Frederick Douglass American Abolitionist

"Who would be free themselves must strike the blow....I urge you to fly to arms and smite to death the power that would bury the Government and your liberty in the same hopeless grave. This is your golden opportunity." ...Frederick Douglass "There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the american people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution.."

This text is geared toward an elementary audience. It is a quite comprehensive look at Douglass' life. It illustrates that slaves did not only work on plantations in the south, but in cities hired out as laborers.

Frederick Douglass saw the Civil War as the inevitable consequence of man's inhumanity to man and a necessary conflagration to break the bonds of slavery. He saw immediately that if former slaves could fully participate in the fighting, they could not be denied full citizenship in the Republic. George Luther Turner, one of the original backers of John Brown, became a major in the Union Army. He immediately turned to Douglass to help recruit "Colored" Troops. The March issue of "Douglass Monthly" issued the well known challenge "Men of Color To Arms." Douglass recruited over one hundred free blacks from upstate New York for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts. Among the recruits arriving at boot camp were two of Douglass' sons Lewis and Charles. Lewis, the older son, served as the first sergeant major of the 54th and he was in the thick of the fighting at Fort Wagner where 1515 Union troops were mowed down by a blistering barrage from the Confederate stronghold. Lewis marveled that he returned unharmed from the assault. President Lincoln sought Douglass' advise and invited him to the White House. Apparently the two men came to an immediate understanding and respect for one another. Douglass left that meeting feeling that his concerns would be addressed and he agreed to continue to do more recruiting. Douglass had one more meeting with Lincoln on behalf of the black soldiers concerning equal pay. He felt that his advise was sincerely sought and duly considered. Nevertheless, Douglass was often frustrated by Lincoln's procrastination in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863, was a decisive moment in the relationship of Douglass and Lincoln. Once having been issued, the slavery system was doomed. Douglass had persuaded Lincoln to make the pronouncement, and once having done so, the course of the war and the future of the nation were profoundly changed.

Voice of Freedom: A Story About Frederick Douglass Interesting for both children and adults, this book does much to evoke the strong-minded, highly-principled person who inspired so many others

Frederick Douglass Timeline 1818 Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, a slave, in Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland. Mother is a slave, Harriet Bailey, and father is a white man, rumored to be his master, Aaron Anthony. He had three older siblings, Perry, Sarah, and Eliza. 1819-23 Raised by grandmother Betsey Bailey at Holme Hill Farm, where he was born; sees his mother only a few times. 1820 Sister Kitty is born. 1822 Sister Arianna is born. 1824 Moves to plantation on Wye River, where he lives with his siblings Perry, Sarah, and Eliza. 1825 Sees his mother for the last time. 1826 His mother dies. Sent to Baltimore to live with Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia. His master, Aaron Anthony, dies late in the year; Frederick becomes the property of Thomas Auld, Anthony's son-in-law. Thomas Auld sends him back to Hugh Auld. 1827 Asks Sophia Auld to teach him to read. She does so until Hugh Auld stops them, believing that education makes slaves rebellious. 1829-30 Works in shipyard as general assistant; practices reading and writing in secret. 1831 Reads newspaper article on John Quincy Adams's antislavery petitions in Congress; learns of the abolitionist movement. Buys copy of a compilation of speeches, Caleb Bingham's The Columbian Orator , with which he hones his reading and speaking skills. 1832 Sister Sarah is sold to a planter in Mississippi. 1833 Sent to St. Michaels, Maryland, where he works for Thomas Auld. Tries to teach other slaves to read until Auld discovers it and stops him. 1834 Auld rents him out to farmer Edward Covey, known as a "slave breaker." He is beaten several times and finally fights back. Covey never tries to beat him again. 1835 Hired out to work for William Freeland, a Talbot County, Maryland, farmer. Secretly organizes Sunday school and teaches other slaves to read. 1836 Makes an escape plan but is discovered, jailed, and then released. He returns to work for Hugh and Sophia Auld in Baltimore and is hired out to work as a caulker in a Baltimore shipyard. The knowledge he gains there helps him escape slavery two years later. 1837 Joins the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, a debating club of free black men. Through the society, he meets a free African-American housekeeper, Anna Murray. 1838 September 3 Borrowing papers from a free black sailor, he escapes from slavery to New York and changes his last name to Johnson. September 15 Marries Anna Murray. The ceremony is performed by minister James W. C. Pennington, who is also an escaped Maryland slave.   The newlyweds move to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Frederick works as an unskilled laborer. They stay with caterers Mary and Nathan Johnson. Nathan suggests that Frederick take on the last name Douglas, from a character in Sir Walter Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake. He does so, spelling it Douglass.   Tries to get job as a caulker, but white workers threaten to quit if he is hired. 1839 June 24 Daughter Rosetta is born. Douglass subscribes to William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist weekly The Liberator. Hears Garrison speaking in April. Becomes a licensed preacher for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. 1840 October 9 Son Lewis Henry is born. 1841 Speaks at an antislavery meeting in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Abolitionist William C. Coffin talks him into speaking about his life as a slave at a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society convention. William Lloyd Garrison follows his remarks with a speech of his own, encouraging Douglass. The Society is impressed and he is hired as a speaker. Douglass becomes closely allied with Garrison and his abolitionist views. 1842 March 3 Son Frederick is born. Meets black abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond. 1843 At an antislavery meeting in Pendleton, Indiana, he is beaten by a mob. His right hand is broken in the scuffle and he never fully recovers the use of his hand. 1844 October 21 Son Charles Remond is born. 1845 Publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass . In it, he reveals details that could lead to his arrest as a fugitive slave. He meets Susan B. Anthony while on a speaking tour. Later he becomes a champion of women's rights. Begins tour of Great Britain and Ireland, lecturing on slavery with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. English friends raise money to "purchase" his freedom; Douglass is manumitted after Hugh Auld receives $711.66 in payment. 1847 Returns from overseas tour; moves to Rochester, New York. With money raised by English and Irish friends, buys printing press and begins publishing the abolitionist weekly North Star. He continues publishing it until 1851. 1848 Participant in first women's rights convention, Seneca Falls, New York. Meets and becomes acquaintance of abolitionist John Brown. Begins sheltering escaped slaves fleeing north on the "underground railroad." Daughter Rosetta is asked to leave school in Rochester because she is African-American; Douglass begins struggle to end segregation in Rochester public schools. 1849 March 22 Daughter Annie is born. Hires a tutor to teach his wife, Anna, to read, but the effort is unsuccessful. 1851 Merges North Star with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper (printed until 1860). Agrees with Smith that the Constitution is an antislavery document, reversing his earlier statements that it was pro slavery, an opinion he had shared with William Lloyd Garrison. This change of opinion, as well as some political differences, create a rift between Douglass and Garrison. Douglass begins to assert his independence in the antislavery movement. 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin , an antislavery novel. It sells three hundred thousand copies its first year in print and helps galvanize opinions on both sides of the slavery issue. 1855 Publication of his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom . 1856 Becomes friends with Ottilia Assing, a German journalist living in New Jersey. She eventually translates My Bondage and My Freedom into German. 1857 In the Dred Scott case, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that African Americans are not U.S. citizens and that Congress has no authority to restrict slavery in U.S. territories. 1859 John Brown and other abolitionist followers raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, then in Virginia. He plans to start a slave insurrection and provide refuge for fleeing slaves. Federal troops capture him, and he is eventually tried and hanged. Authorities find a letter from Douglass to Brown. Douglass flees to Canada and then to a planned lecture tour of England to escape arrest on charges of being an accomplice in Brown's raid. 1859-63 Begins publishing Douglass' Monthly , first as a supplement to Frederick Douglass' Paper. It becomes an independent publication the following year and is distributed until 1863. 1860 March Daughter Annie dies in Rochester. April Returns to the United States and is not charged in the John Brown raid. November Abraham Lincoln is elected president. December South Carolina secedes from the Union. 1861 The Civil War begins. 1862 Congress abolishes slavery in Washington, D.C. 1863 Jan. 1 Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation takes effect, abolishing slavery in the states that are "in rebellion." February Douglass becomes a recruiter for the 54 th Massachusetts Infantry, the first regiment of African-American soldiers; his sons Lewis and Charles join the regiment. Eventually his son Frederick Douglass Jr. becomes an army recruiter also. About 180,000 African Americans serve in the Civil War on the Union side. August 10 Meets with President Lincoln to discuss the unequal pay and poor treatment black soldiers receive. 1864 August 19 Meets with Lincoln again. In case the war is not a total Union victory, Lincoln asks Douglass to prepare an effort to assist slaves escaping to the North. 1865 April 14 Lincoln is assassinated. December 18 The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery, is ratified. 1865-95 Douglass lectures on Reconstruction and women's rights. 1870 Edits and then owns the New National Era , a weekly newspaper for African Americans. He loses ten thousand dollars when the paper folds in 1874. Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution adopted. This amendment states that the rights of citizens to vote cannot be denied "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant appoints Douglass to the commission investigating the possibility of annexing the Dominican Republic to the U.S. 1872 The Equal Rights Party nominates Douglass for vice-president of the United States on a ticket headed by Victoria C. Woodhull. Douglass moves his family to Washington, D.C., after a mysterious fire destroys his home in Rochester. He attributes the fire to arson. 1874 March Becomes president of the troubled Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company. Works with the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to save the bank, which ultimately fails. 1875 Congress passes a Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination in public places. 1877 Douglass is appointed U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia by President Hayes. 1878 Purchases Cedar Hill, in Anacostia, Washington, D.C. The twenty-room house sits on nine acres of land. He later expands the estate by buying fifteen acres of adjoining land. 1881 Publishes his third and final autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. President Garfield appoints one of his own friends to the post U.S. Marshall and makes Douglass recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia, then a high-paying job. 1882 August 4 Douglass's wife of forty-four years, Anna Murray Douglass, dies after suffering a stroke. Douglass goes into a depression. 1883 The U.S. Supreme Court rules the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. 1884 January 24 Douglass marries Helen Pitts, a white woman who had been his secretary when he was recorder of deeds. The interracial marriage causes controversy among the Douglasses' friends, family, and the public. 1886-87 Tours Europe and Africa with wife. 1889 July 1 Appointed U.S. minister resident and consul general, Republic of Haiti, and chargé d'affaires, Santo Domingo. Arrives in Haiti in October. 1890 The U.S. government instructs Douglass to ask permission for the U.S. Navy to use the Haitian port town of Môle St. Nicholas as a refueling station. 1891 In April Haiti rejects the Navy's proposal as too intrusive. The U.S. press reports that Douglass is too sympathetic to Haitian interests. Douglass resigns as minister to Haiti in July. 1892-93 Douglass is commissioner in charge of the Haitian exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. 1895 February 20 Speaks at a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. Dies suddenly that evening of heart failure while describing the meeting to his wife. Newspaper Death Account Buffalo New York 1895 Newspaper Death Account Rochester New York 1895

A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America, 1776-1865 An excellent overview of the antebellum slavery debate and its key issues and participants. The most important abolitionist and proslavery documents written in the United States between the American Revolution and the Civil War Night Boat To Freedom Night Boat to Freedom is a wonderful story about the Underground Railroad, as told from the point of view of two "ordinary" people who made it possible. Beyond that, it is a story about dignity and courage, and a devotion to the ideal of freedom. The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America Go behind the scenes of the crucial Missouri Compromise, the most important sectional crisis before the Civil War, the high-level deal-making, diplomacy, and deception that defused the crisis. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America The evolution of black society from the first arrivals in the early seventeenth century through the Revolution Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy Insights into the relatively neglected debates over fencing laws and hunting and fishing rights in the post emancipation South, and into the solidarity of the low-country black community History's Mysteries - Human Bondage The story of Africans forcibly enslaved and shipped to America is a well-known tale; yet, it is just one tragic episode in the saga of world slavery. For nearly 6,000 years of recorded history, conquerors have imprisoned their enemies and forced them to act as laborers The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference The conflict that from 1861 to 1865 took 620,000 lives, laid waste to large sections of the South, and decided the future course of the nation. Drawn from the Library's unparalleled Civil War collections including previously unpublished letters and diaries, maps and photographs

Sergeant. Major Lewis H. Douglass, one of two sons of Frederick Douglass, served in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

Charles Douglass

Escape from Slavery by: Frederick Douglass, Michael McCurdy

The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass in His Own Words With the power of his words and the truth of his own experience, Frederick Douglass dramatized the abomination of slavery and the struggle of a young man to break free. In this shortened version of Douglass' 1845 autobiography, McCurdy has done a splendid job of bringing the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to middle-grade readers.

Frederick Douglass by: David B. Chesebrough

Oratory from Slavery Great American Orators, No. 26 Frederick Douglass, once a slave, was one of the great 19th century American orators and the most important African American voice of his era. This book traces the development of his rhetorical skills, discusses the effect of his oratory on his contemporaries, and analyzes the specific oratorical techniques he employed.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass

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When Slavery was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War Dissects the evangelical defense of slavery at the heart of the nineteenth century's sectional crisis. John Patrick Daly's writing uncovers the cultural and ideological bonds linking the combatants in the Civil War era and boldly reinterprets the intellectual foundations of secession	Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 An analysis of all aspects and particularly of the commercialism of black slaveowning debunks the myth that black slaveholding was a benevolent institution based on kinship, and explains the transition of black masters from slavery to paid labor.	A House Divided: The Antebellum Slavery Debates in America, 1776-1865 An excellent overview of the antebellum slavery debate and its key issues and participants. The most important abolitionist and proslavery documents written in the United States between the American Revolution and the Civil War	Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 How Reconstruction was viewed by historians and people everywhere in its chronicling of how Americans responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery.
Freedom for Themselves: North Carolina's Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era The processes by which black men enlisted and were trained, the history of each regiment, the lives of the soldiers' families during the war, and the experiences of the colored veterans and their families living in an ex-Confederate state	The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union In this classic study, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson deftly narrates the experience of blacks--former slaves and soldiers, preachers, visionaries, doctors, intellectuals, and common people--during the Civil War	A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army 1861-1865 Almost 200,000 African-American soldiers fought for the Union in the Civil War. Although most were illiterate ex-slaves, several thousand were well educated, free black men from the northern states	Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry The history of how our culture determines manhood. Although a rather detached supporter of abolition, Shaw was skeptical about the fighting abilities of freedmen, and initially declined the command. When he did accept, he was aware that the eyes of the nation were on his regiment, and his training of them was relentless. The 54th measured up by proving itself in battle
Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South The moving story of the quarter of a million free black men and women who lived in the South before the Civil War. portraying their struggle for community, economic independence, and education within an oppressive society.	Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia African American life in Virginia, both slave and free, during the civil war, from soldiers who fought in the Confederate and Union armies to those who acted as spies	Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South This book focuses on biracial persons of white/black ancestry. Persons who tend to be dark complected often consider themselves to be black and because the laws of antebellum South Carolina clearly differentiated between whites and free persons who did not fall into the white category	Bitter Fruits Of Bondage: The Demise Of Slavery And The Collapse Of The Confederacy, 1861-1865 The process of social change initiated during the birth of Confederate nationalism undermined the social and cultural foundations of the southern way of life built on slavery, igniting class conflict that ultimately sapped white southerners of the will to go on.

Civil War History Documentary DVD Movie Titles DVD Documentary Titles Gettysburg / Gods and Generals The tide of the war changes during three fierce days of combat at Gettysburg [Disc 1] the gripping saga of the tactics command errors and sacrifices behind the bloodiest battle ever fought on U.S. soil. Gods and Generals [Disc 2] reveals the spirited allegiances and fierce combat of earlier Civil War struggles The Civil War - A Film by Ken Burns Here is the saga of celebrated generals and ordinary soldiers, a heroic and transcendent president and a country that had to divide itself in two in order to become one Civil War Combat: America's Bloodiest Battles The violent mayhem of the hornet's nest at Shiloh, the valiant charge on the sunken road at Antietam, the carnage in the wheat field at Gettysburg, and the brutal fighting at Cold Harbor Civil War Journal - The Conflict Begins These four programs from the History Channel series Civil War Journal cover critical aspects of the early days of the war.

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U.S. Library of Congress.

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