Frederick Douglass Pecheanu Cosmin,

Studii Americane
Who was Frederick Douglass?

Frederick Douglass (born 1818 - died 1895) was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist,
orator, writer, and statesman. He escaped slavery and became a national leader of the abolitionist
movement in Massachussets and New York. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage,
and held several public offices.

He was regarded as a great orator and Northeners at the time couldn’t believe that he had once
been a slave.

Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as a slave in his Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller and was influential
in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855).
Following the Civil War, Douglass was active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and wrote his
last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
Personal life:
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake
Bay in Talbot County, Maryland. In his first autobiography, Douglass stated: "I have no accurate
knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it." However, based on the
extent records of Douglass's former owner, Aaron Anthony, historian Dickson J. Preston determined
that Douglass was born in February 1818.

At the age of 6, Frederick was separated from his grandparents and moved to the Wye House
plantation, where Aaron Anthony worked as overseer. After Anthony died in 1826, Douglass was given
to Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld, who sent him to serve Thomas' brother Hugh Auld in Baltimore.

When Douglass was about 12, Hugh Auld's wife Sophia began teaching him the alphabet. From the
day he arrived, she saw to it that Douglass was properly fed and clothed, and that he slept in a bed
with sheets and a blanket. Hugh Auld disapproved of the tutoring, feeling that literacy would encourage
slaves to desire freedom and under her husband's influence Sophia came to believe that education and
slavery were incompatible and one day snatched a newspaper away from Douglass. She stopped
teaching him altogether and hid all potential reading materials, including her Bible, from him.
In 1833, Thomas Auld took Douglass back from Hugh and sent him to work for Edward Covey, a poor
farmer who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker". He whipped Douglass so frequently that his wounds
had little time to [Link] 16-year-old Douglass finally rebelled against the beatings, however, and
fought back. After he won a physical confrontation, Covey never tried to beat him again.

In 1837, Douglass met and fell in love with Anna Murray, a free black
woman in Baltimore about five years his senior. Her free status
strengthened his belief in the possibility of gaining his own freedom.
Murray encouraged him and supported his efforts by aid and money
and on September 3rd 1938 he successfully escaped slavery by
boarding a northbound train of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and
Baltimore Railroad. When he reached New York, he sent for Murray to
follow him. They were married on September 15, 1838, by a black
Presbyterian minister. The couple settled in New Bedford,
Massachusetts, (an abolitionist center, full of former slaves), in 1838,
and eventually moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1841. After meeting
and staying with Nathan and Mary Johnson, they adopted Douglass as
their married name.
Career:
- In 1839 he became a licensed preacher, which helped him to hone his oratorical skills. He held
various positions, including steward, Sunday-school superintendent, and sexton.
- In 1840 Douglass delivered a speech in Elmira, New York, then a station on the Underground
Railroad.
- Douglass also joined several organizations in New Bedford and regularly attended abolitionist
meetings. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly newspaper, The Liberator.
- In 1843 Douglass joined other speakers in the American Anti-Slavery Society's "Hundred
Conventions" project, a six-month tour at meeting halls throughout the eastern and midwestern
United States. During this tour, slavery supporters frequently accosted Douglass. At a lecture
in Pendleton, Indiana, an angry mob chased and beat Douglass before a local Quaker family,
the Hardys, rescued him. His hand was broken in the attack; it healed improperly and bothered
him for the rest of his life.
- In 1845 he published his best-known work, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an
American [Link] book received generally positive reviews and became an immediate
bestseller. Within three years, it had been reprinted nine times, with 11,000 copies circulating in
the United States. It was also translated into French and Dutch and published in Europe.
Douglass's friends and mentors feared that the publicity would draw the attention of his ex-
owner, Hugh Auld, who might try to get his "property" back. They encouraged Douglass to tour
Ireland, as many former slaves had done. Douglass set sail on the Cambria for Liverpool,
England, on August 16, 1845. He traveled in Ireland as the Great Famine was beginning.
- In 1847 he started publishing his first abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

- In 1848, Douglass was the only black person to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's
rights convention, in upstate New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution
asking for women's suffrage. Many of those present opposed the idea, but Douglass stood and spoke
eloquently in favor of women's suffrage; he said that he could not accept the right to vote as a black man if
women could also not claim that right. He suggested that the world would be a better place if women were
involved in the political sphere.

- On July 5, 1852, Douglass delivered an address to the ladies of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing
Society. This speech eventually became known as "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"; one
biographer called it "perhaps the greatest antislavery oration ever given."

- By the time of the Civil War, Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the country, known for his
orations on the condition of the black race and on other issues such as women's rights. His eloquence
gathered crowds at every location. His reception by leaders in England and Ireland added to his stature.
- Douglass and the abolitionists argued that because the aim of the Civil War was to end
slavery, African Americans should be allowed to engage in the fight for their freedom.
Douglass publicized this view in his newspapers and several speeches. After Lincoln had
finally allowed black soldiers to serve in the Union army, Douglass helped the recruitment
efforts, publishing his famous broadside Men of Color to Arms! on March 21, 1863.

- In 1863 Douglass conferred with President Abraham Lincoln on

the treatment of black soldiers and on plans to move liberated
slaves out of the South.
- During the U.S. Presidential Election of 1864, Douglass
supported John C. Frémont, who was the candidate of the
abolitionist Radical Democracy Party. Douglass was
disappointed that President Lincoln did not publicly endorse
suffrage for black freedmen.
- After Lincoln had been assassinated, Douglass conferred with
President Andrew Johnson on the subject of black suffrage.
- On April 14, 1876, Douglass delivered the keynote speech at the
unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington's Lincoln
Park. He spoke frankly about Lincoln, noting what he perceived
as both positive and negative attributes of the late President.
 He also said: "Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it
is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery...."
The crowd, roused by his speech, gave Douglass a standing ovation. Lincoln's widow Mary Lincoln
supposedly gave Lincoln's favorite walking-stick to Douglass in appreciation. That walking-stick still rests in
his final residence, "Cedar Hill", now preserved as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.
- In 1870, Douglass started his last newspaper, the New National Era, attempting to hold his country to its
commitment to equality.

- In 1872, Douglass became the first African American nominated for Vice President of the United States, as
Victoria Woodhull's running mate on the Equal Rights Party ticket. He was nominated without his knowledge.
Douglass neither campaigned for the ticket nor acknowledged that he had been nominated. In that year, he
was presidential elector at large for the State of New York, and took that state's votes to Washington, D.C.
Throughout the Reconstruction era, Douglass continued speaking, emphasizing the importance of work,
voting rights and actual exercise of suffrage. His speeches for the twenty-five years following the war
emphasized work to counter the racism that was then prevalent in unions.

- In 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes, named Douglass as United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, the first
person of color to be so named.
- In 1881, Douglass published the final edition of his autobiography, The Life and Times of
Frederick Douglass. That year he was appointed as Recorder of Deeds for the District of
Columbia. His wife Anna Murray Douglass died in 1882.
- On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in
Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he was brought to the platform and received a
standing ovation. Shortly after he returned home, Douglass died of a massive heart attack.
He was 77.