An
Academy of Information Technology webpage assignment created by :
Jellian Chala
Welcome to my Black
History
Page Of
Frederick Douglas
Name:
Frederick Douglas
Birth Place:
Easton, Maryland
Birth Date:
1818
Death Date:
Febuary 20,
1885 By
a Heart Attack
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HE
WAS A SPOKEMAN FOR AFRICANS
AMERICANS IN 1800'S
- Frederick Baily was born a slave in February 1818 on Holmes Hill
Farm, near the town of Easton on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The
farm was part of an estate owned by Aaron Anthony, who also managed
the plantations of Edward Lloyd V, one of the wealthiest men in
Maryland. The main Lloyd Plantation was near the eastern side
of Chesapeake Bay, 12 miles from Holmes Hill Farm, in a home Anthony
had built near the Lloyd mansion, was where Frederick's first
master lived. Frederick's mother, Harriet Baily, worked the cornfields
surrounding
Holmes Hill. He knew little of his father except that the man
was white. As a child, he had heard rumors that the master, Aaron
Anthony, had sired him. Because Harriet Baily was required to
work long hours in the fields, Frederick had been sent to live
with his grandmother, Betsey Baily. Betsy Baily lived in a cabin
a short distance from Holmes Hill Farm. Her job was to look after
Harriet's children until they were old enough to work. Frederick's
mother visited him when she could, but he had only a hazy memory
of her. He spent his childhood playing in the woods near his
grandmother's
cabin. He did not think of himself as a slave during these years.
Only gradually did Frederick learn about a person his grandmother
would refer to as Old Master and when she spoke of Old Master
it was with certain fear. At age 6, Frederick's grandmother had told
him that they were
taking a long journey. They set out westward, with Frederick clinging
to his grandmother's skirt with fear and uncertainty They had
approached a large elegant home, the Lloyd Plantation, where several
children were playing on the grounds. Betsy Baily had pointed
out 3 children which were his brother Perry, and his sisters Sara
and Eliza. His grandmother had told him to join his siblings and
he did so reluctantly. After a while one of the children yelled
out to Frederick that his grandmother was gone. Frederick fell
to the ground and wept, he was about to learn the harsh realities
of the slave system. Frederick's mother was rarely able to visit her
children due to
the distance between Holmes Hill Farm and the Lloyd plantation.
Frederick last saw his mother when he was seven years old. He
remembered his mother giving a severe scolding to the household
cook who disliked Frederick and gave him very little food. A few
months after this visit, Harriet Baily died, but Frederick did
not learn of this until much later.
- Frederick learned from Hugh Auld's outburst that if learning how
to read and write was his pathway to freedom, then gaining this
knowledge was to become his goal. Frederick gained command of
the alphabet on his own and made friends with poor white children
he met on errands and used them as teachers. He paid for his reading
lessons with pieces of bread. At home Frederick read parts of
books and newspapers when he could, but he had to constantly be
on guard against his mistress. Sophia Auld screamed whenever she
caught Frederick reading. Sophia Auld's attitude toward Frederick
had changed, she no longer regarded him as any other child, but
as a piece of property. However, Frederick gradually learned to
read and write. With a little money he had earned doing errands,
he bought a copy of The Columbian
Orator, a collection of
speeches
and essays dealing with liberty, democracy, and courage.
-
-
- Frederick was greatly affected by the speeches on freedom in The
Columbian Orator, and so began reading local newspapers and
began
to learn about abolitionists. Not quite 13 years old but enlightened
with new ideas that both tormented and inspired him. Frederick
began to detest slavery. His dreams of emancipation were encouraged
by the example of other blacks in Baltimore, most of whom were
free. But new laws passed by southern state legislators made it
increasingly difficult for owners to free their slaves.
In Frederick's spare time he met with a group of educated free
blacks and indulged in the luxury of being a student again. Some
of the free blacks formed an educational association called the
East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, which Frederick had
been admitted to. This is where Frederick learned his debating
skills.
- After being on the farm for one week, Frederick was given a
serious
beating for letting an oxen team run wild. During the months to
follow, he was continually whipped until he began to feel that
he was "broken". On one hot August afternoon his strength
failed him and he collapsed in the field. Covey kicked and beat
Frederick to no avail and finally walked away in disgust. Frederick
mustered the strength to get up and walk to the Auld farm, where
he pleaded with his master to let him stay. Auld had little sympathy
for him and sent him back to Covey. Beaten down as Frederick was,
he found the strength to rebel when Covey began tying him to a
post in preparation for a whipping. "At that moment - from
whence came the spirit I don't know - I resolved to fight,"
Frederick wrote. "I seized Covey hard by the throat, and
as I did so, I rose." Covey and Frederick fought for almost
two hours until Covey finally gave up telling Frederick that his
beating would have been less severe had he not resisted. "The
truth was," said Frederick, "that he had not whipped
me at all." Frederick had discovered an important truth:
"Men are whipped oftenist who are whipped easiest."
He was lucky, legally, a slave could be killed for resisting his
master. But Covey had a reputation to protect and did not want
it known that he could not control a 16 year old boy.
-
-
- After working for Covey for a year, Frederick was sent to work
for a farmer named William Freeland, who was a relatively kind
master. But by now, Frederick did not care about having a kind
master. All Frederick wanted was his freedom. He started an illegal
school for blacks in the area that secretly met at night and on
Sundays, and with five other slaves he began to plan his escape
to the North. A year had passed since Frederick began working
for William Freeland and his plan of escape had been completed.
His group planned to steal a boat, row to the northern tip of
Chesapeake Bay, and then flee on foot to the free state of
Pennsylvania.
The escape was supposed to take place just before the Easter holiday
in 1836, but one of Frederick's associates had exposed the plot
and a group of armed white men captured the slaves and put them
in jail.
- Frederick was in jail for about a week. While imprisoned, he
was
inspected by slave traders, and he fully expected that he would
be sold to "a life of living death" in the Deep South.
To his surprise, Thomas Auld came and released him. Then Frederick's
master sent him back to Hugh Auld in Baltimore. The two brothers
had finally settled their dispute. Frederick was now 18 years
old, 6 feet tall and very strong from his work in the fields.
Hugh Auld decided that Frederick should work as a caulker (a man
who forced sealing matter into the seams in a boat's hull to make
it water tight) to earn his keep. He was hired out to a local
shipbuilder so that he could learn the trade. While apprenticing
at the shipyard, Frederick was harassed by white workers who did
not want blacks, slaves or free, competing with them for jobs.
One afternoon, a group of white apprentices beat up Frederick
and nearly took out one of his eyes. Hugh Auld was angry when
he saw what had happened and attempted to press charges against
the assailants. However, none of the shipyard's white employees
would step forward to testify about the beating. Free blacks had
little hope of obtaining justice through the southern court system,
which refused to accept a black person's testimony against a white
person. Therefore, the case had to be dropped.
- Frederick met a free
black woman named Anna Murray. Anna was a few years older than
Frederick and was a servant for a wealthy Baltimore family. Although
Anna was a plain, uneducated woman, Frederick admired her qualities
of thriftiness, industriousness and religiousness. Anna and Frederick
were soon in love and in 1838 they were engaged. Love and courtship
increased Frederick's discontent with his status.
After Frederick's escape attempt, Thomas Auld had promised him
that if he worked hard he would be freed when he turned 25. But
Frederick did not trust his master, and he resolved to escape.
However, escaping would be very difficult due to professional
slave catchers patrolling the boarders between slave states and
free states, and free blacks traveling by train or steamboat had
to carry official papers listing their name, age, height, skin
color, and other distinguishing features. In order to escape,
Frederick needed money to pay for traveling expenses. Frederick
arranged with Hugh Auld to hire out his time, that is, Frederick
would take care of his own room and board and pay his master a
set amount each week, keeping any extra money for himself. This
also gave him the opportunity to see what it was like living on
his own.
- After living in New Bedford for only a few months, a young
man
approached Douglass and asked him if he wanted to subscribe to
the Liberator, a newspaper edited by
the outspoken leader
of the American Anti-Slavery Society, William Lloyd Garrison.
Douglass immediately became caught up in the Liberator's
attacks on southern slaveholders. "The paper became my meat
and drink," wrote Douglass. "My soul was set all on
fire."
- Inevitably, Douglass became involved in the abolitionist
movement,
regularly attending lectures in New Bedford. The American Anti-Slavery
Society, of which he was a member, had been formed in 1833. Like
Garrison, most of the leaders in the society were white, and black
abolitionists sometimes had a difficult time making their voices
heard within the movement. Nonetheless, the black leaders kept
up a constant battle to reduce racial prejudice in the North.
Douglass also became very involved with the local black community,
and he served as a preacher at the black Zion Methodist Church.
One of the many issues he became involved in was the battle against
attempts by white southerners to force blacks to move to Africa.
Some free blacks had moved to Liberia, a settlement area established
for them in West Africa in 1822. Douglass, along with others in
the abolitionist movement were opposed to African colonization
schemes, believing that the United States was the true home of
black Americans. In March 1839 some of Douglass's anticolonization
statements were published in the Liberator.
- In August 1841, at an abolitionist meeting in New Bedford, the
23 year old Douglass saw his hero, William Lloyd Garrison, for
the first time. A few days later, Douglass spoke before the crowd
attending the annual meeting of the Massachusetts branch of the
American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison immediately recognized
Douglass's potential as a speaker, and hired him to be an agent
for the society. As a traveling lecturer accompanying other
abolitionist
agents on tours of the northern states, his job was to talk about
his life and to sell subscriptions to the Liberator and
another newspaper, the Anti-Slavery
Standard. For most
of the next 10 years, Douglass was associated with the Garrisonian
school of the antislavery movement. Garrison was a pacifist who
believed that only through moral persuasion could slavery end,
he attempted through his writings to educate slaveholders about
the evils of the system they supported. He was opposed to slave
uprisings and other violent resistance, but he was firm in his
belief that slavery must be totally abolished. In the first issue
of the Liberator in 1831, he had written:
- "On this subject I do not
wish to think, or speak, or write
with moderation .....Tell a man whose house is on fire to give
a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from
the hands of a ravisher.....but urge me not to use moderation in
a cause like the present.....I will not retreat a single inch----AND
I WILL BE HEARD."
-
- With his reputation at stake, Douglass decided to publish the
story of his life. During the winter of 1844-45, he set down on
paper all the facts - the actual names of the people and places
connected with his years in slavery. When Douglass showed the
finished manuscript to abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, his
friend suggested that he dispose of it before he was found out
and shipped back to Maryland. Douglass was adamant about having
his story printed. He did not care if Thomas Auld and every southern
slave catcher learned who he was, the rest of world would hear
his story too.
- In May 1845, 5,000 copies of the
Narrative of the Life of
Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave
was published. William Lloyd Garrison
and Wendell Phillips wrote introductions to the book. Almost
immediately,
Douglass's autobiography became a best seller. The success brought
by Douglass's Narrative after its publication in 1845 was due
in large part to its moral force. His book is a story of the triumph
of dignity, courage, and self-reliance over the evils of the brutal,
degrading slave system. It is a sermon on how slavery corrupts
the human spirit and robs both master and slave of their freedom.
The book enjoyed widespread popularity in the North, and European
editions also sold very well. However, Douglass's fame as an author
threatened his freedom. Federal laws gave Thomas Auld the right
to seize his property, the fugitive slave Frederick Baily.
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Extra Information
- Leading spokeman for African American in the 1800's and born into
slavery
- Douglas became a noted reformer, author and orator
- Devoted his time to abolition of slavery and fight for black
rights
- At age 8 he was sent to Baltimore to work for one of his
relatives masters
- The master wife helped him out with his education
- 1838 he fled from his master, went to New Bedford, Massachusetts
- He changed his two middle name to avoid capture
- He got a job as a Caulker, but other man refused to work because
he was black
- He attended a meeting in Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society,
Douglas gave a speech on what freedom meant to him and the society was
impressed with his speech and hired him to lecture about his
experiences as a slave
- He protested against segregation seating on trains by sitting in
cars reserved for whites and was against religious discrimination
- He published a autobiography "Narrative
of the life of Frederick Douglas " but he feared he was
going
to get captured so he went to england
- He expanded versions on his autobiograpghy are"My
bondage and my freedom (1855) and Life
and Times of Frederick Douglas (1881)
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Major portions of the above text
were directly copied from public
domian documents found on the internet. I have listed those Internet
Addresses beneath for your convenience.
Free Web Layouts
Pictures
Information
on Frederick Douglas Life
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Links
Frederick's Love :
Anna Murray
Easton , Maryland
Slavery
Frederick
This is Frederick's Book
