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19th Century · Abolition

Frederick Douglass

c. 1818 – 1895

Abolitionist, orator, writer, statesman. Among the most consequential Americans of the 19th century.

Frederick Douglass, studio portrait, about 1879
George Kendall Warren, c. 1879. National Archives and Records Administration via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain

Born enslaved on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Frederick Douglass taught himself to read, escaped to freedom in 1838, and became the most influential Black American of the nineteenth century. As an orator, editor, and author of three autobiographies, he made the case against slavery in the language of the nation’s own founding documents — and after emancipation spent three decades fighting to make citizenship real.

At a Glance

Born
February 1818 (exact date unknown), Talbot County, Maryland
Died
20 February 1895, Washington, D.C.
Birth name
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
Known for
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845); The North Star; “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852)
Fields
Abolition · Journalism · Politics
Era
19th Century

Early Life

Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Talbot County, Maryland, in February 1818; like most enslaved people he never knew his exact birth date, and later chose 14 February to mark it. He was separated from his mother, Harriet Bailey, in infancy and raised by his grandmother, Betsey Bailey, until he was sent to work on the plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd, where his owner, Aaron Anthony, served as overseer.

Around 1826 he was sent to Baltimore to live with Hugh and Sophia Auld. Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet until her husband forbade it, warning that learning would make him unfit for slavery. Douglass drew the opposite lesson. He taught himself to read and write from street children, discarded newspapers, and The Columbian Orator, a school reader of speeches he bought with money he had saved.

Returned to rural Maryland as a teenager, he was hired out in 1834 to Edward Covey, a farmer known for “breaking” enslaved workers. After months of beatings Douglass fought back, and Covey never whipped him again — a turning point he later described as the moment he resolved to be free. An escape plan in 1836 was betrayed, and he was sent back to Baltimore to work in the shipyards.

Life and Work

On 3 September 1838, carrying papers borrowed from a free Black sailor, Douglass boarded a northbound train and reached New York the next day. Anna Murray, a free Black woman from Baltimore who had helped finance the escape, joined him, and they married on 15 September 1838. The couple settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he took the surname Douglass.

In August 1841 he spoke at an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket and was recruited as a lecturer by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Audiences doubted that so polished a speaker had ever been enslaved; his answer was the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which named names and places and became a bestseller. Its publication put him at risk of recapture, and he spent nearly two years lecturing in Ireland and Britain, where supporters raised money to purchase his legal freedom in 1846.

Back in the United States he moved to Rochester, New York, and in December 1847 launched The North Star, later renamed Frederick Douglass’ Paper. He attended the 1848 Seneca Falls convention and spoke in favor of women’s suffrage. By 1851 he had broken with William Lloyd Garrison’s wing of the movement, arguing that the Constitution could be read as an antislavery document and that political action was necessary. On 5 July 1852, in Rochester’s Corinthian Hall, he delivered “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, an indictment of American hypocrisy that remains among the most studied speeches in the national record. He published a second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, in 1855.

During the Civil War Douglass pressed Abraham Lincoln to make emancipation a war aim and to enlist Black soldiers. He recruited for the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, in which two of his sons served, and met Lincoln at the White House in August 1863 to protest unequal pay and treatment of Black troops.

After the war he moved to Washington, D.C., and held a series of federal posts: U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia (1877), Recorder of Deeds for the District (1881–1886), and Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti (1889–1891). He briefly served as president of the Freedman’s Savings Bank in 1874 as it collapsed. He published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass in 1881 and a revised edition in 1892. Anna Murray Douglass died in 1882; in 1884 he married Helen Pitts, a white activist, a union that drew criticism from both Black and white Americans.

“If there is no struggle there is no progress.”

— Frederick Douglass, West India Emancipation speech, Canandaigua, New York, 3 August 1857

Legacy

Douglass died at Cedar Hill, his home in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, on 20 February 1895, after attending a meeting of the National Council of Women. He is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester. Cedar Hill is preserved by the National Park Service as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

His autobiographies remain foundational texts of American literature and of the slave-narrative tradition, and his speeches are read as some of the sharpest arguments ever made that the nation’s principles demanded Black freedom and citizenship. Scholars have also documented his deliberate use of photography: he sat for more portraits than almost any American of his century, using the camera to counter racist caricature.

For Educators

Frederick Douglass turned the nation’s founding ideals into a weapon against slavery, insisting that American principles demanded Black freedom and citizenship. Open the classroom lesson →

Key Dates

  1. February 1818 Born enslaved in Talbot County, Maryland.
  2. c. 1826 Sent to Baltimore; begins teaching himself to read.
  3. 3 September 1838 Escapes to freedom by train and steamboat, reaching New York.
  4. August 1841 Speaks at the Nantucket anti-slavery convention; becomes a paid lecturer.
  5. 1845 Publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
  6. 3 December 1847 First issue of The North Star published in Rochester, New York.
  7. 5 July 1852 Delivers “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
  8. 10 August 1863 Meets President Lincoln at the White House about the treatment of Black soldiers.
  9. 1889 Appointed Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti.
  10. 20 February 1895 Dies at Cedar Hill, Washington, D.C.

Sources and Further Reading

  1. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845). Link
  2. Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Boston: De Wolfe & Fiske, 1892). Link
  3. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).
  4. John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier, Picturing Frederick Douglass (New York: Liveright, 2015).
  5. Library of Congress, Frederick Douglass Papers. Link
  6. National Park Service, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. Link

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