Frederick Douglass (circa 1818 to 1895) was an abolitionist orator, minister, writer, editor, reformer, and statesman, who had been born a slave in Maryland, escaped to New York at around the age of 20, and became a talented orator and writer. Owing to the power of his condemnation of slavery and his skill in presenting it, Douglass was among the most popular speakers on the lecture circuit, became a bestselling author, and, by the end of his life, was the most photographed American of the 19th century.

Douglass championed civil rights for all people, and, at a time when women's suffrage was a controversial issue, argued for a woman's right to vote. His central concern, however, was the abolition of slavery and awakening his fellow Americans to the horrors and hypocrisy of the institution. In answer to the question "What did Frederick Douglass do?" it is not too much to say that he awakened the conscience of the United States to its great shortcomings in human rights and the betrayal of its own ideals as framed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Douglass firmly believed in the ideals of both documents and felt every American should be able to share in the benefits of the society those ideals informed, no matter their skin color or sex. From shortly after his escape from slavery in 1838 until his death in 1895, Douglass maintained his vision of a United States that lived the ideals of its founding. He continued to fight for equal rights for all people and the recognition of freedom as the natural condition of every human being, and one that should never be denied to another, especially not by a government founded on the principles of liberty and justice.

Douglass was born a slave, circa 1818, on a plantation of the Eastern Shore region of Talbot County, Maryland. His mother was Harriet Bailey, a slave, and his father was rumored to have been a White man, most likely Harriet's owner. She named her son Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, a name he would go by until he escaped from slavery, dropped his middle names, and chose the surname Douglass.

In his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he writes that he rarely saw his mother, as she lived on another plantation 12 miles (19 km) away, could only visit him at night, and had to walk that distance both ways to be back home before sunrise. He never knew his birthdate and chose 14 February after his self-emancipation because he seemed to remember his mother calling him her "Little Valentine." The year of his birth is also unclear; Douglass himself said he never really knew how old he was, but he supposed it to be around 1818. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Betsy Bailey (a slave), and her husband, Isaac, who was a free man. Douglass' mother died when he was seven years old, and he would later write:

Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.

(Narrative, 352)

When Douglass was six, he was sent to the Wye House Plantation, and around the age of nine, he was given to Thomas and Lucretia Auld, who sent him to Baltimore to serve Thomas' brother, Hugh Auld, and his wife, Sophia. Sophia treated him kindly, made sure he had clean clothes and a nice bed, and, most importantly, began teaching Douglass to read.

Douglass' lessons with Sophia were stopped when Hugh Auld told her that teaching him to read would make him unfit as a slave. Auld's lecture, Douglass later wrote, was the first time the young slave connected literacy with freedom, and Douglass would always stress the importance of education as the path to equality.

Although Sophia had stopped his lessons, Douglass continued on his own, finding and hiding any reading material he could. He would later cite two books – an anthology of classical writings called The Columbian Orator, and the Bible – as his earliest tutors.

Around 1833, Thomas Auld had an argument with his brother and took Douglass back. Seeming to feel the boy had become spoiled by life in Baltimore, Thomas Auld sent Douglass to work for the famous "slave-breaker" Edward Covey. Covey beat Douglass so often and so severely that the wounds had not healed from a previous beating before he was whipped again.

When Douglass was 16, he fought back, later famously writing, "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man" (Narrative, 389). He defended himself against Covey and was never beaten again. Usually, if a slave lifted his hand against a White man, he was publicly beaten, but this did not happen in Douglass' case, which he attributes to Covey trying to protect his reputation as a "slave-breaker."

In 1834, Douglass was hired out to William Freeland, a kinder master, who allowed his slaves more free time. Douglass made the most of this opportunity to teach his fellow slaves to read and write. Douglass became especially attached to his students and they planned to escape but were discovered before they could act and arrested. Douglass was sure he would now be sold somewhere further south but Thomas Auld retrieved him from prison and sent him back to Baltimore to live with Hugh.

He was hired out as a caulker to a shipbuilder, Mr. Gardner, but left after getting into a fight. Hugh then hired him out to others, keeping most of what Douglass made for himself. Douglass became an expert caulker. During this time (circa 1837), Douglass met the free Black woman, Anna Murray, and the two fell in love. Anna encouraged Douglass to try to escape, and on 3 September 1838, Douglass did so.

He refused to give details of this in his 1845 autobiography because, as he said, to do so would only provide slaveowners with information to prevent other slaves from attempting the same:

I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our western friends have conducted what they call the underground railroad, but which, I think, by their open declarations, has been made most emphatically the upperground railroad…They do nothing towards enlightening the slave, whilst they do much towards enlightening the master.

(Narrative, 410)

This was the basis for Douglass' later objection to the self-promotion of Henry Box Brown – "the man who mailed himself to freedom" – because, in publicizing his extraordinary escape by having himself mailed from bondage in Virginia to freedom in Pennsylvania in 1849, he was preventing others from doing the same (although Douglass' objections were unfounded as Clarissa Davis had herself shipped north in 1854, Lear Green in 1857, and William "Box" Peel Jones in 1859, among others).

Aided by Murray, Douglass boarded a train in Baltimore wearing a sailor's uniform and carrying papers supplied by a retired sailor-friend. He traveled by train to Delaware, took a steamboat to Pennsylvania, and then again traveled by train to New York City. 24 hours after he stepped aboard the train in Baltimore, he was a free man in New York. He sent word to Murray that he was safe, she joined him, and they were married in the home of the abolitionist David Ruggles on 15 September 1838.

Frederick and Anna took the surname "Johnson" at first, but, after moving to New Bedford, Massachusetts, chose "Douglass" at the suggestion of their friends Nathan and Mary Johnson. They joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and Douglass was ordained a preacher in 1839. Preaching weekly helped him develop as an orator, and, in 1840, Douglass spoke on slavery before a congregation in Elmira, New York.

He subscribed to the anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, published by the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (who later became his friend and supporter), was a member of the Underground Railroad, and, between 1840 and 1843, became an increasingly sought-after speaker. In 1845, he published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which became a bestseller, attracting significant attention to its author. He would later continue his life's story in My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, and a revised edition in 1892).

Fearing Douglass might be kidnapped and sold back into slavery, his friends encouraged him to go on a book tour through Ireland. Douglass toured Ireland and Britain for two years, speaking in front of packed houses. In 1846, touched by his story and concerned about his re-enslavement, two of his admirers, abolitionist Anna Richardson and her sister-in-law Ellen, raised 150 pounds to purchase his freedom from Thomas Auld. Douglass could now return home as a legally free man.

Upon his return in 1847, Douglass used some of the money earned from his tours to found his own abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. Anna and Frederick had five children – Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Redmond, and Annie (who died at ten years old) – who grew up free and, of course, supported abolition and helped with the North Star. Douglass' firsthand experience of slavery and his skills as a writer and speaker set him apart from many others on the abolitionist lecture circuit, and he became even more famous.

As a champion for civil rights, Douglass attended the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, at which activist and writer Elizabeth Cady Stanton called for a resolution on women's suffrage. This was opposed, even by other female activists in attendance, until Douglass rose to speak and convinced the assembly that the United States needed women's voices in the political process to achieve much-needed balance. Stanton's Declaration of Rights and Sentiments was approved along with the resolution on women's suffrage.

Although Douglass had always advocated non-violence in abolishing slavery, he was becoming increasingly convinced that this was ineffective, and his conviction in this regard contributed to his split from William Lloyd Garrison. Douglass was especially impressed by the Creole Mutiny of 1841, in which the slave Madison Washington took control of the slave ship Creole, sailed it to the Bahamas, and freed the enslaved on board. In 1853, he was approached by the British abolitionist Julia Griffiths, whom he had met in England, who asked him to contribute a short story to an anthology of anti-slavery fiction she was preparing for publication. In response, Douglass wrote The Heroic Slave (1853), a fictional account of the Creole Mutiny, and his only published work of fiction.

In 1850, Douglass had been elected vice president of the American League of Colored Laborers, the first Black labor union, establishing rights for Black workers and, throughout the 1850s, spoke and wrote boldly against slavery and the unequal treatment of Blacks in the US workforce. On 5 July 1852, he delivered his now-famous speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, highlighting the hypocrisy of a celebration of liberty in a country that defended slavery and oppression.

His increasing militancy attracted the attention of abolitionist John Brown, who, by 1859, was a wanted outlaw for leading anti-slavery forces against pro-slavers in "Bleeding Kansas." John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry had been in the planning stages for decades but now was ready to be put into action. Brown wanted Douglass to join him as a Black leader who could rally the slaves of Harpers Ferry, Virginia, to join his army of liberation, stage a major slave insurrection, and finally end slavery in the United States.

Douglass met with Brown twice but refused to participate, claiming the raid was a suicide mission that would accomplish nothing. Douglass' friend, Shields Green, joined Brown and, after the raid failed, was executed shortly after Brown himself. Douglass later regretted his refusal to support Brown, but, at the same time, he never seems to have wished he had gone with him to Harpers Ferry.

Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry has been called the "spark that ignited the Civil War" as it was the most dramatic event in the years just prior to the conflict that highlighted the division between slave and free states. When the war broke out in 1861, Douglass advocated for the recruitment of Black soldiers to fight for the Union – as did abolitionist Harriet Tubman – but President Lincoln resisted, as it was thought Black soldiers would lack discipline, would desert, and might simply use their guns indiscriminately on White people.

Douglass continued to pressure Lincoln on this point, however, and after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on 1 January 1863, Blacks were able to enlist. Douglass encouraged his sons to fight for the Union – which they did – and published his now-famous broadside "Men of Color to Arms!" in March 1863, calling on Blacks to fight for their freedom. Douglass was among the many to celebrate the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, abolishing slavery in the United States, followed by the 14th and 15th Amendments, granting Blacks the right to vote and citizenship.

After the Civil War, Douglass served as president of the Freedman's Savings Bank, an institution created in 1865 to help newly emancipated Blacks establish themselves financially. The bank was initially a success but failed in 1874 due to fraud and mismanagement. Douglass tried to save the bank, investing $10,000.00 of his own money to bolster it up, but there was nothing he could do.

In 1870, Douglass began publishing the New National Era, a newspaper emphasizing equality for all, at the same time that White supremacist ideology, supported and encouraged by Southern politicians, found expression in hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Douglass worked with President Ulysses S. Grant and supported Grant in signing the Civil Rights Act of 1871 to try to suppress the actions of hate groups.

In 1872, Douglass was nominated for Vice President of the United States by the Equal Rights Party, which had chosen Victoria Woodhull, one of the leaders of the women's suffrage movement, as their candidate for president. Douglass never acknowledged the nomination, and Woodhull's candidacy failed (although she would try again later, also unsuccessfully). In 1877, after a fire (probably started by arson) destroyed his Rochester home, Douglass bought a house in Washington, D.C., Cedar Hill, where he lived until his death in 1895. Today, the house is the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

Also in 1877, Douglass returned to Maryland and reconciled with Thomas Auld, to whom he had written and published an open letter years before. The meeting, set up by Auld's daughter Amanda, seems to have given Douglass closure on his years as a slave. That same year, he was confirmed as United States Marshal for the District of Columbia under President Rutherford B. Hayes.

In 1882, Anna Douglass died, and in 1884, he married Helen Pitts, a White woman 20 years younger. Their marriage caused significant controversy, which Douglass ignored, as he did the protests of his children. He took Helen on a grand tour through Europe and visited Egypt, observing a much more relaxed schedule than he had earlier on his speaking tours.

In 1889, Douglass was appointed Consul-General to the Republic of Haiti by President Harrison, but he resigned in 1891 when it became clear the United States was only interested in benefiting from Haiti's resources and had no interest in actually helping the people. He continued to fight for the rights of others and spent the last day of his life at a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. He returned home and was preparing another lecture when he died on 20 February 1895 of a heart attack. His funeral was attended by thousands of people before his body was transported to Rochester, New York, where he was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery.

Frederick Douglass is recognized today as one of the most important figures of the 19th century and among the most influential Americans during a time when the country was living through its greatest crisis up to that time. Scholar David W. Blight comments:

The orator and writer lived to see and interpret black emancipation, to work actively for women's rights long before they were achieved, to realize the civil rights triumphs and tragedies of Reconstruction, and to witness and contribute to America's economic and international expansion in the Gilded Age…In one lifetime of antislavery, literary, and political activism, Douglass was many things, and this set of apparent paradoxes make his story so attractive to biographers, as well as to so many constituencies today.

(xiv-xv)

Douglass' home at Cedar Hill, as well as his grave at Mount Hope Cemetery, continue to be visited annually by admirers, honoring his achievements and taking inspiration from both his vision and his courage to pursue it.