Biography of Fredrick Douglass

Who is Fredrick Douglass? Do you know a man who was one of the most eminent human- rights leaders of the 19th Century? How about the first black citizen to hold high ranks in the U.S. government? How about a consultant for President Abraham Lincoln? You might have heard of him but do you know what he accomplished? His name is Fredrick Douglass. Here’s some information about him. Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, who later became Fredrick Douglass, was born on February 1818 in a slave cabin in Tuckahoe, Maryland. As an infant, Douglass was separated from his mother and went to live with his grandmother on a Maryland plantation. Douglass never knew who his father was and never seen him before but has been told that his father was a white man. At the age of eight, Douglass’s owner sent him to Baltimore to live as a house servant with a family of Hugh Auld, whose wife disobey the law by teaching Douglass how to read. When Auld found out about what his wife were doing, he told his wife to stop. He said that learning will make Douglass unfit for slavery. However, that didn’t stop Douglass from learning. He continues his education secretly with the aid of schoolboys in the street. Upon the death of his master, Douglass returned to the plantation as a field hand at the age of 16. Later Douglass was hired as a ship caulker in Baltimore. In 1833, Douglass and three others tried to escape but the plot was discovered before they could get away. However five years later, he fled to New York City and then to New Bedford, Massachusetts. In New Bedford, he work as a laborer for three years, eluding slave hunters by changing his last name into Douglass. At an antislavery convention in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1841, Douglass was invited to describe his feelings and experiences under slavery. His speech was spoken beautifully and forcefully that he was unexpectedly hired into a new career as agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. From then on,