Frederick Douglass was born into slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the
exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where at first he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. Upon discovering this, his white master convinced his wife of her error and forbade the practice. Determined to learn, Douglass took to tricking the young white school boys about him into teaching him to read. Living under the harshness of slavery for twenty years, in 1838 he escaped to freedom and went to New York City. There he met and married a free woman of color, Anna Murray. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.
With his new found freedom, Douglass had the opportunity to leave the US and seek a more peaceful life in Europe. However he refused, stressing that he felt he had an obligation to those enslaved Africans he had left behind. In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him as an agent. From then on Douglass became one of the most important Anti-Slavery advocates, speaking passionately on numerous occasions to large crowds and important figures everywhere. From 1845-47, Douglass toured Great Britain, where his speeches aroused popular support for his cause. The British public raised L150 to buy Douglass's freedom so that he might return to the United States to continue his fight without fear of being captured as a fugitive slave. Douglass's weekly journal, The North Star, together with his platform appearances, made him a major political force in the years leading to the Civil War. He spoke often of his life as a slave, detailing the brutality he had witnessed and experienced. Douglass was such an impressive orator that numerous whites doubted if he had ever been a slave. To quell their doubts so he wrote a work entitled, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, detailing his life as a slave and his escape from the oppressive institution.
During the Civil War he assisted in the recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and consistently argued for the emancipation of slaves. After the war he was active in securing and protecting the rights of black freemen, speaking out on the injustices and lynchings of the times. He was also a strong champion of woman's rights. In his later years, at different times, he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshall and recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti.
After a life of dedication to the freedom and rights of blacks in America, Frederick Douglass died in Cedar Hill, Anacostia in 1895. One man summed up his life best stating, "White men and black men had talked against slavery, but no man had ever spoken like Frederick Douglass." (Photo and Information courtesy of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass)
Electronic Version of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave