Douglass

Civil War 2014: Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass sought to embody three keys for success in life… believe in yourself, take advantage of every opportunity, and use the power of spoken and written language to effect positive change for yourself and society. Taking a closer look at his life I have come to the conclusion that not only was Frederick Douglass a strong fighter in what he believed in but was one of a kind who people looked up to, and still do.

He was a fighter from the start on February 1818 where he was born in a slave cabin. He was separated from his mother when he was just a few weeks old where his grandmother then took him in and raised him until she brought him to a plantation and left him there.

Douglass never got over the sense of abandonment that he got left with after his grandmother left him.

He was then given to Lucretia, wife of Thomas Auld, who then sent him to her brother-in-law, Hugh Auld, in his Baltimore home. There he would learn skills that would vault him to national celebrity. At that house Hugh Auld’s wife, Sophia, taught him the alphabet. He was now twelve years old. Soon later Hugh forbid Sophia to teach young Frederick. That’s when he learned from the white neighbor kids. Later, in 1833 he got moved to Edward Covey whose constant abuse nearly broke sixteen year old Douglass psychologically. Eventually Frederick won a fight with Covey and he left him alone.

Although his owner was, obviously, very strict Frederick attempted to escape from slavery twice before succeeding. He was assisted in his final attempt by Anna Murray, a free black woman, in Baltimore, where he fell in love with her. She was five years older than him. September third he boarded a train headed to Havre de Grace Mary...

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...d hold onto and look back on in life. Frederick’s life was not easy at any point yet he still fought for the right to free slaves and the right for everybody to vote. He stood up for what he believed in and look where that got him. From being abandoned at a plantation by his own grandmother to being beaten every day by your owner it seems as if he would’ve just given up long ago. He fought and held his head high for what he believed in and never backed down after everything that happened to him. Just as I said in the beginning Frederick Douglass sought to embody three keys for success in life...believe in yourself, take advantage of every opportunity, and use the power of spoken and written language to effect positive change for yourself and society. Take those words and look through them again, cause they definitely worked for the fighter… Frederick Douglass.