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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Frederick Douglass Biography DOUGLASS, Frederick (1817–95). An American antislavery orator and journalist, born at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Md. His father was a white man, his mother a negro slave, and he was reared as a slave on the plantation of Col. Edward Lloyd until he was 10 years old, when he was transferred to a relative of his owner in Baltimore. There he worked in a shipyard and taught himself to read and write. In 1838 he escaped from slavery under the disguise of a sailor and changed his name from Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to Frederick Douglass. He proceeded first to New York City and then to New Bedford, Mass., where he married a negro woman, and where for several years he was employed as a day laborer. In 1841 he attended an antislavery convention at Nantucket and spoke with such power and eloquence that the Massachusetts Antislavery Society sent him out as a lecturer under its auspices. He met with so much success that an invitation to lecture in Great Britain was extended to him and was accepted. In 1845 he published his autobiography and went to England, where he remained two years, and where a contribution of £150 was raised to buy his freedom in regular form. On his return to America in 1847 he settled at Rochester, N. Y., and began to publish a weekly Abolition newspaper, which was continued until 1860, being called the North Star until 1850, when it was renamed Frederick Douglass's Paper. In 1855 he rewrote his autobiography, which was republished in 1882 as the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. During the Civil War he was among the first to suggest the employment of negro troops by the United States government. In 1871 he was secretary to the Santo Domingo Commission; in 1872 a presidential elector for the State of New York; in 1877–81 United States Marshal for the District of Columbia; in 1881–86 recorder of deeds in the District; and in 1889–91 Minister to Haiti. Consult lives by Holland (New York, 1891) and by Chesnutt (Boston, 1899). Consult Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass (Philadelphia, 1907). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. VII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 206. |