chance daly
frederick douglass
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN HERO



Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland. Douglass served as a slave on farms on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and in Baltimore throughout his childhood. In Baltimore Douglas ejoyed more freedom than slaves usually did in the South. In the city, Douglass first learned how to read and began networking with educated free blacks.Douglass eventually escaped north to New York at around the age of twenty. Here he married a free black woman from Baltimore named Anna Murray. Douglass’s and his wife 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 ''anti‑slavery'' movement was gaining momentum, especially in the far Northeast. When Douglass first arrived in Massachusetts, he began reading the Liberator 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. Garrison offered to employ him as an abolitionist speaker for the American Anti‑Slavery Society. From 1841 to 1845 Douglass traveled with Garrison and others through the Northern states, speaking nearly every day on the injustice of slavery. Douglass encountered hostile opposition and the charge that he was lying. Many Americans did not believe that such an intelligent Negro had so recently been a slave.

Douglass was one of only a few black men employed by the mostly white society .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. Additionally, the Narrative undertook to be not only a personal account of Douglass’s experiences as a slave, but also an story of how some american slaves made a diffrence. With the Narrative, Douglass demonstrated his ability to be not only the teller of his story, but its interpreter as well.

Because Douglass did use real names in his Narrative he had to run away from the United States for a time because his Maryland owner was legally entitled to track him down in Massachusetts and reclaim him. Dou-glass spent the next two years traveling in the British Isles where he was happily welcomed. He returned to the United States only after two English friends bout his freedom. His reputation at home had grown during his absence. Douglass started his own abolitionist newspaper in 1847 in New York, under the name North Star.
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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 ideas. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation 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 after 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 1882 Douglass’s wife Anna died. He remarried to Helen Pitts a white advocate of the women’s movement. Douglass died of a heart attack in 1895. Douglass will always be know as a african american hero.

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