Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an African-American social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave. Douglass wrote several autobiographies. He described his experiences as a slave in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became a bestseller and influential in supporting abolition, as did the second, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). After the Civil War, Douglass remained an active campaigner against slavery and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, it covered events through and after the Civil War. Douglass also actively supported womens suffrage, and held several public offices. Without his approval, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate and Vice Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull on the impracticable, small, but far foreseeing Equal Rights Party ticket. A firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant, Douglass famously said, I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong. Douglass around 29 years of age. Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland, (on the states Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay), and was named by his mother, Harriet Bailey. The plantation was located between Hillsboro and Cordova. His birthplace was likely his grandmothers shack east of Tappers Corner (38.8845°N 75.958°W) and west of Tuckahoe Creek. Years later, after escaping to the North, he took the surname Douglass, having already dropped use of his two middle names. The exact date of Douglasss birth is unknown. He later chose to celebrate it on February 14. The exact year is also unknown (on the first page of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, he stated: I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. He was of mixed race, which likely included Native American on his mothers side as well as African and European.[citation needed] He spoke of his earliest times with his mother: The opinion was ... whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion I know nothing.... My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant.... It [was] common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. I do not recollect ever seeing my mother by the light of day. ... She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. After this early separation from his mother, young Frederick lived with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. Meanwhile, at the age of seven, he was separated from his grandmother and moved to the Wye House plantation, where Aaron Anthony worked as overseer. Douglasss mother died when he was about ten. After Anthony died, the boy was given to Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld, who sent him to serve Thomas brother Hugh Auld in Baltimore. When Douglass was about twelve years old, Hugh Aulds wife Sophia started teaching him the alphabet, although Maryland state law prohibited teaching slaves to read. Douglass described her as a kind and tender-hearted woman, who treated the boy the way one human being ought to treat another. When Hugh Auld discovered her activity, 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 as the first decidedly antislavery lecture he had ever heard.[16] In his autobiography, Douglass related how he learned to read from white children in the neighborhood and by observing the writings of men with whom he worked. One day Mrs. Auld saw Douglass reading a newspaper; she ran over and snatched it from him, with her face showing that education and slavery were incompatible with each other. Douglass continued, secretly, to teach himself how to read and write. He later often said, knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom.As Douglass began to read newspapers, pamphlets, political materials, and books of every description, this new realm of thought led him to question and condemn the institution of slavery. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator, an anthology which he discovered at about age twelve, with clarifying and defining his views on freedom and human rights. The book, first published in 1797, is a classroom reader, containing essays, speeches and dialogues, to assist students in learning reading and grammar. When Douglass was hired out to William Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly Sunday 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 Freeland remained complacent about their activities, other plantation owners became incensed about their slaves 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 a means of punishing Hugh, Douglass later wrote). Thomas Auld sent Douglass to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had a reputation as a slave-breaker. He whipped Douglass regularly and nearly broke him psychologically. The sixteen-year-old Douglass finally rebelled against the beatings and fought back. After Douglass won a physical confrontation, Covey never tried to beat him again. From slavery to freedom Douglass first tried to escape from Freeland, who had hired him out from his owner Colonel Lloyd, but was unsuccessful. In 1836, he tried to escape from his new master Covey, but failed again. In 1837, Douglass met and fell in love with Anna Murray, a free black woman in Baltimore about five years older than he. Her free status strengthened his belief in the possibility of gaining his own freedom. Anna Murray-Douglass, Douglasss wife for 44 years On September 3, 1838, Douglass successfully escaped by boarding a Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad train (the line was newly merged) to the great Northern cities. He jumped aboard the train a short distance east of the previous temporary P.W.& B. train depot in the just-developed industrial, commercial and residential neighborhood of Canton at President and Fleet Streets, east of The Basin of the Baltimore harbor on the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River. (This depot was replaced by the historic President Street Station, constructed 1849-1850; it was noted as a site of other slave escapes along one of many routes of the famous Underground Railroad and during the Civil War.) Young Douglass reached Havre de Grace, Maryland, in Harford County, in the northeast corner of the state, along the southwest shore of the Susquehanna River, which flowed into the Chesapeake Bay. Though this placed him some 20 miles from the free state of Pennsylvania, it was easier to travel through Delaware, another slave state. Dressed in a sailors uniform provided to him by Murray, who also gave him part of her savings to cover his travel costs, he carried identification papers which he had obtained from a free black seaman. Douglass crossed the wide Susquehanna River by the railroads steam-ferry at Havre de Grace to Perryville on the opposite shore in Cecil County, then continued by train across the state line to Wilmington, Delaware, a large port at the head of the Delaware Bay. From there, because of the incompleted rail line at that time, he went by steamboat along the Delaware River further northeast to the Quaker City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an anti-slavery stronghold, and continued to the safe house of noted abolitionist David Ruggles in New York City. His entire journey to freedom took less than 24 hours. Frederick Douglass later wrote of his arrival in New York City: I have often been asked, how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. And my readers may share the same curiosity. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath, and the quick round of blood, I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions. Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil. Once Douglass had arrived, he sent for Murray to follow him north to New York. She brought with her the necessary basics for them to set up a home. They were married on September 15, 1838, by a black Presbyterian minister eleven days after Douglasss arrival in New York. At first, they adopted Johnson as their married name, to divert attention
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 06:03:11 +0000
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