FREDERICK DOUGLASS INSTITUTE

 

WEST CHESTER UNIVERSITY

"The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery" Frederick Douglass

"...American abolitionist, orator, and writer, who escaped slavery and urged other blacks to do likewise before and during the American Civil War. Originally named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, Douglass was born on Feb. 7, 1817, in Tuckahoe, Md. He was the son of a slave, Harriet Bailey (d. 1824?), and was largely self-educated. He failed in an attempt to escape in 1836, but two years later he succeeded and reached New Bedford, Mass., where he assumed the name of Douglass.

His career as an abolitionist began dramatically in 1841 at an antislavery convention in Nantucket, Mass., where his impromptu address to the convention revealed him to be an orator of great eloquence. As “a recent graduate from the institution of slavery with his diploma on his back,” he was engaged as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. His speeches in the following years in the northern states and his work for the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, (q.v.) did much to further the cause of the abolitionists and made his name a symbol of freedom and achievement among whites and blacks alike.

In 1845, Douglass, at the urging of his friends, went to England to escape the danger of seizure under the FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS, (q.v.). His lectures in the British Isles on the slavery question in the U.S. aroused sympathy for the abolitionists’ cause and prompted his admirers to raise funds to purchase his freedom. After returning to the U.S. in 1847, Douglass became the “station-master and conductor” of the Underground Railroad in Rochester, N.Y., where he also established the abolitionist newspaper North Star, which he edited until 1860.

During these years, Douglass became friendly with the American abolitionist John Brown and was given a hint of Brown’s strategy of destroying “the money value of slave property” by training a force of men to help large numbers of slaves escape to freedom in the North via the Underground Railroad. When Douglass learned on the eve of the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 that it was Brown’s intention to seize the federal arsenal there, he objected. Warning Brown that an attack on the arsenal would be tantamount to an assault on the U.S. government and would prove disastrous, Douglass withdrew from further participation.

After the raid, fearing reprisals by the government, Douglass fled to Europe, where he stayed for six months. On his return to the U.S., he campaigned for Abraham Lincoln during the presidential election of 1860 and, following the outbreak of the Civil War, helped raise two regiments of black soldiers, the Massachusetts 54th and 55th. After the war, Douglass, as a recognized leader of and spokesman for the former black slaves, fought for enactment of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. He became U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia (1877–81), recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1881–86), and U.S. minister to Haiti (1889–91). He died in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 20, 1895.

So impressive were Douglass’s oratorical and intellectual abilities that opponents refused to believe he had been a slave and alleged that he was an impostor foisted on the public by the abolitionists. In reply, Douglass wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which he revised in later years; in final form, it appeared in 1882 under the title Life and Times of Frederick Douglass."

** This biography is from the History Channel website.

Chronology of The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Born Frederick Baily near Easton, Maryland

Works for Captain Aaron Anthony

Travels to Baltimore, Maryland to work for Hugh Auld

Returns to Anthony farm to work for Thomas Auld

Works for Edward Covey

Works for William Freeland

First escape plan fails; is imprisoned; sent back to Hugh Auld

Meets Anna Murray

Escapes to New York; sends for and marries Anna Murray; 

changes name to Frederick Douglass

Asked to speak at American Anti-Slavery Society meeting; 

invited to go on lecture tour

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is published;

Douglass begins tour of England

Returns to the United States and begins lecture tour

Begins printing the North Star

Attends first women's rights convention

Becomes involved in the underground railroad

Breaks with William Garrison

Sails to England to begin lecture tour

Returns to the United States

Meets with President Abraham Lincoln to discuss 

the treatment of black soldiers during the Civil War

Meets with Lincoln to formulate plans to lead blacks out of the 

South in case of a Union defeat

Meets with President Andrew Johnson to discuss black suffrage.

Declines Johnson's offer to head Freedman's Bureau

The Fifteenth Amendment is adopted and blacks are granted the right to vote.

Douglass becomes editor of the New National Era

Becomes president of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company

Becomes U.S. Marshal

Appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.

Anna Douglass dies

Douglass marries Helen Pitts of Rochester   

Accepts post of American consul-general to Haiti

Delivers last public lecture at at West Chester University in 

West Chester, Pennsylvania.