Frederick Douglass Biography

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland as Frederick Bailey, circa 1818. Douglass was raised in slavery on farms on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and in Baltimore. In Baltimore, the wife of Douglass’ “owner” taught Douglass to read, and he began making contacts with educated free Blacks.

Douglass escaped to New York around age twenty. Here he reunited with and married his fiancée, a free Black woman from Baltimore named Anna Murray. Uneasy about Douglass’s fugitive status, the two finally settled further north in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Frederick changed his last name from Bailey to Douglass. Douglass worked for the next three years as a laborer and continued his self‑education.

In the early 1840s, the abolitionist, or anti‑slavery, movement was gaining momentum, especially in the far Northeast. When Douglass first arrived in Massachusetts, he began reading the Liberator, the abolitionist newspaper edited by William Lloyd Garrison. In 1841, Douglass attended an abolitionist meeting in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where he met Garrison and was encouraged to tell the crowd about his experiences of slavery. Douglass’s spoken account was so well‑received that Garrison offered to employ him as an abolitionist speaker for the American Anti‑Slavery Society.

From 1841 to 1845, Douglass traveled extensively with Garrison and others through the northern states, speaking nearly every day on the injustice and brutality of slavery. Douglass encountered hostile opposition and, most often, the charge that he was lying. Many Americans did not believe that such an eloquent and intelligent Black man had so recently been a slave.

Douglass encountered a different brand of opposition within the ranks of the Anti‑Slavery Society itself. He was one of only a few Black men employed by the society, and the society’s leaders, including Garrison, would often condescendingly insist that Douglass merely relate the “facts” of his experience, and leave the philosophy, rhetoric, and persuasive argument to others. Douglass’s 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself can be seen as a response to both of these types of opposition. The Narrative pointedly states that Douglass is its sole author, and it contains two prefaces from Garrison and another abolitionist, Wendell Phillips, to attest to this fact. Douglass’s use of the true names of people and places further silenced his detractors who questioned the truthfulness of his story and status as a former slave.

Because Douglass did use real names in his Narrative, he had to flee the United States for a time, as his Maryland “owner” was legally entitled to track him down in Massachusetts and reclaim him. Douglass spent the next two years traveling in the British Isles, where he was warmly received. He returned to the United States only after two English friends purchased his freedom. His reputation at home had grown during his absence. The Narrative was an instant bestseller in 1845 and went through five print runs to accommodate demand. Despite opposition from Garrison, Douglass started his own abolitionist newspaper in 1847 in Rochester, New York, under the name North Star.

Douglass continued to write and lecture against slavery and also devoted attention to the women’s rights movement. He became involved in politics, to the disapproval of other abolitionists who avoided politics for ideological reasons. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Douglass campaigned first to make it the aim of the war to abolish slavery and then to allow Black men to fight for the Union. He was successful on both fronts: Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on December 31, 1862, and Congress authorized the enlistment of Black men in 1863, though they were paid only half what white soldiers made. The Union won the Civil War on April 9, 1865.

During the 1860s and beyond, Douglass continued to campaign, now for the right of Blacks to vote and receive equal treatment in public places. Douglass served in government positions under several administrations in the 1870s and 1880s. He also found time to publish the third volume of his autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, in 1881 (the second volume, My Bondage and My Freedom, was published in 1855). In 1882, Douglass’s wife, Anna, died. He remarried, to Helen Pitts, a white advocate of the women’s movement, in 1884. Douglass died of a heart attack in 1895.

Frederick Douglass Study Guides

Frederick Douglass Quotes

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

Frederick Douglass Nonfiction

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Published 1845

My Bondage and My Freedom

Published 1855

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Published 1881