=====Frederick Douglass - History=====

This article traces the chronological course of the life of [[frederick-douglass|Frederick Douglass]] (c. 1818-1895), from his birth into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland, through his escape, his rise as an abolitionist orator and editor, his role during the Civil War and Reconstruction, and his later public career. For analysis of how his legacy and ideas are interpreted today, see [[frederick-douglass-historical-consensus|Frederick Douglass - Historical Consensus]]. For the dispute over his break with William Lloyd Garrison, see [[frederick-douglass-garrison-debate|Frederick Douglass - Garrison Debate]].

===== Birth and Early Enslavement (1818-1826) =====

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on a plantation between Hillsboro and Cordova in Talbot County, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The exact date of his birth was not recorded; he later estimated February 1818 and chose to observe February 14 as his birthday. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was enslaved and of African descent; his father was unknown to him but was reputed to be a white man, possibly his mother's enslaver. Douglass was separated from his mother in infancy and raised for his first years by his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey, in her cabin near Tuckahoe Creek.

At about age six, Douglass's grandmother brought him to the home plantation of Aaron Anthony, who served as overseer for the wealthy planter Edward Lloyd V. Douglass later described this separation as a formative betrayal, as his grandmother left him there without his having been told what was happening.

===== Baltimore and Self-Education (1826-1833) =====

At about age eight, Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with Hugh and Sophia Auld, relatives of the Anthony family. Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet, but Hugh Auld ended the lessons on learning of them, citing Maryland law against teaching enslaved people to read and the belief that literacy made a slave unfit for bondage. Douglass continued teaching himself, trading food for reading lessons from white children in the neighborhood and using primers and newspapers he could obtain. He later read *The Columbian Orator*, a rhetoric anthology that included a dialogue on slavery and a speech by Richard Sheridan, both of which he credited with shaping his understanding of natural rights.

===== Return to the Eastern Shore and Resistance (1833-1836) =====

In 1833, Douglass was sent back to the Eastern Shore to serve Thomas Auld, Hugh's brother, and was later hired out to Edward Covey, a farmer known for breaking the will of enslaved laborers through harsh treatment. At about age sixteen, Douglass physically fought Covey to a standstill after repeated whippings; Covey did not whip him again afterward. Douglass later described the fight as a turning point in his sense of his own manhood and the limits of his enslavement.

In 1836, Douglass and several other enslaved men planned an escape from the plantation of William Freeland; the plan was discovered before it could be carried out, and Douglass was jailed briefly in Easton before being returned to Baltimore.

===== Escape to Freedom (1838) =====

In Baltimore, Douglass was hired out to shipyards as a caulker and in 1837 met Anna Murray, a free black woman several years his senior, who supported and helped finance his escape. On September 3, 1838, Douglass boarded a northbound train of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad disguised as a sailor and carrying identification papers borrowed from a free black seaman. He traveled by train and steamboat through Delaware and Philadelphia, arriving in New York City the following day. For his protection from slave catchers, he initially adopted the surname Johnson. Anna Murray joined him in New York, and the two married on September 15, 1838. The couple soon settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a center of free black community life and the whaling and shipping trade, where, at the suggestion of a local host, Nathan Johnson, Douglass adopted the surname Douglass, taken from a character in Walter Scott's poem *The Lady of the Lake*.

===== New Bedford and Entry into Abolitionism (1838-1841) =====

In New Bedford, Douglass worked as a laborer and caulker and attended abolitionist meetings, subscribing to William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper *The Liberator*. In August 1841, Douglass spoke at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, where his account of his enslavement and his oratorical ability impressed Garrison and other Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society members. He was hired as a lecturing agent for the Society, beginning a public speaking career that took him through the northern United States over the following years.

===== Narrative and Departure for Britain (1845-1847) =====

On May 28, 1845, Douglass published his first autobiography, *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself*. The book named his former enslavers and the specific circumstances of his enslavement, exposing him to the risk of recapture under federal fugitive slave law. In August 1845, Douglass sailed for England and Ireland, lecturing on slavery and meeting British and Irish reformers. While abroad, British supporters raised funds to purchase his legal manumission; the transaction was completed and recorded in Baltimore County court on December 12, 1846, making him a legally free man under American law. He returned to the United States in the spring of 1847.

===== Break with Garrison and The North Star (1847-1851) =====

On his return, Douglass announced plans to found his own newspaper despite the objections of Garrison and Wendell Phillips, who argued that *The Liberator* already served the cause. Using funds raised in Britain, Douglass launched *The North Star* in Rochester, New York, on December 3, 1847, where he made his home for the next two decades.

Douglass had initially shared the Garrisonian position that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document, pointing to the Three-Fifths Clause, the protection of the international slave trade until 1808, and the Fugitive Slave Clause as evidence. Douglass's position evolved over the following years through correspondence and debate with political abolitionists including Gerrit Smith, and his thinking was shaped in part by Lysander Spooner's 1845 tract *The Unconstitutionality of Slavery*. In May 1851, he publicly announced in the renamed *Frederick Douglass' Paper* that he now considered the Constitution, properly interpreted, an anti-slavery document, and that abolitionists should engage in electoral politics rather than pursue Garrison's strategy of moral suasion and disunion. Douglass himself later described this shift in terms of having grown weary of arguing the slaveholder's reading of the Constitution. The causes and significance of the break are addressed in [[frederick-douglass-garrison-debate|Frederick Douglass - Garrison Debate]].

===== The 1850s: Lecturing, Politics, and John Brown =====

Douglass delivered his address "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" in Rochester on July 5, 1852, contrasting American claims to liberty with the condition of the enslaved. In August 1855, he published a second, expanded autobiography, *My Bondage and My Freedom*. In September 1855, he was nominated for New York Secretary of State by the Liberty Party, reportedly the first such nomination given to a black American.

Douglass's Rochester home served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. In 1858, John Brown stayed with Douglass while developing plans for an armed uprising against slavery; Douglass later testified that Brown had asked him to join the raid on Harpers Ferry and that he had declined, regarding the plan as likely to fail. Following the October 1859 raid, Douglass fled briefly to Canada and then England, fearing prosecution as a co-conspirator, returning to the United States in 1860.

===== Civil War (1861-1865) =====

During the Civil War, Douglass urged the Lincoln administration to make abolition an explicit war aim and to permit the enlistment of black soldiers. After the Emancipation Proclamation and the authorization of black regiments, Douglass recruited soldiers for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry regiments; two of his sons, Charles and Lewis, served in the 54th Massachusetts. Douglass met with President Lincoln on more than one occasion to press for equal pay and treatment for black soldiers and for full emancipation.

===== Reconstruction and Later Public Life (1865-1895) =====

Following the war and the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, Douglass continued to advocate for black civil and political rights and supported the women's suffrage movement, having attended the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention earlier in his career. He held a series of federal appointments, including president of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company in 1874, Marshal of the District of Columbia (1877), Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia (1881), and Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti (1889).

In January 1881, Douglass published his third autobiography, *Life and Times of Frederick Douglass*. His first wife, Anna Murray Douglass, died on August 4, 1882. In January 1884, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a white former secretary and the daughter of an abolitionist family from Honeoye, New York; the marriage drew public criticism from members of both families.

Douglass died of a heart attack on February 20, 1895, at his home, Cedar Hill, in Washington, D.C., shortly after attending a meeting of the National Council of Women.

===== Controversies =====

  * The causes and historical significance of Douglass's 1851 break with William Lloyd Garrison over the constitutional status of slavery remain a subject of disputed interpretation among historians. See [[frederick-douglass-garrison-debate|Frederick Douglass - Garrison Debate]].
  * Some historians dispute the extent to which Gerrit Smith's financial support of Douglass's newspaper influenced his change of position on the Constitution, a claim made by contemporary Garrisonians. See [[frederick-douglass-garrison-debate|Frederick Douglass - Garrison Debate]].
  * Scholars differ on how to characterize Douglass's political philosophy, variously describing him as a classical liberal, a civic republican, or a black nationalist thinker. See [[frederick-douglass-political-philosophy-viewpoint]].
  * Historians dispute Douglass's reasons for declining to join John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. See [[frederick-douglass-john-brown-debate]].

===== Footnotes =====

  - Blight, David W. *Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom*. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.
  - Douglass, Frederick. *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself*. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845.
  - Douglass, Frederick. *My Bondage and My Freedom*. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855.
  - Douglass, Frederick. *Life and Times of Frederick Douglass*. Hartford, CT: Park Publishing, 1881.
  - Preston, Dickson J. *Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years*. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
  - Foner, Philip S., ed. *The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass*. 5 vols. New York: International Publishers, 1950-1975.
  - Sandefur, Timothy. *Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man*. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2018.
  - "Frederick Douglass." *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy*. Stanford University, last modified 2012. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frederick-douglass/.
  - "Is the Constitution Pro-slavery? A Debate ... Syracuse, New York, on January 17, 1850." Frederick Douglass Papers Project, Digital Edition. https://frederickdouglasspapersproject.com/s/digitaledition/item/10415.
  - Trent, Noelle. "Frederick Douglass and the United States Constitution." African American Intellectual History Society, December 3, 2018. https://www.aaihs.org/frederick-douglass-and-the-united-states-constitution/.