Frederick Douglass: The Life of an Abolitionist

Frederick Douglass is perhaps the most well-known abolitionist from American history. He is responsible for creating a lot of support for the abolitionist movement in the years before the Civil War. He, along with many others, was able to gain support for and attention to the abolitionist movement. People like him are the reason that slavery ended in the United States.

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in February of 1818 in Maryland to a slave woman and a white man. 1 He was separated from his mother as an infant and the only thing that he knew for sure about his father was that he was white, although he thought it was a possibility that his father could have been his master. 2 He stayed with his aunt and grandparents when he was a young child until being sent to a ship carpenter in Baltimore for the next eight years of this life. 3 It was in Baltimore that Frederick learned to read and it was also there that he first heard about abolitionists. 4 After those seven years, he was sent back to the country where he worked for a slave owner and was constantly beaten and starved. 5 This horrible treatment led Frederick to want to escape, which he was finally able to do in 1838 when he fled to New York City where he married and changed his name to Frederick Douglass. 6 Soon after, he settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. 7

Douglass then began doing all he could to get involved in the abolitionist movement. He joined various organizations, continued to educate himself, attended Abolitionist meetings, and subscribed to and wrote in to The Liberator, an Abolitionist newspaper. 8 All of this involvement led many to take notice of Douglass. He began a friendship with William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of The Liber...

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...aged to create a legacy of greatness and unrelenting determination. Douglass served as an inspiration for many and he was able to continuously gain support for the abolitionist movement with his talent and passion as both a writer and public speaker. He took action and was able to bring attention to and create followers for his cause. The work of him and his fellow abolitionists helped end slavery in the United States. Without Douglass and others like him, it is questionable when and how slavery would have finally ended in America.

Works Cited

Abolitionist Sentiment Grows. US History. Last modified 2011. http://www.ushistory.org/us/28b.asp.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself. Boston, 1845.

Frederick Douglass. PBS Online. Last modified 2011. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1539.html.