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In this search I would like to know who was Frederick Douglass besides the abolitionist. I know very little about Frederick Douglass. I know that he risked his life to help the black people to escape slavery, and that he learned to read and write. The processes I took to receive or to find information on Frederick Douglass was very short. All I did is go to my local library and ask for some information on Frederick Douglass. Then when I was home I searched on the computer and searched on Frederick Douglass on my two encyclopedias, Bookshelf and Encarta.
As I was looking for information on Frederick Douglass I happened to pass by a book called Frederick Douglass: The Slave Who Learned to Read by Linda Walvoord Guard. Frederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, orator, and writer, who escaped slavery and urged other blacks to do likewise before and during the American Civil War. Originally named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, Douglass was born in Tuckahoe, Maryland. He was the son of a slave, Harriet Bailey, and was largely self-educated, and with some help of his masters mistress, Mrs.
Auld. As a child I learned that Frederick s mother was Harriet Bailey, and his father was his white master, that s what I have learned so far. Harriet Bailey was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both colored. According to law, the child followed the condition of his mother and became a slave. Frederick did not see his mother often for she was to return to a slave after one week of having Frederick. Frederick only saw his mother about five times, and when she died Frederick did not know till later weeks.
Frederick was now six and he had to begin working as a slave. This is where he started to read and write. One day Frederick was told by Miss Lucretia, one of the Old Master s Daugthers, My husbands brother has written from Baltimore. He needs a servant to take care of his little boy.
I figure you re about eight now- plenty old enough take some responsibility. Those words was his best. Once he arrived in Baltimore his days were busy. He ran errands for Master Hugh Auld. He helped Miss Sophia, the master s wife, around the house, and watched over little Tommy, the masters son. The evenings I thought where the best for Frederick, because often Master Hugh had to out on business.
Then Mrs. Sophia took a book and read aloud to Frederick. Within a week he had learned the alphabet and began read small words. Later Master Hugh found out what Mrs.
Sophia had been doing, and it was forbidden by law and by Master Hugh. Since that day one Frederick self thought himself. One day he found pages of a book in the gutter. He read those. He would read anything he could. By the age of twelve he began to help one of his friends shine shoes.
He didn t get much, but he saved every penny until he had fifty cents. Then he bought a book. The book was called The Columbian Orator, a book or stories and poems and speeches. I then learned that when Fredrick was sixteen his master died and he was moved to Thomas Auld, of St. Michael s, Maryland. Thomas Auld sent Frederick to Edward Covey because Thomas Auld thought that city life ruined him and he forgot how to act like a slave.
I was so startled by this because I didn t think this situation could get worse. Those words were even worse than a beating. Frederick was sent to Edward Covey. Their he worked in the fields for the first time. He was slow and clumsy.
Mr. Covey thought he was just being lazy, so took a tree branch down and wiped Frederick till he was covered in blood. After six months his master sent Frederick to another man. Her he started to dream again, but Frederick was tired of dreaming it was time to act. Frederick and five other slaves decided to escape.
Fredrick was their leader. He planned carefully. They would steal a boat and go as far north as they could. This was good plan.
If this were to work, but one of the slaves who was going with Frederick grew more and more afraid so he told. They were arrested. Since Frederick had caused so much trouble he was sent back to Baltimore. Frederick soon had a job working at a nearby shipyard. He was in a club called The East Baltimore Mutual Improvements Society.
Once a week they got together to read, write, and study. At one meeting Frederick met a girl. Her name was Anna Murray. She was tall and slim and very beautiful. Frederick walked walked Anna Murray home and they started falling in love, but he had to break the news that he was escaping. This time Frederick decide to escape, but alone.
He still needed help. He turned to his friend, Stanley. Stanley was a free Negro. He could go whereever he wanted, but he had to carry a free-paper to prove that he was not a slave.
Frederick borrowed Stanley s free-paper. Then the day came. He sailed to a train then on train he went to New York. He was freetown turned to the pages on a book called He Fought for Freedom by Virginia School. I remembered when I was reading the book there was a part mentioning once Frederick arrived in New York he wrote a letter to Anna Murray telling her he is safe a that she should come as fast as she could. Anna Murray was a free black.
Frederick went to work in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he would be safer, but no safe enough. The slave-catchers were still looking for Frederick Bailey. Frederick Bailey would always be a hunted man. Frederick changed his last name to Douglass.
Frederick was to Anna so afterwards. By 1845 the Douglass had 4 children: 6 -year-old Rosetta, 5 -year-old Lewis, 3 -year-old Frederick, and 10 -month-old Charles. There were two books I enjoyed reading that were based on Frederick be an Abolitionist. Frederick Douglass by Sharman Russel and Frederick Douglass: Leader against slavery by Patricia McKissack.
Frederick s career as an abolitionist began dramatically in 1841 at an antislavery convention in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where his impromptu address to the convention revealed him to be an orator of great eloquence. As a recent graduate from the institution of slavery with his diploma on his back, he was engaged as an agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. His speeches in the following years in the northern states and his work for the Underground Railroad did much to further the cause of the abolitionists and made his name a symbol of freedom and achievement among whites and blacks alike. In 1845, Douglass, at the urging of his friends, went to England to escape the danger of seizure under the Fugitive Slave Laws. His lectures in the British Isles on the slavery question in the United States aroused sympathy for the abolitionists cause and prompted his admirers to raise funds to purchase his freedom.
After returning to the United States in 1847, Douglass became the station-master and conductor of the Underground Railroad in Rochester, New York, where he also established the abolitionist newspaper North Star, which he edited until 1860. During these years, Douglass became friendly with the American abolitionist John Brown and was given a hint of Browns strategy of destroying the money value of slave property by training a force of men to help large numbers of slaves escape to freedom in the North via the Underground Railroad. When Douglass learned on the eve of the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 that it was Browns intention to seize the federal arsenal and armory there, he objected. Warning Brown that an attack on federal property would be tantamount to an assault on the U. S. government and would prove disastrous, Douglass withdrew from further participation.
After the raid, fearing reprisals by the government, Douglass fled to Europe, where he stayed for six months. On his return to the United States, he campaigned for Abraham Lincoln during the presidential election of 1860 and, following the outbreak of the Civil War, helped raise two regiments of black soldiers, the Massachusetts 54 th and 55 th. After the war, Douglass, as a recognized leader of and spokesman for the former black slaves, fought for enactment of the 13 th, 14 th, and 15 th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. He became U. S.
marshal for the District of Columbia, 1877 - 1881, recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia, 1881 - 1886, and U. S. minister to Haiti, 1889 - 1891. In August 1882, Anna Douglass died after a long illness.
Then in 1884 he announced he was marrying Helen Pits, a white woman who was 20 years younger than Frederick. He died in Washington, D. C. , on February 20, 1895. There is no accurate date on what day he was born, because the masters didn t want the slaves of knowing. Douglass oratorical and intellectual abilities were so impressive that opponents refused to believe he had been a slave and alleged that he was an impostor foisted on the public by the abolitionists. In reply, Douglass wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which he revised in later years, and in final form, it appeared in 1882 under the title Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
I learned as much as I possibly could about Frederick Douglass. I know more than Frederick Douglass than he knows about him self. I now know why and how he was such a great man. I also know now how he met really famous people, and how he became a good friend with Harriet Tubman.
I think Frederick Douglass should be honored and respected a lot more than what has been so far. I took a survey on Frederick Douglass by asking some local neighbors and family members about him. Results: 80 % = People who didn t know anything about Frederick Douglass 11 % = Only Knew him from The Underground Railroad 9 % = Only remember studying him in American History
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Research essay sample on Learned To Read District Of Columbia
