Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born in 1817. “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. . .I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest–time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. . .The white children could tell their ages. . .”

His mother was a black slave and his father a white farmer. “I never saw my mother, to know her as such; more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. . . She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill.”

By the time he was 8 years old, Frederick was sent to work at a slave plantation for the Auld family. Despite the state law against teaching a slave to read and write, Ms. Auld taught Frederick to read. Mr. Auld was less kind, and often beat and abused his slaves, including Frederick. “He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped. . .”

Auld called in a “slavebreaker” named Mr. Covey. “. . .he ordered me to take off my clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He repeated his order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip myself. Upon this he rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore off my clothes, and lashed me till he had worn out his switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks visible for a long time after.” After several whippings, Douglass turned on Covey, knocked him to the ground and grabbed his throat. He chose not kill him.

Douglass escaped to the North using the papers of a freed, black seaman. He was forced to do odd jobs for 3 years until he became involved with the anti-slavery movement. Douglass protested segregated seating on northern trains by sitting in “whites only” cars. When a group of white men tried to throw him off, he hung onto his seat until they pulled the seat out of the floor with Douglass hanging on to it and threw him out.

William Lloyd Garrison heard Douglass speak (“His was a “voice like thunder””) and sponsored Douglass to speak for antislavery organizations. “I appear this evening as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master, and ran off with them.” Douglass hoped that abolition could be achieved without violence. In 1847, Douglass began his own antislavery newspaper, The North Star. He also worked on the Underground Railroad with Harriet Tubman. He often led escaped slaves all the way to safety in Canada.

However, by 1859, Douglass began to doubt that peaceful means could end slavery. Frederick Douglass met secretly with abolitionist John Brown who was planning to attack Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown planned to capture 100,000 guns, free slaves, and start a war. Douglass decided not to join Brown, saying the attack would be a mistake. “Here we separated; he to go to Harper’s Ferry, I to [New York].” Being a part of the conspiracy, not the attack, Douglass himself had to flee to Canada.

Douglass returned to not only continue his work as an abolitionist, but eventually as the advisor to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.