frederick douglass biography quizlet

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a leader in the abolitionist movement, an early champion of women’s rights and author of ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.’

(1818-1895)

Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Among Douglass’ writings are several autobiographies eloquently describing his experiences in slavery and his life after the Civil War , including the well-known work Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave .

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born around 1818 into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland. As was often the case with slaves, the exact year and date of Douglass' birth are unknown, though later in life he chose to celebrate it on February 14.

Douglass initially lived with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey. At a young age, Douglass was selected to live in the home of the plantation owners, one of whom may have been his father.

His mother, who was an intermittent presence in his life, died when he was around 10.

Learning to Read and Write

Defying a ban on teaching slaves to read and write, Baltimore slaveholder Hugh Auld’s wife Sophia taught Douglass the alphabet when he was around 12. When Auld forbade his wife to offer more lessons, Douglass continued to learn from white children and others in the neighborhood.

It was through reading that Douglass’ ideological opposition to slavery began to take shape. He read newspapers avidly and sought out political writing and literature as much as possible. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator with clarifying and defining his views on human rights.

Douglass shared his newfound knowledge with other enslaved people. Hired out to William Freeland, he taught other slaves on the plantation to read the New Testament at a weekly church service.

Interest was so great that in any week, more than 40 slaves would attend lessons. Although Freeland did not interfere with the lessons, other local slave owners were less understanding. Armed with clubs and stones, they dispersed the congregation permanently.

With Douglass moving between the Aulds, he was later made to work for Edward Covey, who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker.” Covey’s constant abuse nearly broke the 16-year-old Douglass psychologically. Eventually, however, Douglass fought back, in a scene rendered powerfully in his first autobiography.

After losing a physical confrontation with Douglass, Covey never beat him again. Douglass tried to escape from slavery twice before he finally succeeded.

Wife and Children

Douglass married Anna Murray, a free Black woman, on September 15, 1838. Douglass had fallen in love with Murray, who assisted him in his final attempt to escape slavery in Baltimore.

On September 3, 1838, Douglass boarded a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Murray had provided him with some of her savings and a sailor's uniform. He carried identification papers obtained from a free Black seaman. Douglass made his way to the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles in New York in less than 24 hours.

Once he had arrived, Douglass sent for Murray to meet him in New York, where they married and adopted the name of Johnson to disguise Douglass’ identity. Anna and Frederick then settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which had a thriving free Black community. There they adopted Douglass as their married name.

Douglass and Anna had five children together: Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Redmond and Annie, who died at the age of 10. Charles and Rosetta assisted their father in the production of his newspaper The North Star . Anna remained a loyal supporter of Douglass' public work, despite marital strife caused by his relationships with several other women.

After Anna’s death, Douglass married Helen Pitts, a feminist from Honeoye, New York. Pitts was the daughter of Gideon Pitts Jr., an abolitionist colleague. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College , Pitts worked on a radical feminist publication and shared many of Douglass’ moral principles.

Their marriage caused considerable controversy, since Pitts was white and nearly 20 years younger than Douglass. Douglass’ children were especially displeased with the relationship. Nonetheless, Douglass and Pitts remained married until his death 11 years later.

Abolitionist

After settling as a free man with his wife Anna in New Bedford in 1838, Douglass was eventually asked to tell his story at abolitionist meetings, and he became a regular anti-slavery lecturer.

The founder of the weekly journal The Liberator , William Lloyd Garrison , was impressed with Douglass’ strength and rhetorical skill and wrote of him in his newspaper. Several days after the story ran, Douglass delivered his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket.

Crowds were not always hospitable to Douglass. While participating in an 1843 lecture tour through the Midwest, Douglass was chased and beaten by an angry mob before being rescued by a local Quaker family.

Following the publication of his first autobiography in 1845, Douglass traveled overseas to evade recapture. He set sail for Liverpool on August 16, 1845, and eventually arrived in Ireland as the Potato Famine was beginning. He remained in Ireland and Britain for two years, speaking to large crowds on the evils of slavery.

During this time, Douglass’ British supporters gathered funds to purchase his legal freedom. In 1847, the famed writer and orator returned to the United States a free man.

'The North Star'

Upon his return, Douglass produced some abolitionist newspapers: The North Star , Frederick Douglass Weekly , Frederick Douglass' Paper , Douglass' Monthly and New National Era .

The motto of The North Star was "Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren."

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'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'

In New Bedford, Massachusetts, Douglass joined a Black church and regularly attended abolitionist meetings. He also subscribed to Garrison's The Liberator .

At the urging of Garrison, Douglass wrote and published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , in 1845. The book was a bestseller in the United States and was translated into several European languages.

Although the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass garnered Douglass many fans, some critics expressed doubt that a former enslaved person with no formal education could have produced such elegant prose.

Other Books by Frederick Douglass

Douglass published three versions of his autobiography during his lifetime, revising and expanding on his work each time. My Bondage and My Freedom appeared in 1855.

In 1881, Douglass published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , which he revised in 1892.

Women’s Rights

In addition to abolition, Douglass became an outspoken supporter of women’s rights. In 1848, he was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls convention on women's rights. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution stating the goal of women's suffrage. Many attendees opposed the idea.

Douglass, however, stood and spoke eloquently in favor, arguing that he could not accept the right to vote as a Black man if women could not also claim that right. The resolution passed.

Yet Douglass would later come into conflict with women’s rights activists for supporting the Fifteenth Amendment , which banned suffrage discrimination based on race while upholding sex-based restrictions.

Civil War and Reconstruction

By the time of the Civil War , Douglass was one of the most famous Black men in the country. He used his status to influence the role of African Americans in the war and their status in the country. In 1863, Douglass conferred with President Abraham Lincoln regarding the treatment of Black soldiers, and later with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of Black suffrage.

President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation , which took effect on January 1, 1863, declared the freedom of enslaved people in Confederate territory. Despite this victory, Douglass supported John C. Frémont over Lincoln in the 1864 election, citing his disappointment that Lincoln did not publicly endorse suffrage for Black freedmen.

Slavery everywhere in the United States was subsequently outlawed by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution .

Douglass was appointed to several political positions following the war. He served as president of the Freedman's Savings Bank and as chargé d'affaires for the Dominican Republic.

After two years, he resigned from his ambassadorship over objections to the particulars of U.S. government policy. He was later appointed minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti, a post he held between 1889 and 1891.

In 1877, Douglass visited one of his former owners, Thomas Auld. Douglass had met with Auld's daughter, Amanda Auld Sears, years before. The visit held personal significance for Douglass, although some criticized him for the reconciliation.

Vice Presidential Candidate

Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States as Victoria Woodhull 's running mate on the Equal Rights Party ticket in 1872.

Nominated without his knowledge or consent, Douglass never campaigned. Nonetheless, his nomination marked the first time that an African American appeared on a presidential ballot.

Douglass died on February 20, 1895, of a massive heart attack or stroke shortly after returning from a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. He was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Frederick Douglass
• Birth Year: 1818
• Birth State: Maryland
• Birth City: Tuckahoe
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Frederick Douglass was a leader in the abolitionist movement, an early champion of women’s rights and author of ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.’
• Interesting Facts
• Frederick Douglass first learned to read and write at the age of 12 from a Baltimore slaveholder's wife.
• To much controversy, Douglass married white abolitionist feminist Helen Pitts.
• Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States.
• Death Year: 1895
• Death date: February 20, 1895
• Death City: Washington, D.C.
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Frederick Douglass Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/activists/frederick-douglass
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 15, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• If there is no struggle there is no progress. . . . Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
• Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
• I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
• No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
• People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
• I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
• Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
• The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.
• [I]n all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line. We cannot ignore it if we would, and ought not if we could.
• If I ever had any patriotism, or any capacity for the feeling, it was whipt out of me long since by the lash of the American soul-drivers.
• The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.
• The lesson of all the ages on this point is, that a wrong done to one man is a wrong done to all men. It may not be felt at the moment, and the evil day may be long delayed, but so sure as there is a moral government of the universe, so sure will the harvest of evil come.
• Believing, as I do firmly believe, that human nature, as a whole, contains more good than evil, I am willing to trust the whole, rather than a part, in the conduct of human affairs.
• To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.
• To deny education to any people is one of the greatest crimes against human nature. It is easy to deny them the means of freedom and the rightful pursuit of happiness and to defeat the very end of their being.
• 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.
• Let us have no country but a free country, liberty for all and chains for none. Let us have one law, one gospel, equal rights for all, and I am sure God's blessing will be upon us and we shall be a prosperous and glorious nation.

Abolitionists

Harriet Tubman

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Abraham Lincoln

Susan B. Anthony

Lucretia Mott

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Alexandre Dumas

Henry David Thoreau

Mary Ann Shadd Cary

James Garfield

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

Frederick Douglass

February 1818–February 20, 1895

After escaping from bondage on September 3, 1838, Frederick Douglass became a highly-acclaimed orator and writer supporting the abolition of slavery before the Civil War and the enactment of African American rights during Reconstruction.

On July 5, 1852, during a holiday celebration sponsored by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass delivered what many consider to be his most famous speech, entitled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” [ Wikimedia Commons ]

Birth and Early Life

Acclaimed abolitionist and women’s rights supporter Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland, near the Chesapeake Bay. His birth name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. As with many slaves, Douglass did not know the exact date of his birth, but he celebrated it on February 14. Douglass was of mixed ancestry. His mother, Harriet Bailey, was an African American whose lineage may have included some Native American forebears. Douglass’ father was an unknown white man, possibly his mother’s owner.

Separated from his mother as an infant, Douglass lived the first years of his life with his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey, on another plantation. Douglass’ mother died when the boy was about seven years old. Later, writing in his autobiography, Douglass recalled that his master refused to allow him:

to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew anything about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.

About the time his mother died, Douglass became the property of Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld. The Aulds subsequently sent Douglass to Baltimore to serve Thomas’ brother Hugh Auld. When Douglass arrived in Baltimore, Hugh Auld’s wife, Sophia, began teaching him the alphabet, a clear violation of statutes against educating slaves. When Auld’s husband learned of his wife’s activities, he forbade her from continuing the lessons. Afterward, Douglass learned to read by trading scraps of food for lessons from poor white boys he met on the streets of Baltimore.

Douglass lived in Baltimore for about seven years. In March 1832, when he was fourteen years old, Douglass returned to Thomas Auld’s custody at St. Michael’s plantation in eastern Maryland. On January 1, 1833, Auld sent Douglass to toil as a field hand on the small farm of Edward Covey. Covey had a notorious reputation for breaking young slaves, and it took him only a week to inflict the first of many severe whippings to his new rented laborer. Douglass later recorded that “During the first six months, of that year, scarce a week passed without his whipping me.” The abuse went on until August when Douglass resolved to take no more and “seized Covey hard by the throat” as he attempted to administer another whipping. The two then engaged in a fiery brawl that eventually brought Covey to his knees. Douglass recalled that “The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger.” Afterward, Douglass suggested that the reason Covey never reported him for committing the criminal act of laying his hands on a white man was that it would have tarnished his reputation as “a first-rate overseer and negro-breaker” if people learned that a fourteen-year-old boy bested him>

Douglass’ term of service to Covey ended on Christmas Day, 1833. Thomas Auld next hired out Douglas to William Freeland. Douglass found Freeland to be more lenient than Covey. While toiling on Freeland’s farm about three miles from St. Michael’s, Douglass secretly began teaching other slaves in the area to read during “Sabbath school” at “the house of a free colored man.” When Freeland did nothing to stop the meetings after learning of them, armed whites, enraged that Douglass was educating slaves, stormed into a session and permanently dispersed the congregation.

In 1835, Thomas Auld indentured Douglass to Freeland for another year. When authorities arrested Douglass for plotting an escape with two other slaves, he expected Auld to end his indenture and sell him into the Deep South. It elated Douglass to learn that Auld planned to send him back to live with his brother in Baltimore under the watch of Hugh Auld.

Upon Douglass’ return to Baltimore, Hugh Auld hired him out to William Gardner. Working as a caulker for Gardner’s shipbuilding company, Douglass earned a dollar and a half a day, all of which went to Auld. Understandably, Douglass “could see no reason why . . .  at the end of each week” he should “pour the reward of (his) toil into the purse of my master.” Gradually, his resentment renewed his longing to escape to the North.

Escape from Slavery

While living in Baltimore, Douglass began a love affair with Anna Murray, a free black woman. When Douglass shared his desire to escape from bondage, the two conspired to secure his freedom. On September 3, 1838, dressed as a sailor, Douglass used funds provided by Murray to board a train under an assumed identity in Baltimore bound for Wilmington, Delaware. From Wilmington, the fugitive sailed by steamboat to Philadelphia, where he caught a train to New York.  Upon his arrival in New York, Douglass continued on to the home of noted abolitionist David Ruggles, a free black man who reportedly helped over 600 African Americans escape bondage. Douglass’ uneventful journey to freedom spanned fewer than twenty-four hours.

Days after Douglass’ arrival in New York, Murray joined him. On September 15, 1838, the Reverend James Pennington, who was also a fugitive slave from Maryland, married the couple at Ruggles’ home. To avoid discovery by bounty hunters, the newlyweds assumed the surname of Johnson and heeded Ruggles’ advice and moved farther north to New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Upon his arrival in New Bedford, Nathan Johnson befriended Douglass. Douglass also changed his surname. Johnson was reading Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake at the time and suggested the name of the poem’s heroine, Ellen Douglas. From that time forward, Frederick Bailey became Frederick Douglass.

Although Douglass escaped slavery in New Bedford, he did not escape prejudice. When white caulkers refused to work beside him, Douglass had to abandon his craft and toil as a common laborer at any job he could secure for the next three years.

While living in New Bedford, Douglass began reading The Liberator , a weekly newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp in Boston. During its thirty-one years in publication, the weekly championed abolishing slavery and expanding women’s rights in the United States. Inspired by the paper’s message, Douglass began attending anti-slavery meetings and became active in the abolitionist movement. After rising to speak at an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on August 11, 1841, Douglass recalled that:

I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease. From that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren . . . .

John A. Collins, the general agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, attended the meeting that evening. Upon hearing the former slave’s stirring speech, Collins met with Douglass and hired him as a speaker on the spot. Douglass soon began traveling throughout New England speaking before large audiences. He also delivered speeches on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society .

In 1843, the New England Anti-Slavery Society resolved to host 100 meetings across the North. At the urging of William Lloyd Garrison, the group hired Douglass to join its corps of speakers. The escaped slave drew large audiences, but the possibility of being apprehended by bounty hunters prevented him from providing specific details that might reveal his true identity. When detractors began challenging the veracity of Douglass’ recollections of his life in bondage, he countered by publishing the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in 1845, the first of several autobiographical works he penned during his life. Receiving positive reviews, the book quickly became a bestseller.

Life in Europe

On August 16, 1845, following the successful debut of his book, Douglass set sail for Europe where he spent the next two years lecturing, primarily in England and Ireland. During his stay, Douglass legally escaped the clutches of slavery when British supporters purchased his freedom from Hugh Auld at a cost of 150 pounds sterling ($711.66 in American currency) on December 5, 1846.

Newspaper Publisher

When Douglass returned to Boston in April 1847, determined to publish his own abolitionist newspaper, William Lloyd Garrison disapproved. Hoping to avoid competing with Garrison in Boston, the home of Garrison’s The Liberator , Douglass moved to the progressive city of Rochester, in western New York. There, on December 3, 1847, he issued the first edition of the North Star , under the masthead “Right is of no Sex—Truth is of no Color—God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.” The weekly publication remained in circulation until June 1851 when it merged with Gerrit Smith’s Liberty Party Paper (based in Syracuse, New York) to form Frederick Douglass’ Paper .

During the same month that Douglass published the first issue of the North Star , he also had his first meeting with the radical abolitionist John Brown in Springfield, Massachusetts. Over the course of their discussions, Brown revealed his plan to invade the South secretly with a small band of insurgents and encourage slaves to escape their bondage. Douglass did not endorse Brown’s scheme because he believed that it had little chance to succeed. Still, Douglass left the meeting convinced of the dwindling chances of ending slavery in the United States without bloodshed.

Women’s Rights Activist

Douglass did not limit his progressive views to the abolition of slavery. In July 1848, he was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Martha Coffin Wright, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Lucretia Mott , and Jane Hunt organized the event. They advertised it as “a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” Historians often credit the two-day gathering, as the catalyst for the women’s rights movement in the United States.

The organizers invited men to attend the convention on the second day, and roughly forty did. Many of them joined with the first day’s participants in adopting twelve resolutions endorsing specific equal rights for women. Only the ninth resolution, which stated that “it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise,” did not pass unanimously. When it seemed that the ninth resolution might not pass at all, Douglass delivered an impassioned speech in favor of enfranchising women. Following Douglass’ powerful address, a small majority of the delegates approved the resolution.

Abolitionist

During the 1850s, Douglass became increasingly active in the anti-slavery Liberty Party and later with the fledgling Republican Party. In 1851, he openly split with William Lloyd Garrison . The more-radical Garrison believed that the U.S. Constitution sanctioned slavery, and he publicly condemned it. Douglass, however, defended the document, arguing that its lofty rhetoric aspiring to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty” confirmed the “unconstitutionality of slavery.” The two friends afterward became bitter enemies.

On July 5, 1852, during a holiday celebration sponsored by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass delivered what many consider his most famous speech. Over 500 enrapt abolitionists packed Corinthian Hall and listened to Douglass pose the question, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” He praised the vision of the Founding Fathers for a nation based upon “justice, liberty and humanity.” However, he also noted that “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me.” Finally, Douglass declared that Independence Day to the slave is:

a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Predictably, after publication Douglass’ provocative words kindled mixed but strong reactions, ranging from anger to empathy. Despite the discord they may have evoked, however, his stinging, yet accurate, observations have withstood the test of time. They remain a powerful reminder that the pursuit of “liberty and justice for all” is still a work in progress.

John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry

As the specter of slavery further divided the United States following the Compromise of 1850 and the Dred Scott decision in 1857, Douglass began to accept the inevitability of impending bloodshed. During the latter half of the decade, Douglass met with John Brown, spoke on his behalf, and solicited funds for the zealous abolitionist’s militant exploits to end slavery. When the two men secretly met at a stone quarry near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1859, to discuss Brown’s plan to take up arms against the U.S. government and attack the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry , Virginia, Douglass disapproved of the scheme and refused to get involved.

When Brown followed through with his plot on October 16, 1859, Douglass was addressing a crowd in Philadelphia. Upon learning of Brown’s raid and subsequent arrest, Douglass quickly made his way home to Rochester and then fled to Canada for fear of being falsely implicated in the conspiracy. His concerns were not unfounded. On November 13, 1859, Virginia Governor Richard Wise requested President James Buchanan ‘s help in apprehending Douglass who officials charged with “murder, robbery, and inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia.” On November 12, 1859, Douglass left Canada for the distant shores of England where he remained for six months, far from the reach of southern kidnappers.

In 1860, Douglass returned to the United States, passing through Canada to avoid detection. Not surprisingly, he supported President Abraham Lincoln ‘s call to arms after the Southern attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. However, when Lincoln proclaimed his goals were to quell the Southern insurrection and preserve the Union, he disappointed Douglass who viewed the ensuing conflict as a struggle to end slavery.

Despite his frustration, Douglass supported the war, especially after Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Two months later, on February 24, Douglass signed on as an agent for the government to recruit black soldiers for the volunteer army. Douglass was largely responsible for the successful recruitment of the Massachusetts 54th and 55th regiments, the former of which included his sons Lewis and Charles. As the war progressed, Douglass became one of Lincoln’s trusted advisors, and he endorsed the president’s reelection in 1864.

Reconstruction

Following the Civil War, Douglass actively crusaded for the enactment of the 13th , 14th , and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, conferred citizenship on African Americans, and granted black Americans the right to vote. Douglass’ support of the 14th and 15th amendments led to a rift with leading members of the American Equal Rights Association, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony , because the proposed reforms granted voting rights to African American men, but did not enfranchise women. Douglass had been a vocal supporter of women’s rights for two decades, but he feared that linking the causes of black suffrage with female suffrage could doom the attainment either.

Return to Newspaper Publishing

Douglass had retired from journalism in 1863 when he ceased publication of Douglass’ Monthly , the successor of The North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Papers. In January 1870, Douglas re-entered the profession when he joined the staff of the New National Era as a corresponding editor. In December, he purchased the weekly publication and became editor-in-chief. Published until 1874, the newspaper provided a voice for black perspectives on national and local events in the Washington, DC. area.

During his stint as owner-editor of the New National Era , Douglass achieved a measure of political fame in 1872 when the Equal Rights Party nominated him as the vice-presidential running-mate of their U.S. presidential candidate Victoria Claflin Woodhull. Douglass did not seek the position, nor, in fact, was he aware that he had become the first African American nominated for Vice-President of the United States until after the party’s delegates selected him. Apparently unimpressed, Douglass did not acknowledge the nomination, and he actively campaigned for President Ulysses S. Grant ‘s re-election.

Post-Civil War Private Life

Also in 1872, on a more somber note, Douglass’ home in Rochester burned to ruins on June 2. Officials suspected arson but could never prove it. Following the fire, Douglass moved to the Washington, DC. area where he lived for the rest of his life.

In March 1874, trustees of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company (also known as Freedmen’s Bank) appointed Douglass as president of the institution. Incorporated by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865, the privately chartered bank’s purpose was to assist newly emancipated African-Americans deal with their personal financial matters. During its short existence, the bank suffered from a series of fraudulent financial decisions by its managers, which imperiled the savings of thousands of freedmen. The Panic of 1873 , which triggered a worldwide economic depression, left the bank nearly in ruins.

Desperate to forestall a run against the bank’s assets, the institution’s trustees persuaded Douglass to assume oversight. Hoping to restore confidence among depositors, Douglass selflessly deposited thousands of dollars of his own money with the troubled institution. Unfortunately, neither Douglass’ personal sacrifice, nor his name and leadership were enough to avert disaster. On June 29, 1874, the Freedmen’s Bank collapsed, financially ruining tens of thousands of African Americans who had entrusted their savings to it.

Shortly after Rutherford B. Hayes took the oath of office as President of the United States on March 4, 1877, he nominated Douglass for the position of United States Marshal for the District of Columbia. When the U.S. Senate approved the nomination on March 18, Douglass became the first African American confirmed for a presidential appointment in U.S. history. Douglass held the office throughout the four years of Hayes’ presidency.

Six months after his confirmation, Douglass purchased an estate of nearly ten acres overlooking the Anacostia River, which he and his wife, Anna, named Cedar Hill. A year later he bought an adjacent tract of land that expanded the area of his holdings to over ten acres. The National Park Service now preserves the home at 1411 W Street SE, Washington, D.C., as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

After President Hayes left office, his successor James A. Garfield installed Douglass as the Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia in 1881. During the same year, Douglass published his third autobiography, entitled Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Sales of the book and a revised edition, published the following year, were disappointing.

Overshadowing the disappointment of his books’ sales, Douglass suffered a much larger personal tragedy in 1882 when his wife died unexpectedly of a stroke on August 4. Married for nearly forty-four years, the couple raised five children.

Two years after Anna’s death, Douglass married his former secretary and notable feminist, Helen Pitts, on January 24, 1884. Because Helen was white and nearly twenty years younger than Douglass, many people (including his family) did not approve of the marriage.

On January 5, 1886, Douglass resigned from his position as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia and embarked on an extended tour of Europe, visiting England, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, and Greece. After Douglass returned home in 1887, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him as Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti on July 1, 1889. Two months later, Harrison also named Douglass as Chargé d’affaires for Santo Domingo and Minister to Haiti. 1891, Douglass resigned from his appointments following a dispute with the state department. In 1893, Haiti named Douglass a co-commissioner of its pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Death and Burial

On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he received a standing ovation after being welcomed to the speaker’s platform. When Douglass returned home that evening, he suffered a massive heart attack and died at age seventy-seven. Following funeral services at Cedar Hill, on February 25, thousands of mourners viewed Douglass’ body as it lay in state at Metropolitan African Methodist Church in Washington. Douglass’ remains were transported to Rochester where they were interred at Mount Hope Cemetery after additional memorial services.

• Written by Harry Searles

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Why Frederick Douglass Matters

By: Yohuru Williams

Updated: September 28, 2023 | Original: February 10, 2018

Frederick Douglass sits in the pantheon of Black history figures. Born into slavery, he made a daring escape North, wrote best-selling autobiographies and went on to become one of the nation’s most powerful voices against human bondage. He stands as the most influential civil and human rights advocate of the 19th century.

Perhaps his greatest legacy? He never shied away from hard truths.

Because even as he wowed 19th-century audiences in the U.S. and England with his soaring eloquence and patrician demeanor, even as he riveted readers with his published autobiographies, Douglass kept them focused on the horrors he and millions of others endured as enslaved Americans: the relentless indignities, the physical violence, the families ripped apart. And he blasted the hypocrisy of a slave-holding nation touting liberty and justice for all.

He wanted to rouse the nation's conscience—and expose its hypocrisy

Douglass’s voluminous writings and speeches  reveal a man who believed fiercely in the ideals on which America was founded, but understood—with the scars to prove it—that democracy would never be a destination of comfort and repose, but a journey of ongoing self-criticism and struggle. He knew it when he lobbied relentlessly to abolish slavery . And he knew it after Emancipation, when he continued to battle for equal rights under the law .

Indeed, Douglass knew, as he argued so ardently in his famed 1852  July Fourth speech ,   that for democracy to thrive, the nation’s conscience must be roused, its propriety startled and its hypocrisy exposed. Not once, but continually and for the good of the nation, he argued, we must bring the “thunder.”

Douglass’s extraordinary life and legacy can be understood best through his autobiographies and his countless articles and speeches. But they weren't his only activities. He also published an abolitionist newspaper for 16 years...supported the Underground Railroad by which enslaved people escaped north...became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States during roll call at the 1888 Republican National Convention...and even was known to play America’s national anthem on the violin.

Underpinning it all was his relentless process of self-education—a theme that runs throughout Douglass’s life story.

Education, abuse and escape

Born in Maryland in 1818, Douglass, like many enslaved children, was separated from his mother at birth; he resided with his loving maternal grandmother until he turned seven.

At the age of eight, he became a servant in the home of Hugh Auld in Baltimore. In defiance of the codes that explicitly forbade teaching enslaved people how to read, Mrs. Auld taught Douglass the alphabet, unlocking the gateway to education—which he would extol the rest of his life. Over time Douglass surreptitiously continued to teach himself to read and write, all the while strengthening his resolve to escape the confines of slavery. He defied the law in not only learning to read and write, but in teaching other enslaved people to do so. As he observed: “Some know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it.”

In the early 1830s, Douglass was shipped to the plantation of Hugh’s brother Thomas. In an effort to break his spirit, Thomas loaned Douglass to Edward Covey, a sadistic local slave master with a reputation for cruelty. Covey mercilessly beat and abused the teenager until one day Douglass decided to fight back, knocking Covey to the ground. Covey, tempered, never mentioned the encounter, but he also never laid hands on him again.

As for Douglass, he called the battle with Covey “the turning point” in his life as an enslaved person: “It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me my own sense of manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.”

In September of 1838 Douglass, disguised as a sailor and with borrowed free papers, managed to board a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. He continued on to New York and ultimately, New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he settled, a free man. He married Anna Murray , a free woman of color who he had met and fallen in love with while in bondage in Baltimore. The couple had five children. The Douglasses made a commitment to eradicating the evil of slavery.

The authoritative voice of Abolition

After speaking at an anti-slavery meeting in 1841, Douglass met William Lloyd Garrison , one of the leading proponents calling for an immediate end to slavery. The two became friends and with Garrison’s support, Douglass became one of the most sought-after speakers on the abolitionist circuit, not only for his searing testimony but his powerful oratory. In time, he lent his voice to the emerging women’s-rights movement as well. He once reflected: “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”

In 1845, Douglass committed his story to print, publishing the first of three autobiographies , Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave , with the support of Garrison and other abolitionists. The book gained international acclaim, confounding critics who argued that such fluid writing and penetrating thought could not be the product of a Black mind. Nevertheless, the Narrative catapulted Douglass to success outside the ranks of reformers, stoking fears that his celebrity might result in attempts by Auld to reclaim the man he had enslaved. To avoid this fate, Douglass traveled to England, where he remained for two years until a group of supporters there successfully negotiated payment for his freedom.

Back in the United States, Douglass navigated the tumultuous decade of the 1850s, steering a course between extremists like John Brown , who believed the only way to abolish slavery was through armed insurrection, and old friends like Garrison. Douglass published his own newspaper , The North Star . On the masthead, he inserted the motto “Right is of no sex—Truth is of no color—God is the Father of us all, and we are brethren,” incorporating both Douglass’s anti-slavery and pro-women’s rights views.

On the eve of the Civil War , Douglass used his fame and influence to petition the Lincoln Administration to press for emancipation . As he remarked: “The thing worse than the rebellion is the thing that causes the rebellion.” He further demanded that the Union allow Black men to enlist and aided the war effort by promoting recruitment .

Without struggle, he learned, there is no progress

Despite the hope engendered by the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery following the war, Douglass remained cautious, observing: “Verily, the work does not end with the abolition of slavery, but only begins.” Over the course of the next few years, he remained a strong voice advocating for the passage of additional legislation to ensure absolute equality for Black people. By the end of the decade, however, he was also painfully aware of the mounting efforts to suspend Reconstruction and return Black people to a state of quasi-slavery—measures he continued to fight. His experience had taught him: “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”

Douglass died on February 20, 1895. While his life mapped the triumphant journey from slavery to freedom, the seeds of division had already been sown on the eve of his death. Three years earlier, Homer Plessy challenged Louisiana’s law that required “all railway companies [to] provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races,” leading to the landmark 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision upholding racial segregation. In spite of the failure of Reconstruction and the assault on Black equality, Douglass had still remained hopeful of a different outcome.

Of all the inspiring things to be recovered in Douglass life, his work in pursuit of social justice remains the most compelling. An uncompromising critic of American hypocrisy rather than American democracy, his critique was anchored much more in what could be.

Far from “slandering Americans” as he called it, Douglass appealed to them to remember the oppression that led to revolution, the desire for liberty that fueled its leaders and the vigilance necessary to maintain freedom. He warned against the denial of the most basic of human rights and the betrayal of revolutionary values in thoughts and actions.

That, today, is perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from Douglass’s life. We would do well to acknowledge his daring escape from slavery, powerful oratory, leadership on civil and women’s rights. But we shouldn't separate that from his ultimate message, which compelled us to be better—and more vocal—in the messy, ongoing process of pursuing social justice and perfecting our democracy. That, he believed, is what would make America great.

Yohuru Williams, an American academic, author and activist, serves as Distinguished University Chair, Professor and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas.

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Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (c. 1817–1895) is a central figure in U.S. and African American history. [ 1 ] He was born into slavery circa 1817; his mother was an enslaved black woman, while his father was reputed to be his white master. Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 and rose to become a principal leader and spokesperson for the U.S. Abolition movement. [ 2 ] He would eventually develop into a towering figure for the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and American politics, and his legacy would be claimed by a diverse span of groups, from liberals and integrationists to conservatives to nationalists, within and without black America.

He wrote three autobiographies, each one expanding on the details of his life. The first was Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself (1845); the second was My Bondage and My Freedom (1855); and the third was Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881/1893). [ 3 ] They are now foremost examples of the American slave narrative. In addition to being autobiographical, they are also, as is standard, explicitly works of political and social criticism and moral suasion; they aim at the hearts and minds of the readers. Their greater purpose was to attack slavery, contribute to its abolition in the United States, and argue for black Americans’ full inclusion into the nation.

Shortly after escaping from slavery, Douglass began operating as a spokesperson, giving numerous speeches about his life and experiences for William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. To spread his story and assist the abolitionist cause and counter early charges that someone so eloquent as he could not have been a slave, Douglass wrote and published his first autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written By Himself . It brought Douglass fame throughout the United States and the United Kingdom, and it provided the funds to purchase his freedom. Douglass eventually broke with Garrison and founded his first paper, the North Star . He served as its chief editor and authored a considerable body of letters, editorials, and speeches from then on. These writings are collected in Philip Foner’s multi-volume, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (1950–1975), and John W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan’s multi-volume, The Frederick Douglass Papers (1979–1992). [ 4 ]

Douglass’s advocacy in the abolition movement and his continued work after the U.S. Civil War, and his writings and participation in national discussions about the nature and future of the American Republic, made him a significant figure in American history and the history of American political ideas. His writings, speeches, and his national and international work have inspired many lines of discussion in debate within the fields of American and African American history and political science. Moreover, political thinkers representing different ideological positions, including liberals, libertarians, and economic and social conservatives, claim his legacy.

But what does anything about this have to do with philosophy? The connections between Douglass’s legacy and social and political philosophy are numerous and ongoing. His ideas about humanity, liberty, equality, property, democracy, and individual and social development addressed immediately pressing concerns, but they were also theoretical—he self-consciously addressed their moral and theological foundations. Furthermore, his work is connected to academic philosophy through the uptake of his political and social legacy and writings by later African American philosophers such as W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) and Alain Locke (1884–1954). [ 5 ] In contemporary philosophy, Douglass’s work is usually taken up within American philosophy, Africana philosophy, black political philosophy, and moral, social, and political philosophy more broadly. In particular, the discussions that involve Douglass focus on his views concerning some of the topics reviewed in this entry: slavery and racial segregation; natural law and the U.S. constitution; liberalism and republicanism; violence, self-respect, and dignity; racial integration versus emigration or separation; cultural assimilation and racial amalgamation; democratic action; and women’s suffrage. Additionally, just as there is a rich discussion about Douglass in philosophy and political theory, there is a related discussion about Douglass’s rhetoric, particularly the structure and meaning of his political rhetoric as displayed in his speeches, autobiographies, and other writings. [ 6 ]

For students and teachers first learning about Douglass, there is no better place to start than his first autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845). Next, read some of his speeches and writings referenced in this entry, especially “What To the Slave Is The Fourth of July?” (1852 [SFD: 55–92]). Then dive into the historical, political, literary, and philosophical literature about Douglass.

2. Natural Law

3. on liberty, 4. the u.s. constitution, 5. violence and self-defense, 6. respect and dignity, 7. universal human brotherhood, 8. amalgamation and assimilation, 9. integration versus emigration, 10. leadership, 11. women’s suffrage, 12. at the dawn of jim crow, a.1 collections and abbreviations, a.2 works by douglass, b. secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries.

In his narratives, speeches, and articles leading up to the U.S. Civil War, Douglass vigorously argued against slavery. He sought to demonstrate that it was cruel, unnatural, ungodly, immoral, and unjust. Douglass laid out his arguments, first in his speeches while allied with William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society, and then in his first autobiography, the Narrative . As the U.S. Civil War drew closer, he expanded his arguments in many speeches, editorials, and his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom. [ 7 ]

His definition of slavery identified its immorality and injustice by pinpointing its core wrong in the brutalization and the literal commodification of another human being and the stripping of them of their natural rights:

Slavery in the United States is the granting of that power by which on man exercises and enforces a right of property in the body and soul of another. The condition of a slave is simply that of the brute beast . He is a piece of property—a marketable commodity in the language of the law, to be bought and sold at the will and caprice of the master who claims him to be his property; he is spoken of, thought of, and treated as property. His own good, his conscience, his intellect, his affections are all set aside by the master. The will and the wishes of the master are the law of the slave. He is as much a piece of property as a horse. (1846 [SFD: 23]; my emphasis) [ 8 ]

In his own words, he worked to pour out “scorching irony” to expose the evil of slavery (1852 [SFD: 71]). His rebellion against slavery began, as he recounted, while he was enslaved. In his narratives, the depiction of his early recognition and general recognition among blacks and some whites of the injustice, unnaturalness, and cruelty of slavery was a significant element of his argument. It marks his first argument against slavery. Some of the apologists for slavery claimed that blacks were beasts, subhuman, or at least a degenerated form of the human species, drawing on a racial ideology that went back to at least the fifteenth century and that was common in the British American Colonies and then the United States. [ 9 ] Thomas Jefferson, for example, infamously intimates this racist view in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785: Query 14). Against such racist ideology, Douglass argued that blacks were human, rational, and capable of the full range of human emotions and sensitivity. He mocked slavery’s apologists for their hypocrisies and contradictions when they claimed otherwise. In “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”, he is derisive of the idea that he would even need to argue this point (1852 [SFD: 55–92]). [ 10 ]

Against the claim that blacks were beasts, he argued that instead, slavery had brutalized them. He pointed to the obviousness of blacks’ humanity and mocked the hypocrisy of slavery’s apologists. He rhetorically asked: Why should there be special laws prohibiting the free actions of blacks, such as rebelling against slave masters, or any other white person, if slaves were merely bestial and incapable of independent, responsible behavior? Indeed, why had slave masters encouraged their slaves’ Christianization and then forbade their religious gatherings? Along with this hypocrisy, American slaveholders feared and banned the education of blacks while demanding and profiting from their learning and development in the skilled trades. Thus, Douglass argued the accusation that blacks were beasts was predicated on the guilty knowledge that they were humans. Additionally, it subverted not only the natural goodness of blacks by brutalizing them, but it also did so to white slaveholders and those otherwise innocent whites affected by this wicked institution. Slavery, Douglass pointed out, consistent with Jefferson’s anxieties in Query 18 of the Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), was a poison in the body of the republic.

Second, since blacks were humans, Douglass argued they were entitled to the natural rights that natural law mandated ( §2 and §3 ) and that the United States recognized in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution ( §4 ). Slavery subverted the natural rights of blacks by subjugating and brutalizing them: taking men and turning them, against God’s will and nature, into beasts. Third, as an affront to natural law, slavery contradicted God’s laws and corresponding moral duties to others. As a witness and participant of the second Great Awakening, he took the politicized rhetoric of Christian redemption—personal and social liberation from sin—seriously. Douglass viewed redemption as intrinsically wrapped up with freedom from slavery and national liberation like other abolitionists. Fourth, he argued that slavery was inconsistent with the idea of America, with its national narrative and highest ideals, and not just with its founding documents. Fifth, drawing on theories of providential historical development (echoing common American views of manifest destiny), he argued that slavery was inconsistent with moral, political, economic, and social progress. Insofar as it propagated and protected slave power, America was on the wrong side of history on the question of slavery.

The apologists of slavery drew on the same ideological vein of historical progress to offer the defense that slavery was a benevolent and paternal system for the mutual benefit of whites and blacks. Douglass countered that calumny by drawing on his experiences, and the experiences of other enslaved black Americans, that American slavery was in no way benevolent. It brutalized black people. Slavery subjected them to debilitating, murderous violence, sexual violence and exploitation, split up families, denied them education, exploited their labor, and denied their natural property rights. Slavery, as Douglass’s relentlessly argued, was a deep and enduring injustice and evil. Enslaved black people were not happy slaves benefiting from the largess of kind, gentile white masters. Neither were they lacking in agency, self-esteem, self-respect, or a sense of dignity. They were moral beings, fully aware of the rights and capabilities they were unjustly deprived of. As Douglass proclaimed to the nation and world, black Americans wanted freedom, independence, the recognition of their full personhood, moral equality, and their rights as U.S. citizens (McGary and Lawson, 1992). [ 11 ]

The ideas that Douglass drew on in his arguments against slavery originate from natural law theory and Christian theology. Douglass was an Enlightenment thinker, a nineteenth-century modernist, and a Protestant, so natural law in his view was a combination of the prescriptions of reason and revelation evident in the historical and civilizational progress of humanity. One of his clearest articulations of this combined view is from a 1853 speech, “The Present Condition And Future Prospects of the Negro People” (1853b [FDSW: 250–259]), where condemns declares,

Slavery has no means within itself of perpetuation or permanence. It is a huge lie. It is of the Devil, and it will go to its place. It is against nature, against progress, against improvement, and against the Government of God. It cannot stand. It has an enemy in every bar of railroad iron, in every electric wire, in every improvement in navigation, in the growing intercourse of nations, in cheap postage, in the relaxation of tariffs, in common schools, in the progress of education, the spread of knowledge, in the steam engine, and in the World’s Fair…and in everything that will be exhibited there. (1853b [FDSW: 259]) [ 12 ]

The sources for his driving belief in natural law and its moral implications were many: the founding documents of the United States; popular intellectuals, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and his colleagues and acquaintances in the American Abolition movement; the allies he encountered abroad; and his appreciation of George Combe’s The Constitution of Man , from 1834 (Van Wyhe 2004). However, given the numerous religious references in his speeches and writings, a primary source for his employment of the idea of natural law was his adaptation of the American Protestantism of the Second Great Awakening, with its democratic and republican values and generally independent spirit. All of this is on prominent display at the conclusion of his famous speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”:

The arm of the Lord is not shortened“, and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. (1852 [SFD: 90])

Relying on the deus ex machina was not enough for Douglass. His vision of natural rights involved action; his image of civic republicanism emphasized the need for active participation to claim or earn one’s rights and status as a citizen (Davis 1971; Pettit 1997; Myers 2008; Gooding-Williams 2009). As Douglass scathingly pointed out, the slave-holding states resisted the abolition of slavery, and many Americans were apathetic about its cruel injustices—humans resist providential justice. Therefore, he argued, the end of slavery required agitation, protest, and, if needed, military intervention.

Douglass longed for God to cast his thunderbolts of judgment at American slave power, but he knew that human action was needed to abolish slavery in America (Blight 1989: 26–58). His view of, if you will, enacted providence is on full display at the end of his famous Fourth of July speech of 1852, where he cited Psalm 68:31 and paired the idea of God’s fiat with the image of Africa and Asia rising:

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, ”Let there be Light“, has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. ”Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God“. (1852 [SFD: 91]) [ 13 ]

There are many possible concerns about Douglass’s view of natural law, manifest destiny, and providence, which we can discern from a careful reading of the passage above; they involve a belief in historical teleological development and the human costs of that assumption. These costs include affirming nineteenth-century conceptions of civilizational backwardness of non-European societies or peoples. Thus, he is relatively silent about the United States’ destructive actions against indigenous peoples.

This aspect of Douglass’s views led Wilson Jeremiah Moses to characterize him and other early black political figures as ”Moses“ figures: exodus leaders, recipients of natural law for a chosen people. The chosen people, in this case, are African Americans in their travail for freedom, as well as the American Republic as a whole. Douglass—twinned eternally with Abraham Lincoln—is a lawgiver in the American civil religion (Moses 1978). This monumental, world-historical vita aside, Douglass’s faith in progress, although tested to its breaking point, resulted in his putting too much belief in the inevitability of progress. Nonetheless, his faith had a moral, social, and political purpose. He had no time for political pessimism, which is either a narcotizing sentiment for those who have surrendered to despair or a performative luxury whose decadence only those secure in their liberty can afford.

Instead of surrendering to despair, he joined the abolition movement after escaping slavery. And for that grand purpose, natural law and rights were ideas he believed in and used to significant effect. Thus, in his writings, his writings he repeatedly makes clear and direct references to concepts that flow from liberalism: liberty; moral and social equality; individuality; property rights, self-defense, and speech; the moral and instrumental value of labor; democracy; and composite (what we would call multiethnic or multiracial) nationality. This is why he is rightly associated with liberalism (Myers 2008; Buccola 2012). The relation between Douglass’s works and those ideas is apparent; however, three merit highlighting because they are not typically emphasized in the theoretical literature about Douglass: free speech, property, and composite nationality.

Douglass’s life after abolition speaks to the importance of the freedoms of speech, thought, and opinion and the great value he placed on them. From his efforts to learn how to read and write to his desire to start his own newspaper, his attitude and actions aggressively asserted the indivisible links between equal liberty and the right to think and speak one’s mind. Like the name of his first newspaper, this value was his North Star . So, on 9 December 1860, in response to the violent disruption of a meeting he was participating in, Douglass directly addressed the matter in his speech, ”A Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston“, wherein he delivered a classic liberal defense of it that still resonates:

There can be no right where any man however, lifted up or humble, however young or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments. (1860c [FDP1 v.3: 423])

The silencing of speech squashes thought, opinion, and discussion, and doing so, as Douglass pointed out—consistent with other philosophers on liberty—commits a ”double wrong. It violates the right of the hearer as well as those of the speaker (Ibid.). [ 14 ]

On property, Douglass argues, as expected, against human bondage. That, however, was not the only thing he had to say about it. The positive right to property, the right of black Americans to their bodies, the labor of their bodies, and the wealth generated from their productivity are ideas that feature prominently throughout the narratives. Douglass wrote movingly about the productivity of his labor, the exploitation of it by his enslavers and those in their employ, the theft of his rightfully earned wages, and the anger of some white laborers who resented having to work and compete with free black workers. The right to self-ownership, labor, and property were not just mere things denied to him—they were expressions, products, and symbols of his liberty and liberty in general. In the Narrative , for example, on the theft of his wages by Hugh Auld, his master’s brother, Douglass wrote,

I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it,—not because he had any hand in earning it,—not because I owed it to him, nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is exactly the same. (FDAB: 84)

From the Civil War through Reconstruction and its betrayal, Douglass continued to see the right to property as a necessary part of genuine emancipation. He wrote and frequently spoke about the ennobling, moral, and economic power of labor, private property, and individual productivity in articles before emancipation like, “What Shall be Done with the Slave if Emancipated” from 1862 (FDSW: 470–473) to speeches like “Self-Made Men” from 1893 (SFD: 414–453).

On composite nationality, or what we would call multiethnic democracy, Douglass’s “Our Composite Nationality” from 1869a (SFD: 278–303) is a ringing endorsement of a robust vision of civic belonging and national identification. It is an outlook that reflects his support for organic processes of assimilation and amalgamation and social reform. More on that below ( §§6–8 and §12 ).

Just as he drew on liberal ideas, he repeatedly invoked ideas of American civic republicanism and advocated for democratic reform, action, and, eventually, universal suffrage ( §11 ). This democratic advocacy has led some philosophers to view Douglass as a civic republican as much as he was a liberal (Gooding-Williams 2009). The evidence for that connection naturally arises from the wide variety of his democratic associational activity. It is modeled in his narratives, particularly in My Bondage and My Freedom , in its depictions of social organization, action, solidarity, friendship, and affection among black men and women (FDAB: 305–306).

Whether we understand Douglass as a liberal or civic republican (or even as a type of black nationalist or black radical liberal), the values and ideas he drew on were the foundation of his fierce denunciations of and active resistance to American slavery and his interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

In 1851 Douglass broke from William Lloyd Garrison’s position that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document and that the free states should peacefully secede from the Union. In a letter to Gerrit Smith, he reported that he was “sick and tired of arguing on the slaveholder’s side…” (21 January 1851 [FDSW: 171–173]). So, he decided to break with Garrison and side with Smith and the Liberty party’s position that the United States’ founding documents were anti-slavery (Blight 1989: 26–58; Root 2020).

In his famous speech on the topic, “What To the Slave Is The Fourth of July?” (1852 [SFD: 55–92]), he detailed his signature positions on the U.S. Constitution: that slavery is contrary to natural law, that blacks are self-evidently human and entitled to natural rights, and that slavery is inconsistent with the Constitution, American Republicanism, and Christian doctrine, and that it should be forcefully—violently—resisted. [ 15 ] A principal example of this shift is the changes in his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855, FDAB); particularly relevant is the extra and weighty meaning he imparts to the famous scene of his fight with the slave breaker Covey ( §5 ).

Douglass acknowledged that initially, he accepted the view, promoted by William Lloyd Garrison and allies aligned with him, that the framers intended to allow slavery to continue in the slave states and that the Constitution was thereby consistent with the institution of slavery. However, the Garrisonian view of the Constitution resulted in passivity in the face of the Slave-holding states’ threat of succession. That position did not sit well with Douglass because he wanted a more aggressive stance and strategy for abolishing slavery and the emancipation of the enslaved, including in the southern slave-holding states. Plus, he became convinced of the natural law reading of the U.S. Constitution that foregrounded the values outlined in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. What convinced him were the arguments of Gerrit Smith, Lysander Spooner, William Goddell, and Samuel E. Sewall that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document and that the founders were at cross-purposes on the question of slavery. Douglass argued that the general ideas of America’s founding documents supported an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as an evolving document in tune with the development of civilization. Thus, he intoned the call, “let there be light”, to capture his hope for abolition, emancipation, and universal political and social progress (1852 [SFD: 91]).

Douglass’s view of the Constitution is one of the reasons why he is associated with the assimilationist (or what is better understood as the integrationist tradition) tradition in African American political thought. It sets him up for the criticism that he did not squarely recognize the racialized character of the nation, how deeply embedded race and racism were in its institutions, and that it was in many respects a racial state. [ 16 ] Douglass, however, was not blithe to the nation’s sins—he repeatedly and forcefully condemned them through the end of his life ( §12 ). His reading of the Constitution was reasonable, grounded in his affirmation of natural law theory, and it was an essential part of the history of abolition (Sinha 2016; Delbanco 2018).

Douglass remained active in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War. He advocated for the abolition of slavery, worked against the expansion of slavery into new U.S. territories, and vigorously protested the Dred Scott decision and related laws that protected the property rights of slaveholders over slaves who escaped to the Free States in the North.

He was a member of the Liberty party, was involved in other political parties, including the Radical and Free Soil parties, and eventually became involved with the Republican party—all for the sake of abolition and the support of equal citizenship for all Americans (Blight 1989 and 2018). Douglass even met the militant abolitionist, John Brown. Although Douglass declined to join Brown’s militia—he sensed the deadly potential of Brown’s zealotry and the likelihood of its failure—he defended Brown’s ideals and denounced claims that Brown was merely mad. Although Douglass distanced himself from Brown’s plans and destructive actions, he appropriated Brown as a symbol of righteous violence against the national sin of slavery and used the raid at Harper’s Ferry to criticize President Lincoln’s reluctance to support abolitionism (1859 [FDSW: 372–376]; 1860b [FDSW: 417–421]; Myers 2008: 63–73; Blight 1989: 95–100).

Douglass’s rejection of pacifism and his support for Federal military intervention to end slavery was a significant turning point in his thought about natural law, divine providence and manifest destiny, and constitutional interpretation. Douglass’s defense of jus ad Bellum greatly affected his contemporaries and the resulting debate on slavery, struggle, and self-respect. The modern debate over violence and self-respect in African American philosophy, critical race theory, and black political theory begins with Douglass’s narratives, particularly his famous fight with the “Negro breaker”, Edward Covey. This incident plays a significant role in all of Douglass’s narratives: Covey represents the brutalizing institution of American slavery, and Douglass’s fight and victory represent the assertion of manhood, self-respect, dignity, and freedom. However, Douglass’s time with Covey and the suffering he endured by Covey’s hand is given a lengthier description in My Bondage and My Freedom than in the Narrative . In the former, the depiction of the fight explicitly draws parallels between Douglass’s battle with Covey and the struggles of black Americans against slavery and racial degradation.

Additionally, his fight has explicit national political connotations (Gooding-Williams 2009; Myers 2008). The scene’s depiction in each autobiography is powerful and indicates its narrative brilliance (literary, rhetorical, and philosophical), so it deserves to be quoted at length. In the Narrative (1845), Douglass wrote:

The battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free. The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me. (FDAB: 65)

In My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), he gives the following expanded interpretation:

Well, my dear reader, this battle with Mr. Covey,—undignified as it was, and as I fear my narration of it is—was the turning point in my “life as a slave”. It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was nothing before; I WAS A MAN NOW. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be a FREEMAN. A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise. (FDAB: 286, original emphases)

The first passage displays Douglass’s romantic and religious influences; it swells with the longing for the freedom of the soul. The second passage, written without the demands of Garrison’s pacifist politics directing his pen, screams independence and force. It recommends violence—it advocates for the coming U.S. Civil War—to throw off tyranny and claim, defend, and even fulfill one’s honor and humanity.

The fight with Covey has inspired several philosophical interpretations of Douglass’s intentions and the meaning of his struggle. It is commonly read as an exemplar of the conception of the state of war within liberal political theory (Davis 1971) and the interpersonal, or generally relational, dynamics of respect and recognition. [ 17 ] In particular, Bernard Boxill (1997 and 1998) developed an exceptionally influential deontological account of Douglass’s fight as emblematic of the individual sense of self-respect of oneself as a moral being. [ 18 ] That self-recognition comes with the obligation to defend one’s self-respect and to expect respect from others, which implies that others should recognize one’s inherent dignity. For Douglass, that fight was a parable—like Jacob’s wrestling with an angel (Genesis 32:24–32 [KJV]), [ 19 ] except in this case, the antagonist was more demonic than angelic—about the American and black American fight against slavery and racism.

What is more, Douglass’s evocation of dignity in his narrative of the fight is intellectually and emotionally stunning. “A man, without force”, he intensely asserted, “is without the essential dignity of humanity”. He adds to that the claim that

[h]uman nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him; and even this it cannot do long, if the signs of power do not arise. (FDAB, 286, original emphases)

The moral weightiness of the idea of dignity and his use of it invites us to consider whether it plays a special role in his thought and its relation to his frequently repeated arguments and assertions of the humanity and equal moral personhood of black people. Most of his mentions of dignity in his speeches and writings primarily refer to it as an ordinary sense of respectful comportment and propriety. Nonetheless, everyday assertions of dignity, even passive ones, have morally serious implications for individuals, groups, and societies under conditions of absolute domination, such as faced by black Americans during slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Assertions of everyday dignity could often be met with severe and sometimes violent consequences under those conditions—a fact that Douglass highlighted and condemned throughout his life. When Douglass referred to moral personhood as such (the essential moral worth of persons), he typically used the ideas of “equality”, “perfect human equality”, “manhood”, “brotherhood”, and “universal human brotherhood”.

There are, however, moments, as noted in the passage above from My Bondage and My Freedom , where his usage of “dignity” explicitly points to the idea of equal moral personhood.

The same is true in an editorial he wrote in 1850 responding to slander, verbal assaults, and a physical one:

My crime is, that I have assumed to be a man, entitled to all the rights, privileges and dignity, which belong to human nature —that color is no crime, and that all men are brother. I have acted on this presumption . The very “head and front of my offending hath this extent—no more”. I have not merely talked of human brotherhood and human equality, but have reduced that talk to practice. This I have done in broad open day, scorning concealment. I have walked through the streets of New York, in company with white persons, not as a menial, but as an equal. (1850 [FDSW: 157]; my emphases)

As discussed in the previous sections on slavery, natural law, liberty, the U.S. Constitution, and self-defense, Douglass vigorously defended equal personhood and thus the moral equality of black people. On that basis, he condemned slavery as an affront to natural law, Christianity, and republicanism. Therefore, regardless of the frequency he referred to the term “dignity”, he does get at the idea, and it does play a central role (along with and defined through the constellation of other ideas he drew on) in his political philosophical thought. Perhaps then, a basic account of dignity, as indicative of individual moral worth, is all that is needed to understand Douglass’s view. Stopping with that, however, would impart a sense of passivity to it. Douglass’s view was not simply static.

Dignity, for Douglass, is a natural and innate thing, bequeathed to all humans as humans. It is static or changeless in that limited sense. At the same time, Douglass suggests that willful action, epitomized by self-defense, was a condition of what was otherwise an inherent and essential quality of being a human person. It is something to be practiced. [ 20 ] But if dignity is innate and inherent, why must an individual practice it for it to be said that they have it? If it is an essential quality, then its practice or expression cannot be a condition of its possession. Douglass is not equivocating on this point. An individual’s equal moral status comes with the obligation to inhabit, abide by, and defend that status. [ 21 ] This is how we should understand Douglass’s view of dignity as modeled by his open-air rejection of servility and assertion of equality.

All the same, Douglass does not, nor could he, consistently hold that every enslaved black person needed to have an equivalent “fight with Covey” moment and assertion of “manhood” to secure their dignity and natural right to be treated as a moral equal. Directly related to this concern is the continuing discussion of whether the depiction of the fight with Covey and its meaning and value promote a masculinist vision of anti-slavery resistance, liberty, and autonomy (Wallace 2009 and 2014; Alfaro 2018). Douglass did not think that the attitudes and actions of the enslaved conditioned the immorality of slavery and the imperative of emancipation, so what counts as resistance to indignities of injustice requires careful and charitable consideration that is attentive to the constraints of individual circumstances and social conditions.

The bravado in Douglass’s wonderful affront to racism aside, his vision of self-respect, dignity, and the obligation to defend oneself and one’s dignity is central to his legacy. It plays a vital role in the history of African American political theory, and for that reason, given this nation’s history, it is a valuable contribution to American political philosophy about respect, dignity, and personhood. Its implications are profound, as can be seen in his view of universal human brotherhood.

Douglass’s conception of providence, with its American themes of individualism, anti-supernaturalism, and activism, and his view of natural law influenced his understanding of universal human brotherhood (Sundstrom 2003 and 2008: 11–35). He believed that the idea of universal human brotherhood was consistent with the high ideals of American Republicanism and Christianity. It was a doctrine dearly held by Douglass, and he offered it as a response to the rise in the United States of Samuel Morton’s (1799–1851) racial theory of polygenesis , that Josiah Nott and George Gliddon’s Types of Mankind (1854) popularized (Martin 1984; Myers 2008).

Douglass put considerable effort into countering arguments that blacks were subhuman, intellectually and morally inferior, and fit to be dominated as children, forever to be a race in nonage. To counter these claims, he turned to his natural law arguments. He argued that by the standards of Christian theology, blacks, as humans and creations of the divine, were all equally the children of God, no matter their present condition. One of his slogans, drawn directly from the title of a poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, got to the point: “A man’s a man for a’ that” (1795). [ 22 ] Douglass argued that the Christian Bible had to be correct on this score, that the authority of the biblical text relied on the affirmation of the unity of the human family:

What, after all, if they are able to show very good reasons for believing the Negro to have been created precisely as we find him on the Gold Coast—along the Senegal and the Niger—I say, what of all this?—“ A man’s a man for a’ that ”. I sincerely believe, that the weight of the argument is in favor of the unity of origin of the human race, or species—that the arguments on the other side are partial, superficial, utterly subversive of the happiness of man, and insulting to the wisdom of God. Yet, what if we grant they are not so? What, if we grant that the case, on our part, is not made out? Does it follow, that the Negro should be held in contempt? Does it follow, that to enslave and imbrue him is either just or wise ? I think not. Human rights stand upon a common basis; and by all the reason that they are supported, maintained and defended, for one variety of the human family, they are supported, maintained and defended for all the human family; because all mankind have the same wants, arising out of a common nature. A diverse origin does not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a united destiny. (1854 [SFD: 147] [FDP1 v.2: 523])

He emphasized that not only was slavery against natural law and Christian morality but that the very arguments concerning the subhuman status of blacks that slavery’s apologists used to justify attempted slavery contradicted the Bible and were heretical. Douglass, in short, leveraged the Bible and America’s reverence for it against the rising tide of polygenesis race theory. He stated:

The unity of the human race—the brotherhood of man—the reciprocal duties of all to each, and of each to all, are too plainly taught in the Bible to admit of cavil.—The credit of the Bible is at stake—and if it be too much to say, that it must stand or fall, by the decision of this question, it is proper to say, that the value of that sacred Book—as a record of the early history of mankind—must be materially affected, by the decision of the question. (1854 [SFD: 126] [FDP1 v.2: 505])

The doctrine of universal human brotherhood for Douglass, and the abolitionists, was based on the Bible’s creation story and Acts 17:26 [KJV]: “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth”.

These words were not mere words for Douglass and the abolitionists; they were not just-so stories. The Christian doctrine of the unity of the human family or human brotherhood contained the world-historical insight of equal human dignity, which implied—unleashed, as seen in several revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—an uncompromising demand for moral equality and equal liberty.

Douglass’s affirmation of universal human brotherhood, his belief in providential human development, and his observation of the mixing of racialized groups in the United States led him to directly support racial amalgamation: race-mixing was a sign of progress for Frederick Douglass. It is important to note here that he thought there were races to amalgamate, so he affirmed the basic idea that biologically distinct races existed (1854 [SFD: 116–150]). As his view of universal human brotherhood should be clear, he did not think much followed from that admission. The existence of biological races did not, in his view, negate the theological-philosophical insight of universal human brotherhood.

Douglass understood that the sexual boundaries between the races were thin and that, indeed, the conditions of slavery led to a great deal of mixing. Recall that he maintained that his unacknowledged father was his white master, and, in no uncertain terms, he condemned the rape, sexual violence, and exploitation of black women. Yet, given his commitment to his ideals, Douglass promoted amalgamation between free peoples. He believed that blacks and white ought to be free to intermarry and that they should do so. Why should they marry? Douglass, sensing the transformation of the black and Native American population in the United States, believed this process was a natural and continual process; that a new third race, an American race, would emerge in this land. During his time, such views were highly inflammatory and served, and continued to serve, as a reason against the emancipation of enslaved black people and later as a justification for segregation (Sundstrom 2008: 11–35). Nonetheless, in the 1860s, he boldly advocated for amalgamation between the races. He remarked to a journalist, the day after his second marriage to Helen Pitts, who was white,

…there is no division of races. God Almighty made but one race. I adopt the theory that in time the varieties of races will be blended into one. Let us look back when the black and the white people were distinct in this country. In two hundred and fifty years there has grown up a million of intermediate. And this will continue. You may say that Frederick Douglass considers himself a member of the one race which exists. (1884 [FDP1 v.5: 147])

Douglass’s amalgamation is easy to confuse with his support for assimilation. Amalgamation is conceptually distinct from assimilation; one does not have to accept amalgamation to support assimilation. Assimilation concerns various degrees of acculturation. It can theoretically go in either direction, from black to white or white to black, and it can involve the subtle blending of both and many groups (Sundstrom 2008). His support for amalgamation and assimilation could not be any clearer than what he proclaimed in “On Composite Nationality”, in which he called for the molding of all in the land into a common Americanness (1869a [SFD: 278–303]; §12 ). In his enthusiasm for this molding, he is distinct, but he was not exceptional in his support of assimilation; several of his contemporaries and leaders who followed him supported some degree of assimilation. Even some of Douglass’s early critics, such as Edward Blyden (1832–1912), Martin Delany (1812–1885), and Alexander Crummell (1819–1898), who did not support amalgamation, still believed in the assimilation of black Americans to the standards and values Western civilization (Moses 1978).

Douglas advocated assimilation and amalgamation, so, understandably, he supported the right of black Americans to remain in the United States and thought they ought to do so. Rather than leave the country to find homes and start lives abroad in places that they imagined might provide friendlier quarters, Douglass urged black Americans to stay and support abolition efforts and then, in the postbellum years, to fight for equal rights and citizenship. He can be considered a primary example of the political ideal of racial integration as distinct from racial separatism. Douglass’s amalgamation-assimilationist views of the 1860s are not the desegregationist and integrationist ideas associated with the U.S. Civil Rights movement that began around the mid-1950s. Other thinkers and movements influenced those views, which advocated for equal rights, protection, citizenship, and equal access to schools, colleges and universities, and neighborhoods. Yet, Douglass is a fitting icon for the American integrationist impulse.

In his essay from 1848, “The Folly of Racially Exclusive Organization”, Douglass criticized the creation of separate societies, with distinct “negro pews, negro berths in steamboats, negro cars, Sabbath or week-day schools or churches”, and in other social spaces and institutions (FDP1 v.2: 110–111). Formal racial segregation and informal separatism generally served the interests of the defenders of slavery; thus, after the U.S. Civil War, Douglass regarded ongoing racial separatism as a counter to the ideals of the abolition movement. It was a message he frequently repeated (1848a [FDSW: 117–122]).

He opposed plans for black American emigration to Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico, or Latin America for similar reasons. He criticized the emigrationist visions of the American Colonization Society, founded by whites, and the African Civilization Society, founded by blacks. He had four reasons to oppose emigration schemes: First, for slavery to end, Douglass argued that black Americans needed to struggle against it in America. Second, Americans had no other home but the United States; they were uniquely American and products of American history. Third, black Americans had a right to the property their labor had produced. By abandoning the United States, they would leave the land they had built. In his 1894 speech, “Lessons of the Hour” (SFD: 454–497), he wrote,

The native land of the American Negro in America. His bones, his muscles, his sinews, are all American. His ancestors for two hundred and seventy years have lived and laboured and died, on American soil, and millions of his posterity have inherited Caucasian blood. It is competent, therefore, to ask, in view of this admixture, as well as in view of other facts, where the people of this mixed-race are to go, for their ancestors are white and black, and it will be difficult to find their native land anywhere outside of the United States. (1894 [SFD: 485]).

Fourth, according to Douglass, emigration and separation were contrary to historical development and the emergence of a composite nation comprised of a blended people. All the same, Douglass was not opposed to blacks collectively acting in self-help and self-defense. Nonetheless, his opposition to emigration displayed a downside of his commitment to his natural law and manifest destiny-inspired principles. He did not appreciate enough how immigration might be more than a reasonable act of self-preservation and self-determination—in the face of anti-black life-crushing oppression and murderous violence—much like his own escape from slavery. [ 23 ] Initially, Douglass even opposed the internal migration of black Americans from the southern states to the northern ones (Myers 2008). However, he moderated his position nearer the end of his life (1879 [FDP1 v.4: 510–533]; 357 [FDP1 v.5: 357–373]); 1894 [SFD: 454–497]).

Douglass was a leader among the Americans involved in the abolition movement, and after the Civil War, although unelected into any office, he remained a leading voice for black Americans. [ 24 ] Garrison presented Douglass as a victim of and witness to slavery and as a spokesperson for Garrisonian abolitionism, but he freed himself from their restraints, just as he freed himself from slavery. To speak for himself, be his own man, and be a leader among men. That is what Douglass wanted. Thus, he shaped his own story, insisted on speaking his mind free from the control of handlers like Garrison, and strove to represent the interests of black Americans.

His example of leadership was quick to be seized and claimed by other prospective black leaders and spokespersons. The most significant example of this was the conflicting claim between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) over Douglass’s legacy. Both men competed for the opportunity to publish a biography of Douglass with the publishers George W. Jacobs & Company in their series The American Crisis Biographies (Sundstrom 2008: 11–35). The press rejected Du Bois’s bid for this task in favor of Washington’s (1907) and granted Du Bois the project of writing a biography of John Brown instead—but he included within it an extensive discussion on Douglass (Du Bois 1909).

After the death of Douglass, Du Bois penned an unpublished elegiac poem, “The Passing of Douglass” (Du Bois 1999: ix), and he incorporated elements of Douglass’s narrative in The Souls of Black Folk (1903 [1999: xxii]), John Brown (1909), and Black Reconstruction in America (1935 [2021]). Du Bois presented Douglass as a self-assertive freedom fighter and a leader of an activist community that demanded full social and political liberty, equality, and inclusion. Du Bois’s Douglass was not an accommodationist: He was not the sort of black leader who paid obeisance to white leaders and consented to an oppressive status quo, all for a token pittance or self-aggrandizement. Du Bois made this pointed interpretation very clear in his The Souls of Black Folks . In the third chapter (“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”) of Souls , Du Bois argues against Booker T. Washington’s accommodationism in favor of his and Douglass’s demand for, and assertion of, black political and social equality and rights. Economic liberty is not enough, and any gains in the economic sphere would be hampered and vulnerable without the protections and opportunities provided by social and political liberty and rights. And, of course, economic considerations aside, the fight for equal rights and liberty is not solely about economic opportunity—it is about equal dignity and one’s full humanity.

However, it is essential to note that Du Bois took on Douglass’s mantle of leadership after he argued against Douglass’s view of assimilation and amalgamation. In “The Conservation of Races”, Du Bois rejected amalgamation, which Douglass supported, and advocated for conserving a distinct black identity and community (1897 [1992]). Here is his critical reduction of the amalgamation position:

It may, however, be objected here that the situation of our race in America renders this attitude impossible; that our sole hope of salvation lies in our being able to lose our race identity in the commingled blood of the nation; and that nay other course would merely increase the friction of races which we call race prejudice, and against which we have so long and so earnestly fought. (Du Bois 1897 [1992: 488])

Du Bois, in opposition to amalgamation, argued that black Americans ought to embrace a “stalwart originality” that follows “Negro Ideals” and not dissolve into a general American identity (Ibid.). It is a view associated with cultural pluralism that expresses an early version of black cultural nationalism. And as such, it is a historical conceptual landmark in debates in African social and political thought over racial separation versus assimilation and the conservation of race (Boxill 1992a: 173–85; 1992b; 1999; McGary 1999a; 1999b: 43–61; Pittman 1999). [ 25 ]

Because of his cultural pluralism, it is tempting to think that Du Bois rejected Douglass’s view of assimilation and integration, but that would be a mistake. He turned away from Douglass’s vision of total assimilation in favor of retaining some black ideals, which he too quickly assumed that all blacks qua blacks share. Still, his cultural pluralism has at its end the creation of a community that is a “co-worker” in the “kingdom of culture” (Du Bois 1903 [1999: 11]). What results from Du Bois’s rejection of amalgamation and acceptance of some elements of assimilation is the brilliant idea of double consciousness, especially the double consciousness brought on by the black American experience. As is evident from the rhetorical questions at the end of the following passage, Du Bois argued against Douglass’s hopes of amalgamation and presaged his view of black political, social, and cultural solidarity:

No Negro who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people in America has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these cross-roads; has failed to ask himself at some time: What, after all, am I? Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro, am I not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates Black and White America? Is not my only possible aim the subduction of all that is Negro in me to the American? Does my black blood place upon me any more obligation to assert my nationality than German, or Irish or Italian blood would? (Du Bois 1897 [1992: 488])

Du Bois’s answers to these questions directly contradict Douglass’s view about amalgamation. However, their opinions about assimilation share similarities, such as the co-production and enjoyment of a shared American culture. In the end, however, Du Bois’s image of Douglass is skewed toward his political projects of elite leadership, racial solidarity, and uplift.

Likewise, Booker T. Washington’s Douglass is equally a work of art that reflects the artist’s image. His The Life of Frederick Douglass (1907) presents a picture of Douglass contrary to Du Bois’s and is incompatible with many of Douglass’s views. It is, in part, a work of self-promotion. Although Washington accurately pointed out the similarities between Douglass and himself, he failed to mention Douglass’s assertions of equal personhood, his uncompromising demands for equal social and political rights, and that Douglass fully expected that black Americans would fully integrate into a “composite nation”. Washington’s claim over Douglass’s legacy of leadership falls short of the facts. Douglass was a radical Republican and demanded full inclusion of black Americans in the nation’s life and the opening of all opportunities for education and advancement for blacks, and Washington did not.

Du Bois’s claims over Douglass, however, also fall short. Despite Du Bois’s assumption that he had inherited the mantle of black political, social, and (he would add) cultural leadership from Douglass, Douglass’s leadership style and politics were markedly more democratic than Du Bois’s. Although Douglass likely saw himself as an instance of what Ralph Waldo Emerson called a “representative man” (Emerson 1850 [2004]) and as a self-made man to boot (1893 [SFD: 414–453]; 1860d [FDP1 v.3: 289–300]), he did not envision himself as the embodiment of the spirit or culture of his people Gooding-Williams 2009: 19–65).

Douglass’s political activities provide a model of democratic politics in action (Gooding-Williams 2009). He worked with various groups, some underground, while he was enslaved. For example, unbeknownst to his master, he participated in at least one Sabbath School and helped other slaves learn to read and write. And, of course, he worked with several other black and racially integrated advocacy groups after his escape and emancipation. These groups had cross-cutting interests that he had to navigate. He pushed them to reach a consensus on different issues, such as in his work with the American Equal Rights Association, an organization devoted to universal suffrage. So, he did not pose as a singular spokesman for movements, groups, or his race, although he never shied away from pushing or arguing his opinions and promoting democratic action (1848 [FDSW: 117–122]).

Indeed, his liberal and civic republican ideas influenced his thoughts about leadership and his vision of the work and role of “heroes” and so-called “representative men” (1883b [SFD: 374–400]; 1893 [SFD: 414–453]; 1860d [FDP1 v.3: 289–300]). For Douglass, they were invaluable in their stance against tyranny and defense of equal rights and liberty. On John Brown, for example, Douglass wrote, putting him into heroic terms (with overtones of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson),

He believes the Declaration of Independence to be true, and the Bible to be a guide to human conduct, and acting upon the doctrines of both, he threw himself against the serried ranks of American oppression, and translated into heroic deeds the love of liberty and hatred of tyrants, with which he was inspired from both these forces acting upon his philanthropic and heroic soul. (1859 [FDSW: 375])

Thus, in his elegies to John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, we see the value he places on Emersonian representative men and the ideal of the statesman guided by liberal and civic republican principles (1859 [FDSW: 372–376]; 1860b [FDSW: 417–421]; 1876 [FDSW: 616–624]).

After the Civil War, Douglass remained active in Republican Party. He was a staunch supporter of uncompromising Reconstruction of the Union and advocated for economic and education investment in free and newly-freed black Americans. Douglass pressed for the expansion of and guarantee of civil rights for blacks, particularly for the defense of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1883 (1883a [FDSW: 685–693]). Additionally, in keeping with his civil rights efforts and his view of natural rights and the development of the United States into a just Republic, he was an advocate, although a complicated one, of women’s suffrage (Douglass 1976). He joined other prominent leaders in the abolition movement, such as Sojourner Truth, and emerging leaders in the suffrage movement, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in these efforts.

The American Equal Rights Association was the principal national organization working on behalf of women’s right to vote. At least in rhetoric, it had a dual platform of racial and sexual equality (DuBois 1978). Middle-class and wealthy white women primarily led it, and Douglass supported its platform but clashed with its leaders over conflicting interests and its latent racism. The tensions within the American Equal Rights Association, and the suffrage movement generally, erupted over the passing of the fifteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The fifteenth amendment franchised all male citizens, although, as U.S. history so brutally revealed, it did so in word but not in deed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony opposed the fifteenth amendment because they demanded that black men and all women (particularly white women) should be enfranchised simultaneously. Some within the suffrage movement based their arguments for women’s suffrage and against blacks’ enfranchisement on racist grounds. Although the white women who led the association were abolitionists, they also, and not inconsequentially, held that blacks, particularly black men, were inferior to white women and neither as ready for nor deserving of the vote as they were (Stanton 1868 [2000: 194–199] and 1869 [2000: 236–238]).

Douglass was sympathetic to the cause of the universal franchise; however, he condemned arguments for women’s suffrage that were predicated on the supposed racial superiority of white women. He roundly condemned Stanton’s racist claims that black and “Oriental” men, and by extension black and Asian women—i.e., Stanton’s nasty references to “Sambo” and “Yung Tung”—were not as deserving as white women (1869b [FDP1 v.4: 213–219]; Stanton 1868 [2000: 194–199]). Douglass did not want to delay the franchise for black males to resolve the question of women’s right to vote. He believed it a practical matter to quickly get some protections for black Americans while the fight for suffrage for black and white women continued. Moreover, he argued it was imperative to obtain some measure of blacks’ political, legal, and social rights to confront the rising level of horrific anti-black violence sweeping the United States. Douglass firmly made this claim in his speech at an American Equal Rights Association meeting in 1869:

I must say that I do not see how any one can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to women as to the negro. With us, the matter is a question of life and death. It is a matter of existence, at least in fifteen states of the Union. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own. (1869b [FDP1 v.4: 216] [SFD: 271])

When asked if this did not apply to black women, Douglass replied that it did, but because they were black and not women (Ibid.). He did not have ready answers, however, to concerns about how well black men, including elite black men, represented and protected the rights and interests of black women. Generations of black male leaders repeated his shortsightedness, which black women leaders, like Anna Julia Cooper (c. 1859–1964), criticized while also struggling against the racism of first-wave feminism (Cooper 1998).

During and after the Reconstruction, Douglass remained deeply concerned about the prospect that the U.S. would compromise on black Americans’ civil and human rights. He became increasingly worried about the denial of black civil rights and the rising waves of anti-black violence and criticized the growing practice of black peonage in agriculture. And over time, his sympathy for black individuals and families fleeing the American South grew. He did not support internal mass migration as a policy because he judged it a poor option for black labor since it did not address the institutional problems that caused the flight: peonage and exploitation, unequal justice, unrestrained violence, lack of resources and opportunities, and in particular, education. For taking that position, Douglass received a great deal of criticism for failing to support the individual choices of black Americans who sought to flee the inhospitable, degrading, and deadly conditions in the American South. It compelled him to rethink his views on the question ( §9 ).

Related to the conditions causing the flight of black Americans from the southern states, Douglass criticized the inequitable and unfair treatment of blacks in state criminal justice systems, particularly criticizing the Convict-Lease system (Davis 1999). And he joined with Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) in raising the alarm over the growing practice of anti-black lynching in the United States (Giddings 2008; Wells-Barnett et al. 2014). Douglass saw America’s failure to support civil rights and equal citizenship for black Americans as indicative of its moral and political failure. He even went so far as to provocatively claim that emancipation was a stupendous fraud (1888a [FDSW: 712–724]).

Douglass’s later-day activities are an essential part of his record and life; indeed, they are a part of the evolving discussions on various subjects in African American philosophy, political theory, and critical theories in several disciplines. He was part of several movements that helped to mold the nation; they took their confidence in providential historical development in hand—as he did when he first committed to seizing his liberty in his “soul’s complaint”, an “apostrophe” to ships on the Chesapeake Bay:

You are loosed from your mooring, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! Betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave? (1845 [FDAB: 59])

The historian David Blight called Douglass a prophet of freedom, perfectly capturing Douglass’s enduring appeal (2018). His ideas, values, and rhetoric defending equal liberty continue to cry out to us in celebration and defense of equality and liberty. There is no better summation of all that he stood for than what he proclaimed in 1869 at the end of “On Composite Nationality”:

If our action shall be in accordance with the principles of justice, liberty, and perfect human equality, no eloquence can adequately portray the greatness and grandeur of the Republic. We shall spread the network of our science and our civilization over all who seek their shelter, whether from Asia, Africa, or the Isles of the Sea. We shall mould them all, each after his kind, into Americans; Indian and Celt, negro and Saxon, Latin and Teuton, Mongolian and Caucasian, Jew and gentile, all shall bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends. (1869 [SFD: 302–303])

Those inspiring and challenging words stand as an invitation to us to closely study Douglass’s works and legacy and to achieve our nation.

A. Primary Sources

• [FDAB] Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave ; My Bondage and My Freedom ; Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , Henry Louis Gates (ed.), (The Library of America 68), New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1994.
• [FDP1] Series One, Speeches, Debates, and Interviews , John W. Blassingame and John R. McKivigan (eds.), 5 volumes, 1979–1992.
• [FDP2] Series Two, Autobiographical Writings , John W. Blassingame (ed.), 3 volumes, 1999–2012.
• [FDP3] Series Three, Correspondence , 2 volumes (3 more forthcoming), John R. McKivigan (ed.), 2009–.
• [FDSW] Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings , Philip Sheldon Foner and Yuval Taylor (eds.), (Library of Black America), Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999.
• [SFD] The Speeches of Frederick Douglass: A Critical Edition , John R. McKivigan, Julie Husband, and Heather L. Kaufman (eds.), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018.
• 1950, Early years, 1817–1849 , volume 1
• 1950, Pre-Civil War decade, 1850–1860 , volume 2
• 1952, The Civil War, 1861–1865 , volume 3
• 1955, Reconstruction and After , volume 4
• 1975, Supplementary volume, 1844–1860 , volume 5
• 1976, Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights , Philip Sheldon Foner (ed.), (Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies 25), Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
• 2016, The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings & Speeches , Nicholas Buccola (ed.), Indianapolis. IN: Hackett Publishing Company.
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , David W. Blight (ed.), second edition, (Bedford Books in American History), Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 2003.
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself: A New Critical Edition , (Open Media Series), Angela Y. Davis (ed.), San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2010; includes Angela Y. Davis, “Lectures on Liberation”.
• 1846, “American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland”, London, England, 22 May; in SFD: 17–54
• 1848a “An Address to the Colored People of the United States”, The North Star , 29 September; in FDSW: 117–122
• 1848b, “The Folly of Racially Exclusive Organization”, Rochester, New York, 6 March; in FDP1: v.2: 109–112.
• 1850, “At Home Again”, The North Star , 30 May; in FDSW: 156–157
• 1852, “What To the Slave Is The Fourth of July?”, Rochester, NY, 5 July; in SFD: 55–92
• 1853a [2015], “The Heroic Slave”, in Autographs for Freedom , Julia Griffiths (ed.), Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 174–239. Reprinted, 2015, as The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition , Robert S. Levine, John Stauffer, and John R. McKivigan (eds.), New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press.
• 1853b, “The Present Condition And Future Prospects of the Negro People”, annual meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, New York City, 11 May; FDSW: 250–259.
• 1854, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered”, Hudson, Ohio, 12 July; in SFD: 116–150
• 1855, My Bondage and My Freedom , New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan. Reprinted David W. Blight (ed.), New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Also in FDAB: 103–452.
• 1857, “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies”, Canandaigua, New York, 3 August.
• 1859, “Capt. John Brown Not Insane”, Douglass’ Monthly , November; FDSW: 374–375/6.
• 1860a, “The American Constitution and the Slaves”, Glasgow, Scotland, 26 March; in SFD: 151–185.
• 1860b, “Speech on John Brown”, Tremont Temple, Boston, 3 December; FDSW: 417–421.
• 1860c, “A Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston”, Boston, Massachusetts, 9 December; in FDP1 v.3: 420–424.
• 1860d, “The Trials and Triumphs of Self-Made Men”, Halifax, England: in FDP1 v.3: 289–300.
• 1862, “What Shall be Done with the Slave if Emancipated”, Douglass’ Monthly , January; FDSW: 470–473.
• 1869a, “Our Composite Nationality”, Boston, Massachusetts, 7 December; in SFD: 278–303.
• 1869b, “We Welcome the Fifteenth Amendment”, Addresses delivered to the American Equal Rights Association, New York, 12–13 May; in SFD: 267–277; in FDP1 v.4: 213–219.
• 1876, “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln”, unveiling of Freedmen’s Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Park, Washington, DC, 14 April; FDSW: 616–624.
• 1879, “The Negro Exodus From the Gulf States”, New York, September: in FDP1 v.4: 510–533.
• 1881/1893, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass , new revised edition, Boston: De Wolfe & Fiske; earlier shorter version, 1881. Reprinted in FDP2: volume 3, John R. McKivigan (ed.), 2012.
• 1883a, “The Civil Rights Case”, Civil Rights Mass-Meeting, Lincoln Hall, Washington, DC, 22 October; FDSW: 685–693.
• 1883b, “‘It Moves’, Or the Philosophy of Reform”, Washington, DC, 20 November; in SFD: 374–400.
• 1884, “Mr. Douglass Interviewed”, Washington Post , 26 January, page 1; in FDP1 v.5: 147.
• 1888a, “Denounce the So-Called Emancipation as a Stupendous Fraud”, speech on the occasion of the Twenty-Sixth Anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, DC, 16 April; FDSW: 712–724.
• 1888b, “In Law Free: In Fact, A Slave”, Washington, DC, 16 May: FDP1 v.5: 357–373.
• 1893, “Self-Made Men”, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, March; in SFD: 414–453.
• 1894, “Lessons of the Hour”, Washington, DC, 9 January; in SFD: 454–497.
• Alfaro, Ange-Marie Hancock, 2018, “Black Masculinity Achieves Nothing without Restorative Care: An Intersectional Rearticulation of Frederick Douglass”, in Roberts 2018: 236–251 (ch. 7).
• Appiah, Anthony, 1985 [1986], “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race”, Critical Inquiry , 12(1): 21–37. Reprinted in “Race”, Writing and Difference , Henry Louis Gates Jr. (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 21–37.
• Bernasconi, Robert, 1991, “The Constitution Of The People: Frederick Douglass And The Dred Scott Decision”, Cardozo Law Review , 13(4): 1281–1296.
• Blight, David W., 1989, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee , Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
• –––, 2018, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom , New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Boxill, Bernard R., 1976, “Self-Respect and Protest”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 6(1): 58–69.
• –––, 1992a, Blacks and Social Justice , revised edition, Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• –––, 1992b, “Two Traditions in African American Political Philosophy”, Philosophical Forum , 24: 119–135.
• –––, 1997, “The Fight with Covey”, in Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy , Lewis R. Gordon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 273–290.
• –––, 1998, “Radical Implications of Locke’s Moral Theory: The Views of Frederick Douglass”, in Lott 1998: 29–48.
• –––, 1999, “Douglass against the Emigrationists”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 21–49 (ch. 1).
• Bromell, Nicholas Knowles, 2021, The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass , Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Brotz, Howard, 1992, African-American Social and Political Thought, 1850–1920 , New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
• Buccola, Nicholas, 2012, The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty , New York: New York University Press.
• Burns, Robert, 1795, “A Man’s a Man for a’ That”. Collected in multiple places including in Burns: Poems , Gerard Carruthers (ed.), New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007, 131–132.[ Burn 1795 available online ]
• Combe, George, 1828, The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects , Edinburgh.
• Cooper, Anna J., 1998, The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters , Charles C. Lemert and Esme Bhan (eds.), Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield.
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• Davis, Angela Y., 1971, Lectures on Liberation , New York: New York Committee to Free Angela Davis. Reprinted in the 2010 edition of Douglass 1845 which she edited.
• –––, 1971 [1983], “Unfinished Lecture on Liberation-II”, in Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917 , Leonard Harris (ed.), Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 130–136.
• –––, 1999, “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Lease System”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 339–362 (ch. 12).
• –––, 2005, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture , New York: Seven Stories Press.
• Delany, Martin Robison, 1852 [1968], The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States. Politically Considered , Philadelphia. Reprinted, 1968, (American Negro, His History and Literature), New York: Arno Press.
• Delbanco, Andrew, 2018, The War before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War , New York: Penguin Press.
• Du Bois, W.E.B. 1897 [1992], “The Conservation of Races”, speech to the American Negro Academy, March 1897. Reprinted in Brotz 1992: 483–492.
• –––, 1903 [1999], The Souls of Black Folk , Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co. Reprinted, 1999, Henry Louis Gates and Terri Hume Oliver (eds), (A Norton Critical Edition) New York: W.W. Norton.
• –––, 1909, John Brown , (American Crisis Biographies), Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs & company.
• –––, 1935 [2021], Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 , New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. Reprinted, 2021, Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (eds.), (Library of America 350), New York, NY: The Library of America.
• DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1978, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Dworkin, Ronald, 2006, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate , Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1850 [2004], Representative Men: Seven Lectures , Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. Reprinted, 2004, Brenda Wineapple (ed.), New York: Modern Library.
• Foner, Philip Sheldon, 1964, Frederick Douglass: A Biography , New York: Citadel Press.
• Fredrickson, George M., 2002, Racism: A Short History , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Giddings, Paula, 2008, Ida: A Sword among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching , New York: Amistad.
• Gooding-Williams, Robert, 2009, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Gordon, Ann D. (ed.), 2000, The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Volume 2: Against an Aristocracy of Sex, 1866 to 1873 , New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Gordon, Lewis R. 1999. “Douglass as an Existentialist”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 207–226 (ch. 8).
• Hobbes, Thomas, 1651/1668 [1994], Leviathan , London; revised Latin edition, 1668. Reprinted as Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 , E. M. Curley (ed.), Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
• Jefferson, Thomas, 1785 [1999], Notes on the State of Virginia , Paris; reprinted, 1999, Frank Shuffelton (ed.), New York: Penguin Books.
• Lawson, Bill E. and Frank M. Kirkland (eds.), 1999, Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Critical Readers), Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Lee, Maurice S. (ed.), 2009, The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass (Cambridge Companions to American Studies), Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521889230
• Levine, Robert S., 1997, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity , Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
• –––, 2016, The Lives of Frederick Douglass , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Lott, Tommy Lee (ed.), 1998, Subjugation and Bondage: Critical Essays on Slavery and Social Philosophy , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• Martin, Waldo E., Jr., 1984, The Mind of Frederick Douglass , Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
• Mazzini, Giuseppe [Joseph], 1860 [1862], Doveri dell’uomo , London; translated as The Duties of Man , London: Chapman & Hall, 1862; re-translated by Ella Noyes in The Duties of Man And Other Essays , introduced by Thomas Jones, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907.
• McFeely, William S., 1991, Frederick Douglass , New York: Norton.
• McGary, Howard, 1999a, “Douglass on Racial Assimilation and Racial Institutions”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 50–63 (ch. 2).
• –––, 1999b, Race and Social Justice , Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• McGary, Howard and Bill E. Lawson, 1992, Between Slavery and Freedom: Philosophy and American Slavery , (Blacks in the Diaspora), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Mills, Charles W., 1997, The Racial Contract , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1999, “Whose Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass and ‘Original Intent’”, in Lawson and Kirkland 1999: 100–142 (ch. 5).
• Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, 1978, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925 , Hamden, CT: Archon Books.
• Myers, Peter C., 2008, Frederick Douglass: Race and the Rebirth of American Liberalism , (American Political Thought), Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
• Nott, Josiah C. and George R. Gliddon, 1854, Types of Mankind or, Ethnological Researches: Based upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and upon Their Natural, Geographical, Philological and Biblical History, Illustrated by Selections from the Inedited Papers of Samuel George Morton and by Additional Contributions from L. Agassiz; W. Usher; and H. S. Patterson , Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott, Grambo & co.
• Outlaw, Lucius, 1992 [1996], “Against the Grain of Modernity: The Politics of Difference and the Conservation of ‘Race’”, Man and World , 25(3–4): 443–468. Reprinted in his On Race and Philosophy , New York: Routledge, 1996, 135–157. doi:10.1007/BF01252429
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Emerson, Ralph Waldo | ethics: natural law tradition | liberalism | Locke, John | Locke, John: political philosophy | republicanism W.E.B. Du Bois |

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Frederick Douglass

On July 5, 1852 approximately 3.5 million African Americans were enslaved — roughly 14% of the total population of the United States. That was the state of the nation when Frederick Douglass was asked to deliver a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration.

He accepted and, on a day white Americans celebrated their independence and freedom from the oppression of the British crown, Douglass delivered his now-famous speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July. In it, Douglass offered one of the most thought provoking and powerful testaments to the hypocrisy, bigotry and inhumanity of slavery ever given.

Douglass told the crowd that the arguments against slavery were well understood. What was needed was “fire” not light on the subject; “thunder” not a gentle “shower” of reason. Douglass would tell the audience:

The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, most likely in February 1818 — birth dates of slaves were rarely recorded. He was put to work full-time at age six, and his life as a young man was a litany of savage beatings and whippings. At age twenty, he successfully escaped to the North. In Massachusetts he became known as a voice against slavery, but that also brought to light his status as an escaped slave. Fearing capture and re-enslavement, Douglass went to England and continued speaking out against slavery.

He eventually raised enough money to buy his freedom and returned to America. He settled in Rochester, New York in 1847 and began to champion equality and freedom for slaves in earnest. By then, his renown extended far beyond America's boundaries. He had become a man of international stature.

My Bondage and My Freedom  by Frederick Douglass, published in 1857.

One suspects that Rochester city leaders had Douglass' fame and reputation as a brilliant orator in mind when they approached him to speak at their Independence Day festivities. But with his opening words, Douglass' intent became clear — decry the hypocrisy of the day as it played out in the lives of the slaves:

Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

You can easily imagine the wave of unease that settled over his audience. The speech was long, as was the fashion of the day. A link to the entire address can be found at the end of this Our American Story. When you read it you will discover that, to his credit, Douglass was uncompromising and truthful:

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn ... What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? ... a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham ... your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings ... hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

Reaction to the speech was strong, but mixed. Some were angered, others appreciative. What I've always thought most impressive about Douglass' speech that day was the discussion it provoked immediately and in the weeks and months that followed.

Certainly much has changed since Douglass’ speech. Yet the opportunity to discuss and debate the important impact of America’s racial history is very much a part of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Douglass’ words remind us that many have struggled to ensure that the promise of liberty be applied equally to all Americans — regardless of race, gender or ethnicity. And that the struggle for equality is never over.

So, as we gather together at picnics, parades, and fireworks to celebrate the 4th of July, let us remember those, like Frederick Douglass, who fought and sacrificed to help America live up to its ideals of equality, fair play and justice.

Photo of Frederick Douglass ca. 1895.

Frederick Douglass' life and words have left us a powerful legacy. His story, and the African American story, is part of us all.

To you and your family, have a joyous and safe Fourth of July and thank you for your interest in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

P.S. Read the full text Frederick Douglass’ speech of July 5, 1852 .

Subtitle here for the credits modal.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself: Electronic Edition.

Frederick douglass, 1818-1895.

Call number E 449 D746 1845 (Murrey Atkins Library, UNC-Charlotte)

Written by himself..

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

LYNN, Mass., April 28, 1845.

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Frederick Douglass: A Biography - Questi...

Frederick Douglass: A Biography - Questions

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Why does Douglass say that learning to read was a curse rather than a blessing?

It showed his horrible situation, but not how to escape it.

No books were available so he had nothing to read.

He was upset that his slave owners would be angry with him.

The young boys who helped him could get in serious trouble.

What was Douglass's purpose for writing his autobiography?

to make readers think writing is important

to inform readers about the life of a slave

to express feelings about Master Hugh

to tell an interesting story from his past

According to the text, What year was Frederick Douglass born?

• 4. Multiple Choice Edit 45 seconds 1 pt Shares the subject's personal thoughts and feelings about his/her life Autobiography Biography Both Neither

What is a plantation?

Small family farms that were used to help feed single families

Large family houses that were passes down from generation to generation

Large estates that grew cash crops, like cotton and sugar, using

slave labor.

Small communities that were made up of farmers and slave laborers

Why didn't Douglass know his mother very well?

She was constantly dissatisfied with him

He never saw his mother before he was sold

She worked on a different plantation

She died during childbirth

At an early age, what did Douglass realize about reading and writing?

He realized there was a connection between literacy and freedom

He realized that he would never be able to read or write without asking for help

He realized that reading and writing were simply a way that the white man felt superiod

He realized that reading and writing were a waste of his time

According to the text, where did Douglass teach himself how to read and write?

While he was working in his master's home

While he was out in the fields and plantations

He would sneak into school just to try to listen to the lessons

On the streets of Baltimore

According to the text, what happened when Douglass was 15 years of age?

He was hired as a body servant in the house

He was made as a field hand, where he rebelled intensely

He was given the opportunity to learn how to read and write

He was forced to work inside the household to help educate the white children

Who was Anna Murray?

Douglass's slave owner's wife

A young free black woman the helped him escape

The person who helped him how to read the most

A young teacher who allowed him to attend classes in secret

Where did Douglass have to go in order to "declare himself free?"

New York City

Pennsylvania

When did Frederick Douglass escape from slavery?

September 11, 1838

December 3, 1838

September 13, 1838

September 3, 1838

Upon gaining his freedom, Frederick Douglass became known as a great orator

The article does not state

When was, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" published?

After declaring himself free, why was Douglass still forced to travel overseas and away from the United States?

He was technically a fugitive slave

He was worried that the States would not take his book seriously

He was ashamed that he never told his wife he was a slave in the past

He received too many death threats while in the states

How did Douglass receive his "legal" freedom from slavery?

He was never able to be "legally" free from slavery

His former masters were killed

His book made so much money that he was able to purchase his freedom himself

Abolitionists offered to purchase his freedom

When Douglass returned to the states as a free man, where did he move his wife and family to?

Rochester, New York

Baltimore, Maryland

New York Cty, New York

Jersey Shore, New Jersey

In which ways did Douglass contribute to the Civil War? Select ALL that apply!

He recruited African-American men to fight in the U.S. Army

He met with President Lincoln to advocate for equal treatment of black troops

He served in the US army to help fight for the emancipation of slaves

Two of his sons served in the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry

What did the 13th Amendment do?

Granted national birthright citizenship

Abolished slavery

Stated that no one could be denied voting rights on the basis of race, skin color, or previous servitude.

Stated the right to bear arms

Why is the 15th Amendment so important?

It abolished slavery

It ensured that all men could vote, regardless of skin color or previous servitude

It allowed for all women to have the right to vote in all general elections

It granted national birthright citizenship

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