Frederick Douglass American Abolitionist

Frederick Douglass

"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

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

"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."

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 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.

On March 2, 1863, eminent abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass sent out this powerful message in his newspaper, Douglass Monthly . Titled "Men of Color, to Arms!" it urged black men to support the nation's war and the crusade to end generations of slavery. Approximately 180,000 African American soldiers took up the call to fight for the Union, comprising more than 10% of all Federal forces. Knowing that a Northern loss could mean possible reenslavement, freemen and former slaves showed dedication to their country and a commitment to the freedom of their people forever.

Kindle Available
Black Slaveowners

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.

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. Address for John Brown
	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.

Kindle Available

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

Kindle Available

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

Kindle Available

Nothing but Freedom
Emancipation and Its Legacy
Insights into the relatively neglected debates over fencing laws and hunting and fishing rights in the postemancipation 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

Kindle Available Escape from Slavery by: *Frederick Douglass, Michael McCurdy* This shortened version brings the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to middle-grade readers.	Kindle Available Raising Freedom's Child: Black Children and Visions of the Future After Slavery Previously untapped documents and period photographs casts a dazzling, fresh light on the way that abolitionists, educators, missionaries, planters, politicians, and free children of color envisioned the status of African Americans after emancipation	Frederick Douglass Oratory From Slavery 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 by: *David B. Chesebrough*
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.	Kindle Available A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation A mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group with the publication	A Stranger And a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum Arkansas An illiterate free black man, defied all generalizations about race as he served with distinction as a marksman in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812, repeatedly crossed the color line, and became an Arkansas yeoman farmer, thriving and respected by white neighbors until he fell victim of new discriminatory legislation on the eve of the Civil War

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

by Frederick Douglass

Civil War Colored Troops
African American Timeline
Daniel P. Murray
Summary of the Civil War
American Civil War Exhibits
American Civil War Timeline
Women in the War
Kids Zone Underground Railroad
Civil War Picture Album
Civil War Submarines
First African American General Officer

African American Civil War Book Titles
Kindle Available 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	Honor in Command: Lt. Freeman S. Bowley's Civil War Service in the 30th United States Colored Infantry A young white officer who served as a lieutenant in a regiment of U.S. Colored Troops in the Union Army, is the work of a superb storyteller who describes how his Civil War experiences transformed him from a callow youth into an honorable man. Describing in detail his relationship with the men in his company, Bowley extols the role of black soldiers and their officers in the Union victory.	Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of Black Soldiers During the Civil War African-Americans - both freemen and ex-slaves - enlisted for a variety of reasons, from patriotism to sheer poverty. Like many of their white counterparts, they attributed theological significance to the 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
The Black Civil War Soldiers of Illinois: The Story of the Twenty-Ninth U.S. Colored Infantry Study in the lives of black recruits in the Civil War era, and a journey into the hinterlands of an American racial pathos. Throughout this study, Miller explores in detail the biographies of individual soldiers, revealing their often convoluted histories	Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves The United States of America originated as a slave society, holding millions of Africans and their descendants in bondage, and remained so until a civil war took the lives of a half million soldiers, some once slaves themselves.	Where Death and Glory Meet: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Infantry July 18, 1863, the African American soldiers of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry led a courageous but ill-fated charge on Fort Wagner, a key bastion guarding Charleston harbor. Confederate defenders killed, wounded, or made prisoners of half the regiment. Only hours later, the body of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the regiment's white commander, was thrown into a mass grave with those of twenty of his men.	Kindle Available 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

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U.S. National Park Service
U.S. Library of Congress.

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