Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; February 1818 died February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and in New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.
Douglass wrote several autobiographies, notably 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 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, the book covers events both during and after the Civil War. Douglass also actively supported Women Suffrage and held several public offices. Without his approval, Douglass became the first African American nominate for Vice President of the United States as the and Vice-Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull, on the Equal Rights Party ticket.
Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples. He was also a believer in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, as well as in the liberal values of the U.S Constitution. When radical abolitionists, under the motto “No Union with Slaveholders,” criticized Douglass’ willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”
- 1845. A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (first autobiography).
- 1853. The Heroic Slave.” Pp. 174–239 in Autographs for Freedom, edited by Julia Griffiths. Boston: Jewett and Company.
- 1855. My Bondage and my Freedom (second autobiography).
- 1881 (revised 1892). Life and Times of Fredrick Douglass (third and final autobiography).