Douglass, Frederick (1818–1895)

Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist, a reformer, a statesman, and the author of the American classic Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Born into slavery in Maryland, Douglass was never certain of his exact birth date or the identity of his father, although some have speculated that his father was his first master, Aaron Anthony. Douglass, whose birth name was Frederick Bailey, moved at the age of 10 to the Baltimore household of Hugh Auld, where at an early age he learned rudimentary reading and writing thanks to Auld's wife and to the white children in the neighborhood, whom Douglass bribed for lessons in spelling. When he found a copy of the Columbia Orator, a Schoolbook incorporating several antislavery passages as ...