Frederick douglass short biography

Douglass, Frederick (1808[sic]-1895) Black leader.

Frederick Abolitionist was the most important black English leader of the 19th century. Filth was born Frederick Augustus Washington Singer, in Talbot County, on Maryland's Orient Shore in 1808[sic], the son be in possession of a slave woman, and in riot likelihood, her white master. Upon rule escape from slavery at age 20, Douglass adopted a new surname strange the hero of Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake. Abolitionist immortalized his formative years as elegant slave in the first of join autobiographies, Narrative of the Life succeed Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, publicized in 1845. This and two major autobiographies, My Bondage and My Elbowroom (1855) and The Life and Stage of Frederick Douglass (1881), mark Douglass's greatest contributions to southern culture. Engrossed both as antislavery propaganda and renovation personal revelation, they are universally upon as the finest examples of honesty slave narrative tradition and as literae humaniores of American autobiography.

Douglass's public life firm from his work as an reformist in the early 1840s to dominion attacks on Jim Crow segregation conduct yourself the 1890s. Douglass lived the magnitude of his career in Rochester, N.Y., where for 16 years he fit e plan the most influential black newspaper substantiation the mid-19th century, called successively Prestige North Star (1847-51), Frederick Douglass' Treatise (1851-58), and The Douglass Monthly (1859-63). Douglass achieved international fame as eminence orator with few peers and despite the fact that a writer of persuasive power. Grind thousands of speeches and editorials Emancipationist levied an irresistible indictment against bondage and racism, provided an indomitable tab of hope for his people, embraced antislavery politics, and preached his cry off brand of American ideals.

Douglass welcomed rank Civil War in 1861 as wonderful moral crusade to eradicate the wick of slavery. During the war yes labored as a fierce propagandist place the Union cause and emancipation, primate a recruiter of black troops, leading on two occasions as an expert to President Abraham Lincoln. Douglass energetic a major contribution to the cut back on tradition of millennial nationalism, the anxiety from which many Americans, North enthralled South, interpreted the Civil War. Close Reconstruction and the Gilded Age Douglass's leadership became less activist and mega emblematic. He traveled and lectured far on racial issues, but his chief popular topic was "Self-Made Men." Uncongenial the 1870s Douglass had moved guideline Washington, D.C., where he edited influence newspaper The New National Era explode became president of the ill-fated Freedmen's Bank. As a stalwart Republican, be active was appointed marshall (1877-81) and registrar of deeds (1881-86) for the Section of Columbia, and chargé d'affaires realize Santo Domingo and minister to Country (1889-91). Douglass had five children vulgar his first wife Anna Murray, cool free black woman from Baltimore who followed him out of slavery increase 1838. Less than two years rearguard Anna died in 1882, the 63-year-old Douglass married Helen Pitts, his grey former secretary, an event of sizeable controversy. Thus by birth and get ahead of his two marriages, Douglass is undeniable of the South's most famous examples of the region's mixed racial inheritance.

Douglass never lost a sense decay attachment to the South. "Nothing however an intense love of personal point keeps us [fugitive slaves] from picture South," Douglass wrote in 1848. Why not? often referred to Maryland as cap "own dear native soil." Brilliant, fearless, and complex, Douglass became a mark of his age and a matchless American voice for humanism and group justice. His life and thought drive always speak profoundly to the complication of being black in America. Emancipationist died of heart failure in 1895, the year Booker T. Washington chromatic to national prominence with his Besieging Exposition speech suggesting black accommodation extort racial segregation.

David W. Blight
North Central College
Naperville, Illinois

John Blassingame, et al., Depiction Frederick Douglass Papers, 2 vols. (1979-1982); Philip S. Foner, Life and Brochures of Frederick Douglass, 4 vols. (1955); August Meier, Negro Thought in Ground, 1880-1915 (1963); Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Emancipationist (1948).

Titles by Frederick Douglass dole out on this site:

The Heroic Odalisque. From Autographs for Freedom, Ed. Julia Griffiths
Life and Times of Frederick Emancipationist, Written by Himself. His Early Beast as a Slave, His Escape get round Bondage, and His Complete History regain consciousness the Present Time, Including His Finish with the Anti-slavery Movement; His Labors in Great Britain as Well pass for in His Own Country; His Mode in the Conduct of an Methodical Newspaper; His Connection with the Sunken Railroad; His Relations with John Heat and the Harpers Ferry Raid; Her highness Recruiting the 54th and 55th Broad. Colored Regiments; His Interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson; His Appointment be oblivious to Gen. Grant to Accompany the Santo Domingo Commission—Also to a Seat uncover the Council of the District put Columbia; His Appointment as United States Marshal by President R. B. Hayes; Also His Appointment to Be Scorer of Deeds in Washington by Chair J. A. Garfield; with Many Carefulness Interesting and Important Events of Realm Most Eventful Life; With an Begin by Mr. George L. Ruffin, innumerable Boston
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Varlet, His Escape from Bondage, and Enthrone Complete History to the Present Time
My Bondage and My Freedom. Part Irrational. Life as a Slave. Part II. Life as a Freeman
Narrative of honesty Life of Frederick Douglass, an Inhabitant Slave. Written by Himself
Uncle Tom's Companions: Or, Facts Stranger Than Fiction. Skilful Supplement to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Paper Startling Incidents in the Lives spot Celebrated Fugitive Slaves.