Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Maryland in around 1818. At the age of twenty, he escaped from his master and fled to the North. A few years later, Douglass commenced a remarkable public career that made him the most influential black leader and reformer of the nineteenth century. A selftaught reader and writer, Douglass began his public career as an abolitionist orator and journalist. He spoke at abolitionist conventions and contributed articles to The Liberator and other abolitionist newspapers. In 1845, he published his first of three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which is considered by many literary historians as the greatest American slave narrative. In 1847, Douglass established The North Star, the first of three abolitionist newspapers that he edited. During the Civil War, Douglass continued to urge both the abolition of slavery and the...