Frederick Douglass

Early life and escape

Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, enslaved, in Talbot County on Maryland's Eastern Shore in February 1818. He never knew the exact day and later chose February 14 as his birthday.

On September 3, 1838, he escaped by train, dressed as a sailor and travelling on a ticket that Anna Murray had paid for with her own money. He reached New York City in less than a day. The couple married and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they took the surname Douglass.

Abolitionist speaker and author

The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society soon hired Douglass to speak about slavery, and he lectured widely across the North and Midwest. In 1845 he published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, partly to answer listeners who doubted that so polished a speaker had ever been enslaved. He then spent about two years lecturing in England, Ireland and Scotland. British supporters bought his legal freedom, and he returned to the United States a free man.

He wrote two more autobiographies: My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised 1892).

Editor and publisher

Settling in Rochester, New York, Douglass launched The North Star, whose first issue appeared on December 3, 1847, funded in part by support raised during his British tour. In 1851 it merged with another paper to become Frederick Douglass' Paper. According to the Library of Congress, the paper adopted the view that the U.S. Constitution could be read as an antislavery document, a position that broke with William Lloyd Garrison, his early mentor. Later papers included Douglass' Monthly and, from 1870, the New National Era in Washington, D.C., which backed Reconstruction and opposed the Ku Klux Klan.

Women's rights and the Civil War

In July 1848 Douglass attended the women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, the only African American known to have been there, and in 1866 he helped found the American Equal Rights Association. During the Civil War he recruited Black soldiers for the Union Army, including two of his sons, who served in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, and he met President Abraham Lincoln to press for equal pay and treatment for Black troops.

Washington years and legacy

Douglass moved to Washington, D.C., in 1872 and in 1877 bought the Anacostia estate he called Cedar Hill. He served as U.S. Marshal for the District (1877–1881), Recorder of Deeds (1881–1886), and Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti (1889–1891). In 1884 he married Helen Pitts, a white activist, a match that drew public controversy. He died of a heart attack at Cedar Hill on February 20, 1895, and is buried in Rochester. Cedar Hill is now a National Park Service historic site.