against slavery. During the war he labored as a propagandist of the Union cause and emancipation, a recruiter of black troops, and (on two occasions) an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln. He viewed the Union victory as an apocalyptic rebirth of America as a nation rooted in a rewritten Constitution and the ideal of racial equality. Some of his hopes were dashed during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, but he continued to travel widely and lecture on racial issues, national politics, and women's rights. In the 1870s Douglass moved to Washington, D.C., where he edited a newspaper and became president of the ill-fated Freedman's Bank. As a stalwart Republican, Douglass was appointed marshal (1877-1881) and recorder of deeds (1881-1886) for the District of Columbia, and chargé d'affaires for Santo Domingo and minister to Haiti (1889-1891).

Brilliant, heroic, and complex, Douglass became a symbol of his age and a unique voice for humanism and social justice. His life and thought will always speak profoundly to the meaning of being black in America, as well as the human calling to resist oppression. Douglass died in 1895 after years of trying to preserve a black abolitionist's meaning and memory of the great events he had witnessed and helped to shape.

Bibliography:

David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1989); Waldo E. Martin, The Mind of Frederick Douglass (1984).

Author:

David W. Blight

See also Abolitionist Movement; Free Negroes, 1619-1860; Lynching; Reconstruction; Segregation; Slavery; Suffrage.

An abolitionist (see abolitionism) of the nineteenth century. Douglass, an escaped slave, was an especially captivating speaker. His autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, tells of the violence he suffered because of his beliefs. Late in his life, he attacked Jim Crow laws.

A very influential African American leader of the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass used his exceptional skills as an orator, writer, journalist, and politician to fight for the abolition of slavery and an end to racial discrimination. He helped shape the climate of public opinion that led to the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which were created in large measure to protect, respectively, the freedom, citizenship, and voting rights of ex-slaves. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) is a classic account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery for slave and slaveholder alike.

Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in 1817 or 1818, on a Talbot County, Maryland, plantation. His mother was a black slave and his father most likely her white owner. Douglass was separated from his mother at an early age, and at seven years was sent to Baltimore to work for a family. He later regarded this change from the plantation to the city as a great stroke of fortune because in Baltimore, he was able to begin to educate himself. His master's wife taught him the alphabet, and Douglass, under the tutelage of young boys on the streets and docks, proceeded to teach himself how to read and write. Even when he was very young, his limited reading convinced him of the evils of slavery and the need to seek his freedom.

But Douglass continued to suffer under slavery. At times during the 1830s, he was sent back to the plantation to endure its scourges, including beatings and whippings. He briefly attempted to teach fellow slaves to read and write, but his efforts were quickly put to an end by whites.

In 1838, living again in Baltimore and caulking ships, Douglass escaped north and won his freedom. He married a free African American woman, Anna Murray, and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Now a fugitive slave, he changed his name to Frederick Douglass in order to avoid capture. Douglass quickly became a respected member of the African American community in New Bedford. However, he was disappointed to find that racism was prevalent in the North as well as in the South.

Shortly after his arrival in the North, Douglass became an avid reader of the Liberator, a newspaper published by a leading abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. He became involved in abolitionist campaigns and soon earned a reputation as an eloquent speaker for the cause. In 1841, he met Garrison and was recruited to speak for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Throughout his life, he would travel all over the United States on speaking engagements, becoming a famous and sought-after orator.

In part to refute those who did not believe that someone as eloquent as he had once been a slave, Douglass published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. The book became a best-seller and made Douglass into a celebrity. It also made known his status as a fugitive slave, and he was forced to flee to the British Isles for safety in 1845. During his travels, he was greatly impressed by the relative lack of racism in Ireland, England, and Scotland. English friends purchased his legal freedom in 1846, paying his old master $711.66.

Upon his return to the States in 1847, Douglass settled in Rochester, New York, and founded his own abolitionist newspaper, the North Star. In its pages, he published African American writers and focused on African American achievements. He also wrote highly influential editorials for the paper. Douglass published a series of newspapers, including Frederick Douglass' Weekly, until 1863.

Douglass continued to lecture widely and became sympathetic to other reformist causes of the day, including the temperance, peace, and feminist movements. By the 1850s and 1860s, he increasingly came to doubt that slavery could be ended by peaceful means. He became friends with the militant abolitionist John Brown, although he did not join Brown in his ill-fated 1859 military campaign against slavery at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

During the Civil War (1861-65), Douglass fought hard to make the abolition of slavery a Union goal, and he also lobbied for the enlistment of African Americans into the Union armed forces. In public speeches and even in private meetings with President Abraham Lincoln, Douglass made his case forcefully. Aided by rising sentiment against slavery in the North, both of Douglass's goals became a reality. Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation sent a strong signal that the North would seek the abolition of slavery in the South, and in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution formally ended the institution of slavery in the United States. By the end of the war, nearly two hundred thousand African Americans had enlisted in the Union armed forces. Douglass personally helped enlist men for the Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Colored Regiments and served as a leading advocate for the equal treatment of African Americans in the military.

After the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified in 1865, some abolitionists pronounced their work over. Douglass argued that much more remained to be done, and he continued to struggle for the rights of African Americans. He called for voting rights for African Americans, the repeal of racially discriminatory laws, and the redistribution of land in the South. Although disappointed that land redistribution was never achieved, he was encouraged by the passage of the Fourteenth (1868) and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments, which, respectively, protected against the infringement of constitutional rights by the states and established the right of all citizens to vote.

Although these constitutional amendments appeared to guarantee the civil rights of African Americans, the actual laws and practices of states and localities continued to discriminate against blacks. African Americans were also harassed by violence from private groups. The Ku Klux Klan waged a campaign of terror against African Americans who sought to exercise their civil rights, and white lynch mobs killed hundreds of black men each year. Douglass spoke out against these forms of terrorism and called for federal laws against lynching.

Douglass was a loyal spokesman for the Republican party and vigorously campaigned for its candidates. His support helped gain hundreds of thousands of black votes for Republicans. As a result of such work, several Republican presidents rewarded him with political offices. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant named him assistant secretary to the Santo Domingo Commission. Later, Republican presidents appointed him marshal (1877-81) and recorder of deeds (1881-86) for the District of Columbia. In 1888, President Benjamin Harrison appointed Douglass minister resident and consul general to Haiti, the first free black republic in the Western Hemisphere. He resigned the position in 1891, over policy differences with the Harrison administration. Although such positions did not afford Douglass great political power in themselves, they provided a comfortable living as well as some recognition for his significant contributions to the public life of the country.

Douglass was also the first African American ever nominated for the vice presidency. He declined the nomination, which came from the little known Equal Rights party in 1872.

To the end of his life, Douglass continued to lecture and write for the cause of freedom. He died on February 20, 1895, in Washington, D.C., after attending a meeting of the National Council of Women.

Quotes:

"A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me."

"One and God make a majority."

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

"We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future."

"Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done."

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

See more famous quotes by Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass, c.1879.
Born	c. 1818 Talbot County, Maryland, United States
Died	February 20, 1895 (aged 77) Washington, D.C., United States
Occupation	Abolitionist, author, editor, diplomat
Spouse(s)	Anna Murray (c.1839) Helen Pitts (1884)
Children	Charles Remond Douglass Rosetta Douglass Lewis Henry Douglass Frederick Douglass Jr. Annie Douglass (died at 10)
Parents	Harriet Bailey and perhaps Aaron Anthony
Signature

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, (born circa 1818  – February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. Called "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia", Douglass is one of the most prominent figures in African American and United States history.

He was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant. He was fond of saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

Contents 1 Life as a slave 2 From slavery to freedom 3 Abolitionist activities 3.1 Autobiography 3.2 Travels to Ireland and Great Britain 4 Civil War years 4.1 Before the Civil War 4.2 Fight for emancipation 4.3 Lincoln's death 5 Reconstruction era 6 Family life 6.1 Death 7 Establishing date of birth 8 Works 8.1 Writings 8.2 Speeches 9 Cultural representation 10 See also 11 Sources 12 References 13 Further reading 14 External links

Life as a slave

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Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, who later became known as Frederick Douglass, was born a slave in Talbot County, Maryland, between Hillsboro and Cordova, in a shack east of Tappers Corner and west of Tuckahoe Creek.^[1] He was separated from his mother, Harriet Bailey, when he was still an infant. She died when Douglass was about seven and Douglass lived with his maternal grandmother Betty Bailey. His mother's ancestors likely had Native American heritage.

The identity of his father is obscure. Douglass originally stated that he was told his father was a white man, perhaps his owner Aaron Anthony. Later he said he knew nothing of his father's identity. At age seven, Douglass was separated from his grandmother and moved to the Wye House plantation, where Anthony worked as overseer.^[2] When Anthony died, Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld. She sent Douglass to serve Thomas' brother Hugh Auld in Baltimore.

When Douglass was about twelve, Hugh Auld's wife Sophia started teaching him the alphabet. She was breaking the law against teaching slaves to read. When Hugh Auld discovered this, he strongly disapproved, saying that if a slave learned to read, he would become dissatisfied with his condition and desire freedom. Douglass later referred to this statement as the "first decidedly antislavery lecture" he had ever heard.^[3] As detailed in his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), Douglass succeeded in learning to read from white children in the neighborhood and by observing the writings of men with whom he worked.

As Douglass learned and began to read newspapers, political materials, and books of every description, he was exposed to a new realm of thought that led him to question and then condemn the institution of slavery. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator, which he discovered at about age twelve, with clarifying and defining his views on freedom and human rights.

When Douglass was hired out to a Mr. Freeman, he taught other slaves on the plantation how to read the New Testament at a weekly Sabbath school. As word spread, the interest among slaves in learning to read was so great that in any week more than 40 slaves would attend lessons. For about six months, their study went relatively unnoticed. While Freeman was complacent about their activities, other plantation owners became incensed that their slaves were being educated. One Sunday they burst in on the gathering, armed with clubs and stones to disperse the congregation permanently.

In 1833, Thomas Auld took Douglass back from Hugh after a dispute ("[A]s a means of punishing Hugh," Douglass wrote). Dissatisfied with Douglass, Thomas Auld then sent him to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker." There Douglass was whipped regularly. The sixteen-year-old Douglass was indeed nearly broken psychologically by his ordeal under Covey, but he finally rebelled against the beatings and fought back. After losing a confrontation with Douglass, Covey never tried to beat him again.

In 1837, Douglass met Anna Murray, a free black in Baltimore. They married soon after he obtained his freedom.

From slavery to freedom

Douglass first unsuccessfully tried to escape from Mr. Freeman, who had hired him out from his owner Colonel Lloyd. In 1836, he tried to escape from his new owner Covey, but failed again.

On September 3, 1838, Douglass successfully escaped by boarding a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. He was dressed in a sailor's uniform and carried identification papers provided by a free black seaman. He crossed the Susquehanna River by ferry at Havre de Grace, then continued by train to Wilmington, Delaware. From there he went by steamboat to "Quaker City" — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — and eventually reached New York; the whole journey took less than 24 hours.

Abolitionist activities

The home and meetinghouse of the Johnsons, where Douglass lived in New Bedford

Douglass continued traveling up to Massachusetts. There he joined various organizations in New Bedford, including a black church, and regularly attended abolitionist meetings. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly journal The Liberator, and in 1841 heard Garrison speak at a meeting of the Bristol Anti-Slavery Society. At one of these meetings, Douglass was unexpectedly asked to speak.

After he told his story, he was encouraged to become an anti-slavery lecturer. Douglass was inspired by Garrison and later stated that "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments [of the hatred of slavery] as did those of William Lloyd Garrison." Garrison was likewise impressed with Douglass and wrote of him in The Liberator. Several days later, Douglass delivered his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket. Then 23 years old, Douglass said later that his legs were shaking but he conquered his nervousness and gave an eloquent speech about his rough life as a slave.

In 1843, Douglass participated in the American Anti-Slavery Society's Hundred Conventions project, a six-month tour of meeting halls throughout the Eastern and Midwestern United States. He participated in the Seneca Falls Convention, the birthplace of the American feminist movement, and signed its Declaration of Sentiments.

Autobiography

Frederick Douglass as a young man

Douglass' best-known work is his first autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, published in 1845. At the time, some skeptics attacked the book and questioned whether a black man could have produced such an eloquent piece of literature. The book received generally positive reviews and it became an immediate bestseller. Within three years of its publication, the autobiography had been reprinted nine times with 11,000 copies circulating in the United States; it was also translated into French and Dutch and published in Europe.

The book's success had an unfortunate side effect: Douglass' friends and mentors feared that the publicity would draw the attention of his ex-owner, Hugh Auld, who might try to get his "property" back. They encouraged Douglass to tour Ireland, as many other former slaves had done. Douglass set sail on the Cambria for Liverpool on August 16, 1845, and arrived in Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine was beginning.

Douglass published three versions of his autobiography during his lifetime (and revised the third of these), each time expanding on the previous one. The 1845 Narrative, which was his biggest seller, was followed by My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855. In 1881, after the Civil War, Douglass published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he revised in 1892.

Travels to Ireland and Great Britain

Mural featuring Frederick Douglass in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Starting in August 1845, Douglass spent two years in Great Britain and Ireland, where he gave many lectures, mainly in Protestant churches or chapels. His draw was such that some facilities were "crowded to suffocation"; an example was his hugely popular London Reception Speech, which Douglass delivered at Alexander Fletcher's Finsbury Chapel in May 1846. Douglass remarked that in England he was treated not "as a color, but as a man." He met and befriended the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell.

It was during this trip that Douglass became officially free, when his freedom was purchased from his owner by British supporters.^[4] British sympathizers led by Ellen Richardson of Newcastle upon Tyne collected the money needed to purchase his freedom. Douglass roused tumultuous crowds with his speeches about slavery and his experiences, and he met with acclaim. In 1846 Douglass was able to meet with Thomas Clarkson, one of the last survivors of the abolitionists who had persuaded Parliament to abolish slavery in Great Britain and its colonies.^[5]

After his return to the US, Douglass produced some regular abolitionist newspapers: The North Star, Frederick Douglass Weekly, Frederick Douglass' Paper, Douglass' Monthly and New National Era. The motto of The North Star was "Right is of no Sex — Truth is of no Color — God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren."

Douglass believed that education was key for African Americans to improve their lives. For this reason, he was an early advocate for desegregation of schools. In the 1850s, he was especially outspoken in New York. While the ratio of African American to white students there was 1 to 40, African Americans received education funding at a ratio of only 1 to 1,600.^{[citation needed]} This meant that the facilities and instruction for African-American children were vastly inferior. Douglass criticized the situation and called for court action to open all schools to all children. He stated that inclusion within the educational system was a more pressing need for African Americans than political issues such as suffrage.

Douglass' work spanned the years prior to and during the Civil War. He was acquainted with the radical abolitionist John Brown but disapproved of Brown's plan to start an armed slave rebellion in the South. Brown visited Douglass' home two months before he led the raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry. After the raid, Douglass fled for a time to Canada, fearing guilt by association and arrest as a co-conspirator. Douglass believed that the attack on federal property would enrage the American public. Douglass later shared a stage at a speaking engagement in Harpers Ferry with Andrew Hunter, the prosecutor who successfully convicted Brown.

Douglass conferred with President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 on the treatment of black soldiers, and with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of black suffrage. His early collaborators were the white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. In the early 1850s, however, Douglass split with those who supported Garrison over the issue of interpretation of the United States Constitution. He believed it provided all that was necessary to gain the freedom of African Americans and guarantee their rights.

Civil War years

Before the Civil War

In 1851, Douglass merged the North Star with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper, which was published until 1860. Douglass came to agree with Smith and Lysander Spooner that the United States Constitution was an anti-slavery document. This reversed his earlier belief that it was pro-slavery.

At one time he had shared the views of William Lloyd Garrison, who was concerned that support for slavery was part of the fabric of the Constitution. Garrison had publicly expressed his opinion by burning copies of the document. Further contributing to their growing separation, Garrison was worried that the North Star competed with his own National Anti-Slavery Standard and Marius Robinson's Anti-Slavery Bugle.

Douglass' change of position on the Constitution was one of the most notable incidents of the division in the abolitionist movement after the publication of Spooner's book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery in 1846. This shift in opinion, and other political differences, created a rift between Douglass and Garrison. Douglass further angered Garrison by saying that the Constitution could and should be used as an instrument in the fight against slavery. With this, Douglass began to assert his independence from Garrison and his supporters.

Frederick Douglass stood up to speak in favor of women's right to vote.

In 1848, Douglass attended the first women's rights convention, the Seneca Falls Convention, as the only African American.^[6] Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution asking for women's suffrage.^[7] Many of those present opposed the idea, including influential Quakers James and Lucretia Mott. Douglass stood and spoke eloquently in favor; he said that he could not accept the right to vote himself as a black man if woman could not also claim that right. Douglass projected that the world would be a better place if women were involved in the political sphere. "In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world."^[8] Douglass's powerful words rang true with enough attendees that the resolution passed.^[9]

In March 1860, Douglass' youngest daughter Annie died in Rochester, New York, while he was still in England. Douglass returned from England the following month. He took a route through Canada to avoid detection.

By the time of the Civil War, Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the country, known for his orations on the condition of the black race and on other issues such as women's rights. His eloquence gathered crowds at every location. His reception by leaders in England and Ireland added to his stature.

Fight for emancipation

Douglass and the abolitionists argued that because the aim of the war was to end slavery, African Americans should be allowed to engage in the fight for their freedom. Douglass publicized this view in his newspapers and several speeches.

President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863, declared the freedom of all slaves in Confederate-held territory.^[10] Douglass described the spirit of those awaiting the proclamation: "We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky...we were watching...by the dim light of the stars for the dawn of a new day...we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries."^[11]

With the North no longer obliged to return slaves to their owners in the South, Douglass fought for equality for his people. He made plans with Lincoln to move the liberated slaves out of the South. During the war, Douglass helped the Union by serving as a recruiter for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. His son Frederick Douglass Jr. also served as a recruiter and his other son, Lewis Douglass, fought for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment at the Battle of Fort Wagner.

Slavery everywhere in the United States was outlawed by the post-war (1865) ratification of the 13th Amendment. The 14th Amendment provided for citizenship and equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment protected all citizens from being discriminated against in voting because of race.

Lincoln's death

Frederick Douglass

At the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington's Lincoln Park, Douglass was in the audience while a tribute to Lincoln was being given by a prominent lawyer. Some of the audience felt it did not do him justice and asked Douglass to speak. Reluctantly, Douglass stood up and spoke. With no preparation, he gave an eloquent tribute to the assassinated President, a speech for which he received much respect.

In the speech, Douglass spoke frankly about Lincoln, balancing the good and the bad in his account. He called Lincoln "the white man's president" and cited his tardiness in joining the cause of emancipation. He noted that Lincoln initially opposed the expansion of slavery but did not support its elimination. But Douglass also stated, "Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word?"^[12]

The crowd, roused by his speech, gave him a standing ovation. A witness later said, "I have heard Clay speak and many fantastic men, but never have I heard a speech as impressive as that."^{[citation needed]} A long-told anecdote claims that the widow Mary Lincoln gave Douglass Lincoln's favorite walking stick in appreciation. Lincoln's walking stick still rests in Douglass' house known as Cedar Hill. It is both a testimony and a tribute to the effect of Douglass' powerful oratory.

Reconstruction era

Cedar Hill, Douglass' house in Washington, D.C.

After the Civil War, Douglass was appointed to several important political positions. He served as President of the Reconstruction-era Freedman's Savings Bank; as marshal of the District of Columbia; as minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti (1889–1891); and as chargé d'affaires for the Dominican Republic. After two years, he resigned from his ambassadorship because of disagreements with U.S. government policy. In 1872, he moved to Washington, D.C., after his house on South Avenue in Rochester, New York burned down; arson was suspected. Also lost was a complete issue of The North Star.

In 1868, Douglass supported the presidential campaign of Ulysses S. Grant. President Grant signed into law the Klan Act and the second and third Enforcement Acts. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina and sending troops there and into other states; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Ku Klux Klan received a serious blow. Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan made him unpopular among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised him. An associate of Douglass wrote of Grant that African Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."

In 1872, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States, as Victoria Woodhull's running mate on the Equal Rights Party ticket. He was nominated without his knowledge. During the campaign, he neither campaigned for the ticket nor acknowledged that he had been nominated.

Douglass continued his speaking engagements. On the lecture circuit, he spoke at many colleges around the country during the Reconstruction era, including Bates College in Lewiston, Maine in 1873. He continued to emphasize the importance of voting rights and exercise of suffrage.

White insurgents had quickly arisen in the South after the war, organizing first as secret vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Through the years, armed insurgency took different forms, the last as powerful paramilitary groups such as the White League and the Red Shirts during the 1870s in the Deep South. They operated as "the military arm of the Democratic Party", turning out Republican officeholders and disrupting elections.^[13] Their power continued to grow in the South; more than 10 years after the end of the war, white Democrats regained political power in every state of the former Confederacy and began to reassert white supremacy. They enforced this by a combination of violence, late 19th c. laws imposing segregation and a concerted effort to disfranchise African Americans. From 1890-1908, white Democrats passed new constitutions and statutes in the South that created requirements for voter registration and voting that effectively disfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites.^[14] This disfranchisement and segregation were enforced for more than six decades into the 20th century.

Family life

Douglass and Anna had five children: Charles Remond Douglass, Rosetta Douglass, Lewis Henry Douglass, Frederick Douglass Jr., and Annie Douglass (died at the age of ten). The two oldest, Charles and Rossetta, helped produce his newspapers.

Douglass was an ordained minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1877, Douglass bought his final home in Washington D.C., on a hill above the Anacostia River. He named it Cedar Hill (also spelled CedarHill). He expanded the house from 14 to 21 rooms, and included a china closet. One year later, he expanded his property to 15 acres (61,000 m²) by buying adjoining lots. The home has been designated the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

Frederick Douglass with his second wife Helen Pitts Douglass (sitting). The woman standing is her sister Eva Pitts.

After the disappointments of whites' regaining power in the South after Reconstruction, many African Americans, called Exodusters, moved to Kansas to form all-black towns where they could be free. Douglass spoke out against the movement, urging blacks to stick it out. He was condemned and booed by black audiences.

In 1877, Douglass was appointed a United States Marshal. In 1881, he was appointed Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. His wife, Anna Murray Douglas, died in 1882, leaving him depressed. His association with the activist Ida B. Wells brought meaning back into his life.

In 1884, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a white feminist from Honeoye, New York. Pitts was the daughter of Gideon Pitts, Jr., an abolitionist colleague and friend of Douglass. Pitts was a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (then called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary). She had worked on a radical feminist publication named Alpha while living in Washington, D.C. The couple faced a storm of controversy with their marriage, since she was both white and nearly 20 years younger than he. Her family stopped speaking to her; his was bruised, as his children felt his marriage was a repudiation of their mother. But feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton congratulated the couple.^[15] The new couple traveled to England, France, Italy, Egypt and Greece from 1886 to 1887.

At the 1888 Republican National Convention, Douglass became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States in a major party's roll call vote.^[16][17][18]

In 1892 the Haitian government appointed Douglass as its commissioner to the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. He spoke for Irish Home Rule and the efforts of leader Charles Stewart Parnell in Ireland. He briefly revisited Ireland in 1886. Also in 1892, he constructed rental housing for blacks in the Fells Point area of Baltimore. Now known as Douglass Place, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.^[19][20]

Death

Gravestone of Frederick Douglass located in Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York

On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he was brought to the platform and given a standing ovation by the audience. Shortly after he returned home, Frederick Douglass died of a massive heart attack or stroke in his adopted hometown of Washington, D.C. He is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

In 1921, members of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity designated Frederick Douglass as an honorary member. Theirs was the first African-American intercollegiate fraternity. Douglass was the only man to receive an honorary membership posthumously.^[21]

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Frederick Douglass to his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.^[22]

Establishing date of birth

1965 US Postage Stamp, published during the upsurge of the Civil Rights Movement

In successive autobiographies, Douglass gave more precise estimates of when he was born, his final estimate being 1817. He adopted February 14 as his birthday because his mother Harriet Bailey used to call him her "little valentine". Douglass was born at 38°53′04″N 75°57′29″W / 38.8845°N 75.958°W / 38.8845; -75.958^[1] on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where slaves were punished for learning to read or write and so could not keep records. Historian Dickson Preston examined the records of Douglass' former owner Aaron Anthony and determined that February 1818 was when Douglass was born.^[23]

Works

Writings

• A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
• "The Heroic Slave." Autographs for Freedom. Ed. Julia Griffiths, Boston: Jewett and Company, 1853. pp. 174-239.
• My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
• Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised 1892)
• Douglass also was editor of the abolitionist newspaper The North Star from 1847 to 1851. He merged The North Star with another paper to create the Frederick Douglass' Paper.

Speeches

• "The Church and Prejudice"
• Self-Made Men

Cultural representation

• The 1989 film Glory featured Frederick Douglass as a friend of Francis George Shaw, attending a party where he encouraged Shaw's son Robert and reviewing the new unit of Black Union Army soldiers. He was played by Raymond St. Jacques.
• The 2004 mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America featured Douglass.
• Frederick Douglass is a major character in the alternate history novel How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove.
• Douglass is the protagonist of the novel Riversmeet (Richard Bradbury, Muswell Press, 2007), a fictionalized account of his 1845 speaking tour of the British Isles. ^[24]
• Frederick Douglass appears as a Great Humanitarian in the 2008 strategy video game Civilization Revolution. ^[25]

See also

• The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• List of African-American abolitionists
• Slave narrative
• African-American literature
• The Columbian Orator

Sources

• Parts of this article are drawn from Houston A. Baker, Jr., introduction to the 1986 Penguin edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Amanda Barker, The Search for Frederick Douglass' Birthplace, 1996. Retrieved on April 18, 2009.
2. ^ ""Frederick Douglass: Talbot County's Native Son", The Historical Society of Talbot County, Maryland". http://www.hstc.org/frederickdouglass.htm. 
3. ^ Douglass, Frederick. The life and times of Frederick Douglass: his early life as a slave, his escape from bondage, and his complete history, p. 50. Dover Value Editions, Courier Dover Publications, 2003. ISBN 0486431703
4. ^ http://www.rense.com/general34/lifeand.htm
5. ^ Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution, New York: HarperCollins, 2006 Pbk, pp. 415-421
6. ^ Stanton, 1997, p. 85.
7. ^ USConstitution.net. Text of the "Declaration of Sentiments", and the Resolutions. Retrieved on April 24, 2009.
8. ^ McMillen, 2008, pp. 93–94.
9. ^ National Park Service. Women's Rights. Report of the Woman's Rights Convention, July 19–20, 1848. Retrieved on April 24, 2009.
10. ^ Slaves in Union-held areas were not covered by this war-measures act.
11. ^ "The Fight For Emancipation". http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part4.html. Retrieved April 19 2007. 
12. ^ "Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln by Frederick Douglass". Teachingamericanhistory.org. http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=39. Retrieved 2008-09-04. 
13. ^ George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1984, p. 132
14. ^ Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", Constitutional Commentary, Vol.17, 2000, pp.12-13, accessed 10 Mar 2008
15. ^ Frederick Douglas biography at winningthevote.org. Accessed October 3, 2006.
16. ^ "Past Convention Highlights." Republican Convention 2000. CNN/AllPolitics.com. Accessed 2008-07-01.
17. ^ "Official Proceedings of the Republican National Convention Held at Chicago, June 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 25, 1888". http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=YSENAAAAIAAJ. 
18. ^ "CNN: Think you know your Democratic convention trivia?". http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/25/dems.convention.trivia/index.html. 
19. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2008-04-15. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. 
20. ^ "Maryland Historical Trust". Douglass Place, Baltimore City. Maryland Historical Trust. 2008-11-21. http://www.marylandhistoricaltrust.net/nr/NRDetail.aspx?HDID=764&COUNTY=Baltimore%20City&FROM=NRCountyList.aspx?COUNTY=Baltimore%20City. 
21. ^ "Prominent Alpha Men". http://www.albany.edu/~aphia/newsite/famousas.html. Retrieved May 6 2007. 
22. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
23. ^ McFeely, 1991, p. 8.
24. ^ Frederick Douglass and Riversmeet: connecting 19th century struggles, Socialist Worker online, December 1 2007
25. ^ Civilization Revolution: Great People "CivFanatics" Retrieved on 3rd September 2009

Further reading

Scholarship

• Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, ed. Frederick Douglass, Autobiography (Library of America, 1994) ISBN 978-0-94045079-0
• Foner, Philip Sheldon. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. New York: International Publishers, 1950.
• Huggins, Nathan Irvin, and Oscar Handlin. Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass. Library of American Biography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980; Longman (1997). ISBN 0673393429
• Lampe, Gregory P. Frederick Douglass: Freedom's Voice,. Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998. ISBN-X (alk. paper) ISBN (pbk. alk. paper) (on his oratory)
• Levine, Robert S. Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN (alk. paper). ISBN (pbk.: alk. paper) (cultural history)
• McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York: Norton, 1991. ISBN 039331376X
• McMillen, Sally Gregory. Seneca Falls and the origins of the women's rights movement. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0195182650
• Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2007. ISBN 0-39306194-9
• Quarles, Benjamin. Frederick Douglass. Washington: Associated Publishers, 1948.
• Stanton, Elizabeth Cady; edited by Theodore Stanton and Harriot Stanton Blatch. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, As Revealed in Her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences, Harper & Brothers, 1922.
• Webber, Thomas, Deep Like Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community 1831-1865. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (1978).
• Woodson, C.G., The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, (1915); Indy Publ. (2005) ISBN 1421926709

For young readers

• Miller, William. Frederick Douglass: The Last Day of Slavery. Illus. by Cedric Lucas. Lee & Low Books, 1995. ISBN 1880000423
• Weidt, Maryann N. Voice of Freedom: a Story about Frederick Douglass. Illus. by Jeni Reeves. Lerner Publications, (2001). ISBN 1-575-05553-8

Documentary films

• Frederick Douglass and the White Negro [videorecording] / Writer/Director John J Doherty, produced by Camel Productions, Ireland. Irish Film Board/TG4/BCI.; 2008
• Frederick Douglass [videorecording] / produced by Greystone Communications, Inc. for A&E Network ; executive producers, Craig Haffner and Donna E. Lusitana.; 1997
• Frederick Douglass: When the Lion Wrote History [videorecording] / a co-production of ROJA Productions and WETA-TV.
• Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist Editor [videorecording]/a production of Schlessinger Video Productions.
• Race to Freedom [videorecording] : the story of the underground railroad / an Atlantis

External links

Find more about Frederick Douglass on Wikipedia's sister projects:

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Textbooks from Wikibooks
Quotations from Wikiquote
Source texts from Wikisource
Images and media from Commons
News stories from Wikinews
Learning resources from Wikiversity

Douglass' sources online

• The Frederick Douglass Papers Edition : A Critical Edition of Douglass' Complete Works, including speeches, autobiographies, letters, and other writings.
• Works by Frederick Douglass at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions illustrated)
• Works by Frederick Douglass at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Frederick Douglass at Online Books Page
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845.
• The Heroic Slave. From Autographs for Freedom, Ed. Julia Griffiths. Boston: John P. Jewett and Company. Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor, and Worthington. London: Low and Company., 1853.
• My Bondage and My Freedom. Part I. Life as a Slave. Part II. Life as a Freeman. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855.
• Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time. Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., 1881.
• Frederick Douglass lecture on Haiti - Given at the World's Fair in Chicago, January 1893.
• Fourth of July Speech

Resource Guides

• Frederick Douglass: Online Resources from the Library of Congress

Biographical information

• Frederick Douglass Project at the University of Rochester.
• Frederick Douglass (American Memory, Library of Congress) Includes timeline.
• Timeline of Frederick Douglass and family
• Frederick Douglas Timeline
• Timeline of "The Life of Frederick Douglas" - Features key political events
• Read more about Frederick Douglass
• Frederick Douglass NHS - Douglass' Life
• Frederick Douglass NHS - Cedar Hill National Park Service site
• Frederick Douglass Western New York Suffragists
• Mr. Lincoln and Freedom: Frederick Douglass
• Mr. Lincoln's White House: Frederick Douglass

Memorials to Frederick Douglass

• Frederick Douglas National Historic Site The Washington, DC home of Frederick Douglass
• Frederick Douglass Gardens at Cedar Hill Frederick Douglass Gardens
• The Frederick Douglass Prize A national book prize
• Lewis N. Douglas as a Sergeant Major in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry

Preceded by None

United States Equal Rights Party Vice-Presidential Nominee 1872

Succeeded by Marietta Stow (National Equal Rights Party)

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Persondata
NAME	Douglass, Frederick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American abolitionist
DATE OF BIRTH	February 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH	Talbot County, Maryland, United States
DATE OF DEATH	February 20, 1895
PLACE OF DEATH	Washington, D.C., United States

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