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Example research essay topic: William Lloyd Garrison Anti Slavery Society - 3,021 words

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Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. A brilliant speaker, Douglass was asked by the American Anti-Slavery Society to engage in a tour of lectures, and so became recognized as one of Americas first great black speakers. Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice.

Frederick Baily was born a slave in February 1818 on Holmes Hill Farm, near the town of Easton on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Because Harriet Baily, Fredericks mother, was required to work long hours in the fields, he had been sent to live with his grandmother, Betsy Baily. Her job was to look after Harriet's children until they were old enough to work. Fredericks mother visited him when she could, but he had only a hazy memory of her. Frederick last saw his mother when he was seven years old. Because Frederick had a natural charm that many people found engaging, he was chosen to be the companion of Daniel Lloyd, the youngest son of the plantations owner.

Fredericks chief friend and protector was Lucretia Auld, who was recently married to a ships captain named Thomas Auld. One day in 1826 Lucretia told Frederick that he was being sent to live with her brother-in-law, Hugh Auld, who managed a ship building firm in Baltimore, Maryland. Upon Fredericks arrival at the Auld Home, his only duties were to run errands and care for the Auld's infant son, Tommy. Frederick enjoyed the work and grew to love the child.

Sophia Auld was a religious woman and frequently read aloud from the Bible. Frederick asked his mistress to teach him to read and she readily consented. He soon learned the alphabet and a few simple words. Sophia Auld was very excited about Fredericks progress and told her husband what she had done.

Hugh Auld became furious at this because it was unlawful to teach a slave to read. Hugh Auld believed that if a slave knew how to read and write that it would make him unfit for a slave. A slave that could read and write would no longer obeyed his master without question or thought, or even worse could forge papers that said he was free and thus escape to a northern state where slavery was outlawed. Hugh Auld then instructed Sophia to stop the lessons at once! 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. At the age of thirteen, Frederick began to detest slavery.

New laws were passed by southern state legislators that made it increasingly difficult for owners to free their slaves. All Frederick wanted was his freedom. He was hired out to a local shipbuilder so that he could learn the trade. However, that didnt work out and he began apprenticing at the shipyard where Hugh Auld worked. Within a year, he was an experienced caulker and was being paid the highest wages possible for a tradesman at his level. In Fredericks 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. At one of the society's meetings, 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.

Anna and Frederick were soon in love and in 1838 they were engaged. 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. He made a resolution that in three weeks, on September 3, 1838, he would be on a northbound train. Escaping was a difficult decision for Frederick.

He would be leaving his friends and his fairly comfortable life in Baltimore forever. he did not know when and if he would see Anna Murray again. Furthermore, if he was caught during his escape, he was sure that he would be either killed or sold to slave traders. Taking all of this into consideration, Frederick was resolved to escape to freedom. With money that he borrowed from Anna, Frederick bought a ticket to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He also had a friends sailors protection, a document that certified that the person named on it was a free seaman (Foner, 58). Dressed in a sailors red shirt and black cravat, Frederick boarded the train. Frederick reached northern Maryland before the conductor made it to the Negro car to collect tickets and examine papers. Frederick became very tense when the conductor approached him to look at his papers because he did not fit the description on them. But with only a quick glance, the conductor walked on, and the relieved Frederick sank back in his seat. Upon arriving in Wilmington, Delaware, Frederick then boarded a steamboat to Philadelphia.

Even after stepping on Pennsylvania's free soil, he knew he was not yet safe from slave catchers. On September 4, 1838, Frederick arrived in New York City. Frederick could not find the words to express his feelings of leaving behind his life in slavery (Huggins, 26). Alone in New York, Frederick soon realized that although he was free, he was not free of cares. Frederick sent for his fiancee, Anna Murray. The two were married on September 15, 1838.

Anna and Frederick stayed in the home of the well-to-do black family of Nathan Johnson. To go along with his new life, Frederick decided to change his name so as to make it more difficult for slave catchers to trace him. Frederick Baily thus became Frederick Douglass. In June 1839, Anna gave birth to their first child, a daughter which they named Rosetta. A son, Lewis was born the following year...

In March 1839 some of Douglass anti colonization 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 (Foner, 89). Garrison immediately recognized Douglass potential as a speaker, and hired him to be an agent for the society.

Garrison had a strong effect on Douglass. For three months in 1851, Douglass traveled with other abolitionists to lectures through Massachusetts. After Douglass first trial period as a lecturer was over, he was asked to continue with his work, and he eagerly agreed. During 1842, he traveled throughout Massachusetts and New York with William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent speakers.

In 1843, Douglass participated in the Hundred Conventions project, the American Anti-Slavery Society's six month tour of meeting halls throughout the west. Douglass was sure that he had found his purpose in life. His abilities as a speaker grew as he continued to lecture in 1844. In May 1845, 5, 000 copies of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was published (Foner, 156). William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips wrote introduction s to the book. Almost immediately, Douglass autobiography became a best seller.

The success brought by Douglass 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 (Huggins, 108). However, Douglass fame as an author threatened his freedom. Federal laws gave Thomas Auld the right to seize his property, the fugitive slave Frederick Baily. The fear of losing his freedom prompted Douglass to pursue a dream he had long held.

In the summer of 1845 he decided to go to England. There he would be free from slave catchers, and also have the opportunity to speak to English audiences and try to gain support for the American antislavery movement. As the wife of a traveling lecturer, Anna Douglass had probably grown used to her husbands long absences. By August 1845, the Douglass had 4 children: 6 year old Rosetta, 5 year old Lewis, 3 year old Frederick and 10 month old Charles. Douglass sailed to England on the British steamship Cambria. For nearly two years, Douglass traveled throughout the British Isles.

Everywhere he went, prominent people welcomed him to their homes. Everywhere he spoke, enthusiastic crowds came to hear the fugitive slave denounce the system which he had grown up in. He was quite happy in his new surroundings (Douglass, 94). In the summer of 1846, Douglass was joined by William Lloyd Garrison, and they traveled around England as a powerful team of antislavery lecturers (Foner, 178).

The World Temperance Convention that was held in London in August 1846 was the scene of Douglass most controversial speech (Foner, 189). By the fall of 1846, Douglass was ready to return home. However, recapture remained a frightening possibility for Douglass if he returned to the United States. The problem was unexpectedly resolved when two English friends raised enough money to buy his freedom. The required amount, $ 710. 96, was sent to Hugh Auld, to whom Thomas Auld had transferred the title to Douglass. On December 5, 1846, Hugh Auld signed the papers that declared the 28 year old Douglass a free man (Douglass, 106).

Douglass bought a two story home in Rochester, New York for Anna and the children and on December 3, 1847, Douglass began his second career, when his four page weekly newspaper, the North Star, came off the press (Douglass, 115). During the papers first year, he was on the road for six months. The paper allowed him to discover the problems facing blacks around the country (Foner, 204). By the end of the 1840 s, Douglass was well on his way to becoming the most famous and respected black leader in the country. After 1851, it would be titled Frederick Douglass Paper. Douglass newspaper continued publication as a weekly until 1860 and survived for three more years as a monthly.

In November 1859, Douglass sailed to England to begin a lecture tour. In May 1860, just as he was about to continue his lecture tour in France, word reached him that his youngest child, Annie, had died. Heartbroken over the loss of his daughter, Douglass decided to go home. The election year of 1860 produced many candidates. The two Democratic candidates received far more votes than anyone else did, but the division in the party gave the presidency to Lincoln. South Carolina, unwilling to accept the results of the election, seceded from the Union in December 1860.

In February 1861, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas also seceded and established a separate government under the name of the Confederate States of America. The four other slave states: Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, remained in the Union. The two sides prepared for battle, the North was fighting to preserve the Union; the South was fighting for the right to secede and establish a nation that guaranteed a persons right to own slaves. On the night of December 31, 1826, the president issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that as of the next day all slaves in areas not held by Union troops were free.

Lincolns act freed millions of blacks, who fled from their masters and took freedoms road to areas controlled by Union forces. In the beginning of April, the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, was captured. A few days later, the commander of the Confederate forces, General Robert E. Lee, surrendered to the Union commander, Ulysses S. Grant, at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. On April 9, 1865, the Civil War was over.

Do to the horror of the newly reunited nation, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, while attending a play at Fords Theater in Washington on April 14. He died the next day. With the rest of the country, Douglass mourned the man he had grown to respect (Douglass, 129). No sadness could completely overshadow Douglass joy at this time, however. A single, glorious fact remained: the war to end slavery had been won. With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in December 1865, slavery was officially abolished in all areas of the United States.

Frederick Douglass was then 47 years old, an active man in the prime of his life. But black Americans still desperately needed an advocate, and Douglass soon rejected any notion of an early retirement. In many parts of the South, the newly freed slaves labored under conditions similar to those existing before the war (Huggins, 154). During the later part of 1865, Douglass traveled throughout the North, speaking out for black suffrage and warning the country that the former slaveholders were regaining control of the South. The radical Republicans held a meeting in Philadelphia to vote on a resolution calling for black suffrage, and Douglass attended the convention as a delegate from New York (Foner, 236). Unfortunately, he encountered much prejudice from some Republican politicians, who were unwilling to associate with blacks on an equal level.

Nonetheless, Douglass went to the convention and spoke out for black suffrage. Speeches by Douglass and the woman suffragist Anna E. Dickinson helped turn the tide in favor of black suffrage. The movement for black suffrage grew rapidly after the Philadelphia convention. Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed to ensure that rights guaranteed earlier to blacks under the Civil Rights Bill were protected by the Constitution. The amendment was finally ratified in July 1868 after all the states approved it.

Although the new amendment declared that no state could deny any person his full rights as an American citizen, it did not guarantee blacks the right to vote. During the 1868 presidential contest black voters came out strongly for the Republicans, helping Grant win the presidency. With Grant in office, the Fifteenth Amendment passed through Congress and was submitted to the states for ratification. This amendment guaranteed all citizens the right to vote, regardless of their race.

At the last official meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass spoke gratefully about the new rights blacks had won. While thanking all the men and women who had struggled for so long to make this new world possible, he modestly omitted his own name (Foner 245). However, no one had fought harder for black rights than Douglass. In 1870, Douglass was asked to serve as editor of a newspaper based in Washington, DC, whose goal was to herald the progress of blacks throughout the country. The paper folded in 1874, but for a few years it provided him with the means to publish his opinions on the developing racial situation in the United States (Huggins, 162). Douglass decided to move his family to the center of political activity in Washington, DC During 1872, Douglass campaigned hard for the reelection of President Grant.

Grant easily won the 1872 election, and Douglass was given an unexpected honor. He was chosen as one of the two electors-at-large from New York, the men who carried the sealed envelope with the results of the state voting to the capital (Douglass, 147). After the election, Douglass expected that he would be given a position in the Grant administration, but no post was offered, so he returned to the lecture circuit. On whatever subject he lectured, he combined his humor, intelligence, and passion to create a memorable experience for his audiences (Foner, 250). Many people described him as one of the worlds greatest speakers.

In 1877, after the inauguration of the new Republican president, Rutherford B. Hayes, Douglass was finally rewarded with a political post, the largely ceremonial position of marshal for Washington, DC (Foner, 252). After the 1880 election of the Republican candidate James Garfield as president, Douglass was appointed to the post of recorder of deeds for Washington, DC. In August 1882, Anna Douglass died after a long illness. Douglass observed a traditional year of grieving, but he was hardly ready to settle into the life of a widower (Douglass, 143). He had never shrunk from controversy, and his next act upset both black and white society.

In early 1884, Douglass announced that he was marrying Helen Pitts, a white woman who was nearly 20 years younger than he was. Douglass enjoyed 9 years of marriage to Helen Pitts, however, on February 20, 1895, Douglass was struck by a massive heart attack and died at the age of 77. As news of Douglass death spread throughout the country, crowds gathered at the Washington church where he lay in state to pay their respects (Huggins, 167). Black public schools closed for the day, and parents took their children for a last look at the famed leader. His wife and children accompanied his body back to Rochester, where he was laid to rest.

No one has struggled more resolutely for the rights of his people than Frederick Douglass. Born at a time when strong voices were desperately needed to cry out for freedom, he established himself as a powerful speaker for all men and women (Foner, 270) Work Cited Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York: Collier Books, 1962.

Foner, Philip S. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass: Early Years, Civil War Years, Reconstruction and After. New York: International Publishers, 1955. Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass.

Boston: Little Brown, 1980.


Free research essays on topics related to: anti slavery society, american anti slavery, life of frederick douglass, read and write, william lloyd garrison

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