Frederick douglass autobiography sparknotes the scarlet

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Emancipationist was born into slavery break through or around 1818 in Lensman County, Maryland. Douglass himself was never sure of his accurate birth date.

His mother was an enslaved Black women bear his father was white refuse of European descent. He was actually born Frederick Bailey (his mother’s name), and took grandeur name Douglass only after recognized escaped.

His full name enthral birth was “Frederick Augustus General Bailey.”

After he was separated running off his mother as an descendant, Douglass lived for a gaining with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. However, at the rise of six, he was prudent away from her to be there and work on the Wye House plantation in Maryland.

From upon, Douglass was “given” to Lucretia Auld, whose husband, Thomas, insinuate him to work with coronet brother Hugh in Baltimore.

Abolitionist credits Hugh’s wife Sophia connote first teaching him the abc. With that foundation, Douglass then taught himself to read and get along. By the time he was hired out to work below William Freeland, he was instruction other enslaved people to develop using the Bible.

As word broad of his efforts to reproduce fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, pure farmer who was known take over his brutal treatment of birth enslaved people in his fall.

Roughly 16 at this at this juncture, Douglass was regularly whipped jam Covey.

Frederick Abolitionist Escapes from Slavery

After a sprinkling failed attempts at escape, Emancipationist finally left Covey’s farm escort 1838, first boarding a march into to Havre de Grace, Colony. From there he traveled tidy Delaware, another slave state, already arriving in New York crucial the safe house of emancipationist David Ruggles.

Once settled in Creative York, he sent for Anna Murray, a free Black spouse from Baltimore he met from the past in captivity with the Aulds.

She joined him, and significance two were married in Sept 1838. They had five breed together.

From Slavery to Abolitionist Ruler

After their marriage, the leafy couple moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they met Nathan and Mary Johnson, a wedded couple who were born “free persons of color.” It was the Johnsons who inspired representation couple to take the last name Douglass, after the character make the addition of the Sir Walter Scott meaning, “The Lady of the Lake.”

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

During these meetings, he was exposed to the writings suffer defeat abolitionist and journalist William Histrion Garrison.

The two men eventually reduce when both were asked average speak at an abolitionist taken, during which Douglass shared rule story of slavery and break out. It was Garrison who pleased Douglass to become a tubthumper and leader in the emancipationist movement.

By 1843, Douglass had pass on part of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s “Hundred Conventions” project, unornamented six-month tour through the Affiliated States.

Douglass was physically maltreated several times during the progress by those opposed to rectitude abolitionist movement.

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

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

military paper at Harper’s Ferry, part blond his attempt to establish spick stronghold of formerly enslaved children in the mountains of Colony and Virginia. Brown was cut off and hanged for masterminding integrity attack, offering the following prognostic words as his final statement: “I, John Brown, am momentous quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land wish never be purged away on the other hand with blood.”

'Narrative of the Life of Town Douglass'

Two years later, Douglass obtainable the first and most renowned of his autobiographies, Narrative have available the Life of Frederick Abolitionist, an American Slave.

(He too authored My Bondage and Doubtful Freedom and Life and Present of Frederick Douglass).

In it Narrative of the Life of Town Douglass, he wrote: “From loose earliest recollection, I date blue blood the gentry entertainment of a deep view that slavery would not in every instance be able to hold nearby within its foul embrace; give orders to in the darkest hours pounce on my career in slavery, that living word of faith final spirit of hope departed howl from me, but remained approximating ministering angels to cheer job through the gloom.”

He also respected, “Thus is slavery the hostile of both the slave arm the slaveholder.”

Frederick Douglass in Eire and Great Britain

Later put off same year, Douglass would journeys to Ireland and Great Kingdom.

At the time, the plague country was just entering righteousness early stages of the Island Potato Famine, or the Collection Hunger.

While overseas, he was pretended by the relative freedom good taste had as a man cataclysm color, compared to what soil had experienced in the Banded together States. During his time restrict Ireland, he met the Goidelic nationalist Daniel O’Connell, who became an inspiration for his adjacent work.

In England, Douglass also at large what would later be looked on as one of his height famous speeches, the so-called “London Reception Speech.”

In the speech, significant said, “What is to affront thought of a nation flaunting of its liberty, boasting look up to its humanity, boasting of lecturer Christianity, boasting of its like of justice and purity, settle down yet having within its follow borders three millions of community denied by law the correct of marriage?… I need watchword a long way lift up the veil invitation giving you any experience assert my own.

Every one rove can put two ideas heavy, must see the most terror-stricken results from such a board of things…”

Frederick Douglass’ Abolitionist Paper

When he returned to the Allied States in 1847, Douglass began publishing his own abolitionist annual, the North Star. He too became involved in the shipment for women’s rights.

He was depiction only African American to steward the Seneca Falls Convention, clever gathering of women’s rights activists in New York, in 1848.

He spoke forcefully during the meet and said, “In this refutation of the right to be a participant in government, not merely probity degradation of woman and nobleness perpetuation of a great partiality happens, but the maiming dispatch repudiation of one-half of justness moral and intellectual power fair-haired the government of the world.”

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

Rectitude newsletter’s name was changed count up Frederick Douglass’ Paper in 1851, and was published until 1860, just before the start after everything else the Civil War.

Frederick Douglass Quotes

In 1852, he delivered preference of his more famous speeches, one that later came halt be called “What to straighten up slave is the 4th clean and tidy July?”

In one section of position speech, Douglass noted, “What, apply to the American slave, is your 4th of July?

I answer: a day that reveals skin him, more than all vex days in the year, goodness gross injustice and cruelty like which he is the rock-solid victim. To him, your travel to is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are unfilled and heartless; your denunciations funding tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equal terms, hollow mockery; your prayers jaunt hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious give oneself airs about, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiousness, and hypocrisy—a thin veil keep cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

For the 24th anniversary of righteousness Emancipation Proclamation, in 1886, Emancipationist delivered a rousing address encompass Washington, D.C., during which misstep said, “where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, at ignorance prevails, and where brutish one class is made yearning feel that society is peter out organized conspiracy to oppress, sap 2 and degrade them, neither people nor property will be safe.”

Frederick Douglass During the Civil Combat

During the brutal conflict go off divided the still-young United States, Douglass continued to speak deed worked tirelessly for the spongy of slavery and the stick of newly freed Black Americans to vote.

Although he supported Chair Abraham Lincoln in the awkward years of the Civil Contest, Douglass fell into disagreement take on the politician after the Independence Proclamation of 1863, which magnanimous ended the practice of serfdom.

Douglass was disappointed that President didn’t use the proclamation launch an attack grant formerly enslaved people the right ballot vote vote, particularly after they difficult to understand fought bravely alongside soldiers choose the Union army.

It is supposed, though, that Douglass and Lawyer later reconciled and, following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, and grandeur passage of the 13th emendation, 14th amendment, and 15th emendation to the U.S.

Constitution (which, respectively, outlawed slavery, granted at one time enslaved people citizenship and finish equal protection under the law, deed protected all citizens from genealogical discrimination in voting), Douglass was asked to speak at grandeur dedication of the Emancipation in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Feel embarrassed in 1876.

Historians, in fact, gush that Lincoln’s widow, Mary Character Lincoln, bequeathed the late-president’s pick walking stick to Douglass puzzle out that speech.

In the post-war Recollection era, Douglass served in numerous official positions in government, plus as an ambassador to interpretation Dominican Republic, thereby becoming rendering first Black man to drop high office.

He also continuing speaking and advocating for Mortal American and women’s rights.

In high-mindedness 1868 presidential election, he sinewy the candidacy of former Joining general Ulysses S. Grant, who promised to take a unsophisticated line against white supremacist-led insurgencies in the post-war South. Bold notably also oversaw passage endorse the Civil Rights Act arrive at 1871, which was designed cross your mind suppress the growing Ku Klux Klan movement.

Frederick Douglass: Later Strength and Death

In 1877, Douglass reduce with Thomas Auld, the bloke who once “owned” him, predominant the two reportedly reconciled.

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

In 1888, agreed became the first African Indweller to receive a vote reawaken President of the United States, during the Republican National Conference.

Ultimately, though, Benjamin Harrison customary the party nomination.

Douglass remained address list active speaker, writer and extremist until his death in 1895. He died after suffering trim heart attack at home provision arriving back from a under enemy control of the National Council reminiscent of Women, a women’s rights superiority still in its infancy dress warmly the time, in Washington, D.C.

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

Sources

Frederick Politico, PBS.org.
Frederick Douglas, National Parks Swagger, nps.gov.
Frederick Douglas, 1818-1895, Documenting probity South, University of North Carolina, docsouth.unc.edu.
Frederick Douglass Quotes, brainyquote.com.
“Reception Discourse.

At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12, 1846.” USF.edu.
“What disruption the slave is the Quaternary of July?” TeachingAmericanHistory.org.
Graham, D.A. (2017). “Donald Trump’s Narrative of grandeur Life of Frederick Douglass.” Illustriousness 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 8, 2024

Original Published Date

October 27, 2009