Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born: Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey -- c.1818 - February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. Called "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia" was the most prominent African-American of his time, and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history.
Life as a slave
Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Talbot County, Maryland near Tucaho creek. As a boy, Douglass lived twelve miles from his mother and never learned the identity of his father. His mother, who often walked the twenty-four mile round trip to visit him, died when he was nine years old. Douglass never knew anything about the identity of his father other than he was a white man, although some believe it was his master, Captain Aaron Anthony. When Anthony died, Douglass was taken into the possession of Mrs. Lucretia Auld. Lucretia Auld is the wife of Captain Thomas Auld; young Douglass is sent to Baltimore to live with Thomas Auld's brother, Hugh Auld.
At age twelve, his owner, Sophia Auld, broke the law by teaching him to read. His master, Hugh Auld, disapproved, saying that if a slave learns to read, he would become dissatisfied with his condition and desire freedom; Douglass later referred to this as the first abolitionist speech he had ever heard. Another turning point was when he purchased a copy of the book The Columbian Orator: Containing a Variety of Original and Selected Pieces Together With Rules, Which Are Calculated to Improve Youth and Others, in the Ornamental and useful art of eloquence by Caleb Bingham, A. M. (ISBN 0814713238). Douglass studied and memorized classic speeches by Cicero in order to find his own voice. It was the first book he ever owned.
Douglas became attached to a deeply religious man named Uncle Lawson. He was a spiritual father to Douglass and the young man took every opportunity to be with him. Lawson told him that it was possible for him to be delivered from bondage and he prayed to God that it would be so.
In 1836 Hugh and Sophia Auld hired Douglass out to work as a caulker in a Baltimore, Maryland shipyard and allowed him to keep a portion of his wages. Though he became a master caulker, whites refused to work alongside him.
In 1843, Douglass participated in the the American Anti-Slavery Society's Hundred Conventions project; a six month tour of meeting halls throughout the east and middle west.
Douglass later became the publisher of a series of newspapers: "The North Star", "Frederick Douglass Weekly", "Frederick Douglass' Paper", "Douglass' Monthly" and the "New National Era". The motto of "The North Star" was "Right is of no sex--Truth is of no color--God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethen".
His work spanned the years prior to and during the Civil War. He knew Captain John Brown but did not approve of Brown's plan to start an armed slave revolt. Douglass believed that an the Harper's Ferry attack on federal property would enrage the American public.
He conferred with President Abraham Lincoln on the treatment of black soldiers in 1863 and with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of black suffrage. His closest collaborators were the white abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips.
Douglass' most well-known work is his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which was published in 1845. Critics frequently attacked the book as inauthentic, not believing that a black man could possibly have written so eloquent a work. It was an immediate bestseller and received overwhelmingly positive critical reviews. Within three years of publication, it had been reprinted nine times with 11,000 copies circulating in the United States and translated into French and Dutch.
The book's success had an unfortunate side effect when his friends and mentors became afraid that the publicity would draw the attention of his ex-owner who could try to get their "property" back. They encouraged him to go on a tour in Ireland, as many other ex-slaves had done in the past. He set sail on the Cambria for Liverpool on August 16, 1845, and arrived in Ireland when the Irish famine was just starting.
He met and befriended Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell. When Douglass visited Scotland, the members of Free Church of Scotland, whom he had criticized for accepting money from US slave-owners, demonstrated against him with placards that read "Send back the nigger."
Douglass was able safely to return to the US only when two Englishwomen, Ellen and Anna Richardson, purchased his freedom from his former master, Hugh Auld, for $710710.96 or £150;150. On December 5, 1846 at age 28, Douglass was legally a free man.
Douglass had five children. Two of the children, Charles and Rossetta, helped produce his newspapers.
In March of 1860, Annie, his youngest daughter, died in Rochester, New York while Douglass was still in England. Douglass returned from England the following month, taking the route through Canada to avoid detection.
Douglass supported the presidential campaign of Ulysses S. Grant. The Klan Act and Enforcement Act were signed into law by President Grant. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina, sending troops into that and other states; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Ku Klux Klan was dealt a serious blow.
Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan gained him unpopularity among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised him. An associate of Douglass wrote that African-Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services." The conflict was not limited to the KKK. Racist groups like the Knights of the White Camellia and the White League also played a part.
By the time of the Civil War, Douglass was the most famous black man in the country, known for his oratories on the condition of the black race, and other issues such as women's rights. After the war, he served as President of the failed Reconstruction-era Freedman's Savings Bank, marshal of the District of Columbia, minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti and chargé d'affaires for Santo Domingo. After two years his resigned his ambassadorship due to disagreement with US government policy. In 1872, he moved to Washington, D.C., after his house on South Avenue in Rochester, New York burned down — arson was suspected. Also lost was a complete round of The North Star.
In 1892 the Haitian government appointed him has its commissioner to the Chicago World Columbian Exposition. He spoke for Irish Home Rule and efforts of Charles Stewart Parnell and briefly revisited Ireland in 1886.
After the disapointments of Reconstruction many African Americans called Exodusters moved to Kansas to form all-black towns. Douglass spoke out against the movement, urging blacks to stick it out. He was condemned and booed by black audiences.
Douglass's wife Anna died in 1882 leaving him in a state of depression. His association with activist Ida B. Wells brought meaning back into his life. In 1884, he married Helen Pitts, a feminist from Honeoye, New York Pitts was a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, and daughter of Gideon Pitts, Jr., an abolitionist colleague and friend of Douglass. While living in Washington, D.C. before her marriage, she had worked on a radical feminist publication called the Alpha while living in Washington, D.C. Frederick and Helen Pitts Douglass faced a storm of controversy as a result of their marriage. She was a white woman who was nearly 20 years younger than he. Both families recoiled; hers stopped speaking to her; his was bruised for they felt his marriage was a repudiation of their mother. But individualist feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, congratulated the two.
They traveled to England, France, Italy, Egypt and Greece from 1886 to 1887.
In his later life Douglass determined to find his birthday. He was born in February of 1817 by his own calculations but historians have found a record indicating his birth in February of 1818.
On February 20, 1895, he attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he was brought to the platform and given a standing ovation by the audience. Shortly after he returned home, Frederick Douglass died of a massive heart attack or stroke in his adopted hometown of Washington D.C
This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
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Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.
More than twenty years of unswerving devotion to our common cause may give me some humble claim to be trusted at this momentous crisis. I will not argue. To do so implies hesitation and doubt, and you do not hesitate. You do not doubt. The day dawns; the morning star is bright upon the horizon! The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty. The chance is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to rise in one bound from social degradation to the place of common equality with all other varieties of men.
I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine. I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
I say nothing of father, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have
never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as
it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either
fathers or families, and its laws do not recognize their
existence in the social arrangements of the plantation.
We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question forthe philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be, What principles should dictate thepolicy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go with this people, either as a testimony against them, or as an evidence in their favor throughout their generations.
There is a class of people who seem to think that if a man should fall overboard into the sea with a Bible in his pocket it would hardly be possible to drown.
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
See also: List of African-American abolitionists, Slave narrative
The Fight with Edward Covey
In 1834, Hugh Auld rented Douglass out to a farmer named Edward Covey, a "slave breaker" of extraordinary cruelty. 15-year-old Douglass was nearly broken psychologically but finally rebelled against the beatings and fought back. Covey lost out and never tried to beat Douglass again. This was kept quiet as Covey was ashamed of his defeat.Escape to freedom
In 1837, Douglass joined the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, a debating club of free blacks. Through the society, he met a free African-American housekeeper, Anna Murray. Anna Murray sold a poster bed to buy sailor's papers needed for Frederick Douglass's escape. On September 3, 1838 he boarded a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from slavery, dressed in a sailor's uniform and carrying identification papers provided by a free black seaman. Though he did not match the physical description in the papers, the conductor gave them only a casual glance. From Baltimore, Douglass made his way to Wilmington, Delaware to Philadelphia to New York and finally to New Bedford, Massachusetts. This was by no means the most creative escape of a slave; Henry Box Brown mailed himself from Virginia to Philadelphia in a journey taking 26 hours.Garrison and Speaking Career
Douglass continued reading. He joined various organizations in New Bedford, including a black church. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly journal, the Liberator. He attended Abolitionist meetings. In 1841, he saw Garrison speak at the Bristol Anti-Slavery Society's annual meeting. Douglass was inspired by the Garrison, later stating, "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments [the hatred of slavery] as did those of William Lloyd Garrison." Garrison, likewise, was impressed with Douglass, and mentioned him in the Liberator. Several days later Douglass gave his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket Island. 23 years old at the time, Douglass later said that his legs were shaking. He conquered his nervousness and gave an eloquent speech about his life as a slave. Travels to Europe
Douglass spent two years in the British Isles and gave several lectures, mainly in Protestant churches. He remarked that he was treated not "as a color, but as a man."The Civil War
In 1851 Douglass merged North Star with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper which was published until 1860. Douglass comes to agree with Smith that the United States Constitution is an antislavery document, reversing his earlier belief that it was proslavery, a view he had shared with William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison had publicly demonstrated his opinion of the Constitution by burning copies of it. This shift in opinion, as well as some political differences, create a rift between Douglass and Garrison. Douglas further angered Garrison by saying that the Constitution should be used to fight slavery. With this, Douglass began to assert his independence in the antislavery movement. Garrison saw the North Star as competition with the National Anti-Slavery Standard and Marius Robinson's Anti-slavery Bugle.Later life
In 1877, Frederick Douglass purchased his final home in Washington D.C. on the banks of the Anacostia River. He named it Cedar Hill. He expanded the house from 14 to 21 rooms including a china closet. One year later, Douglass expanded his property to 15 acres with the purchase of adjoining lots.Quotes
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
References
Books by Douglass
Books on Douglass
External links