Frederick Douglass

By: Sean Russell



Frederick Douglass


The book Frederick Douglass is a book about an American slave. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery. As a young man and still a slave in Maryland, Frederick Douglass was known for his intellligence by both blacks and whites. During his life as a slave in Baltimore, he learned to read and write and developed his speaking ability. Douglass had a deep comemitment to teaching and speaking on the need for freedom and equality for African Americans. He escaped from slavery in Bedford, Massachusetts. There he leerned about Douglass and Garrison worked together toend slavery. Douglass began telling his story at meatings of the Abolitionist Society. He
was an intense speaker who drew his audiaence into his personal stories of the slave
experience. Douglass became a powerful voice convincing many Americans to support
abolition of the institution of slavery.

Frederick Douglass continued his campaign to eliminate slavery by traveling to Great Britain from 1845 to 1847. At this point in his life, he broadened his goal to support struggles for human rights. He favored Irish home rul, women’s suffrage, prison
reform, and free public school educeation. Speaking in New York in 1857, Douglass
proclaimed, “The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all
concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and
yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they
want rain without thunder and lighttning. They want ocean without the roar of its many
waters.”

During the Civil War, Frederick Douglass worked as an enlistment officer for the Union. He knew President Lincoln personally and urged him to focus on emancipation as an issue in the Civil War. Followeing the war Douglass worked for the Freedman’s Bureau and held federal government positions. Douglass served as miniaster to Haiti and US marshal for the District of Columbia.