The Westport Library Resource Guides: Frederick Douglass: About

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Frederick Douglass: Abolitionist, Journalist, Reformer

Frederick Douglass, an icon of American history, was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Talbot County, Maryland in 1818. Born a slave, Douglass escaped to freedom in his early twenties. He rose to fame with the 1845 publication of his first book The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written By Himself. He fought throughout most of his career for the abolition of slavery and worked with notable abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Gerrit Smith. However, Douglass’s fight for reform extended beyond the fight for abolition.

In 1848 he was one of a few men to attend the Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, this convention gave birth to the women’s movement in the United States. During the Civil War, he advocated for the use of African American soldiers in the Union Army and would later become a recruiter for the United States Colored Troops. Douglass regarded the Civil War as the fight to end slavery, but like many free blacks he urged President Lincoln to emancipate the slaves as a means of insuring that slavery would never again exist in the United States. Immediately after the war, Douglass advocated for Constitutional amendments that would permanently change the status of African Americans in the United States. The change in the status of African Americans came in the form of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments which granted African Americans citizenship and the right to vote. Continue reading from The National Civil Rights Museum