Frederick douglass when was he born

By the time he was hired out to work under William Freeland, he was teaching other enslaved people to read using the Bible. As word spread of his efforts to educate fellow enslaved people, Thomas Auld took him back and transferred him to Edward Covey, a farmer who was known for his brutal treatment of the enslaved people in his charge.

Roughly 16 at this time, Douglass was regularly whipped by Covey. From there he traveled through Delaware , another slave state, before arriving in New York and the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles. She joined him, and the two were married in September They would have five children together.

In New Bedford, Douglass began attending meetings of the abolitionist movement. During these meetings, he was exposed to the writings of abolitionist and journalist William Lloyd Garrison. The two men eventually met when both were asked to speak at an abolitionist meeting, during which Douglass shared his story of slavery and escape. It was Garrison who encouraged Douglass to become a speaker and leader in the abolitionist movement.

Douglass was physically assaulted several times during the tour by those opposed to the abolitionist movement. The injuries never fully healed, and he never regained full use of his hand. Two years later, Douglass published the first and most famous of his autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Later that same year, Douglass would travel to Ireland and Great Britain.

At the time, the former country was just entering the early stages of the Irish Potato Famine , or the Great Hunger. While overseas, he was impressed by the relative freedom he had as a man of color, compared to what he had experienced in the United States. When he returned to the United States in , Douglass began publishing his own abolitionist newsletter, the North Star. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

For the 24th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation , in , Douglass delivered a rousing address in Washington, D.

During the brutal conflict that divided the still-young United States, Douglass continued to speak and worked tirelessly for the end of slavery and the right of newly freed Black Americans to vote. Although he supported President Abraham Lincoln in the early years of the Civil War, Douglass would fall into disagreement with the politician after the Emancipation Proclamation of , which effectively ended the practice of slavery.

Constitution which, respectively, outlawed slavery, granted formerly enslaved people citizenship and equal protection under the law, and protected all citizens from racial discrimination in voting , Douglass was asked to speak at the dedication of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D. In the post-war Reconstruction era, Douglass served in many official positions in government, including as an ambassador to the Dominican Republic, thereby becoming the first Black man to hold high office.

Always striving to educate himself, Douglass continued his reading. He joined various organizations in New Bedford, including a black church. He attended Abolitionists' meetings. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly journal, the Liberator. Douglass was inspired by the speaker, later stating, "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments [the hatred of slavery] as did those of William Lloyd Garrison.

Several days later Douglass gave his speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket-- the speech described at the top of this page. Of the speech, one correspondent reported, "Flinty hearts were pierced, and cold ones melted by his eloquence.

It was the launch of a career that would continue throughout Douglass' long life. Despite apprehensions that the information might endanger his freedom, Douglass published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself. The year was Three years later, after a speaking tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland, Douglass published the first issue of the North Star , a four-page weekly, out of Rochester, New York.

Ever since he first met Garrison in , the white abolitionist leader had been Douglass' mentor. But the views of Garrison and Douglass ultimately diverged. Garrison represented the radical end of the abolitionist spectrum. He denounced churches, political parties, even voting. Douglass died of heart failure in , the year Booker T. Washington rose to national prominence with his Atlanta Exposition speech suggesting black accommodation to racial segregation.

John Blassingame, et al. Foner, Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass , 4 vols. Douglass, Frederick [sic] Black leader. David W. From Autographs for Freedom, Ed. George L.

Part I. Life as a Slave.