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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth.

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A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women's rights in the nineteenth century. Learn more at womenshistory.org.

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Mobile Walking Tour | Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee

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Sojourner Truth | Abolitionist and Women's Rights Activist | PBS LearningMedia

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An abolitionist and feminist during the nineteenth century, Sojourner Truth demanded not less discrimination, but no discrimination. Truth escaped enslavement and, despite being unable to read or write, rose to be a leader in the fight for equality and fair treatment for both women and African Americans.

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NATIONAL ABOLITION HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

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The abolitionist-women's rights advocate, Sojourner Truth, was born into northern slavery in upstate New York around 1797. Originally Isabella Baumfree, she spoke the Low Dutch of her "masters", the Hardenberghs. Auctioned with her family at age nine, she experienced first hand the family break-ups, and fierce, arbitrary cruelty of a system that defined human beings as chattel. By 1826, at age 29, "she walked away" from slavery with her youngest child, having known five "masters", whippings, deprivation, betrayal, and the selling away of her parents' as well as her own children. She found shelter and employment with the Van Wagenen family and assumed their name.

​In 1843, at age 46, Isabella Van Wagenen had a divinely inspired vision. She renamed herself Sojourner Truth, left New York City, and set forth on her life's work of "testifying of the hope that was in her." By 1844, Sojourner Truth had given her first anti-slavery speech. Yet unlike many of her formerly enslaved self-liberated African American contemporaries, Sojourner Truth did not become literate. Still, her platform eloquence and oratory were full of mother wit, straightforward examples, wry humor, insight, and targeted Biblical parables; her command of Scripture from memory was formidable.

Sojourner Truth was a highly visible, eloquent and moving abolitionist speaker and activist. She was the most powerful African American woman to consistently and publicly link the oppression of slavery with the subjection of women. She spoke at the first national women's rights convention in 1850, and in 1851, at age 54, delivered a famed speech at the Akron women's rights convention. Throughout her life, Truth continually reminded her allies that black women were half the slave population, and that without changing the conditions of all women's oppression, black women would not achieve Freedom.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Sojourner Truth worked to supply troops with needed clothing, blankets, and food, and to recruit African American soldiers for the Union. She worked for the Freedman's Bureau during the Civil War, aiding the newly emancipated. Her insights proved prophetic in the aftermath of the Civil War. In 1867, Sojourner Truth reminded attendees of the Equal Rights Association meeting that she came "from another field - from the country of the slave" and that"they had to keep the thing going while things are stirring" for "women have no right, no voice, nobody speaks for them." The women's rights movement split over the issue of black male enfranchisement. Sojourner Truth attempted to weave the factions together, and was correct in her post-war assessment that not enfranchising African American women would delay Freedom for all women.

Sojourner Truth was very clear, very early that legal Emancipation was not full Freedom. Overcoming the challenges of slavery, illiteracy, penury, prejudice, and sexism in her own lifetime, Sojourner Truth worked for Freedom and to end Racism by mobilizing thousands to support abolition, align their Christian faith with anti-slavery activism, and concretize the founding ideals of America in the lives of all.

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The abolitionist-women's rights advocate, Sojourner Truth, was born into northern slavery in upstate New York around 1797. Originally Isabella Baumfree, she spoke the Low Dutch of her "masters", the Hardenberghs. Auctioned with her family at age nine, she experienced first hand the family break-ups, and fierce, arbitrary cruelty of a system that defined human beings as chattel.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin. The novel is a fictionalized account of the pain slavery caused its victims, the struggles slaves endured to escape and travel on the Underground Railroad, and the triumph of escaping to freedom in the northern states or Canada. Within the first year of publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin has now been published in over 75 languages and is still an important text used in schools all over the world.
What caused Harriet to write Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Shortly after, in 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive State Law which required citizens to help police officers catch runaway slaves. Harriet believed the law to be unchristian, and she used this viewpoint to encourage families to honor their religious faith and help those in need.
Uncle Tom's Cabin became an important part of the social fabric and it is thought to have added wood to the fire that started the Civil War and led to the emancipation of southern slaves by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin. The novel is a fictionalized account of the pain slavery caused its victims, the struggles slaves endured to escape and travel on the Underground Railroad, and the triumph of escaping to freedom in the northern states or Canada.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin | The Abolitionists | PBS LearningMedia

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In this video adapted from American Experience: “The Abolitionists,” featuring historical reenactments, learn about the impact of novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe on the abolitionist movement. Stowe was an author whose commitment to the abolitionist cause was strengthened after passage of the Fugitive…

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GREAT place to start: Listen to the first 5 minutes of this podcast to find out about him and his life.

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In Our Time - Frederick Douglass - BBC Sounds

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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Frederick Douglass: Crash Course Black American History #17

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Frederick Douglass | Orator, Editor, and Abolitionist Video | PBS LearningMedia

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After escaping from slavery in 1838, Frederick Douglass went on to become a prominent writer, orator, and abolitionist in the years leading up to the Civil War. This video is a part of a lesson plan including two primary source activities and a short video: understand how Douglass stood firm in his beliefs and rose to prominence, and explore the importance of literacy in his life.

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The North Star | American Experience | PBS

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Frederick Douglass named his abolitionist newspaper The North Star after the icon followed by escaped slaves on their journeys to freedom.

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Frederick Douglass | The African Americans | PBS LearningMedia

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This video from The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross describes the life of Frederick Douglass and his rise to prominence in the abolitionist community.

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Frederick Douglass Joins the Abolitionists | The Abolitionists | PBS LearningMedia

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In this video adapted from AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: "The Abolitionists," featuring historical reenactments, learn about the contributions of Frederick Douglass to the abolitionist movement. Formerly enslaved, Douglass escaped to freedom in 1838 and his eloquence made him one of the most prominent spokespersons for the movement to end slavery.

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Douglass's letter to his former owner! (Scroll down to find the subheading for this.)

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Douglass's letter to his former owner! (Scroll down to find the subheading for this.)

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Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1817 or 1818 - February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, during which he gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to enslavers' arguments that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.

Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as an enslaved person in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Following the Civil War, Douglass was an active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers his life up to those dates. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage, and he held several public offices. Without his knowledge or consent, Douglass became the first African American nominated for vice president of the United States, as the running mate of Victoria Woodhull on the Equal Rights Party ticket.

Douglass believed in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, as well as in the liberal values of the U.S. Constitution. When radical abolitionists, under the motto "No Union with Slaveholders", criticized Douglass's willingness to engage in dialogue with slave owners, he replied: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

Early life and slavery

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland. The plantation was between Hillsboro and Cordova; his birthplace was likely his grandmother's cabin east of Tappers Corner and west of Tuckahoe Creek. In his first autobiography, Douglass stated: "I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it." In successive autobiographies, he gave more precise estimates of when he was born, his final estimate being 1817. However, based on the extant records of Douglass's former owner, Aaron Anthony, historian Dickson J. Preston determined that Douglass was born in February 1818. Though the exact date of his birth is unknown, he chose to celebrate February 14 as his birthday, remembering that his mother called him her "Little Valentine."

Birth family

Douglass's mother, enslaved, was of African descent and his father, who may have been her master, apparently of European descent; in his Narrative (1845), Douglass wrote: "My father was a white man." According to David W. Blight's 2018 biography of Douglass, "For the rest of his life he searched in vain for the name of his true father." Douglass's genetic heritage likely also included Native American. Douglass said his mother Harriet Bailey gave him his name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and, after he escaped to the North in September 1838, he took the surname Douglass, having already dropped his two middle names.

He later wrote of his earliest times with his mother:

The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing. ... My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant. ... It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. ... I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.

After separation from his mother during infancy, young Frederick lived with his maternal grandmother Betsy Bailey, who was also enslaved, and his maternal grandfather Isaac, who was free. Betsy would live until 1849. Frederick's mother remained on the plantation about 12 miles (19 km) away, visiting Frederick only a few times before her death when he was 7 years old.

Returning much later, about 1883, to purchase land in Talbot County that was meaningful to him, he was invited to address "a colored school":

I once knew a little colored boy whose mother and father died when he was six years old. He was a slave and had no one to care for him. He slept on a dirt floor in a hovel, and in cold weather would crawl into a meal bag head foremost and leave his feet in the ashes to keep them warm. Often he would roast an ear of corn and eat it to satisfy his hunger, and many times has he crawled under the barn or stable and secured eggs, which he would roast in the fire and eat.

That boy did not wear pants like you do, but a tow linen shirt. Schools were unknown to him, and he learned to spell from an old Webster's spelling-book and to read and write from posters on cellar and barn doors, while boys and men would help him. He would then preach and speak, and soon became well known. He became Presidential Elector, United States Marshal, United States Recorder, United States diplomat, and accumulated some wealth. He wore broadcloth and didn't have to divide crumbs with the dogs under the table. That boy was Frederick Douglass.

Early learning and experience

The Auld family

At the age of 6, Douglass was separated from his grandparents and moved to the Wye House plantation, where Aaron Anthony worked as overseer. After Anthony died in 1826, Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld, wife of Thomas Auld, who sent him to serve Thomas' brother Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia Auld in Baltimore. From the day he arrived, Sophia saw to it that Douglass was properly fed and clothed, and that he slept in a bed with sheets and a blanket. Douglass described her as a kind and tender-hearted woman, who treated him "as she supposed one human being ought to treat another." Douglass felt that he was lucky to be in the city, where he said enslaved people were almost freemen, compared to those on plantations.

When Douglass was about 12, Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet. Hugh Auld disapproved of the tutoring, feeling that literacy would encourage enslaved people to desire freedom. Douglass later referred to this as the "first decidedly antislavery lecture" he had ever heard. "'Very well, thought I,'" wrote Douglass. "'Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.' I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom."

Under her husband's influence, Sophia came to believe that education and slavery were incompatible and one day snatched a newspaper away from Douglass. She stopped teaching him altogether and hid all potential reading materials, including her Bible, from him. In his autobiography, Douglass related how he learned to read from white children in the neighborhood and by observing the writings of the men with whom he worked.

Douglass continued, secretly, to teach himself to read and write. He later often said, "knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom." As Douglass began to read newspapers, pamphlets, political materials, and books of every description, this new realm of thought led him to question and condemn the institution of slavery. In later years, Douglass credited The Columbian Orator, an anthology that he discovered at about age 12, with clarifying and defining his views on freedom and human rights. First published in 1797, the book is a classroom reader, containing essays, speeches, and dialogues, to assist students in learning reading and grammar. He later learned that his mother had also been literate, about which he would later declare:

William Freeland

When Douglass was hired out to William Freeland, he "gathered eventually more than thirty male slaves on Sundays, and sometimes even on weeknights, in a Sabbath literacy school."

Edward Covey

In 1833, Thomas Auld took Douglass back from Hugh ("[a]s a means of punishing Hugh," Douglass later wrote). Thomas sent Douglass to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had a reputation as a "slave-breaker". He whipped Douglass so frequently that his wounds had little time to heal. Douglass later said the frequent whippings broke his body, soul, and spirit. The 16-year-old Douglass finally rebelled against the beatings, however, and fought back. After Douglass won a physical confrontation, Covey never tried to beat him again.

Recounting his beatings at Covey's farm in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass described himself as "a man transformed into a brute!" Still, Douglass came to see his physical fight with Covey as life-transforming, and introduced the story in his autobiography as such: "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man."

Escape from slavery

On September 3, 1838, Douglass successfully escaped by boarding a northbound train of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad in Baltimore. The area where he boarded was formerly thought to be a short distance east of the train depot, in a recently developed neighborhood between the modern neighborhoods of Harbor East and Little Italy. This depot was at President and Fleet Streets, east of "The Basin" of the Baltimore harbor, on the northwest branch of the Patapsco River. Research cited in 2021, however, suggests that Douglass in fact boarded the train at the Canton Depot of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad on Boston Street, in the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore, further east.

Douglass reached Havre de Grace, Maryland, in Harford County, in the northeast corner of the state, along the southwest shore of the Susquehanna River, which flowed into the Chesapeake Bay. Although this placed him only some 20 miles (32 km) from the Maryland-Pennsylvania state line, it was easier to continue by rail through Delaware, another slave state. Dressed in a sailor's uniform provided to him by Murray, who also gave him part of her savings to cover his travel costs, he carried identification papers and protection papers that he had obtained from a free black seaman.

Douglass crossed the wide Susquehanna River by the railroad's steam-ferry at Havre de Grace to Perryville on the opposite shore, in Cecil County, then continued by train across the state line to Wilmington, Delaware, a large port at the head of the Delaware Bay. From there, because the rail line was not yet completed, he went by steamboat along the Delaware River farther northeast to the "Quaker City" of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an anti-slavery stronghold. He continued to the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles in New York City. His entire journey to freedom took less than 24 hours. Douglass later wrote of his arrival in New York City:

Once Douglass had arrived, he sent for Murray to follow him north to New York. She brought the basic supplies for them to set up a home. They were married on September 15, 1838, by a black Presbyterian minister, just eleven days after Douglass had reached New York. At first they adopted Johnson as their married name, to divert attention.

Religious views

As a child, Douglass was exposed to a number of religious sermons, and in his youth, he sometimes heard Sophia Auld reading the Bible. In time, he became interested in literacy; he began reading and copying bible verses, and he eventually converted to Christianity. He described this approach in his last biography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass:

Douglass was mentored by Rev. Charles Lawson, and, early in his activism, he often included biblical allusions and religious metaphors in his speeches. Although a believer, he strongly criticized religious hypocrisy and accused slaveholders of " wickedness", lack of morality, and failure to follow the Golden Rule. In this sense, Douglass distinguished between the "Christianity of Christ" and the "Christianity of America" and considered religious slaveholders and clergymen who defended slavery as the most brutal, sinful, and cynical of all who represented "wolves in sheep's clothing".

In What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, an oration Douglass gave in the Corinthian Hall of Rochester, he sharply criticized the attitude of religious people who kept silent about slavery, and he charged that ministers committed a " blasphemy" when they taught it as sanctioned by religion. He considered that a law passed to support slavery was "one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty" and said that pro-slavery clergymen within the American Church "stripped the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form", and "an abomination in the sight of God".

Of ministers like John Chase Lord, Leonard Elijah Lathrop, Ichabod Spencer, and Orville Dewey, he said that they taught, against the Scriptures, that "we ought to obey man's law before the law of God". He further asserted, "in speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States ... Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend [Robert R. Raymonde]".

He maintained that "upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave's redemption from his chains". In addition, he called religious people to embrace abolitionism, stating, "let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds."

During his visits to the United Kingdom between 1846 and 1848, Douglass asked British Christians never to support American churches that permitted slavery, and he expressed his happiness to know that a group of ministers in Belfast had refused to admit slaveholders as members of the Church.

On his return to the United States, Douglass founded the North Star, a weekly publication with the motto "Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren." In his 1848 "Letter to Thomas Auld", Douglass denounced his former slaveholder for leaving Douglass's family illiterate:

Sometimes considered a precursor of a non-denominational liberation theology, Douglass was a deeply spiritual man, as his home continues to show. The fireplace mantle features busts of two of his favorite philosophers, David Friedrich Strauss, author of The Life of Jesus, and Ludwig Feuerbach, author of The Essence of Christianity. In addition to several Bibles and books about various religions in the library, images of angels and Jesus are displayed, as well as interior and exterior photographs of Washington's Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. Throughout his life, Douglass had linked that individual experience with social reform, and, according to John Stauffer, he, like other Christian abolitionists, followed practices such as abstaining from tobacco, alcohol and other substances that he believed corrupted body and soul. According to David W. Blight, however, "Douglass loved cigars" and received them as gifts from Ottilie Assing.

Family life

Douglass and Anna Murray had five children: Rosetta Douglass, Lewis Henry Douglass, Frederick Douglass Jr., Charles Remond Douglass, and Annie Douglass (died at the age of ten). Charles and Rosetta helped produce his newspapers.

Anna Douglass remained a loyal supporter of her husband's public work. His relationships with Julia Griffiths and Ottilie Assing, two women with whom he was professionally involved, caused recurring speculation and scandals. Assing was a journalist recently immigrated from Germany, who first visited Douglass in 1856 seeking permission to translate My Bondage and My Freedom into German. Until 1872, she often stayed at his house "for several months at a time" as his "intellectual and emotional companion."

Assing held Anna Douglass "in utter contempt" and was vainly hoping that Douglass would separate from his wife. Douglass biographer David W. Blight concludes that Assing and Douglass "were probably lovers". Though Douglass and Assing are widely believed to have had an intimate relationship, the surviving correspondence contains no proof of such a relationship.

After Anna died in 1882, in 1884 Douglass married again, to Helen Pitts, a white suffragist and abolitionist from Honeoye, New York. Pitts was the daughter of Gideon Pitts Jr., an abolitionist colleague and friend of Douglass's. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College (then called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary), Pitts worked on a radical feminist publication named Alpha while living in Washington, D.C. She later worked as Douglass's secretary.

Assing, who had depression and was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer, committed suicide in France in 1884 after hearing of the marriage. Upon her death, Assing bequeathed Douglass a $13,000 trust fund, a "large album", and his choice of books from her library.

The marriage of Douglass and Pitts provoked a storm of controversy, since Pitts was both white and nearly 20 years younger. Many in her family stopped speaking to her; his children considered the marriage a repudiation of their mother. But feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton congratulated the couple. Douglass responded to the criticisms by saying that his first marriage had been to someone the color of his mother, and his second to someone the color of his father.

Abolitionist and preacher

Frederick Douglass, c. 1840s, in his 20s

The couple settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts (an abolitionist center, full of former enslaved people), in 1838, moving to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1841. After meeting and staying with Nathan and Mary Johnson, they adopted Douglass as their married name. Douglass had grown up using his mother's surname of Bailey; after escaping slavery he had changed his surname first to Stanley and then to Johnson. In New Bedford, the latter was such a common name that he wanted one that was more distinctive, and asked Nathan Johnson to choose a suitable surname. Nathan suggested " Douglass", after having read the poem The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott, in which two of the principal characters have the surname " Douglas".

Douglass thought of joining a white Methodist Church, but was disappointed, from the beginning, upon finding that it was segregated. Later, he joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, an independent black denomination first established in New York City, which counted among its members Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. He became a licensed preacher in 1839, which helped him to hone his oratorical skills. He held various positions, including steward, Sunday-school superintendent, and sexton. In 1840, Douglass delivered a speech in Elmira, New York, then a station on the Underground Railroad, in which a black congregation would form years later, becoming the region's largest church by 1940.

Douglass also joined several organizations in New Bedford and regularly attended abolitionist meetings. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly newspaper, The Liberator. He later said that "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments [of the hatred of slavery] as did those of William Lloyd Garrison." So deep was this influence that in his last autobiography, Douglass said "his paper took a place in my heart second only to The Bible."

Garrison was likewise impressed with Douglass and had written about his anti- colonization stance in The Liberator as early as 1839. Douglass first heard Garrison speak in 1841, at a lecture that Garrison gave in Liberty Hall, New Bedford. At another meeting, Douglass was unexpectedly invited to speak. After telling his story, Douglass was encouraged to become an anti-slavery lecturer. A few days later, Douglass spoke at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention, in Nantucket. Then 23 years old, Douglass conquered his nervousness and gave an eloquent speech about his life as a slave.

While living in Lynn, Douglass engaged in an early protest against segregated transportation. In September 1841, at Lynn Central Square station, Douglass and his friend James N. Buffum were thrown off an Eastern Railroad train because Douglass refused to sit in the segregated railroad coach.

In 1843, Douglass joined other speakers in the American Anti-Slavery Society's "Hundred Conventions" project, a six-month tour at meeting halls throughout the eastern and midwestern United States. During this tour, slavery supporters frequently accosted Douglass. At a lecture in Pendleton, Indiana, an angry mob chased and beat Douglass before a local Quaker family, the Hardys, rescued him. His hand was broken in the attack; it healed improperly and bothered him for the rest of his life. A stone marker in Falls Park in the Pendleton Historic District commemorates this event.

In 1847, Douglass explained to Garrison, "I have no love for America, as such; I have no patriotism. I have no country. What country have I? The Institutions of this Country do not know me-do not recognize me as a man."

Autobiography

Douglass's best-known work is his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts and published in 1845. At the time, some skeptics questioned whether a black man could have produced such an eloquent piece of literature. The book received generally positive reviews and became an immediate bestseller. Within three years, it had been reprinted nine times, with 11,000 copies circulating in the United States. It was also translated into French and Dutch and published in Europe.

Douglass published three autobiographies during his lifetime (and revised the third of these), each time expanding on the previous one. The 1845 Narrative was his biggest seller and probably allowed him to raise the funds to gain his legal freedom the following year, as discussed below. In 1855, Douglass published My Bondage and My Freedom. In 1881, in his sixties, Douglass published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he revised in 1892.

Travels to Ireland and Great Britain

Douglass's friends and mentors feared that the publicity would draw the attention of his ex-owner, Hugh Auld, who might try to get his "property" back. They encouraged Douglass to tour Ireland, as many former slaves had done. Douglass set sail on the Cambria for Liverpool, England, on August 16, 1845. He traveled in Ireland as the Great Famine was beginning.

Eleven days and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand miles of the perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchical government. Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle [Ireland]. I breathe, and lo! the chattel [slave] becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab-I am seated beside white people-I reach the hotel-I enter the same door-I am shown into the same parlor-I dine at the same table-and no one is offended.... I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church, I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip to tell me, ' We don't allow niggers in here!'

He also met and befriended the Irish nationalist and strident abolitionist Daniel O'Connell, who was to be a great inspiration.

Douglass spent two years in Ireland and Great Britain, lecturing in churches and chapels. His draw was such that some facilities were "crowded to suffocation". One example was his hugely popular London Reception Speech, which Douglass delivered in May 1846 at Alexander Fletcher's Finsbury Chapel. Douglass remarked that in England he was treated not "as a color, but as a man".

In 1846, Douglass met with Thomas Clarkson, one of the last living British abolitionists, who had persuaded Parliament to abolish slavery in Great Britain's colonies. During this trip Douglass became legally free, as British supporters led by Anna Richardson and her sister-in-law Ellen of Newcastle upon Tyne raised funds to buy his freedom from his American owner Thomas Auld. Many supporters tried to encourage Douglass to remain in England but, with his wife still in Massachusetts and three million of his black brethren in bondage in the United States, he returned to America in the spring of 1847, soon after the death of Daniel O'Connell.

In the 21st century, historical plaques were installed on buildings in Cork and Waterford, Ireland, and London to celebrate Douglass's visit: the first is on the Imperial Hotel in Cork and was unveiled on August 31, 2012; the second is on the façade of Waterford City Hall, unveiled on October 7, 2013. It commemorates his speech there on October 9, 1845. The third plaque adorns Nell Gwynn House, South Kensington in London, at the site of an earlier house where Douglass stayed with the British abolitionist George Thompson. On the 31st of July 2023 the first statue of him in Europe was unveiled in High Street in Belfast.

Douglass spent time in Scotland and was appointed "Scotland's Antislavery agent." He made anti-slavery speeches and wrote letters back to the USA. He considered the city of Edinburgh to be elegant, grand and very welcoming. Maps of the places in the city that were important to his stay are held by the National Library of Scotland. A plaque and a mural on Gilmore Place in Edinburgh mark his stay there in 1846.

"A variety of collaborative projects are currently [in 2021] underway to commemorate Frederick Douglass's journey and visit to Ireland in the 19th century."

Return to the United States; the abolitionist movement

After returning to the U.S. in 1847, using £500 (equivalent to $48,612 in 2021) given to him by English supporters, Douglass started publishing his first abolitionist newspaper, the , from the basement of the Memorial AME Zion Church in Rochester, New York. Originally, Pittsburgh journalist Martin Delany was co-editor but Douglass didn't feel he brought in enough subscriptions, and they parted ways.[page needed ] The North Star's motto was "Right is of no Sex - Truth is of no Color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren." The AME Church and North Star joined in the freedmen community's vigorous opposition to the mostly white American Colonization Society and its proposal to send free black people to Africa. Douglass also participated in the Underground Railroad. He and his wife provided lodging and resources in their home to more than four hundred fugitive slaves.

Douglass also soon split with Garrison, whom he found unwilling to support actions against American slavery. Earlier Douglass had agreed with Garrison's position that the Constitution was pro-slavery, because of the Three-Fifths Clause, the compromise that provided that 60 percent of the number of enslaved people would be added to "the whole Number of free Persons" for the purpose of apportioning congressional seats; and protection of the international slave trade through 1807. Garrison had burned copies of the Constitution to express his opinion. However, Lysander Spooner published The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1846), which examined the United States Constitution as an antislavery document. Douglass's change of opinion about the Constitution and his splitting from Garrison around 1847 became one of the abolitionist movement's most notable divisions. Douglass angered Garrison by saying that the Constitution could and should be used as an instrument in the fight against slavery.

On July 24, 1851, "shortly after his announced change of opinion", Douglass delivered a speech titled, "Is the United States Constitution For or Against Slavery". He expressed his changed views again in an 1860 speech in Glasgow, Scotland, titled, " The Constitution of the United States: is it pro-slavery or anti-slavery?". In that speech, he said, "When I escaped from slavery, and was introduced to the Garrisonians, I adopted very many of their opinions.... I was young, had read but little, and naturally took some things on trust. Subsequent reading and experience", however, "brought me to other conclusions". He now believed that "dissolution of the American Union", which Garrison advocated, "would place the slave system more exclusively under the control of the slaveholding States...." In addition, "Mr. Garrison and his friends tell us that while in the Union we are responsible for slavery.... I deny that going out of the Union would free us from that responsibility.... The American people in the Northern States have helped to enslave the black people. Their duty will not be done till they give them back their plundered rights."

Letter to his former owner

In September 1848, on the tenth anniversary of his escape, Douglass published an open letter addressed to his former master, Thomas Auld, berating him for his conduct, and inquiring after members of his family still held by Auld. In the course of the letter, Douglass adeptly transitions from formal and restrained to familiar and then to impassioned. At one point he is the proud parent, describing his improved circumstances and the progress of his own four young children. But then he dramatically shifts tone:

In a graphic passage, Douglass asked Auld how he would feel if Douglass had come to take away his daughter Amanda into slavery, treating her the way he and members of his family had been treated by Auld. Yet in his conclusion Douglass shows his focus and benevolence, stating that he has "no malice towards him personally," and asserts that, "there is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege, to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other."

Women's rights

In 1848, Douglass was the only black person to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, in upstate New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution asking for women's suffrage. Many of those present opposed the idea, including influential Quakers James and Lucretia Mott. Douglass stood and spoke eloquently in favor of women's suffrage; he said that he could not accept the right to vote as a black man if women could also not claim that right. He suggested that the world would be a better place if women were involved in the political sphere:

After Douglass's powerful words, the attendees passed the resolution.

In the wake of the Seneca Falls Convention, Douglass used an editorial in The North Star to press the case for women's rights. He recalled the "marked ability and dignity" of the proceedings, and briefly conveyed several arguments of the convention and feminist thought at the time.

On the first count, Douglass acknowledged the "decorum" of the participants in the face of disagreement. In the remainder, he discussed the primary document that emerged from the conference, a Declaration of Sentiments, and the "infant" feminist cause. Strikingly, he expressed the belief that "[a] discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency...than would be a discussion of the rights of women," and Douglass noted the link between abolitionism and feminism, the overlap between the communities.

His opinion as the editor of a prominent newspaper carried weight, and he stated the position of the North Star explicitly: "We hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man." This letter, written a week after the convention, reaffirmed the first part of the paper's slogan, "right is of no sex."

After the Civil War, when the 15th Amendment giving black men the right to vote was being debated, Douglass split with the Stanton-led faction of the women's rights movement. Douglass supported the amendment, which would grant suffrage to black men. Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it limited the expansion of suffrage to black men; she predicted its passage would delay for decades the cause for women's right to vote. Stanton argued that American women and black men should band together to fight for universal suffrage, and opposed any bill that split the issues. Douglass and Stanton both knew that there was not yet enough male support for women's right to vote, but that an amendment giving black men the vote could pass in the late 1860s. Stanton wanted to attach women's suffrage to that of black men so that her cause would be carried to success.

Douglass thought such a strategy was too risky, that there was barely enough support for black men's suffrage. He feared that linking the cause of women's suffrage to that of black men would result in failure for both. Douglass argued that white women, already empowered by their social connections to fathers, husbands, and brothers, at least vicariously had the vote. Black women, he believed, would have the same degree of empowerment as white women once black men had the vote. Douglass assured the American women that at no time had he ever argued against women's right to vote.

Ideological refinement

Meanwhile, in 1851, Douglass merged the North Star with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper, which was published until 1860.

On July 5, 1852, Douglass delivered an address in Corinthian Hall at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. This speech eventually became known as " What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"; one biographer called it "perhaps the greatest antislavery oration ever given." In 1853, he was a prominent attendee of the radical abolitionist National African American Convention in Rochester. Douglass was one of five people whose names were attached to the address of the convention to the people of the United States published under the title, The Claims of Our Common Cause. The other four were Amos Noë Freeman, James Monroe Whitfield, Henry O. Wagoner, and George Boyer Vashon.

Like many abolitionists, Douglass believed that education would be crucial for African Americans to improve their lives; he was an early advocate for school desegregation. In the 1850s, Douglass observed that New York's facilities and instruction for African American children were vastly inferior to those for European Americans. Douglass called for court action to open all schools to all children. He said that full inclusion within the educational system was a more pressing need for African Americans than political issues such as suffrage.

Douglass argued against John Brown's plan to attack the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, painting by Jacob Lawrence

On March 12, 1859, Douglass met with radical abolitionists John Brown, George DeBaptiste, and others at William Webb's house in Detroit to discuss emancipation. Douglass met Brown again when Brown visited his home two months before leading the raid on Harpers Ferry. Brown penned his Provisional Constitution during his two-week stay with Douglass. Also staying with Douglass for over a year was Shields Green, a fugitive slave whom Douglass was helping, as he often did.

Almost all that is known about this incident comes from Douglass. It is clear that it was of immense importance to him, both as a turning point in his life-not accompanying John Brown-and its importance in his public image. The meeting was not revealed by Douglass for 20 years. He first disclosed it in his speech on John Brown at Storer College in 1881, trying unsuccessfully to raise money to support a John Brown professorship at Storer, to be held by a black man. He again referred to it stunningly in his last Autobiography.

After the raid, which took place between October 16 and 18, 1859, Douglass was accused both of supporting Brown and of not supporting him enough. He was nearly arrested on a Virginia warrant, and fled for a brief time to Canada before proceeding onward to England on a previously planned lecture tour, arriving near the end of November. During his lecture tour of Great Britain, on March 26, 1860, Douglass delivered a speech before the Scottish Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, " The Constitution of the United States: is it pro-slavery or anti-slavery?", outlining his views on the American Constitution. That month, on the 13th, Douglass's youngest daughter Annie died in Rochester, New York, just days shy of her 11th birthday. Douglass sailed back from England the following month, traveling through Canada to avoid detection.

Photography

Douglass considered photography very important in ending slavery and racism, and believed that the camera would not lie, even in the hands of a racist white person, as photographs were an excellent counter to many racist caricatures, particularly in blackface minstrelsy. He was the most photographed American of the 19th century, consciously using photography to advance his political views. He never smiled, specifically so as not to play into the racist caricature of a happy enslaved person. He tended to look directly into the camera and confront the viewer with a stern look.

Civil War years

Before the Civil War

By the time of the Civil War, Douglass was one of the most famous black men in the country, known for his orations on the condition of the black race and on other issues such as women's rights. His eloquence gathered crowds at every location. His reception by leaders in England and Ireland added to his stature.

He had been seriously proposed for the congressional seat of his friend and supporter Gerrit Smith, who declined to run again after his term ended in 1854. Smith recommended to him that he not run, because there were "strenuous objections" from members of Congress. The possibility "afflicted some with convulsions, others with panic, more with an astonishing flow of exceedingly select and nervous language", "giving vent to all sorts of linguistic enormities." If the House agreed to seat him, which was unlikely, all the Southern members would walk out, so the country would finally be split. No black person would serve in Congress until 1870, just after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.

Fight for emancipation and suffrage

1863 broadside Men of Color to Arms!, written by Douglass

Douglass and the abolitionists argued that because the aim of the Civil War was to end slavery, African Americans should be allowed to engage in the fight for their freedom. Douglass publicized this view in his newspapers and several speeches. After Lincoln had finally allowed black soldiers to serve in the Union army, Douglass helped the recruitment efforts, publishing his famous broadside Men of Color to Arms! on March 21, 1863. His eldest son, Charles Douglass, joined the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, but was ill for much of his service. Lewis Douglass fought at the Battle of Fort Wagner. Another son, Frederick Douglass Jr., also served as a recruiter.

During the U.S. Presidential Election of 1864, Douglass supported John C. Frémont, who was the candidate of the abolitionist Radical Democracy Party. Douglass was disappointed that President Lincoln did not publicly endorse suffrage for black freedmen. Douglass believed that since African American men were fighting for the Union in the American Civil War, they deserved the right to vote.

After Lincoln's death

The postwar ratification of the 13th Amendment, on December 6, 1865, outlawed slavery, "except as a punishment for crime." The 14th Amendment provided for birthright citizenship and prohibited the states from abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States or denying any "person" due process of law or equal protection of the laws. The 15th Amendment protected all citizens from being discriminated against in voting because of race. After Lincoln had been assassinated, Douglass conferred with President Andrew Johnson on the subject of black suffrage.

On April 14, 1876, Douglass delivered the keynote speech at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington's Lincoln Park. He spoke frankly about the complex legacy of Lincoln, noting what he perceived as both positive and negative attributes of the late President. Calling Lincoln "the white man's President," Douglass criticized Lincoln's tardiness in joining the cause of emancipation, noting that Lincoln initially opposed the expansion of slavery but did not support its elimination: "He had been ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the humanity of the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people. Lincoln was neither our man or our model". But Douglass also asked, "Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word?" He also said: "Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery...." Most famously, he added: "Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined."

The crowd, roused by his speech, gave Douglass a standing ovation. Lincoln's widow Mary Lincoln supposedly gave Lincoln's favorite walking-stick to Douglass in appreciation. That walking stick still rests in his final residence, "Cedar Hill" in Washington, D.C., now preserved as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

After delivering the speech, Douglass immediately wrote to the National Republican newspaper in Washington (which published his letter five days later, on April 19), criticizing the statue's design and suggesting the park could be improved by more dignified monuments of free black people. "The negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude," Douglass wrote. "What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man."

Reconstruction era

Meanwhile, white insurgents had quickly arisen in the South after the war, organizing first as secret vigilante groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. Armed insurgency took different forms. Powerful paramilitary groups included the White League and the Red Shirts, both active during the 1870s in the Deep South. They operated as "the military arm of the Democratic Party", turning out Republican officeholders and disrupting elections. Starting 10 years after the war, Democrats regained political power in every state of the former Confederacy and began to reassert white supremacy. They enforced this by a combination of violence, late 19th-century laws imposing segregation and a concerted effort to disfranchise African Americans. New labor and criminal laws also limited their freedom.

To combat these efforts, Douglass supported the presidential campaign of Ulysses S. Grant in 1868. In 1870, Douglass started his last newspaper, the New National Era, attempting to hold his country to its commitment to equality. President Grant sent a congressionally sponsored commission, accompanied by Douglass, on a mission to the West Indies to investigate whether the annexation of Santo Domingo would be good for the United States. Grant believed annexation would help relieve the violent situation in the South by allowing African Americans their own state. Douglass and the commission favored annexation, but Congress remained opposed to annexation. Douglass criticized Senator Charles Sumner, who opposed annexation, stating that if Sumner continued to oppose annexation he would "regard him as the worst foe the colored race has on this continent."

Douglass's former residence in the U Street Corridor of Washington, D.C. He built 2000-2004 17th Street, NW, in 1875.

After the midterm elections, Grant signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Klan Act), and the second and third Enforcement Acts. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina and sending troops there and into other states. Under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made. Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan made him unpopular among many whites but earned praise from Douglass. A Douglass associate wrote that African Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of [Grant's] name, fame and great services."

In 1872, 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. He was nominated without his knowledge. Douglass neither campaigned for the ticket nor acknowledged that he had been nominated. In that year, he was presidential elector at large for the State of New York, and took that state's votes to Washington, D.C.

However, in early June of that year, Douglass's third Rochester home, on South Avenue, burned down; arson was suspected. There was extensive damage to the house, its furnishings, and the grounds; in addition, sixteen volumes of the North Star and Frederick Douglass' Paper were lost. Douglass then moved to Washington, D.C.

Throughout the Reconstruction era, Douglass continued speaking, emphasizing the importance of work, voting rights and actual exercise of suffrage. His speeches for the twenty-five years following the war emphasized work to counter the racism that was then prevalent in unions. In a November 15, 1867, speech he said:

...rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.

Douglass spoke at many colleges around the country, including Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, in 1873.

Frederick Douglas House

In 1877 Frederick Douglas bought a house that included a big yard, as well as a studio where he did most of his work; he lived in this house from 1878 until his death in 1895, and it was named the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

Final years in Washington, D.C.

The Freedman's Savings Bank went bankrupt on June 29, 1874, just a few months after Douglass became its president in late March. During that same economic crisis, his final newspaper, The New National Era, failed in September. When Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president, he named Douglass United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, making him the first person of color to be so named. The United States Senate voted to confirm him on March 17, 1877. Douglass accepted the appointment, which helped assure his family's financial security. During his tenure, Douglass was urged by his supporters to resign from his commission, since he was never asked to introduce visiting foreign dignitaries to the President, which is one of the usual duties of that post. However, Douglass believed that no covert racism was implied by the omission and stated that he was always warmly welcomed in presidential circles.

Cedar Hill, Douglass's house in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., is preserved as a National Historic Site.

In 1877, Douglass visited his former enslaver Thomas Auld on his deathbed, and the two men reconciled. Douglass had met Auld's daughter, Amanda Auld Sears, some years prior. She had requested the meeting and had subsequently attended and cheered one of Douglass's speeches. Her father complimented her for reaching out to Douglass. The visit also appears to have brought closure to Douglass, although some criticized his effort.

That same year, Douglass bought the house that was to be the family's final home in Washington, D.C., on a hill above the Anacostia River. He and Anna named it Cedar Hill (also spelled CedarHill). They expanded the house from 14 to 21 rooms and included a china closet. One year later, Douglass purchased adjoining lots and expanded the property to 15 acres (61,000 m ²). The home is now preserved as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

In 1881, Douglass published the final edition of his autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he updated in 1892. In 1881, he was appointed Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia. His wife Anna Murray Douglass died in 1882, leaving the widower devastated. After a period of mourning, Douglass found new meaning from working with activist Ida B. Wells. He remarried in 1884, as mentioned above.

Douglass also continued his speaking engagements and travel, both in the United States and abroad. With new wife Helen, Douglass traveled to England, Ireland, France, Italy, Egypt, and Greece from 1886 to 1887. He became known for advocating Irish Home Rule and supported Charles Stewart Parnell in Ireland.

At the 1888 Republican National Convention, Douglass became the first African American to receive a vote for President of the United States in a major party's roll call vote. That year, Douglass spoke at Claflin College, a historically black college in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and the state's oldest such institution.

Many African Americans, called Exodusters, escaped the Klan and racially discriminatory laws in the South by moving to Kansas, where some formed all-black towns to have a greater level of freedom and autonomy. Douglass favored neither this nor the Back-to-Africa movement. He thought the latter resembled the American Colonization Society, which he had opposed in his youth. In 1892, at an Indianapolis conference convened by Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, Douglass spoke out against the separatist movements, urging blacks to stick it out. He made similar speeches as early as 1879 and was criticized both by fellow leaders and some audiences, who even booed him for this position. Speaking in Baltimore in 1894, Douglass said, "I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me."

President Harrison appointed Douglass as the United States's minister resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti and Chargé d'affaires for Santo Domingo in 1889, but Douglass resigned the commission in July 1891 when it became apparent that the American President was intent upon gaining permanent access to Haitian territory regardless of that country's desires. In 1892, Haiti made Douglass a co-commissioner of its pavilion at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In 1892, Douglass constructed rental housing for blacks, now known as Douglass Place, in the Fells Point area of Baltimore. The complex still exists, and in 2003 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. During that meeting, he was brought to the platform and received a standing ovation. Shortly after he returned home, Douglass died of a massive heart attack. He was 77.

Thousands of people passed by his coffin to show their respect. United States Senators and Supreme Court judges were pallbearers. Jeremiah Rankin, President of Howard University, delivered "a masterly address". A letter from Elizabeth Cady Stanton was read. The Secretary of the Haitian Legation "expressed the condolence of his country in melodious French."

Douglass's coffin was transported to Rochester, New York, where he had lived for 25 years, longer than anywhere else in his life. His body was received in state at City Hall, flags were flown at half mast, and schools adjourned. He was buried next to Anna in the Douglass family plot of Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester's premier memorial park. Helen was also buried there, in 1903. His grave is, with that of Susan B. Anthony, the most visited in the cemetery. A marker, erected by the University of Rochester and other friends, describes him as "escaped slave, abolitionist, suffragist, journalist and statesman, founder of the Civil Rights Movement in America".

1847. "Liberty", an eight-line poem, was written by Frederick Douglass in his notebook on September 13, 1847, in Cleveland, Ohio. Since mid-August he and William Lloyd Garrison, on a Western tour for the abolitionist movement, had been traveling through Ohio, where their receptions ranged from hospitable to enthusiastic. This raised Douglass's spirits considerably after he had faced an onslaught of "rotten eggs and all manner of stones and brickbats" while speaking a few weeks earlier in the courthouse at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. As a result of his receptions in Ohio, he was moved to write poetry on at least one other occasion in that state after he had written the poem "Liberty". The handwritten poem is now held in the Xavier University of Louisiana, Archives & Special Collections.

Legacy and honors

A 1965 U.S. postage stamp, published during the upsurge of the civil rights movement

Roy Finkenbine argues:

The most influential African American of the nineteenth century, Douglass made a career of agitating the American conscience. He spoke and wrote on behalf of a variety of reform causes: women's rights, temperance, peace, land reform, free public education, and the abolition of capital punishment. But he devoted the bulk of his time, immense talent, and boundless energy to ending slavery and gaining equal rights for African Americans. These were the central concerns of his long reform career. Douglass understood that the struggle for emancipation and equality demanded forceful, persistent, and unyielding agitation. And he recognized that African Americans must play a conspicuous role in that struggle. Less than a month before his death, when a young black man solicited his advice to an African American just starting out in the world, Douglass replied without hesitation: ″Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!″

The Episcopal Church remembers Douglass with a Lesser Feast annually on its liturgical calendar for February 20, the anniversary of his death. Many public schools have also been named in his honor. Douglass still has living descendants today, such as Ken Morris, who is also a descendant of Booker T. Washington. Other honors and remembrances include:

In 1871, a bust of Douglass was unveiled at Sibley Hall, University of Rochester.

In 1895, the first hospital for black people in Philadelphia, PA was named the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital. Black medical professionals, excluded from other facilities, were trained and employed there. In 1948, it merged to form Mercy-Douglass Hospital.

In 1899, a statue of Frederick Douglass was unveiled in Rochester, New York, making Douglass the first African-American to be so memorialized in the country.

In 1921, members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (the first African-American intercollegiate fraternity) designated Frederick Douglass as an honorary member. Douglass thus became the only man to receive an honorary membership posthumously.

The Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, sometimes referred to as the South Capitol Street Bridge, just south of the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., was built in 1950 and named in his honor.

In 1962, his home in Anacostia (Washington, D.C.) became part of the National Park System and in 1988 was designated the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

In 1965, the United States Postal Service honored Douglass with a stamp in the Prominent Americans series.

In 1999, Yale University established the Frederick Douglass Book Prize for works in the history of slavery and abolition, in his honor. The annual $25,000 prize is administered by the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Frederick Douglass to his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 2003, Douglass Place, the rental housing units that Douglass built in Baltimore in 1892 for blacks, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2007, the former Troup-Howell Bridge, which carried Interstate 490 over the Genesee River in Rochester, was redesigned and renamed the Frederick Douglass - Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge.

In 2010, the Frederick Douglass Memorial was unveiled at Frederick Douglass Circle at the northwest corner of Central Park in New York City.

In 2010, the New York Writers Hall of Fame inducted Douglass in its inaugural class.

On June 12, 2011, Talbot County, Maryland, installed a seven-foot (2-meter) bronze statue of Douglass on the lawn of the county courthouse in Easton, Maryland.

On June 19, 2013, a statue of Douglass by Maryland artist Steven Weitzman was unveiled in the United States Capitol Visitor Center as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection, the first statue representing the District of Columbia.

On September 15, 2014, under the leadership of Governor Martin O'Malley a portrait of Frederick Douglass was unveiled at his official residence in Annapolis, MD. This painting, by artist Simmie Knox, is the first African-American portrait to grace the walls of Government House. Commissioned by Eddie C. Brown, founder of Brown Capital Management, LLC, the painting was presented at a reception by the Governor.

On January 7, 2015, as a parting gift in honor of Governor Martin O'Malley's last Board of Public Works a portrait of Frederick Douglass was gifted to him by Peter Franchot. Two editions of this artwork, by artist Benjamin Jancewicz, were purchased from Galerie Myrtis by Peter Franchot and his wife Ann both as a gift for the Governor as well as to add to their own collection. The Governor's edition now hangs in his office.[non-primary source needed ]

In November 2015, the University of Maryland dedicated Frederick Douglass Plaza, an outdoor space where visitors can read quotes and see a bronze statue of Douglass.

On October 18, 2016, the Council of the District of Columbia voted that the city's new name as a State is to be "Washington, D.C.", and that "D.C." is to stand for "Douglass Commonwealth."

On April 3, 2017, the United States Mint began issuing quarters with an image of Frederick Douglass on the reverse, with the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in the background. The coin is part of the America the Beautiful Quarters series.

On May 20, 2018, Douglass was awarded an honorary law degree from the University of Rochester. The degree, which was accepted by Douglass's great-great-great-grandson, was the first posthumous honorary degree that the university had granted.

The final public lecture of Frederick Douglass was on February 1, 1895, at West Chester University, nineteen days before his death. Today, there is a statue of him on the university campus commemorating this event. The Frederick Douglass Institute has a West Chester University program for advancing multicultural studies across the curriculum and for deepening the intellectual heritage of Douglass.

In New York State there is the "Let's Have Tea" sculpture of Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.

From April 22 to June 14, 2019, the National Gallery of Art had an exhibit titled In the Library: Frederick Douglass Family Materials from the Walter O. Evans Collection

On September 30, 2019, Newcastle University opened the 'Frederick Douglass Centre', a key teaching component for their School of Computing and Business School. Frederick Douglass stayed in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1846 on a street adjacent to the new university campus.

A statue of Douglass located in Rochester, New York's Maplewood Park was vandalized and torn down over the weekend of July 4, 2020.

In 2020, Douglas Park in Chicago, which was named for U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, was renamed Douglass Park, in honor of Frederick and Anna Douglass. In the 1850s the senator had promoted "popular sovereignty" as a middle position on the slavery issue and made "blatant assertions of white superiority." The name change was the result of a multi-year student-led campaign to rename the park.

A plaque on Gilmore Place in Edinburgh, Scotland marks his stay there in 1846. In 2020 a mural of his image was added nearby.

On June 19, 2021, on Boston Street in the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, two panels were unveiled at the spot where, as it had shortly before been discovered, Douglass had boarded the train that took him to his freedom from enslavement.

On August 18, 2021, the Frederick Douglass Park in Lynn, Massachusetts was dedicated, directly across the street from the site of the Central Square railroad depot where Douglass was forcibly removed from the train in 1841. The park features a bronze bas-relief sculpture of Douglass.

In 2020, the Greater Rochester International Airport was renamed the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport.

On January 18, 2023, Governor Wes Moore was sworn in as governor of Maryland on a Bible owned by Douglass.

In popular culture

Film and television

Literature

Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain (1988) is an alternate-history novel in which John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry succeeded and, instead of the Civil War, the Black slaves emancipated themselves in a massive slave revolt. In this history, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman are the revered founders of a Black state created in the Deep South.

Douglass is a major character in the novel How Few Remain (1997) by Harry Turtledove, depicted in an alternate history in which the Confederacy won the Civil War and Douglass must continue his anti-slavery campaign into the 1880s.

Douglass appears in Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994) by George MacDonald Fraser.

Douglass, his wife, and his alleged mistress, Ottilie Assing, are the main characters in Jewell Parker Rhodes' Douglass' Women (New York: Atria Books, 2002).

Douglass's time in Ireland is fictionalized in Colum McCann's TransAtlantic (2013).

A comedic representation of Douglass is made in James McBride's 2013 novel The Good Lord Bird.

In 2019, author David W. Blight was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for History for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

In 1938-39, African-American artist Jacob Lawrence created The Frederick Douglass series of narrative paintings. They were part of the historical series started by Lawrence in 1937, which included painted panels about prominent Black historical figures such as Toussaint Louverture and Harriet Tubman. During his preparatory work, Lawrence conducted research at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, drawing primarily from the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). For this series the artist used a multipanel-plus-caption format that allowed him to develop a serial narrative that was not possible to convey by means of traditional portrait or history painting. Instead of reproducing Douglass's original narratives verbatim, Lawrence constructed his own visual and textual narrative in the form of 32 panels painted in tempera and accompanied with Lawrence's own captions. The structure of the painting series is linear and consists of three parts (the slave, the fugitive, the free man) which offer an epic chronicle of Douglass's transformation from slave to leader in the struggle for the liberation of black people. The Frederick Douglass series is currently in the Hampton University Museum.

Other media

In 2019, Douglass was the focus of the exhibition Lessons of the Hour - Frederick Douglass by British artist Isaac Julien, at New York's Metro Pictures Gallery and Memorial Art Gallery.

In August 2022, "American Prophet: Frederick Douglass in His Own Words," a musical starring Cornelius Smith Jr. as Douglass, was performed at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

A drawing of Frederick Douglass appears on the cover of Ebony magazine, September 1963

One Life: Frederick Douglass Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., June 16, 2023 - April 21, 2024. DeNeen L. Brown, "The photos of Frederick Douglass that helped him fight to end slavery", The Washington Post, July 1, 2023.

Explanatory notes

References

1. ^ Chambers, Veronica; Jamiel Law (ill.) (February 25, 2021). "How Negro History Week Became Black History Month and Why It Matters Now". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

2. ^ Gatewood, Willard B. Jr. 1981. "Frederick Douglass and the Building of a 'Wall of Anti-Slavery Fire' 1845-1846. An Essay Review." The Florida Historical Quarterly 59(3):340-344. JSTOR 30147499.

3. Stewart, Roderick M. 1999. "The Claims of Frederick Douglass Philosophically Considered." ^ Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, B. E. Lawson and F. M. Kirkland, eds., pp. 155-156. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0631205784. "Moreover, though he does not make the point explicitly, again the very fact that Douglass is ably disputing this argument on this occasion celebrating a select few's intellect and will (or moral character)-this fact constitutes a living counterexample to the narrowness of the pro-slavery definition of humans."

4. Matlack, James. 1979. "The Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass." ^ Phylon (1960-) 40(1):15-28. doi:10.2307/274419. JSTOR 274419. p. 16: "He spoke too well. ... Since he did not talk, look, or act like a slave (in the eyes of Northern audiences), Douglass was denounced as an imposter."

5. ^ Foner, Philip; Taylor, Yuval, eds. (1999). Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings. Chicago Review Press. p. 629. ISBN 1-55652-349-1. Archived from the original on December 21, 2020. let us have liberty, law, and justice first. Let us have the Constitution, with its thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, fairly interpreted, faithfully executed, and cheerfully obeyed in the fullness of their spirit and the completeness of their letter.

6. ^ Frederick Douglass (1855). The Anti-Slavery Movement, A Lecture by Frederick Douglass before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. Press of Lee, Mann & Company, Daily American Office. p. 33. My point here is, first, the Constitution is, according to its reading, an anti-slavery document; and, secondly, to dissolve the Union, as a means to abolish slavery, is about as wise as it would be to burn up this city, in order to get the thieves out of it. But again, we hear the motto, 'no union with slave-holders;' and I answer it, as the noble champion of liberty, N. P. Rogers, answered it with a more sensible motto, namely-' No union with slave-holding.' I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.

7. Barker, Amanda. [1996]. "^ The Search for Frederick Douglass' Birthplace Archived December 7, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. Choptank River Heritage. Retrieved June 14, 2020. Although Barker's website devoted to the Douglass birthplace states that it could not be found with tour books and guides, that is no longer the case.

8. Barker, Don. February 4, 2014. "^ The Search for Frederick Douglass's Birthplace Archived July 31, 2020, at the Wayback Machine." Choptank River Heritage. Retrieved June 14, 2020.

9. "Frederick Douglass | Museums and Gardens." Talbot Historic Society. 2016. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016. Retrieved December 22, 2016.

10. ^
Frederick Douglass began his own story thusly: "I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot County, Maryland." (Tuckahoe is not a town; it refers to the area west of Tuckahoe Creek in Talbot County.) In successive autobiographies, Douglass gave more precise estimates of when he was born, his final estimate being 1817.

11. ^ February 14: Frederick Douglass Archived June 15, 2020, at the Wayback Machine. The Florida Center for Instructional Technology. US: University of South Florida. 2020.

12. Sterngass, Jon. 2009. ^ Frederick Douglass, (Leaders of the Civil War era). Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 1604133066. p. 16 Archived June 15, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, 132 Archived June 15, 2020, at the Wayback Machine

13. ^ Field, Kate (February 23, 1895). "Fred. Douglass dead". Kate Field's Washington. 11 (8): 119. Archived from the original on March 21, 2022.

14. Douglass, Frederick. 1845. "^ Chapter VII."

15. Douglass, Frederick. [1881-82] 2003. ^ Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself, His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time (Dover Value Editions). p. 50. Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 0486431703.

16. ^ Appiah, Kwame Anthony. [2000] 2004. "Introduction." In 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave' & 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'. New York: Modern Library. pp. xiii, 4.

17. ^ Douglass, Frederick (1855). My Bondage and My Freedom (1st ed.). New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan. p. 58.

18. ^ Blight, David W., Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, p. 68.

19. Bowers, Jerome. "^ Frederick Douglass Archived August 30, 2011, at the Wayback Machine." Teachinghistory.org. US: Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. 2018. Retrieved June 14, 2020.

20. ^

21. ""JUNETEENTH|Historic Panels Commemorating Frederick Douglass' Escape Unveiled In Canton"". June 19, 2021. Archived from the original on June 20, 2021.

22. ""Panels honoring Frederick Douglass to be unveiled at Canton waterfront"". June 9, 2021. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021.

23. ""Historic Panels Commemorate Frederick Douglass' Escape From Slavery In Canton"". Archived from the original on June 24, 2021.

24. ^

25. ^ Lee, Maurice S., ed. (2009). The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass. Cambridge University Press. p. 69.

26. ^ Blight, David (2020). Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster. p. 514. ISBN 978-1-4165-9032-3.

27. ^ Adam Gopnik, "American Prophet: The gifts of Frederick Douglass", The New Yorker, October 15, 2018, pp. 81-82

28. ^

29. ^ Lee, Maurice S., ed. (2009). The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass. Cambridge University Press. p. 63.

30. ^

31. Douglass, Frederick. [1881] 2008. ^ Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Cosimo, Inc., p. 149 ISBN 978-1605203997.

32. ^ The full text of Page:My Bondage and My Freedom (1855).djvu/411 at Wikisource

33. Reprinted in ^ Blassingame, John W.; McKivigan, John R., eds. (1979). The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series One-Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. Vol. 2. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 57.

34. Douglass, Frederick. [1885] 2003. ^ My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I - Life as a Slave, Part II - Life as a Freeman, introduction by James McCune Smith, edited by J. Stauffer. New York: Random House. ISBN 0812970314. p. 371 Archived January 31, 2017, at the Wayback Machine

35. ^ The Liberator, 27 March 1846 Archived May 20, 2021, at the Wayback Machine; reprinted in Philip Foner, ed., Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1950), p. 138.

36. Frederick Douglass letter to ^ William Lloyd Garrison quoted in Christine Kinealy ed. (2018), Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words, Volume II. Routledge, New York. ISBN 978-0429505058. pp. 67-72.

37. ^

38. ^ Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution, New York: HarperCollins, 2006, pp. 415-21.

39. ^ Fenton, Laurence (2014). Frederick Douglass in Ireland : the 'Black O'Connell'. Cork: Collins Press. pp. 131, 151. ISBN 978-1848891968. OCLC 869789226.

40. ^ "Jerry Rescue Celebration". Anti-Slavery Bugle. Salem, Ohio. October 14, 1854. p. 2.

41. ^ U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 2.

42. ^ Rebeiro, footnotes 51 and 67.

43. ^ (1860) FREDERICK DOUGLASS, "THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES: IS IT PRO-SLAVERY OR ANTI-SLAVERY?", full text. Abridged

44. ^ Stanton, 1997, p. 85.

45. Foner, p. 600.

46. ^

47. ^

48. ^ Underground Railroad, US Department of Interior, National Park Service, Denver Service Center. Diane Publishing, February 1, 1995, p. 168.

49. ^ "High Treason!". Franklin Repository. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. August 24, 1859. p. 5. Archived from the original on April 13, 2021 - via newspapers.com.

50. ^ Drescher, Seymour (1995). "Servile Insurrection and John Brown's Body in Europe". In Finkelman, Paul (ed.). His Soul Goes Marching On. Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid. Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia. p. 275. ISBN 978-0813915364.

51. ^ Douglass, Frederick (November 11, 1859) [October 31, 1859]. "Letter from Frederick Douglass". The Liberator. Boston, Massachusetts. p. 1. Archived from the original on April 13, 2021 - via newspapers.com.

52. ^ "Supposed Search for Fred. Douglass". The New York Times. October 27, 1859. p. 8. Archived from the original on April 13, 2021 - via newspapers.com.

53. ^

54. Frederick Douglass (1860), ^ "The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?" - via BlackPast, March 15, 2012. Retrieved August 29, 2020.

55. Douglass, Frederick (1881). John Brown. An address by Frederick Douglass, at the fourteenth anniversary of Storer College, Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, May 30, 1881. Dover, New Hampshire: Dover, N.H., Morning Star job printing house. pp. 3-4.

56. ^ John Stauffer; Zoe Trodd; Celeste-Marie Bernier; Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Kenneth B. Morris Jr. (2015). Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American (revised ed.). Liveright (imprint of Norton). p. 320. ISBN 978-0871404688. Archived from the original (hardcover) on August 6, 2016.

57. ^ David Brooks (August 2, 2016). "How Artists Change the World". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 5, 2016.

58. ^ "Picture This: Frederick Douglass Was The Most Photographed Man Of His Time - interview by Michel Martin of John Stauffer, author of Picturing Frederick Douglass". NPR.org. NPR. December 13, 2015. Archived from the original on May 4, 2016.

59. ^ "Black man going to Congress". Weekly Raleigh Register. Raleigh, North Carolina. July 5, 1854. p. 1. Archived from the original on April 21, 2022 - via newspapers.com.

60. ^ "The Black and White Douglas". Wabash Courier. Terre Haute, Indiana. July 22, 1854 - via Hoosier State Chronicles.

61. ^ "F. Douglass in Congress". Anti-Slavery Bugle. Salem, Ohio. August 5, 1854. p. 1.

62. ^ George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1984, p. 132.

63. ^ Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon" Archived November 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Constitutional Commentary, Vol. 17, 2000, pp. 12-13. Retrieved March 10, 2008.

64. Richard Reid, ^ "The Gloria Rackley-Blackwell story" Archived July 27, 2019, at the Wayback Machine The Times and Democrat (February 22, 2011). Retrieved June 3, 2011.

65. ^ Wilkerson, Isabel, The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), p. 40.

66. ^ Louis Martin Sears (May 1941). "Frederick Douglass and the Mission to Haiti, 1889-1891". The Hispanic American Historical Review. 21 (2): 222-238. doi:10.2307/2507394. JSTOR 2507394.

67. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. April 15, 2008.

68. ^ Field, Kate (April 20, 1895). "A Life of Contrasts". Kate Field's Washington. 11 (16): 253-254. Archived from the original on March 22, 2022.

69. Finkenbine, Roy E. 2000. "^ Douglass, Frederick Archived December 24, 2016, at archive.today." American National Biography. Retrieved on March 16, 2016.

70. ^ "Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on April 10, 2021.

71. ^ Letter reprinted in The New York Times, July 2, 1879 (June 28, 1879). "Frederick Douglass". Democrat and Chronicle. Rochester, New York. p. 2. Archived from the original on July 9, 2021 - via newspapers.com.

72. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1573929638.

73. ^ Burlingame, Michael, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, vol. 1, p. 526, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008; Unedited manuscript, p. 1446. Archived September 1, 2021, at the Wayback Machine

74. ^ Sippell, Margeaux (August 2, 2019). "Daveed Diggs to Play Frederick Douglass in Ethan Hawke's Showtime Limited Series 'The Good Lord Bird'". TheWrap. Archived from the original on December 5, 2019.

75. ^ "Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches | Official Website for the HBO Series". HBO.com.

76. Carson, Saul. November 3, 1946. "Negro's Apotheosis." ^ New York Times Book Review. pp. 7, 36.

77. Olende, Ken. December 1, 2007. "^ Frederick Douglass and 'Riversmeet': connecting 19th century struggles Archived August 16, 2008, at the Wayback Machine." Socialist Worker.

78. ^ Lyons, Joel (August 21, 2013). "James McBride on 'The Good Lord Bird'". Daily News. New York. Archived from the original on August 25, 2013.

79. ^ Isherwood, Charles (August 11, 2022). "Opinion - 'American Prophet' Review: Frederick Douglass's Fiery Words". WSJ.

80. ^ "The Making of a Man" (mp3). Destination Freedom - via Internet Archive Digital Library. & "The Key to Freedom" (mp3). Destination Freedom - via Internet Archive Digital Library.

Further reading

Primary sources

Douglass, Frederick (1845). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office.

- (1855). My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I. Life as a Slave, Part II. Life as a Freeman. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan.

- (1881). Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself. Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co.

- (1892). Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself. Boston: De Wolfe & Fiske Co. (updated edition of 1881 version).

- (1950). The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. New York: International Publishers.

Gregory, James Monroe (1893). Frederick Douglass the Orator: Containing an Account of His Life; His Eminent Public Services; His Brilliant Career as Orator; Selections from His Speeches and Writings. Willey Book Company.

Stauffer, John, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier (2015). Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American (revised ed.). Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Newspaper and magazine articles

Scholarship

Balkin, Jack M. and Levinson, Sanford (2023). "Frederick Douglass as Constitutionalist". Maryland Law Review, forthcoming.

Barnes, L. Diane. Frederick Douglass: Reformer and Statesman (Routledge, 2012).

Blight, David W. (1989). Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

Bromell, Nick. The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass (Duke University Press, 2021).

Buccola, Nicholas. The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty (NYU Press, 2013). online

Chaffin, Tom (2014). Giant's Causeway: Frederick Douglass's Irish Odyssey and the Making of an American Visionary. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.

Chesebrough, David B. Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery (Greenwood, 1998).

Child, Lydia Maria (1865). "Frederick Douglass" in Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

Colaiaco, James A. (2015). Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July. New York: St Martin's Press.

Dilbeck, D. H. Frederick Douglass: America's Prophet (UNC Press Books, 2018) online

Douglas, Janet. "A Cherished Friendship: Julia Griffiths Crofts and Frederick Douglass." Slavery & Abolition 33.2 (2012): 265-274.

Fee Jr., Frank E. "To No One More Indebted: Frederick Douglass and Julia Griffiths, 1849-63." Journalism History 37.1 (2011): 12-26. online

Finkelman, Paul (2016). "Frederick Douglass's Constitution: From Garrisonian Abolitionist to Lincoln Republican". Missouri Law Review, vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 1-73.

Finkenbine, Roy E. (2000). "Douglass, Frederick". American National Biography. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1500186. Brief scholarly biography.

Foster, A. Kristen. "'We Are Men!' Frederick Douglass and the Fault Lines of Gendered Citizenship." Journal of the Civil War Era 1.2 (2011): 143-175. [1]

Golden, Timothy J. (2021). Frederick Douglass and the Philosophy of Religion: An Interpretation of Narrative, Art, and the Political. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Gougeon, Len (2012). "Militant Abolitionism: Douglass, Emerson, and the Rise of the Anti-Slave". New England Quarterly, 85.4: 622-657.

Hamilton, Cynthia S. (2005). "Models of Agency: Frederick Douglass and 'The Heroic Slave'". American Antiquarian Society.

Hawley, Michael C. (2022). "Light or Fire? Frederick Douglass and the Orator's Dilemma". American Journal of Political Science.

Henderson, Rodger C. (December 1, 2006). "Native Americans and Frederick Douglass". Oxford African American Studies Center.

Huggins, Nathan Irvin (1980. Slave and Citizen: The Life of Frederick Douglass (Library of American Biography). Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Kilbride, Daniel. "What did Africa Mean to Frederick Douglass?". Slavery & Abolition 36.1 (2015): 40-62. online

Lampe, Gregory P. (1998). Frederick Douglass: Freedom's Voice. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.

Lee, Maurice S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass (2009), essays by experts, with emphasis on historiography.

Levine, Robert S. (2016). The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Levine, Robert S. (2021). The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

McClure, Kevin R. "Frederick Douglass' use of comparison in his Fourth of July oration: A textual criticism." Western Journal of Communication 64.4 (2000): 425-444. online

McMillen, Sally Gregory (2008). Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement. Oxford University Press.

Mieder, Wolfgang (2001). "No Struggle, No Progress": Frederick Douglass and His Proverbial Rhetoric for Civil Rights. Peter Lang Pub Incorporated.

Mindich, David T. Z. "Understanding Frederick Douglass: Toward a New Synthesis Approach to the Birth of Modern American Journalism." Journalism History 26.1 (2000): 15-22. online

Muller, John (2012). Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: The Lion of Anacostia. Charleston, S.C.: The History Press. ISBN 978-1609495770.

Oakes, James (2007). The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Quarles, Benjamin (1948). Frederick Douglass. Washington: Associated Publishers.

Ray, Angela G. "Frederick Douglass on the Lyceum Circuit: Social Assimilation, Social Transformation?" Rhetoric & Public Affairs 5.4 (2002): 625-647. summary

Rebeiro, Bradley. "Frederick Douglass and the Original Originalists". Brigham Young University Law Review, vol. 48 (2023)

Root, Damon. (2020). A Glorious Liberty: Frederick Douglass and the Fight for an Antislavery Constitution. Potomac Books Inc. ISBN 978-1640122352.

Sandefur, Timothy. (2008). "Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 126-127. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n80. ISBN 978-1412965804. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.

Selby, Gary S. "The limits of accommodation: Frederick Douglass and the Garrisonian abolitionists." Southern Journal of Communication 66.1 (2000): 52-66.

Stephens, Gregory (1997). "Frederick Douglass' Multiracial Abolitionism-Antagonistic Cooperation & Redeemable Ideals in the July 5 Speech". Communication Studies. 48 (3): 175-194. doi:10.1080/10510979709368500.

Sundstrom, Ronald. (2017). "Frederick Douglass". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.

Sweeney, Fionnghuala. Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World (Liverpool University Press, 2007) online.

Vogel, Todd, ed. (2001). The Black Press: New Literary and Historical Essays. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Washington, Booker T. (1906). Frederick Douglass. London, UK: Hodder & Stoughton. Online Historian John Hope Franklin wrote that Washington's biography of Douglass "has been attributed largely to Washington's friend, S. Laing Williams". Introduction to Three Negro Classics, New York: Avon Books (1965), p. 17.

Webber, Thomas L. (1978). Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community, 1831-1865. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Woodson, C. G. (1915). The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861: A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

For young readers

Miller, William. 1995. Frederick Douglass: The Last Day of Slavery, illustrated by C. Lucas. Lee & Low Books.

Walker, David F.; Smyth, Damon; Louise, Marissa. 2018. The Life of Frederick Douglass: A graphic narrative of a slave's journey from bondage to freedom. Ten Speed Press.

Weidt, Maryann N. 2001. Voice of Freedom: A Story about Frederick Douglass, illustrated by J. Reeves. Lerner publications.

Documentary films and videos

External links

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Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1817 or 1818 - February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, during which he gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings.

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NATIONAL ABOLITION HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

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Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin, in February, 1818, near the town of Easton, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Separated from his mother when only a few weeks old he was raised by his...

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The amazing story of how he escaped slavery

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The amazing story of how he escaped slavery

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Never had Frederick Douglass been so nervous. The butterflies in his stomach fluttered with every bounce of the carriage over Baltimore's cobblestone streets as he approached the Baltimore and Ohio railroad station. The slave, then known by his birth name of Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was embarking on a perilous journey with New York-and freedom-his intended destinations.

After Douglass' attempt to escape slavery two years prior was betrayed by a fellow slave, he had been jailed, sent to Baltimore by his master and hired out to work in the city's shipyards. Undeterred, Douglass vowed to try to escape again on September 3, 1838, although he knew the risk. "I felt assured that if I failed in this attempt, my case would be a hopeless one," he wrote in his autobiography. "It would seal my fate as a slave forever."

Douglass disguised himself as a free black sailor, a creditable ruse given the nautical knowledge he gained from working on the waterfront. The slave also knew that the deference shown to sailors in a seafaring city such as Baltimore could work to his benefit. He donned a red shirt and sailor's hat and loosely knotted a black cravat around his neck. Into his pocket the slave stuffed a sailor's protection pass, which he could present in lieu of the "free papers" that railroad officials required black passengers to carry as proof they were not enslaved. Douglass had borrowed the document from a free African American seaman, but he bore little resemblance to the physical description detailed on the piece of paper. Close examination by a railroad official or any authority would reveal the subterfuge and imperil both Douglass and his friend.

To avoid the scrutinizing eyes of the ticket agent inside the station, Douglass waited and jumped on the moving train at the last moment as it began to puff its way north. Many minutes passed before the conductor finally entered the segregated passenger car bearing the train's African-American riders. Although Douglass remained calm on the outside, his heart pounded as the conductor carefully inspected the passengers' free papers. "My whole future depended upon the decision of this conductor," he wrote.

Photo12/UIG/Getty Images

Finally, the railroad official came to Douglass' seat. "I suppose you have your free papers?" he asked.

"No, sir; I never carry my free papers to sea with me," the slave said.

"But you have something to show that you are a free man, have you not?" the conductor queried.

"Yes sir, I have a paper with the American eagle on it, that will carry me round the world," Douglass responded. Douglass pulled the document out of his pocket. The eyes of the conductor were drawn to the authoritative eagle emblazoned on the top rather than to the erroneous physical description. After a quick glance, the conductor collected Douglass' fare and continued to the back of the rail car. "Had the conductor looked closely at the paper," Douglass wrote, "he could not have failed to discover that it called for a very different looking person from myself."

Douglass' anxiety did not totally fade along with the conductor's footsteps, however. He remained subject to arrest at any moment as the train passed through the slave states of Maryland and Delaware. The faster the train sped, the slower it seemed to drag to the fleeing slave. "Minutes were hours, and hours were days during this part of my flight," he wrote.

In addition, Douglass' cover was nearly blown on multiple occasions. The trip required the fugitive slave to cross the Susquehanna River by ferry, and on board was an old acquaintance who began to ask probing questions about his journey before Douglass could break away. Then, boarding a northbound train across the river, Douglass looked through the window of another train stopped on the track and spotted a white ship captain for whom he had recently worked.

The captain's gaze never fixed on the slave, but the eyes of a German blacksmith whom Douglass knew did fall upon him. The blacksmith looked at Douglass intently but never called him out to the railroad officials. "I really believe he knew me," Douglass wrote, "but had not heart to betray me."

Everett Collection

In spite of the obstacles, Douglass arrived safely in New York less than 24 hours after leaving Baltimore. Although on free soil, Douglass was not legally a free man. Packs of slave catchers roamed the streets of New York searching for fugitives. Anti-slavery activist David Ruggles sheltered Douglass until his intended wife, a free black housekeeper named Anna Murray, arrived from Baltimore.

The afternoon following their nuptials, Douglass and his new bride set off to safer refuge in New Bedford, Massachusetts. There, he began his life as an abolitionist crusader. To better conceal his identity from slave catchers, the escaped slave changed his last name from Bailey to Douglass. His supporters eventually raised enough money for Douglass to purchase his liberty and become a free man in the eyes of the law.

When Douglass published his autobiography in 1845, he divulged few details about his escape in order to protect those who abetted him and to keep authorities ignorant of the method he employed to slip the bonds of slavery. It was not until 1881 that he finally detailed his escape.

Douglass always looked back on February 14, 1838, as the day when his "free life began," and for the rest of his life he celebrated the date in place of his unknown birthday.

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Never had Frederick Douglass been so nervous. The butterflies in his stomach fluttered with every bounce of the carriage over Baltimore's cobblestone streets as he approached the Baltimore and Ohio railroad station. The slave, then known by his birth name of Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was embarking on a perilous journey with New York-and freedom-his intended destinations.

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He comes alive: Denzel Whitaker plays Douglass!

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He comes alive: Denzel Whitaker plays Douglass!

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Denzel Whitaker on ‘Frederick Douglas: In Five Speeches’

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More: Douglass comes alive - Portrayed by actors

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More: Douglass comes alive - Portrayed by actors

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Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches | HBO

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His great great grandchildren!! Reading his speech out loud: What to the slave is the 4th of July?

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His great great grandchildren!! Reading his speech out loud: What to the slave is the 4th of July?

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In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide protests for racial justice and systemic reforms in the wake of George Floyd's death. That June, we asked five young descendants of Frederick Douglass to read and respond to excerpts of his famous speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?". It's a powerful, historical text that reminds us of the ongoing work of liberation.

A text version of the full speech is available here.
This video was inspired by Jennifer Crandall's documentary project "Whitman, Alabama." Visit whitmanalabama.com.

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VIDEO: Frederick Douglass' descendants deliver his 'Fourth of July' speech

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Five descendants of Frederick Douglass read and respond to excerpts of his famous speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?".

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What to the slave is the 4th of July: His speech in written form

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What to the slave is the 4th of July: His speech in written form

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Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" (article) | Khan Academy

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If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

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Newsela | Time Machine (1895): The death of Frederick Douglass

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

As we've just said, the apology for slavery from the House of Representatives is just the latest public act in the century-long drama of slavery in the U.S. Fiction has shaped much of how America has viewed the lives of enslaved Americans. From "Gone to the Wind," to "Roots," to "Amistad," the public imagination has evolved from seeing slaves as happy servants to victims of history to defiant heroes who demanded that the country live up to its core beliefs.

But "Uncle Tom," is the most enduring fictional slave. He's the title character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the novel written by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. The bestseller was meant to rally the moral sentiments of whites against the horrors of slavery, and it succeeded. But the character of "Uncle Tom" has become synonymous with servility and self-hatred.

Today, we reexamine the character of "Uncle Tom," as part of NPR's In Character series, a look at the fictional characters who have defined American life. With us to help unravel the story of "Uncle Tom" is Patricia Turner, folklorist and professor of African-American studies at the University of California, at Davis. Welcome.

Prof. PATRICIA TURNER (African-American Studies, University of California, Davis; Folklorist): I'm glad to be here.

MARTIN: Professor Turner, it's my understanding that "Uncle Tom" was based on a real slave in Maryland named Josiah Henson. Can you tell us a little bit more about him, and how did Harriet Beecher Stowe know about him?

Prof. TURNER: Harriet Beecher Stowe was very offended by the passage of the fugitive slave bill in 1850 that required northerners who were protecting blacks from - on the Underground Railroad. It required them to return them to the South and to slavery, and she decided to write a book to combat that influence.

To do her research, she looked into slave narratives, which were accounts of very real slaves who had escaped along the Underground Railroad into freedom, one of whom was Josiah Henson. She used a variety of these texts to put together the characters in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

MARTIN: As I mentioned, the book became a bestseller. How big of a bestseller was it back in the day?

Prof. TURNER: It outsold the Bible when it was published. They had to keep the printing presses open 24 hours a day. It's commonly called "the first bestseller," because there had been nothing like this in popular literature prior to "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

MARTIN: You wrote a book about black images and their influence on culture. How much of an influence is "Uncle Tom" on today's culture? Can you give us a sense of just how much - I mean, let's set aside the whole stereotype, pejorative aspect of it, but just as a story. How important is it in the culture?

Prof. TURNER: If you look at the history of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," it's a widely successful book in the 1850s. By the late 1850s, producers of dramatic stage shows, minstrel shows, had embraced it and were starting to stage "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in theaters throughout the United States, throughout England, really throughout the world.

By the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Alva Edison films "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to experiment with film. It's one of the very first things that we have on film, and throughout the rest of the 20th century, we've got classic comic books, we've got cartoons, we've got stage shows.

When Showtime emerges as a cable channel, one of the first things it does is "Uncle Tom's Cabin." So it's had an enormous impact for the past, you know, 120 years.

MARTIN: Do you remember when you first read "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?

Prof. TURNER: I actually read it in about fifth grade, which is young. I read it so young, that I - I think I'm one of the few African-Americans who read the novel before being really familiar with the slur. So I don't remember ever hearing my parents referring to anyone as an "Uncle Tom" before I had actually read the novel.

MARTIN: So does that make you crazy when you - having read the novel at such a young age, did it make you crazy when you heard people refer to people that way? And did you want to go, no, no, but...

Prof. TURNER: Absolutely, and at that tender age, all of the sentimentality that Stowe incorporates into the novel really struck me. I mean, I wept when Uncle Tom died at the end, and I didn't see him as any kind of a sell-out, and so I've always found my self wanting to correct people who accuse someone of being an "Uncle Tom."

It was a really rough time for me during the Clarence Thomas hearings because it was very common in the black community to refer to Clarence Thomas as an "Uncle Tom." And my understanding of Justice Thomas, you know, he wasn't good enough to be the real Uncle Tom. I couldn't imagine him being someone who would have let himself be beat to death rather than reveal where these two black women were.

MARTIN: What is it that African-Americans hate about this story?

Prof. TURNER: Many African-Americans don't hate the real story that Stowe wrote. The Uncle Tom character that she gives us is extraordinarily Christian. The climax of the story really comes when Uncle Tom is asked to reveal where two slave women are hiding, who had been sexually abused by their master. And he refuses. Knowing that he is going to be beaten to death, he refused to say where they are. And African-Americans who have read the novel can appreciate what kind of heroism that took for a black man to sign away his life to save two black women.

Unfortunately, the stage depictions don't include that part of the story. They grossly distort Uncle Tom into an older man than he is in the novel, a man whose English is poor, a man who will do quite the opposite, who will sell out any black man if it will curry the favor of a white employer, a white master, a white mistress. It's that distorted character that is so objectionable to African-Americans.

MARTIN: How did that happen? It is quite remarkable that this is a book which was intended to, and in many ways succeeded in revealing to people who were not aware or chose not to pay attention to the horrors of slavery, I mean, the unimaginable brutality, the exploitation of women, the physical violence, all of that. It was meant to reveal this, and somehow or other this character, who is meant to be very brave and an example of, you know, Christian forbearance, turned into this - the sell-out. How did that happen?

Prof. TURNER: The producers of the early stage shows didn't think that they could attract an audience for the Uncle Tom as he was depicted by Stowe. They couldn't sell tickets to a theatrical production, the climax which would have been this man dying, rather than the revealing the whereabouts of these women.

They could sell tickets, as they had been successful by showing blacks in minstrel depictions, showing them liking to dance more than they liked to work, showing their insensitivity to each other, showing their willingness to tell the master or mistress what he or she wanted to hear. That sold tickets, and so those were the shows that they produced, staged and circulated throughout the world.

MARTIN: You're saying that this was a - that some of these sort of producers were modifying the story to fit commercial aims, but could part of that have just been racism? They just didn't want to accept the fact that African-Americans could be heroic figures. They didn't want to accept the brutality of slavery. I mean, there are slavery deniers, just like there are deniers of other, you know, genocides throughout history, right?

Prof. TURNER: Absolutely. I think they were interested in using their stage shows to revise the image of slavery that Stowe had, and other abolitionists had depicted in their literature. Stowe faced an enormous amount of criticism after the success of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" from the apologist for slaveries.

Even something like the film "Birth of A Nation," which was based on a novel entitled "The Clansman." The author of "The Clansman" said that he wrote that to counter the influence that the literary, the real "Uncle Tom's Cabin," had had. That it wasn't right for people to assume that slavery was this egregious institution and that slave owners were egregious individuals. He wanted to revisit and revise that to show how inferior blacks were and how superior white Southern planters were.

MARTIN: So that they would deserve their maltreatment.

Prof. TURNER: Exactly.

MARTIN: What about the real literary Uncle Tom? Is there any possibility of Uncle Tom's being redeemed to his original purpose? Has that ever happened? Do literary figures ever get restored to their original meaning, even if they have become something else in popular culture?

Prof. TURNER: I don't think the real Uncle Tom will ever be able to escape the shackles of the distorted Uncle Tom. I don't think that Stowe's character will ever be able to reclaim that. I think that if - if people interested in 19th century American literature take the time to read the novel, it gives them a grounding in what the abolitionists were trying to accomplish with the fight to abolish slavery.

MARTIN: Patricia Turner is a folklorist and author of "Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies," "Black Images and Their Influence on Culture," among other books. She joined us from UC Davis, where she is a professor of African-American and African studies. Thank you so much for speaking with us.

Prof. TURNER: It was nice to be with you.

Copyright © 2008 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Why African-Americans Loathe 'Uncle Tom'

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Folklorist Patricia Turner discusses "Uncle Tom" - the lead character in the anti-slavery novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe - as part of NPR's In Character series. The series examines the fictional characters who have defined American life.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe - The Remarkable Story of How One Woman Helped End Slavery in the U.S.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe Center!! GREAT SOURCE

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Harriet Beecher Stowe Center!! GREAT SOURCE

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Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, CT to the Rev. Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) and Roxanna Foote Beecher (1775-1816), the sixth of 11 children.

The Beechers expected their children to shape the world around them:

All seven sons became ministers, then the most effective way to influence society

Oldest daughter Catharine pioneered education for women

Youngest daughter Isabella was a founder of the National Women's Suffrage Association

Harriet believed her purpose in life was to write. Her most famous work exposed the truth about the greatest social injustice of her day, human slavery

Family Life

When Harriet was five years old, her mother died and her oldest sister
Catharine assumed much of the responsibility for raising her younger
siblings. Harriet showed early literary promise: At seven, she won a
school essay contest, earning praise from her father. Harriet's later
pursuit of painting and drawing honored her mother's talents.

Her father's second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher (1800-1835), was a
beautiful woman slightly overwhelmed by the eight boisterous children
she inherited. Her own children, Isabella, Thomas and James, added to
the noisy household.

In Litchfield, and on frequent visits to her grandmother in Guilford, CT, Harriet and her sisters and brothers played, read, hiked, and joined their father in games and exercises. Many of these childhood events were incorporated in her last novel Poganuc People (1878).

Daguerreotype, Beecher Family Portrait, Matthew Brady Studios, 1859

Education

As a young girl, Harriet took part in lively debates at the family table. By discussing current events and social issues, Harriet learned how to argue persuasively.

She began her formal education at Sarah Pierce's academy, one of the earliest institutions to encourage girls to study academic subjects in addition to the traditional ornamental arts.

In 1824, Harriet became first a student and then a teacher at Hartford Female Seminary, founded by sister Catharine. There, she furthered her writing talents, spending many hours composing essays.

In 1832, 21-year-old Harriet Beecher moved with her family to Cincinnati, OH when her father

Lyman was appointed President of Lane Theological Seminary. There she met and married Calvin Stowe, a theology professor she described as "rich in Greek & Hebrew, Latin & Arabic, & alas! rich in nothing else..."

Six of Stowe's seven children were born in Cincinnati. In the summer of 1849, Stowe experienced for the first time the sorrow of many 19th century parents when her 18-month-old son, Samuel Charles Stowe, died of cholera. Stowe later credited that crushing pain as one of the inspirations for Uncle Tom's Cabin because it helped her understand the pain enslaved mothers felt when their children were sold away from them.

In 1850 Calvin Stowe joined the faculty of his alma mater, Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, ME. The Stowe family moved and lived in Brunswick until 1853.

After the Civil War, the Stowes purchased a house and property in Mandarin, FL on the St. John's River and began to travel south each winter. The relatively mild winters of northern Florida were a welcome respite from Hartford's cold and the high costs of winter fuel.

The Beechers and the Stowes knew that racial equality required more than legislation; it also required education. Stowe's brother Charles Beecher (1815-1900) opened a Florida school to teach emancipated people and he had urged Calvin and Harriet Stowe to join him.

Newly expanded railroads made shipping citrus fruits north a potentially lucrative business. Stowe purchased an orange grove which she hoped her son Frederick would manage.

Harriet Beecher Stowe loved Florida, comparing its soft climate to Italy, and she published Palmetto Leaves (1873), describing the beauties and advantages of the state. Stowe and her family wintered in Mandarin for more than 15 years before Calvin's health prohibited long travel.

Stowe was less than half way through her life when she published Uncle Tom's Cabin. She continued to write and work to improve society for most of her days. From Brunswick, the Stowes moved to Andover, MA, where Calvin was a professor of theology at Andover Theological Seminary (1853-1864).

After his retirement, the family moved to Hartford, CT. There, Harriet Beecher Stowe built her dream house, Oakholm, in Nook Farm, a neighborhood full of friends and relatives. The high maintenance cost and encroaching factories led her to sell her mansion in 1870. In 1873, Harriet, along with her husband and two adult daughters, settled into a brick Victorian Gothic cottage on Forest Street where she remained for 23 years.

While living in Hartford, Stowe undertook two speaking tours, one along the east coast, the second taking her to the western states. Promoting progressive ideals, she worked to reinvigorate the art museum at the Wadsworth Atheneum and establish the Hartford Art School, later part of the University of Hartford.

Stowe wrote some of her best known works, after Uncle Tom's Cabin, while living in Hartford: The American Woman's Home (1869), Lady Byron Vindicated (1871) and Poganuc People (1878).

Harriet Beecher Stowe's writing career spanned 51 years. She published 30 books and countless short stories, poems, articles, and hymns. She learned early that her writing contributed to the family income. With her writing, Stowe could publicly express her thoughts and beliefs in a time when women were discouraged from public speaking, and could not vote or hold office.

Stowe's publishing career began before her marriage with:

Primary Geography for Children (1833)
Her sympathetic approach to Catholicism, unusual for its time, won her the praise of the local bishop.

New England Sketches (1835)
A short story collection.

These were followed after marriage by:

The Mayflower: Sketches of Scenes and Characters among the Descendants of the Pilgrim (1843)

The Coral Ring (1843)
A short story which promoted temperance and an anti-slavery tract.

Numerous articles, essays and short stories published regularly in newspapers and journals

In 1851, The National Era publisher Gamaliel Bailey contracted with Stowe for a story that would "paint a word picture of slavery" and that would run in installments in the abolitionist newspaper. Stowe expected Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life Among the Lowly to be three or four chapters. She wrote more than 40.

Uncle Tom's Cabin brought Stowe financial security and allowed her to write full time. She published multiple works each year including three other antislavery works: The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) documenting the case histories on which she had based Uncle Tom's Cabin, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), a forceful anti-slavery novel, and The Minister's Wooing (1859) encouraging a more forgiving form of Christianity.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853)

Other Notable Works

The American Woman's Home
A practical guide to homemaking, co-authored with sister Catharine Beecher

Lady Byron Vindicated
Which strove to defend Stowe's friend lady Byron whileimmersing Stowe herself in scandal.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) published more than 30 books, but it was her best-selling anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin that catapulted her to international celebrity and secured her place in history. She believed her actions could make a positive difference. Her

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- [Voiceover] Hey, Becca. - [Voiceover] Hi, Kim. - [Voiceover] Alright, so we're here to talk about Uncle Tom's Cabin, and I think this is such an interesting book because when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said to her, "So you're the little lady that started this great war." He said Uncle Tom's Cabin actually started the Civil War. So how does a book start a war? - [Voiceover] I think that's a really good question, Kim, and these next two videos are gonna help us understand a little bit more why Lincoln said that. How does a little book start a war? So this book was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, here she is, Stowe, and Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut to this kind of great abolitionist family. So what's abolitionism, Kim? - [Voiceover] Well abolitionism was the belief in mostly in the early 19th century that slavery should be ended immediately. So there were varieties of beliefs about the institution of slavery in early America. Some people obviously were very pro-slavery believe that it was a natural institution sanctioned by the Bible. Some people, like Abraham Lincoln, at least early in his political career, just wanted slavery to stay where it was, and those were what we would call free-soilers, or anti-slavery advocates. They said, "Alright, we can't get rid of slavery "in the South. "It's too entrenched there as an institution, "but we can make sure that it does not spread "to any of the Western territories "that we might settle in the future." But abolitionists were these strongest opponents of slavery. They said that slavery should be ended today everywhere in the United States and the world, and that it is an immoral, un-Christian institution. So these Western territories were a really big part of the increasing tension over the institution of slavery in the 1850s. So in 1848, the United States won the Mexican-American War and they got a whole bunch of new territory that had once been Mexico, and these will become the states of Texas, and Oklahoma, and many of the sort of Midwestern states we have today, but this now threatened the balance of power between those slave-holding states in US Congress and those that were free states, so now everyone is wondering is slavery going to spread to the West? Should slavery spread to the West? - [Voiceover] And this kind of anxiety about the Western expansion of slavery was more tense and became more sectionally divided after the Compromise of 1850. So the Compromise of 1850 happened right here in 1850, (laughter) and the Compromise of 1850, I like to think of it kind of like a band-aid over this sectional tension, so I'll draw you guys a little band-aid. - [Voiceover] This is like a gaping wound, right, and the Compromise of 1850 is just like this tiny, little band-aid that's kind of holding this dam together to mix my metaphors. - [Voiceover] The Compromise of 1850 actually admitted California as a free state, which was a really big win for the North, obviously. - [Voiceover] Right, lots of gold. - [Voiceover] But it also had a really strong Fugitive Slave Act, so this was a really kind of critical part of the Compromise of 1850, and this was a big win for the South. So why was it a big win? - [Voiceover] Well the Fugitive Slave Act said that if a marshal was in your town requesting your help in rounding up an escaped slave, you had to help that marshal or face charges yourself. So this meant that any time that someone who was enslaved in the South made a run for the North, a run for Canada as many of the enslaved people did, anyone in the North might be drafted to help return that person to the South. - [Voiceover] And if they didn't, they were oftentimes fined, and this really made all Northerners participatory in slavery, even if they weren't slaveholders themselves or living on a plantation in the South, Northerners were participating in the way that slavery was held together by disallowing runaway slaves from continuing their lives in free territories. - [Voiceover] So you could imagine how this might really galvanize a Northern audience into action about slavery because before, you might think, "Well, I don't like slavery, "but what does it have to do with me, right? "I'm just a grain miller living in Pennsylvania. "None of my business. "I don't like it, but I can't do anything about it, "and it's not my fault." Now all of a sudden, if an escaped slave comes past your house and a marshal follows him or her, now you've got to be a person to round that person up, and so that means you have to participate in slavery directly, and so you might find yourself thinking, "You know what, I refuse to do that, "and that means that I really do hate slavery." - [Voiceover] And this was definitely the sentiment that Stowe and her family had on the Underground Railroad. So Stowe lived on a stop in the Underground Railroad, and that was this passageway for Southern slaves to get to the North, and Stowe and her husband actually helped a lot of runaway slaves. - [Voiceover] So the Underground Railroad wasn't like a literal railroad, right? I mean that would be pretty sweet if there were a railroad that went under the ground all the way up to Canada, but it was more like a sort of an informal network of people who might help escaped slaves, direct them to food and shelter, and just kind of send them along to the next waypost on their trip, either to the North or to Canada. - [Voiceover] And so when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed with the Compromise of 1850, the band-aid, this really upset Harriet Beecher Stowe and really was one of the main catalysts for her writing this book. She also witnessed a slave auction, and this Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about as just this terrible kind of scene of a family being just torn apart, and this was a really common practice within slavery, that the unit of the family was not respected as slaveholders wanted to sell their slaves to different plantations throughout the South, and the slave auction really became the basis for the plot of Uncle Tom's Cabin. - [Voiceover] Slave auctions were absolutely terrible. In fact, not long before the Civil War, the main slave auction site in Washington, D.C. was just around the corner from the White House, so imagine walking down the thoroughfare of this great democracy, seeing the president's house, the seat of government, and then turning a corner and seeing people being sold off the block. You know Abraham Lincoln saw a slave auction in New Orleans and he said it was one of the things that most influenced him to hate slavery, just witnessing these families being torn apart. And imagine either watching a mother being sold away from her infant children, or being that mother wondering what it would be like if you're ever going to see them again. - [Voiceover] I think that's a really important point just to show that this was something that was happening all around the United States and this was just abolitionist fervor was bubbling up, and then in 1852, when this book was published, it really set into motion this new wave of political rhetoric, and other novels, and just a lot of talk about these fundamental contradictions between Christianity and human bondage. - [Voiceover] And we'll get to that in the next video.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin - influence of the Fugitive Slave Act (video) | Khan Academy

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Voiceover] Hey, Becca. - [Voiceover] Hi, Kim. - [Voiceover] Alright, so we're here to talk about Uncle Tom's Cabin, and I think this is such an interesting book because when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said to her, "So you're the little lady that started this great war."

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Uncle Tom's Cabin - reception and significance (video) | Khan Academy

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How did Northerners, Southerners, and the international community receive Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel? Kim and Becca discuss the reception and far-reaching consequences of the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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The Beecher family was comprised of religious, educated, and determined individuals. Out of the thirteen Beecher children, six went on to do incredible things for religion, education, women's suffrage, anti-slavery work, and more. The Beecher family and their many contributions helped advance the United States in numerous ways.

​Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, co-founder and leader of the American Temperance Society, and the father of thirteen children. After graduating from Yale and beginning his career as a pastor, Beecher moved to Cincinnati to act as president for the Lane Seminary; a role which he had from 1832-1852. During his time at the Seminary, Beecher was a professor of theology, as well as pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati.

Beecher was also a strong anti-Catholicism advocate, writing numerous sermons and speeches on the threat of Catholic immigrants. In 1834, his sermon on this topic ignited a passionate Protestant mob to burn down a sisters' convent.

After acting as president of the Lane Theological Seminary for twenty years, Beecher returned back East to live with his son. Unfortunately, after his 80th birthday, Beecher suffered from paralysis, and his mental capacity rapidly declined. Lyman Beecher passed away in Brooklyn in 1863.

Catharine Beecher was an American educator who became well known for her opinions on female education, as well as for her continued support of public school systems in the United States. As a student in a private school in Litchfield, Catharine was exposed to the limited curriculum available to young women at the time, but managed to teach herself subjects such as math, Latin, and philosophy. After finishing the schooling available to her, Catharine became a teacher in 1821 at a school in New Haven, Connecticut.

In 1823, Catharine opened the Hartford Female Seminary, where she taught until 1832. Opening this school was the first step in Catharine's advocacy for female education, and it was followed by a number of other significant achievements, including the creation of new schools, women's movements, and educational associations.

In 1832, Catharine Beecher moved to Cincinnati with her father and opened the Western Female Institute, an all-female seminary. Due to Catharine's failing health at the time, the seminary was closed within two years, but her advocacy for female education continued to grow at the national level. In 1837, Beecher started The Ladies' Society for Promoting Education in the West, and in 1847 she co-founded the Board of National Popular Education with William Slade, an ex-governor of Vermont. In 1852, Beecher founded the American Women's Educational Association, whose goal was to recruit and train teachers for Western schools.

Catharine was also a well-known published author. During her time at the Hartford Female Seminary, and in an attempt to make up for the school's limited supplies, she wrote and published a number of textbooks on subjects including arithmetic, theology, and mental and moral philosophy. In December of 1829, Beecher published the "Circular Addressed to the Benevolent Ladies of the U. States", which acted as a response in protest to President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Bill. Twelve years later in 1841, Beecher published "A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School", a book which discussed the underestimated importance of women's roles in society.

Catharine Beecher was an educational advocate for over forty years, and many effects of her work can still be seen today. Beecher was a pioneer in the field of education, and did much to advance women's rights to a fair education in the early 1800's. After a long and successful life, Catharine Beecher died in 1878 from apoplexy. ​

​Edward Beecher graduated from Yale and then went on to study theology in Andover, Massachusetts. Following in the footsteps of his father he became a pastor and then went on to become the first president of Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois. During his fourteen-year presidency, he helped organize the first anti-slavery society in Illinois. Additionally, Edward Beecher focused heavily on writing; he was involved with two Christian magazines, The Congregationalist and the Christian Union.

​Harriet Beecher Stowe grew up a very educated woman. She was enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary where women were given similar educational opportunities as men. At the age of twenty-one, she moved to Cincinnati with her father. In Cincinnati, Beecher became involved with a number of literary groups, including the Semi-Colon Club. It was at a Club meeting that Beecher met her husband, Calvin Stowe. After marrying Stowe, the couple became increasingly involved in anti-slavery movements and occasionally assisted fugitive slaves along the Underground Railroad.

Beecher's involvement in anti-slavery movements, as well as the loss of one of her sons, inspired her to write Uncle Tom's Cabin. Harriet stated, "Having experienced losing someone so close to me, I can sympathize with all the poor, powerless slaves at the unjust auctions." Uncle Tom's Cabin sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is credited as being one of the greatest novels of our times. In addition to writing, Harriet Beecher was also one of the founding members of the Hartford Art School.

Henry Ward Beecher was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker. He is best known for his support of anti-slavery, his preaching that emphasized God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. After graduating from Amherst College, Beecher went on to study at Lane Theological Seminary, after which he was placed as a minister in Indianapolis.

Although he was not a soldier during the Civil War, Henry fought in other ways. He spent time raising money to purchase captive slaves, and also to send rifles to abolitionists fighting in Kansas and Nevada. Abraham Lincoln personally chose Henry Ward Beecher to tour Europe and give speeches about supporting the Union, and after the war Lincoln again chose Beecher to give a speech at Fort Sumter where the first shots of the war were fired.

In his later years, Beecher was involved in an adultery charge. It is believed that his trial was one of the most widely reported U.S. trials of the century. The trial last seven months, but ended in July after jurors were unable to reach a verdict. Due to the jurors' lack of verdict and Beecher's church affiliations, the Congregational church exonerated him.

Following in his brothers' footsteps, Charles Beecher graduated from Bowdoin College and then studied at Lane Theological Seminary. An avid musician and composer, Beecher taught music classes in Cincinnati for some time, and then moved to Indiana to serve as the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church.

However, in 1863 Charles was stripped of his preaching license for preaching against orthodox doctrine. After the Civil War, he moved to Florida in order to help some of his siblings minister newly-freed slaves. From 1871-1873, Charles was the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Florida, before moving to Pennsylvania, where he spent the rest of his days.

Isabella Beecher Hooker was an avid leader, lecturer, and activist in the American suffragist movement. She was heavily involved in drafting and presenting bills to Connecticut legislature. These bills focused on making husband and wife equal in terms of property rights, allowing women the right to be involved in the government, and giving women the right to vote.

Isabella traveled frequently, attending women's rights conventions. In her town of Hartford, she helped found the Connecticut Women Association and Society for the Study of Political Science. Beecher Hooker's determination, intelligence, and dedication furthered the battle for women's rights in various ways. After multiple visits spanning numerous years, Isabella convinced the Connecticut General Assembly to pass a bill that provided married women with property rights, as well as an additional bill that allowed women to vote.

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The Beecher family was comprised of religious, educated, and determined individuals. Out of the thirteen Beecher children, six went on to do incredible things for religion, education, women's suffrage, anti-slavery work, and more. The Beecher family and their many contributions helped advance the United States in numerous ways.

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The electrifying speeches of Sojourner Truth - Daina Ramey Berry

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Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative: Sojourner Truth

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#APeoplesJourney: African American Women and the Struggle for Equality

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Truth's most famous speech performed by Kerry Washington

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Truth's most famous speech performed by Kerry Washington

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Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” Performed by Kerry Washington

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Performed by Cicely Tyson at the White House

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Performed by Cicely Tyson at the White House

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Why is there more than one version of Sojourner Truth's famous 1851, "Ain't I a Woman" speech?

Most people are familiar with the 1863 popular version of Sojourner Truth's famous, "Ain't I a woman" speech but they have no idea that this popular version, while based off of Sojourner's original 1851 speech, is not Sojourner's speech and is vastly different from Sojourner's original 1851 speech. I must acknowledge Nell Irvin Painter, a professor at Princeton University, specializing in American history and notable for her works on southern history of the nineteenth century. Professor Painter was the scholar who first rang the bell on this historical mistake. This site would not be possible with out relying on her brilliant work.

The popular but inaccurate version was written and published in 1863, (12 years after Sojourner gave the "Ain't I a woman" speech), by a white abolitionist named Frances Dana Barker Gage. Curiously, Gage not only changed all of Sojourner's words but chose to represent Sojourner speaking in a stereotypical 'southern black slave accent', rather than in Sojourner's distinct upper New York State low-Dutch accent. Frances Gage's actions were well intended and served the suffrage and women's rights movement at the time; however, by today's standards of ethical journalism, her actions were a gross misrepresentation of Sojourner Truth's words and identity. By changing Truth's words and her dialect to that of a stereotypical southern slave, Frances Gage effectively erased Sojourner's Dutch heritage and her authentic voice. As well as unintentionally adding to the oversimplification of the American slave culture and furthering the eradication of our nations Northern slave history. Frances Gage admitted that her amended version had "given but a faint sketch" of Sojourner's original speech but she felt justified and believed her version stronger and more palatable to the American public then Sojourner's original version.

The most authentic version of Sojourner Truth's, "Ain't I a woman," speech was first published in 1851 by Truth's good friend Rev. Marius Robinson in the Anti-Slavery Bugle and was titled, " On Woman's Rights ". This website is dedicated to re-introducing this original transcription of the speech and Sojourner's authentic voice.

Why it's important to hear both speeches?

The question of why there is more than one version of Sojourner's speech is a fascinating story. It is also one that underlies our nation's multiple perspectives; connecting the issues of gender and race addressed in the speech to contemporary social issues and the politics of language.

For many reasons Gage's "faint sketch of the truth" version of the speech persists as Truth's "truth" while the more authentic version, by Marius Robinson, is largely unknown. I believe Marius Robinson's transcription of Sojourner Truth's speech should be heard along side of Frances Gage's version. If you are going to teach one version you must also present the other. They both have a place in American history.

The purpose of this website is:

(1) to provide a platform for the original 1851 Marius Robinson transcription of Sojourner Truth's "On Woman's Rights" speech".

(2) to rectify this historical oversight and to dispel the many misconceptions due to Francis Gage's inaccurate portrayal of Sojourner.

(3) to offer a more truthful picture of Sojourner's words, her accent, her heritage and her distinct voice.

How can we honor Sojourner Truth's heritage?

In an 1851 issue of the Kalamazoo Daily Telegraph, an article states that Truth prided herself on "fairly correct English, which is in all senses a foreign tongue to her. . .. People who report her often exaggerate her expressions, putting in to her mouth the most marked southern dialect, which Sojourner feels is rather taking an unfair advantage of her". (qtd. in Fitch and Mandziuk 1997: 129)

In 1851the technology to record sound had not yet been invented and speeches were transcribed by reporters who did their best to record accurately. Thus, we will never know exactly what Sojourner said on that day in 1851 or exactly what her dialect sounded like, but the videos on this site help us move in the direction of truth. Truth, unable to read or write, could not offer her own rhetoric in the written form. Her words (as we read them today) are not her words, but a representation of her words by people who transcribed them.

It is important to note Sojourner's specific Dutch dialect is officially lost and is not rediscovered. Because of this, I have chosen to represent the speech in many different contemporary Afro-Dutch dialects. These women and their readings do not claim to embody Sojourner in any way, in fact, none of them may be correct, but all of them are a nod to Sojourner's authentic voice and her heritage. The intent of these videos is to counter the hundreds of popular but inaccurate Gage versions of Sojourner's speech on the internet that portray Sojourner with a southern slave dialect. Gage's version effectively erases Sojourner's identity and heritage, adding to the oversimplification of American slave culture and furthers the eradication of our nations Northern slave history.

Why we should care?

I hope these speeches will become a reference point for people researching Sojourner Truth; and, that they will offer a more historically correct and dignified perspective that will pay long overdue respect to the author of these profound words.

How can we honor Sojourner Truth's legacy?

Sojourner's story is the ultimate American story and deserves a more in-depth exploration than this site offers. The more we examine her life with all its complexities, the more we understand our nation's history. Sojourner Truth exists today in many forms; as a person, as a symbol and as a myth. The preference for the Gage version of Truth's speech speaks to our nations need for symbolism and mythology in our historical narrative. However, to only see Sojourner through this lense is an oversimplification of her identity and minimizes her real life struggles and hard won human accomplishments. It is important to see her as a real person who, despite starting life enslaved, rose-up and fought tirelessly with incredible conviction, faith and courage for human rights and personal freedoms.

Throughout her adult life, she worked against a society that thought of her as less than human. Sojourner's struggle to establish her identity is reflected in the efforts by others to control her. And she is still struggling. Her struggle to define herself as a person, a woman, a woman of color, and a citizen did not end with her speech in Akron. At a time when we are fighting for the principles of liberty and justice around the world it is fitting that we honor the memory of one who fought her whole life for the realization of personal freedoms and human rights. Sojourner Truth's bold assertion of her own identity, "I am a woman's rights," serves as a timely reminder that the fight for equality has always been, and will continue to be, a constant challenge and an ongoing rhetorical and physical process within our democratic society.

Professor Nell Irvin Painter

Professor Nell Irvin Painter brilliantly explored the varied and numerous implications of this incident and how it can help to inform us about ourselves and our nations complexities. Knowledge of Painter's work mainly exists in academia. Noting the absence of anything online regarding Sojourner's original 1851 speech, I was inspired by Professor Painter's work to create a user friendly site for children and adults to quickly access and investigate this historical incident as well as introduce concepts of the deeper implications that Painter uncovered. This site is built upon Professor Nell Irvin Painter's work which I have cited on the reference page. I hope this site inspires you to investigate further into her brilliant work as I can not do it justice.

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Most people are familiar with the 1863 popular version of Sojourner Truth's famous, "Ain't I a woman" speech but they have no idea that this popular version, while based off of Sojourner's original 1851 speech, is not Sojourner's speech and is vastly different from Sojourner's original 1851 speech.

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Sojourner Truth - Quotes, Speech & Facts

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Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth is best known for her speech on racial inequalities, “Ain’t I a Woman?” delivered at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851.

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"I sell the shadow to support the substance." -- Sojourner Truth. Carte de Visite, circa 1864, in the collections of the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/97513239/)

Born into slavery in 1797, Isabella Baumfree, who later changed her name to Sojourner Truth, would become one of the most powerful advocates for human rights in the nineteenth century. Her early childhood was spent on a New York estate owned by a Dutch American named Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh. Like other slaves, she experienced the miseries of being sold and was cruelly beaten and mistreated. Around 1815 she fell in love with a fellow slave named Robert, but they were forced apart by Robert's master. Isabella was instead forced to marry a slave named Thomas, with whom she had five children.

In 1827, after her master failed to honor his promise to free her or to uphold the New York Anti-Slavery Law of 1827, Isabella ran away, or, as she later informed her master, "I did not run away, I walked away by daylight...." After experiencing a religious conversion, Isabella became an itinerant preacher and in 1843 changed her name to Sojourner Truth. During this period she became involved in the growing antislavery movement, and by the 1850s she was involved in the woman's rights movement as well. At the 1851 Women's Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth delivered what is now recognized as one of the most famous abolitionist and women's rights speeches in American history, "Ain't I a Woman?" She continued to speak out for the rights of African Americans and women during and after the Civil War. Sojourner Truth died in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1883.

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Ain't I A Woman?
Delivered 1851
Women's Rights Convention, Old Stone Church (since demolished), Akron, Ohio

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.[1]

But Wait!
There is some controversy regarding Sojourner Truth's famous 'Ain't I a Woman?' Speech listed above. There are different versions of the speech. The popular 'Ain't I a Woman' Speech was first published by Frances Gage in 1863, 12 years after the speech itself. Another version was published a month after the speech was given in the Anti-Slavery Bugle by Rev. Marius Robinson. In Robinson's Version the phrase 'Ain't I a Woman' is not present.

Compare the speeches and decide yourself at the Library of Congress or at The Sojourner Truth Project. [2]

[1] This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.
[2] This article first appeared on the Women's Rights National Historical Park website.

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Sojourner Truth: Ain't I A Woman? (U.S. National Park Service)

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Born into slavery in 1797, Isabella Baumfree, who later changed her name to Sojourner Truth, would become one of the most powerful advocates for human rights in the nineteenth century. Her early childhood was spent on a New York estate owned by a Dutch American named Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh.

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Sojourner Truth, "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance". Library of Congress.

. After the Association disbanded in 1846, Truth remained in western Massachusetts and began dictating her memoirs to her friend Olive Gilbert. In 1850 her book, Frederick Douglass The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave was published by Garrison; she bought a house in Northampton, and spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. She paid off her home just three years later, in part by selling photographs of herself captioned, "I sell the shadow to support the substance."

Notes:
[1] The only surviving building of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry is Ross Farm at 123 Meadow Street, Northampton, Massachusetts. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 8, 2008.

[2] Sojourner Truth spoke extemporaneously at the meeting in Akron; she did not have a written speech to read from. Therefore, her words survive as written by others. There are many variations of what Truth said; the first record of her full speech, published within a month of her giving it, does not include the phrase, "Ain't I a Woman." Twelve years later, in 1863, another version was published by Frances Dana Barker Gage, a suffragist and abolitionist who worked with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others. In her version, Truth's words have the stereotypical characteristics of Southern slaves (even though Truth grew up in New York speaking Dutch), included the phrase "Ain't I a Woman," and included embellishments about her life. It is Gage's version of Truth's speech, which was republished in 1875, 1881, and 1889, that has become the version most people are familiar with.

[3] The White House was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1960.

[4] The United States Capitol building was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 19, 1960.

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Sojourner Truth (U.S. National Park Service)

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After the Association disbanded in 1846, Truth remained in western Massachusetts and began dictating her memoirs to her friend Olive Gilbert. In 1850 her book, Frederick Douglass The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave was published by Garrison; she bought a house in Northampton, and spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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Perfect place to start - see her come alive

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Perfect place to start - see her come alive

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Southern Abolitionist Angelina Grimké | The Abolitionists | PBS LearningMedia

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In this video adapted from the American Experience: "The Abolitionists," featuring historical reenactments, learn about the daughter of South Carolina slaveholders who devoted her life to ending slavery and winning equal rights for women. Angelina Grimké and her sister Sarah drew upon their strong religious beliefs from an early age to oppose slavery in their native state and throughout the United States.

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Angelina Grimke Weld." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Angelina Grimke Weld." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/angelina-grimke-weld.

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Although raised on a slave-owning plantation, Angelina Grimké Weld became an ardent abolitionist. Read more at womenshistory.org.

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ThoughtCo has a great article here on her

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ThoughtCo has a great article here on her

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Angelina Grimké Facts

Known for: Sarah and Angelina Grimké were two sisters, originally from a South Carolina slaveholding family, who spoke out on abolition of slavery. The sisters became advocates of women's rights when their anti-slavery efforts were criticized because their outspokenness violated traditional gender roles. Angelina Grimké was the younger of the two sisters. See also Sarah Grimké
Occupation: reformer
Dates: February 20, 1805 - October 26, 1879
Also known as: Angelina Emily Grimké, Angelina Grimké Weld

Angelina Grimké Biography

Angelina Emily Grimké was born on February 20, 1805. She was the fourteenth and last child of Mary Smith Grimké and John Faucheraud Grimké. Three of their children died in infancy. Mary Smith Grimké's wealthy South Carolina family included two governors during colonial times. John Grimké, descended from German and Huguenot settlers, had been a Continental Army captain during the Revolutionary War. He served in the state House of Representatives and as the state's chief justice.

The family spent their summers in Charleston and the rest of the year on the Beuafort plantation. The Grimké plantation produced rice until the invention of the cotton gin made that crop more profitable. The family owned many slaves, including field hands and household servants.

Sarah, the sixth of the 14 children, had been taught the usual subjects for girls, including reading and embroidery.

she also studied with her brothers. When her older brother Thomas went to Harvard, Sarah realized that she could not hope for an equal educational opportunity.

The year after Thomas left, Angelina was born. Sarah convinced her parents to let her be Angelina's godmother. Sarah became like a second mother to her little sister.

Angelina, like her sister, was offended by slavery from an early age. At age 5, she begged a sea captain to help a slave escape, after she saw the slave shipped. Angelina was able to attend a seminary for girls. There, she fainted one day when she saw a slave boy her own age opening a window, and noticed he could barely walk and was covered on his legs and back with bleeding wounds from a whipping. Sarah tried to console and comfort her, but Angelina was marked by this. At age 13, Angelina refused confirmation in the Anglican church of her family because of the church's support for slavery.

Angelina Without Sarah

Also when Angelina was 13, her sister Sarah accompanied their father to Philadelphia and then to New Jersey for his health. Their father died there, and Sarah returned to Philadelphia where she joined the Quakers, drawn by their anti-slavery stance and by their inclusion of women in leadership roles. Sarah briefly returned home to South Carolina, and then moved to Philadelphia.

It fell on Angelina, in Sarah's absence and after her father's death, to manage the plantation and care for her mother. Angelina tried to persuade her mother to set at least the household slaves free, but her mother would not.

In 1827, Sarah returned for a longer visit. She was dressed in Quaker simple clothing. Angelina decided she would become a Quaker, remain in Charleston, and persuade her fellow Southerners to oppose slavery.

Philadelphia

Within two years, Angelina gave up hope of having an effect while remaining at home. She moved to join her sister in Philadelphia, and she and Sarah set out to educate themselves. Angelina was accepted at Catherine Beecher's school for girls, but their Quaker meeting refused to give permission for her to attend. The Quakers also discouraged Sarah from becoming a preacher.

Angelina became engaged, but her fiance died in an epidemic. Sarah also received an offer of marriage but refused it, thinking she might lose the freedom she valued. They received word about that time that their brother Thomas had died.

He had been a hero to the sisters. He was involved in working for emancipating slaves by sending volunteers back to Africa.

Getting Involved in Abolitionism

The sisters turned to the growing abolitionist movement. Angelina, first of the two, joined the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, associated with the American Anti-Slavery Society, founded in 1833.

On August 30, 1835, Angelina Grimké wrote a letter that would change her life. She wrote to William Lloyd Garrison, a leader in the American Anti-Slavery Society and editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Angelina mentioned in the letter her first-hand knowledge of slavery.

To Angelina's shock, Garrison printed her letter in his newspaper. The letter was reprinted widely and Angelina found herself famous and at the center of the anti-slavery world. The letter became part of a widely-read anti-slavery pamphlet. Sarah was involved in another anti-slavery project: the "Free Produce" movement to boycott products made with slave labor, a projet initiated by Sarah's Quaker inspiration, John Woolman.

The Quakers of Philadelphia did not approve of Angelina's anti-slavery involvement, nor Sarah's less radical involvement. At the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Quakers, Sarah was silenced by a male Quaker leader. So the sisters moved to Providence, Rhode Island, in 1836, where the Quakers were more supportive.

Anti-Slavery Writings

There, Angelina published a tract, "Appeal to the Christian Women of the South." She argued that women could and should end slavery through their influence.

Her sister Sarah wrote "An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States." In that essay, Sarah confronted Biblical arguments typically used by the clergy to justify slavery. Sarah followed that with another pamphlet, "An Address to Free Colored Americans." While these were published by two Southerners and addressed to Southerners, they were reprinted widely in New England. In South Carolina, the tracts were publicly burned.

Speaking Careers

Angelina and Sarah received many invitations to speak, first at Anti-Slavery Conventions, and then other venues in the North. Fellow abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld helped train the sisters to improve their speaking skills. The sisters toured, speaking in 67 cities in 23 weeks. At first they spoke to all-woman audiences, and then men began to attend the lectures as well.

A woman speaking to a mixed audience was considered scandalous. The criticism helped them to understand that social limitations on women were not much different than slavery, though the conditions in which women lived were different.

It was arranged for Sarah to speak to the Massachusetts legislature on slavery. Sarah became ill, and Angelina filled in for her. Angelina was thus the first woman to speak to a United States legislative body.

After returning to Providence, the sisters still traveled and spoke, but they also wrote, this time appealing to their northern audience. In 1837 Angelina wrote an "Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States," and Sarah wrote an "Address to the Free Colored People of the United States." They spoke at the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women.

Catherine Beecher publicly criticized the sisters for not keeping to their proper feminine sphere, i.e. the private, domestic sphere. Angelina responded with Letters to Catherine Beecher, arguing for full political rights for women including the right to hold public office.

The sisters often spoke in churches. The Congregational ministers' association in Massachusetts issued a letter denouncing the sisters' speaking to mixed audienced and denouncing their criticism of interpretations by men of the Bible. Garrison published the ministers' letter in 1838.

Angelina spoke once to a mixed audience in Philadelphia. This so outraged many in the city that a mob attacked the building where she spoke. The building ws burned the next day.

Angelina's Marriage

Angelina married fellow abolitionist Theodore Weld in 1838, the same young man who had helped prepare the sisters for their speaking tour. The marriage ceremony included friends and fellow activists both white and black. Six former slaves of the Grimké family attended. Weld was a Presbyterian, the ceremony was not a Quaker one, Garrison read the vows, and Theodore renounced all legal power that laws at the time gave him over Angelina's property. They left "obey" out of the vows. Because the wedding was not a Quaker wedding and her husband not a Quaker, Angelina was expelled from the Quaker meeting. Sarah was also expelled, for attending the wedding.

Angelina and Theodore moved to New Jersey to a farm; Sarah moved with them. Angelina's first child was born in 1839; two more and a miscarriage followed. The family focused their lives around raising the three Weld children and on demonstrating that they could manage a household without slaves. They took in boarders and opened a boarding school. Friends, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her husband, visited them at the farm. Angelina's health declined.

More Anti-Slavery and Women's Rights

In 1839, the sisters published American Slavery As It Is: Testimony From a Thousand Witnesses. The book was later used as a source by Harriet Beecher Stowe for her 1852 book, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The sisters kept up their correspondence with other anti-slavery and pro-women's rights activists. One of their letters was to the 1852 women's rights convention in Syracuse, New York. In 1854, the Angelina, Theodore, Sarah and the children moved to Perth Amboy, operating a school there until 1862. Emerson and Thoreau were among the visiting lecturers.

All three supported the Union in the Civil War, seeing it as a path to end slavery. Theodore Weld traveled and lectured occasionally. The sisters published "An Appeal to the Women of the Republic," calling for a pro-Union women's convention. When it was held, Angelina was among the speakers.

The sisters and Theodore moved to Boston and became active in the women's rights movement after the Civil War. All three served as officers of the Massachusetts Women's Suffrage Association. On March 7, 1870, as part of a protest involving 42 other women, Angelina and Sarah voted (illegally).

Grimké Nephews Discovered

In 1868, Angelina and Sarah discovered that their brother Henry had, after his wife died, established a relationship with a slave, and fathered several sons. The sons came to live with Angelina, Sarah and Theodore, and the sisters saw to it that they were educated.

Francis James Grimké graduated from Princeton Theological School and became a minister. Archibald Henry Grimké graduated from Howard Law School. He married a white woman; they named their daughter for her great-aunt Angelina Grimké Weld. Angelina Weld Grimké was raised by her father after her parents separated and her mother chose not to raise her. She became a teacher, poet and playwright recognized later as part of the Harlem Renaissance.

Death

Sarah died in Boston in 1873. Angelina suffered strokes shortly after Sarah's death, and was paralyzed. Angelina Grimké Weld died in Boston in 1879. Theodore Weld died in 1885.

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Angelina Grimké: Opposing Slavery Led Her to Women's Rights

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Known for: Sarah and Angelina Grimké were two sisters, originally from a South Carolina slaveholding family, who spoke out on abolition of slavery. The sisters became advocates of women's rights when their anti-slavery efforts were criticized because their outspokenness violated traditional gender roles. Angelina Grimké was the younger of the two sisters.

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Back to search results
Sarah and Angelina Grimke eloquently fought the injustices of slavery, racism and sexism during the mid-19th century. As daughters of a prominent South Carolina judge and plantation owner, the Grimke sisters witnessed the suffering of slaves.

Determined to speak out, they were eventually forced to move to the North, where they continued to appeal to northerners and southerners to work toward abolition. They also urged white northerners to end racial discrimination.

The Grimke sisters were pioneering women. Among the first female abolitionists, they were the first women to speak publicly against slavery, an important political topic. Faced with criticism from clergy and others that they were threatening "the female character," they continued their crusade.

In 1838, Angelina became the first woman to address a legislative body when she spoke to the Massachusetts State Legislature on women's rights and abolition. Active in the women's movement, they helped set the agenda later followed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and others, calling for equal educational opportunities and the vote.

One historian said of Sarah's writings: "[They were] a milestone on the road to the Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls" and "central to the feminist writings in the decades that followed." Sarah was one of the first to compare the restrictions on women and slaves, writing that "woman has no political existence . . . . She is only counted like the slaves of the south, to swell the number of lawmakers."

After the Civil War, they continued to champion the causes of equality and women's rights. Through their examples and their words, the Grimke sisters proved that women could affect the course of political events and have a far-reaching influence on society.

Year Honored: 1998

Birth: 1805 - 1879

Born In: South Carolina

Achievements: Humanities
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Weld, Angelina Grimké - National Women's Hall of Fame

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Sarah and Angelina Grimke eloquently fought the injustices of slavery, racism and sexism during the mid-19th century. As daughters of a prominent South Carolina judge and plantation owner, the Grimke sisters witnessed the suffering of slaves. Determined to speak out, they were eventually forced to move to the North, where they continued to appeal to...

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Archives of Women's Political Communication

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Angelina Grimké Weld was nineteenth-century abolitionist, suffragist and orator.

Born on February 20, 1805, to a family of wealthy slaveholders in Charleston, South Carolina, Weld witnessed the evils of slavery from an early age. Both she and her sister, Sarah Moore Grimké, were deliberately educated less than their brothers, although the boys shared what they had learned with their sisters.

Weld joined her sister in Philadelphia in 1829 and converted to Quakerism, both joining the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1835, Grimké was catapulted to fame after a letter she wrote to prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was printed in his newspaper without her consent. After that, she and her sister began to publish booklets calling for abolition and women's rights, which earned them a fierce backlash from Southern leaders. They toured the country as speakers for the American Anti-Slavery Society and, in 1838, Weld became the first woman to address the Massachusetts State Legislature when she brought a petition signed by 20,000 women calling for the abolition of slavery. That same year, after her speech at the Philadelphia anti-slavery convention, angry mobs burned down the building in which she'd spoken.

After her marriage to Thomas Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld retired from speaking and had three children. After moving to New Jersey in 1839, Weld, her husband and her sister started working in education and operated two boarding schools until 1862. Shortly after, the Grimké sisters took in their mixed-race nephews, Archibald and Francis, who were the sons of their brother, Henry, and his slave, Nancy Weston.

Although Weld never returned to speaking and touring due to her failing health, she remained a staunch supporter of abolition, writing in support of the cause into her old age. Weld died on October 26, 1879 at the age of 74.

Source:

Michals, Debra. "Angelina Grimke Weld." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/angelina-grimke-weld.

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Angelina Grimké Weld was nineteenth-century abolitionist, suffragist and orator. Born on February 20, 1805, to a family of wealthy slaveholders in Charleston, South Carolina, Weld witnessed the evils of slavery from an early age. Both she and her sister, Sarah Moore Grimké, were deliberately educated less than their brothers, although the boys shared what they...

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NATIONAL ABOLITION HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

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Angelina Grimké Weld (1805-1879), abolitionist writer and lecturer, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to Mary Smith and John Faucheraud Grimké, a prominent judge and slaveholder. Following...

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Her life and how she rejected her parents

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Her life and how she rejected her parents

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This is the story of Sarah Moore Grimké and Angelina Grimké Weld, two southern white women who became leading abolitionists and women's rights activists.

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Amazing story of his life told through a painting

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Amazing story of his life told through a painting

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American Experience | John Brown Gathers His Arsenal | Season 1

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John Brown put little stock in peaceful abolition. In 1855 he left New York for Kansas.

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The abolitionist’s bloody raid on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry 150 years ago set the stage for the Civil War

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PBS NewsHour
Clip: 11/15/2011 | 8m 5s

Author Tony Horwitz tells the story of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in the new book, "Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War." Jeffrey Brown and Horwitz discuss the life and legend of John Brown.

Aired: 11/15/11

Rating: NR

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PBS NewsHour | 'Midnight Rising' Explores Life, Legend of John Brown | Season 2011

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PBS NewsHour Clip: 11/15/2011 | 8m 5s Author Tony Horwitz tells the story of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in the new book, "Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War." Jeffrey Brown and Horwitz discuss the life and legend of John Brown.

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American Experience
Clip: Season 25 Episode 12 | 2m 21s |

In 1859 John Brown went on trial for the raid on Harpers Ferry. The raid itself had failed, but Brown successfully brought attention his cause.

Aired: 01/22/13

Rating: NR

The full episode is no longer available for online streaming. Why?

Please continue to enjoy extra(s) from this episode. The full episode is still available for purchase through the "Buy Now" links.

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American Experience | John Brown Puts His Accusers on Trial | Season 25 | Episode 12

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American Experience Clip: Season 25 Episode 12 | 2m 21s | In 1859 John Brown went on trial for the raid on Harpers Ferry. The raid itself had failed, but Brown successfully brought attention his cause. Aired: 01/22/13 Rating: NR The full episode is no longer available for online streaming.

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Performance of Brown's speech during his trial

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Performance of Brown's speech during his trial

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John Brown’s Last Speech Performed by David Strathairn

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Hero or Terrorist - More thoughts on this question

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Hero or Terrorist - More thoughts on this question

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JOHN BROWN: Crazed Terrorist or American Hero? | The Raid on Harpers Ferry

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Learn about his life in this article. (Bolded headings that you might find especially interesting include "What Brown did" and "Who was John Brown".

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Learn about his life in this article. (Bolded headings that you might find especially interesting include "What Brown did" and "Who was John Brown".

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Spring 2011, Vol. 43, No. 1

By Paul Finkelman

As we celebrate the beginning of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, it is worthwhile to remember, and contemplate, the most important figure in the struggle against slavery immediately before the war: John Brown.

When Brown was hanged in 1859 for his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, many saw him as the harbinger of the future. For Southerners, he was the embodiment of all their fears-a white man willing to die to end slavery-and the most potent symbol yet of aggressive Northern antislavery sentiment. For many Northerners, he was a prophet of righteousness, bringing down a terrible swift sword against the immorality of slavery and the haughtiness of the Southern master class.

In 2000, the United States marked the bicentennial of Brown's birth. At that time, domestic terrorism was a growing problem. Bombings, ambushes, and assassinations had been directed at women's clinics and physicians in a number of places; a bomb planted in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 summer Olympics had killed one person and wounded more than a hundred people; in 1995 a pair of right-wing extremists had planted a bomb at the Alfred A. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 others.

During that bicentennial year, a number of historians and others talked about whether John Brown was America's first terrorist. Was he a model for the cowards who planted bombs at clinics, in public parks, or in buildings? Significantly, at least one modern terrorist, Paul Hill, compared himself to John Brown after he was arrested for murdering two people who worked at a women's clinic in Florida.

A year after Brown's bicentennial, the United States was faced with multiple terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The meaning of terrorism had changed. It was no longer the result of random attacks by an individual or two. Now it was tied to a worldwide conspiracy, coordinated overseas and meticulously planned. The American response was a "war on terror." In an age of rising incidents of terrorism, numerous scholars, and more important, much of the general public, have again asked if John Brown was America's "first terrorist."
Some Definitions of Terrorism
There are no complete or certain definitions of terrorism. Terrorists seek to "terrify" people and strike fear in the minds of those at whom their terror is directed. This, however, is not a complete definition. After all, few would consider soldiers in warfare terrorists, yet surely they try to make their enemy "fearful" of them. Starting with World War II, large-scale bombing has been a fact of modern warfare, but bombing of military targets is surely not an act of terrorism, even though the civilian population may be harmed or terrorized.

This aspect of warfare is hardly new. Siege warfare of the ancient and medieval world surely terrorized those inside castles or towns. Similarly, the long sieges of the Civil War, as well as decisions by both sides to strike at civilian targets that aided the war effort, surely terrorized populations. The trench warfare and artillery duels of World War I terrorized millions of civilians, but this was not essentially terrorism.

So, what beyond scaring or frightening people constitutes terrorism? How do we define the "terrorist?"

For terrorists, the "terror" itself, the act of violence, is the goal rather than simply the means to an end. Terrorists may hope for political change, but what they often want is to simply strike back at and harm those they oppose. The act of terror becomes the goal, with no expectation that anything else will follow.

This makes terrorism different from other kinds of illegal activity or violence. A kidnapper wants a ransom; a hostage taker usually has "demands" that should be met; a robber simply wants money or goods and might be willing to kill for them. But the terrorist often has no demands and no goals other than to terrorize. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols made no demands; they wanted nothing other than to kill and destroy. Those who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon only wanted to kill, destroy, and terrorize. They made no demands, asked for nothing, and by their own design would not have even been alive to negotiate for whatever they might have wanted.

Another hallmark of terrorists is indiscriminate killing; it helps spread terror. Terrorists generally do not care who they kill-adults, children, old people, women, men-although sometimes assassinations are an exception to this.

Terrorists are not concerned about collateral damage. Planting a bomb or shooting indiscriminately is a key indicator of terrorism. It does not even matter if some of those who die are sympathetic to the terrorists or of their own ethnic group. A number of American Muslims died in the attack on the World Trade Center because that is where they worked, but these collateral deaths were of no consequence to those who planned the attack. For terrorists, indiscriminate killing helps spread terror. Similarly, for terrorist killers there is no reason to spare lives or minimize death-every life is a legitimate target.

Terrorists usually attack nonmilitary targets and those who are unable to defend themselves. Often their victims are what might be called noncombatants in whatever ongoing struggle there is. One common aspect of terrorists is that they avoid direct contact and confrontation with those who are armed, especially the military. Tied to this, most terrorists plan their actions to have the greatest impact and to kill the most people.

Terrorists also act in secret and try to avoid anyone knowing who they are. They often wear masks and in other ways try to hide their identity. The classic American terrorist is the sheeted Klansman, with his face covered, killing, beating, mutilating, burning, and raping, to terrorize those who supported racial equality and black suffrage. Because they are violent and seek to kill, maim, or destroy property, terrorists naturally must be secretive. After their acts, however, they are likely to openly (but anonymously) brag about their crimes.

Terrorism also has a political context. This is particularly important to see when we try to make the distinction between terrorism and revolution. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson set out a series of principles that justified violent overthrow of the government. One was a "long train of abuses."

Even more important for Jefferson and his colleagues was the lack of access to the political process to change things peacefully. From the American perspective, in 1776, there was not a political solution to the crisis because Americans had no voice in the British government. In addition, the American Revolution was a response to attacks initiated by the British.

Thus, where there are no political avenues for change, violence-such as the American troops firing at the British-becomes revolution. But where the political processes are open, violence becomes terrorism. This was even true for the 9-11 terrorists. Nothing prevented them from politically organizing, demonstrating, and educating the American public about the changes they wanted. Their choice was to short-circuit the political options in favor of violence and terrorism.

With these general understandings, let us turn to John Brown, first to understand what he did, and second to see if it fits in the context of terrorism.
What Brown Did
Brown is connected to terrorism for two events in his life: the Pottawatomie raid in the Kansas Territory in 1856 and his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859. Both involved violence and killing. Both have led some people to claim Brown was a terrorist.

On the night of May 24, 1856, Brown led a raiding party of four of his sons, his son-in-law, and two other men to Pottawatomie Creek. For the most part, this raid was unplanned and almost spontaneous. Brown acted in retaliation for a raid on the free state settlement at Lawrence, the killings of free state settlers in Kansas, and persistent threats by the proslavery settlers along Pottawatomie Creek. Brown and his men entered three cabins, interrogated a number of men, and eventually killed five of them, all with swords and knives. Some were killed quickly, while others, who resisted, were cut in many places. Brown and his men then departed.

Significantly, although Brown and his men killed five proslavery settlers, they did not kill all the Southern settlers they encountered. They spared the life of the wife and teenage son of one of the men they killed, even though these people could have identified the raiders. At another cabin, they interrogated two men and let them go, convinced they had not threatened free state settlers or been involved in violent actions against the free state settlers. At a third house they also spared the wife of one man, even while they killed him.

Three and a half years later, on the evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown and 18 "soldiers" seized the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's plans were fantastic-some would say insane. He would use the arms in the arsenal-as well as old-fashioned pikes he had had specially manufactured-to begin a guerrilla war against slavery. The core of his army would be the mostly white band of raiders who seized the arsenal. But soon, he hoped-he believed-he just knew-that hundreds or even thousands of slaves would join him in the fight against the "peculiar institution." He predicted that once word of his raid got out, slaves from throughout the region would appear at his side, as bees "swarm to the hive."

During his raid, Brown and his men had captured a number of slave owners in the area, including Lewis Washington, the great-grand-nephew of President George Washington. Brown did not kill any of these captured men, and he went out of his way to protect them and make sure they were not harmed.

While in Harpers Ferry, the raiders killed a railroad baggage handler, who ironically was a free black, when he refused their orders to halt. In a firefight they killed a few townsmen, including the mayor. At one point Brown stopped a passenger train, held it for a while, and then released it. The train continued on to Washington, D.C., where the crew dutifully reported to officials that Brown had seized Harpers Ferry. The next day, October 18, U.S. marines, under the command of Army Brevet Col. Robert E. Lee, captured Brown in the engine house on the armory grounds. By this time, most of the raiders were either dead or wounded.

Ten days later, Brown's trial began in Charlestown, Virginia (now West Virginia). He was charged with treason, murder, and conspiring with slaves to rebel. He was convicted on November 2 and sentenced to death. Before his sentencing, Brown told the court that his actions against slavery were consistent with God's commandments.

"I believe," he said in a speech that electrified many Northerners who later read it, "that to have interfered as I have done in behalf of His despised poor, is no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say 'let it be done.'"

In the month between his sentencing on November 2 and his execution on December 2, Brown wrote brilliant letters that helped to create, in the minds of many Northerners, his image as a Christ-like martyr who gave his life so that the slaves might be free. Indeed, Frederick Douglass would later say that he lived for the slave, but John Brown was willing to "die for the slave." Brown welcomed his end, declaring: "I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose."

For abolitionists and antislavery activists, black and white, Brown emerged as a hero, a martyr, and ultimately, a harbinger of the end of slavery. Most Northern whites, especially those not committed to abolition, were aghast at the violence of his action. Yet there was also widespread support for him in the region. Northerners variously came to see Brown as an antislavery saint, a brave but foolish extremist, a lunatic, and a threat to the Union.

The future Republican governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew, summed up the feelings of many Northerners when he refused to endorse Brown's tactics or the wisdom of the raid, but declared that "John Brown himself is right." But most Republican politicians worried that they would be tarred by his extremism and lose the next election. Democrats and what remained of the Whigs (who would become Constitutional Unionists), by contrast, feared that Brown's raid would polarize the nation, put the Republicans in power, and chase the South out of the Union.

For white Southerners, Brown was the worst possible nightmare: a fearless, committed abolitionist, armed, accompanied by blacks, and willing to die to end slavery. Indeed, in the minds of Southerners, Brown was the greatest threat to slavery the South had ever witnessed. Most Southerners had at least a vague fear of slave rebellions. But Southerners had convinced themselves that most slaves were content with their status and that, in any event, blacks were incapable of anything worse than sporadic violence. Brown, however, raised the ominous possibility of armed black slaves, led by whites, who together would destroy Southern white society.

Who was this lunatic, this mad man, this abolitionist hero, this saint, this martyr to freedom? Was he America's first terrorist?
Who Was John Brown?
In many ways Brown was a typical 19th-century American. He was born in Torrington, Connecticut, into a family of deeply religious Congregationalists who were Puritan in their heritage and overtly antislavery in their views. When he was five, the family moved to what was then the "West." They migrated to Hudson, Ohio, which was in the Western Reserve between Akron and Cleveland. The region was full of New Englanders, especially from Connecticut.

Brown grew up in an atmosphere in which everyone despised slavery. Both Brown and his father were early supporters of the new abolitionism that emerged in the 1830s. Brown's father, a prominent businessman with a large tannery, was involved in trying to make Western Reserve College into an antislavery stronghold. When that failed, the elder Brown supported the creation of Oberlin College as a racially integrated coeducational institution of higher learning with an antislavery bent.

Despite his father's association with colleges, Brown had little formal education. Early in his life he considered becoming a clergyman, and he returned to Connecticut to attend a preparatory school as a prelude to going to a seminary. But that possibility ended when he flunked out of the school. By age 20 he was married and a foreman in his father's tannery. His bride, Dianthe Lusk, gave birth to seven children before she died in 1832. Five of those children lived until adulthood. In 1833 he married Mary Ann Day, an uneducated 16-year-old, half his age. She would have 13 children, but only six would survive to adulthood.

In 1825 Brown moved to western Pennsylvania, where he was a successful tanner and a postmaster (under President John Quincy Adams). Despite his own poor education and struggles with schooling, he helped start a local school. A proper burgher of the community, he became a church leader and joined the Masons. In 1834 his business went bad, and he moved back to Ohio, starting a tannery in Kent. There he speculated in land and won a contract to build a canal from Kent (then called Franklin Mills) to Akron. He formed the Franklin Land Company with 700 acres for building houses.

As we recall Brown's future activities, it is fascinating to also contemplate the image of John Brown as a suburban developer. But the panic of 1837 changed everything. By the end of the year, Brown was bankrupt. For the next five years he dodged creditors before finally declaring bankruptcy in 1842 and losing almost everything he owned.

Up to this point in his life, Brown had done nothing to indicate he was particularly political or unusually antislavery. He was, in fact, a fairly conventional Jacksonian, trying to increase his status and wealth and always looking for the next opportunity: tanner, canal builder, suburban developer, and in the wake of the panic, bankrupt.

By 1844, Brown was back in the business world, raising sheep with a wealthy business partner in Akron. But his inept business skills did him in again, especially an attempt to sell 200,000 pounds of wool in England, which was an exporter of wool. Oddly, while his creditors sued him, no one accused him of dishonesty or lacking integrity. Even people whose finances were almost ruined by his behavior liked him.

In 1854-at age 54-Brown was a failed businessman, an impoverished farmer with a few head of cattle in Ohio and some land in Upstate New York-at North Elba-that he had not yet paid for. That year five of his sons and his son-in-law moved to Kansas. In part they went to improve their economic status and find new, virgin soil for farming. But they also went to spread freedom in the West.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had organized the new Kansas Territory without banning slavery. Under that law, the settlers themselves would decide the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty. Thus, when the Browns moved to Kansas, they were making a political statement to help ensure that Kansas would be a free state.

During this period, Brown had gradually emerged as an unyielding opponent of slavery. He participated in the underground railroad and in 1851 helped found the League of Gileadites, an organization of whites, free blacks, and runaway slaves dedicated to protecting fugitive slaves from slave catchers.

In the 1840s Brown was in contact with such antislavery leaders as Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass. Yet as late as 1855 Brown remained a marginal figure in the antislavery movement and in all other ways historically insignificant. In 1855 Brown joined his sons and son-in-law in Kansas, settling along the Osawatomie River. In December 1855 he helped defend Lawrence, the center of antislavery settlers, from an armed attack by proslavery forces.

On May 21, 1856, though, when Brown was elsewhere, proslavery men sacked and burned the free-soil town, destroying the printing press there, burning buildings, and terrorizing the residents. Three days later, Brown and his band of free-state guerrillas killed five Southern settlers along the Pottawatomie River, decapitating some of them with swords. Later that summer, a proslavery minister, working as a scout for the U.S. Army, murdered Brown's unarmed son Frederick, shooting him in the heart at close range. His body, when discovered, was riddled with bullets.

Throughout the rest of 1856, Brown and his remaining sons fought in Kansas and Missouri. Some of these encounters were pitched battles between Brown's small army and proslavery forces, which were sometimes abetted by the U.S. Army.

By the end of 1856, Brown was one of the most renowned (and either hated or adored) figures in "bleeding Kansas," and in the East he became known as "Osawatomie Brown" or "Old Osawatomie." For some New England abolitionists he was approaching the status of a cult figure. Taciturn, blunt, gruff-and armed-Brown had become a symbol of the emerging holy crusade against slavery. Those in the East knew he fought against slavery, but few were aware of the exact nature of his role in the gory events at Pottawatomie.

Within two weeks after the incident, the play Osawatomie Brown appeared on Broadway. The play accused Brown's enemies of the massacre at Pottawatomie and suggested that the real killers had blamed Brown in order to discredit him. Moreover, ever since the massacre, James Redpath, an English journalist who later wrote Brown's biography, had been assuring readers that Brown was not responsible for the murders. Thus, when Brown went on a fund-raising trip to Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1857, no one saw him as a killer. At the time, he denied any role in the Pottawatomie murders, and his abolitionist supporters in the East gladly accepted his disavowal at face value. Brown's eastern contacts thought their donations to him would go to support the war against slavery in Kansas. Actually, Brown was already planning a raid on Harpers Ferry.

As early as 1854, Brown had been thinking, and talking, about an organized war against slavery in Virginia. His focus, from the beginning, seems to have been on Harpers Ferry, the site of a federal arsenal and armory. By 1857 his plans were beginning to take shape. In March 1857 he hired a Connecticut forgemaster to make a thousand pikes, allegedly for use in Kansas but actually to be given to slaves who he believed would flock to his guerrilla army once he invaded the South.

In January and February 1858 he spent a month at the home of Frederick Douglass, planning his raid and writing a provisional constitution for the revolutionary state Brown hoped to create. Brown begged Douglass to join him. Douglass was sympathetic to Brown's goals but believed the plan was suicidal: "You're walking into a perfect steel-trap and you will never get out alive," he told Brown. Nevertheless, Douglass introduced Brown to Shields Green, a fugitive slave from South Carolina who joined Brown-and whom Virginia authorities hanged after the raid.

In the early spring of 1858, Brown began raising large amounts of money for his raid, writing potential backers that he was planning some "[underground] Rail Road business on a somewhat extended scale." However, in person he made it clear that he intended to do more than merely help large numbers of slaves to escape. On February 22, 1858, Brown revealed his general plans-and his provisional constitution-to Gerrit Smith and Franklin Sanborn. Brown also contacted black leaders to help recruit free blacks. In March 1858 Brown met in Boston with the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, George Stearns, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Franklin Sanborn. These five, along with Smith, made up the "Secret Six," Brown's primary financial backers. In June 1858, traveling as "Shubel Morgan," Brown headed west, raising more money and recruiting more raiders in Cleveland. While Brown continued on to Kansas, John E. Cook, one of his raiders, moved to Harpers Ferry, where he found work and learned what he could about the community, the armory, and the lay of the land. He also fathered a child and married a local woman.

In December 1858 Brown once again made headlines for his exploits in the West. He invaded Missouri, where he killed a slave owner, liberated 11 slaves, and brilliantly evaded law enforcement officers as he led the freed blacks to Canada. There Brown met a black printer, Osborne Perry Anderson, who would later take part in the Harpers Ferry raid. Although a wanted man with a price of $250 on his head, Brown returned to the United States, traveling and speaking in Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Brown also contacted the "Secret Six" who were financing him.

In June 1859 Brown visited his home in North Elba, New York, for the last time, where he said good-bye to his wife and daughters. Brown probably knew that he was unlikely to see his family again, something he stoically accepted as a cost of his crusade against slavery. He was less accepting of his son Salmon, however, who decided he would not join his father on an apparently suicidal mission into Virginia.

Brown and his sons Oliver and Owen arrived in Harpers Ferry on July 3, 1859, and Brown rented a farm in Maryland, about seven miles from Harpers Ferry. He expected large numbers of men to enlist in his "army," but by September only 18 had arrived, including another of Brown's sons, Watson. By mid-October, a few more arrived.

On Sunday, October 16, Brown and his men began their raid. They made a strange assortment: veterans of the struggles in Kansas, fugitive slaves, free blacks, transcendental idealists, Oberlin College men, and youthful abolitionists on their first foray into the world. The youngest was 18. The oldest, Dangerfield Newby, was a 44-year-old fugitive slave from Virginia who hoped to rescue his wife from bondage. But most of the raiders were in their 20s, half the age of their leader, the 59-year-old Brown. Brown left three of his recruits to guard their supplies and arms at the farmhouse in Maryland. The remaining 18 raiders, 13 whites and five blacks, marched with John Brown to Harpers Ferry.

Brown's small army arrived in Harpers Ferry at night and quickly secured the federal armory and arsenal and later Hall's Rifle Works, which manufactured weapons for the national government. With the telegraph wires cut, Brown might have easily seized the weapons in the town, liberated slaves in the neighborhood, and then taken to the hills. Or he might have destroyed the armory and literally blown up the town.

Inexplicably, though, he remained in the armory, waiting for slaves to flock to his standard. They never came. Instead, townsmen and farmers surrounded the armory. These civilians were probably not strong enough to dislodge Brown, but they kept him pinned down. Although Brown tried to negotiate with the civilians, his emissaries, including his son Watson, were shot while under a white flag. By the morning of October 18, eight of Brown's men were dead or captured, and that same day militia from Virginia and Maryland arrived. President James Buchanan had dispatched U.S. marines and soldiers to Harpers Ferry, with Brevet Colonel Lee in command. Directly under Lee was another Virginian, Lt. J.E.B. Stuart.

That morning, marines stormed the engine house of the armory, capturing Brown and a few of his raiders and killing the rest. By the end of the raid, of the 22 who had been involved in the plot, 10 of Brown's men, including his sons Watson and Oliver, were dead or mortally wounded; five, including Brown, had been captured. Seven escaped, but two were later captured in Pennsylvania and returned to Virginia for trial and execution. The other five, including Brown's son Owen, made their way to safe havens in Canada and remote parts of the North. All but Owen Brown later served in the Union Army.

Brown's capture on October 18 set the stage for his trial and execution. Severely wounded, Brown had to be carried into court on October 25 for a preliminary hearing and on October 27 for his trial. The judge would not even delay the proceedings a day to allow Brown's lawyer to arrive. The trial was speedy. On November 2 Brown was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on December 2, and on December 8 he was buried at the family farm in North Elba, near Lake Placid. Many Northerners interpreted the hasty actions of the Virginia authorities in trying and executing Brown as another example of Southern injustice. The apparent lack of due process in his trial thus contributed to the Northern perception that Brown was a martyr. The most absurd aspect of the trial was the charge against Brown. He was indicted and convicted of "treason" against the state of Virginia. But as Brown pointed out, he had never lived in Virginia, never owed loyalty to the state, and therefore could not have committed treason against the state. Most Southerners, however, saw Virginia's actions as a properly swift response to the unspeakable acts of a dangerous man whose goal was to destroy their entire society.

By the time of his execution, the entire nation was fixated on this bearded man who spoke and looked like a biblical prophet and whose deeds thrilled-whether with fear or admiration or both-an entire generation.

Indicative of this fixation is a shared aspect in the otherwise divergent responses of Wendell Phillips and Edmund Ruffin-the great abolitionist orator and the fire-eating Virginia secessionist. In the year following the raid, each of them prominently carried and displayed a "John Brown pike" that Brown had ordered from the Connecticut foundry. For Phillips the pike symbolized the glory, and for Ruffin the horror, of a servile insurrection led by a resurrected Puritan willing to die to overthrow slavery.
Terrorist, Guerrilla Fighter, Revolutionary?
Brown's actions in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry were clearly violent. He killed people or at least supervised their death. But was he a terrorist? At neither place do his actions comport with what we know about modern terrorists.

The Harpers Ferry raid was his most famous act. Brown held Harpers Ferry from late Sunday night, October 16, until he was captured on the 18th. He was in possession of almost unlimited amounts of gunpowder and weapons. He had captured prominent citizens, most famously Colonel Washington. He stopped a train full of passengers and freight.

What would modern terrorists have done in such circumstances? They might have let the train go, only after they had robbed all the passengers to fund further acts of terror, and then blown up the bridge as the train crossed from Virginia to Maryland. They might have planted explosives on the train and let it proceed, as terrorists did in Spain a few years ago. What did Brown do? He boarded the train, let people know who he was, and was seen by people who might later have identified him. Then he let the train continue on to Washington. These were not the actions of a terrorist.

While in Harpers Ferry, Brown might have blown up the federal armory (or indeed most of the town) after taking as much powder and weapons as his men could carry. He might have broken into homes of prominent people and slaughtered them. Brown did none of these things. He waited, foolishly for sure, for the slaves in the area to flock to him. He was caught in a firefight with local citizens, and he was captured by the U.S. forces. He proved to be a disastrous military leader and a failed "captain" of his brave and idealistic troops. But he never acted like a terrorist. He ordered no killings; he did not wantonly destroy property; and he cared for his hostages. This is simply not how terrorists act.

The events at Kansas are similar. Brown targeted a number of individuals who had been leading-violently leading-proslavery forces in the area.

At the home of James Doyle, the raiders did not kill his 16-year-old son or his wife, Mahala, even though both could have identified Brown and his men. Brown's men killed Allen Wilkinson, but not his wife, Louisa, who recognized one of Brown's sons from his voice. Mrs. Wilkinson was ill at the time, and after killing her husband, Brown asked her if there would be neighbors who could help care for her.

Surely, as Robert McGlone notes, it might seem "bizarre" that Brown was concerned about her health after he had just killed her husband. But her husband was guilty of attacking free state men and threatening the Browns, and so he was (in John Brown's mind) justly executed. But his wife was innocent and not punished. This was not the behavior of a terrorist.

Kansas-Bleeding Kansas as it is known-was in the midst of a civil war. Between 1855 and 1860 about 200 men would be killed in Kansas. Not all were politically motivated, and historians disagree on what constitutes a "political" killing. But even the most conservative scholar of this violence finds 56 killings that were tied to slavery and politics. I think this number is low, and that most of the 200 deaths were actually politically motivated and tied to slavery and Bleeding Kansas. But the actual number of political killings is less important than the understanding that in Kansas there was a violent civil war being fought over slavery; men on both sides were killed. Brown's actions are most famous because there were five killings, and he strategically used swords, rather than guns, which would have alerted neighbors. This is the nature of guerrilla warfare. It is brutal and bloody, but it is not terrorism.

There is also a political context. In Kansas there was no democratic government. Elections were notoriously fraudulent and violent. The majority of the settlers were from the free states, but the national government recognized a minority government that was proslavery. That legislature made it a crime to publicly oppose slavery. There was, at least under the formal law, no free speech in Kansas for abolitionists. This was also true in Virginia, when John Brown raided Harpers Ferry. He could not have gone to Virginia to denounce slavery or even urge Virginians to give up slavery. Thus, in this sense Brown was not fighting against democratic institutions in a free society; rather he was fighting against an unfree society that denied him basic civil liberties and, in Kansas, even the right to have a fair election.
Remembering, Honoring, John Brown
So, what in the end can we make of John Brown? If he was not a terrorist-what was he? He might be seen as revolutionary, trying to start a revolution to end slavery and fulfill the goals of the Declaration of Independence. As proslavery border ruffians tried to prevent democracy in Kansas, and were willing to murder and assault supporters of freedom, John Brown surely had a right to defend his settlement and his side. Brown did not carefully plan the Pottawatomie raid the way Terry Nicholas and Timothy McVeigh planned the Oklahoma City bombing. He reacted to specific threats and the sacking of Lawrence by a proslavery mob. This was not terrorism, but a fact of warfare in Bleeding Kansas. Nevertheless, modern Americans are uncomfortable endorsing his vengeful violence in Kansas, however necessary it may have been.

Similarly, no one, not even the slaveholders, could deny that slaves might legitimately fight for their own liberty. If slaves could fight for their liberty, then surely a white man like Brown was not morally wrong for joining in the fight against bondage. Thus Harpers Ferry is in the end a blow for freedom, against slavery. Who can deny the legitimacy of such a venture, however foolish, poorly designed, and incompetently implemented? But in a society of democratic traditions, Americans recoil at the idea of violent revolution and raids on government armories, even when, as was the case in Virginia in 1859, democracy was something of a sham, and there was neither free speech nor free political institutions.

In the end, we properly view Brown with mixed emotions: admiring him for his dedication to the cause of human freedom, marveling at his willingness to die for the liberty of others, yet uncertain about his methods, and certainly troubled by his incompetent tactics at Harpers Ferry.

Perhaps we end up accepting the argument of the abolitionist lawyer and later governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew, who declared "whether the enterprise of John Brown and his associates in Virginia was wise or foolish, right or wrong; I only know that, whether the enterprise itself was the one or the other, John Brown himself is right."

Paul Finkelman received his B.A. from Syracuse University and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. He is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy at Albany Law School. He is the author or editor of more than 25 books and over 150 scholarly articles. His legal history scholarship has been cited by numerous courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
Note on Sources
The very best discussion of Brown in Kansas is found in Robert E. McGlone, John Brown's War Against Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

The quotation from Brown's speech in court is from Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia, ed. Franklin B. Sanborn (1885), p. 585. Quotations of Frederick Douglass and Brown are from Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown, 2nd ed. (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), p. 335. For more on Brown's self-created martyrdom, see Paul Finkelman, His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995), pp. 41-66.

For the conservative estimate of the number of political killings in Kansas, see Dale E. Watts, "How Bloody was Bleeding Kansas? Political Killings in the Kansas Territory, 1854-1861," Kansas History, 18 (1995): 116-129.

John Andrew's declaration that "John Brown himself is right" is quoted in Owald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years Later (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1943), p. 557.

Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.

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Spring 2011, Vol. 43, No. 1 By Paul Finkelman For Southerners, Brown was the embodiment of all their fear--a white man willing to die to end slavery. For many Northerners, he was a prophet of righteousness.

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NATIONAL ABOLITION HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

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Born in Connecticut on May 9, 1800, John Brown was raised in the Calvinist tradition by poor parents who taught him that divine predestination ruled lives. When the family moved to Hudson, Ohio, in 1805, John became friends with local black children and Native Americans. After witnessing the vicious beating of a young slave by his owner, he became a lifelong foe of slavery.

Following his aborted interest in being educated for the ministry, Brown married Dianthe Lusk in 1820 and became involved in several business ventures including surveying, tanning, and sheep farming. After moving to Randolph Township, Pennsylvania, in the mid 1820s, John was successful at opening a school for children, and a church, but his business ventures failed.

In the mid 1830s Brown moved back to the Hudson, Ohio, area with a new zeal for antislavery work which had been ignited by his subscription to and reading of William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper The Liberator. Following the murder of abolitionist journalist Elijah Lovejoy by proslavery men in Illinois in 1837, Brown attended a religious service recognizing Lovejoy's martyrdom at which Brown consecrated his life publicly to the destruction of slavery. Shortly, thereafter, he defied church segregation policy by inviting black people to join him in his pew. The racist reaction of local Ohio residents convinced him that only force could succeed in overcoming such intense prejudice.

John Brown grew to admire the nationally known abolitionist congressmen John Quincy Adams and Joshua Giddings, as well as the antislavery Liberty Party. As a nonconformist, Brown would not join an antislavery organization, but by 1848, he had met radical abolitionists Henry Highland Garnet, Jermain Loguen, Frederick Douglass, and Gerrit Smith, and was seriously considering the use of violence against the institution of slavery.

Brown's attempts to help blacks included aiding them on the Underground Railroad, and his move to North Elba, New York, in 1849 to mentor black farmers participating in Gerrit Smith's experiment in black enfranchisement. The passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law infuriated Brown, and he established the United States League of Gileadites to encourage slaves to resist their owners by force.

When the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was signed in 1854, Brown perceived a Slave Power plot to extend slavery into the new territory, and went there to fight for free soil. He fought against incursions into Kansans from slave states that bullied free soil settlers physically, socially, and politically. When Kansas was pacified by political means, Brown turned his focus toward Virginia as a fertile slave state in which he might instigate slave insurrection. The result was his attack on the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859. That event sparked the Civil War and the eventual abolishment of slavery in the United States. Brown was subsequently tried for treason against the State of Virginia, and hanged for his effort to abolish slavery.

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Born in Connecticut on May 9, 1800, John Brown was raised in the Calvinist tradition by poor parents who taught him that divine predestination ruled lives. When the family moved to Hudson, Ohio, in 1805, John became friends with local black children and Native Americans.

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John Brown's "tragic prelude" to the U.S. Civil War (article) | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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History of US - Great chapter on John Brown (If you have trouble opening this, look for the "Open in a new doc" on the top.  Click that on and it will open.)

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History of US - Great chapter on John Brown (If you have trouble opening this, look for the "Open in a new doc" on the top.  Click that on and it will open.)

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The Life of Abolitionist John Brown timeline.

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A year after John's first wife Dianthe dies, John Brown marries 16-year-old Mary Day. Mary takes care of the five children from John's previous marriage as well as the thirteen of her and John's own children. Economic hardships prove to be getting worse and worse, and John Brown struggles to support his large family.

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Speaks at an antislavery meeting in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Abolitionist William C. Coffin talks him into speaking about his life as a slave at a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society convention. William Lloyd Garrison follows his remarks with a speech of his own, encouraging Douglass. The Society is impressed and he is hired as a speaker. Douglass becomes closely allied with Garrison and his abolitionist views.

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The Life & Times of Frederick Douglass timeline.

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Speaks at an antislavery meeting in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Abolitionist William C. Coffin talks him into speaking about his life as a slave at a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society convention. William Lloyd Garrison follows his remarks with a speech of his own, encouraging Douglass. The Society is impressed and he is hired as a speaker.

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The Stowe's hired a servant girl from Kentucky. By laws the girl was free since her mistress brought her to Ohio and let her stay in Cincinnati. A few months later they heard her master was looking for her and was in town. If he found her he could legally return her to slavery.

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Spring 2011, Vol. 43, No. 1

By Paul Finkelman

As we celebrate the beginning of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, it is worthwhile to remember, and contemplate, the most important figure in the struggle against slavery immediately before the war: John Brown.

When Brown was hanged in 1859 for his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, many saw him as the harbinger of the future. For Southerners, he was the embodiment of all their fears-a white man willing to die to end slavery-and the most potent symbol yet of aggressive Northern antislavery sentiment. For many Northerners, he was a prophet of righteousness, bringing down a terrible swift sword against the immorality of slavery and the haughtiness of the Southern master class.

In 2000, the United States marked the bicentennial of Brown's birth. At that time, domestic terrorism was a growing problem. Bombings, ambushes, and assassinations had been directed at women's clinics and physicians in a number of places; a bomb planted in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 summer Olympics had killed one person and wounded more than a hundred people; in 1995 a pair of right-wing extremists had planted a bomb at the Alfred A. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 others.

During that bicentennial year, a number of historians and others talked about whether John Brown was America's first terrorist. Was he a model for the cowards who planted bombs at clinics, in public parks, or in buildings? Significantly, at least one modern terrorist, Paul Hill, compared himself to John Brown after he was arrested for murdering two people who worked at a women's clinic in Florida.

A year after Brown's bicentennial, the United States was faced with multiple terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The meaning of terrorism had changed. It was no longer the result of random attacks by an individual or two. Now it was tied to a worldwide conspiracy, coordinated overseas and meticulously planned. The American response was a "war on terror." In an age of rising incidents of terrorism, numerous scholars, and more important, much of the general public, have again asked if John Brown was America's "first terrorist."
Some Definitions of Terrorism
There are no complete or certain definitions of terrorism. Terrorists seek to "terrify" people and strike fear in the minds of those at whom their terror is directed. This, however, is not a complete definition. After all, few would consider soldiers in warfare terrorists, yet surely they try to make their enemy "fearful" of them. Starting with World War II, large-scale bombing has been a fact of modern warfare, but bombing of military targets is surely not an act of terrorism, even though the civilian population may be harmed or terrorized.

This aspect of warfare is hardly new. Siege warfare of the ancient and medieval world surely terrorized those inside castles or towns. Similarly, the long sieges of the Civil War, as well as decisions by both sides to strike at civilian targets that aided the war effort, surely terrorized populations. The trench warfare and artillery duels of World War I terrorized millions of civilians, but this was not essentially terrorism.

So, what beyond scaring or frightening people constitutes terrorism? How do we define the "terrorist?"

For terrorists, the "terror" itself, the act of violence, is the goal rather than simply the means to an end. Terrorists may hope for political change, but what they often want is to simply strike back at and harm those they oppose. The act of terror becomes the goal, with no expectation that anything else will follow.

This makes terrorism different from other kinds of illegal activity or violence. A kidnapper wants a ransom; a hostage taker usually has "demands" that should be met; a robber simply wants money or goods and might be willing to kill for them. But the terrorist often has no demands and no goals other than to terrorize. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols made no demands; they wanted nothing other than to kill and destroy. Those who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon only wanted to kill, destroy, and terrorize. They made no demands, asked for nothing, and by their own design would not have even been alive to negotiate for whatever they might have wanted.

Another hallmark of terrorists is indiscriminate killing; it helps spread terror. Terrorists generally do not care who they kill-adults, children, old people, women, men-although sometimes assassinations are an exception to this.

Terrorists are not concerned about collateral damage. Planting a bomb or shooting indiscriminately is a key indicator of terrorism. It does not even matter if some of those who die are sympathetic to the terrorists or of their own ethnic group. A number of American Muslims died in the attack on the World Trade Center because that is where they worked, but these collateral deaths were of no consequence to those who planned the attack. For terrorists, indiscriminate killing helps spread terror. Similarly, for terrorist killers there is no reason to spare lives or minimize death-every life is a legitimate target.

Terrorists usually attack nonmilitary targets and those who are unable to defend themselves. Often their victims are what might be called noncombatants in whatever ongoing struggle there is. One common aspect of terrorists is that they avoid direct contact and confrontation with those who are armed, especially the military. Tied to this, most terrorists plan their actions to have the greatest impact and to kill the most people.

Terrorists also act in secret and try to avoid anyone knowing who they are. They often wear masks and in other ways try to hide their identity. The classic American terrorist is the sheeted Klansman, with his face covered, killing, beating, mutilating, burning, and raping, to terrorize those who supported racial equality and black suffrage. Because they are violent and seek to kill, maim, or destroy property, terrorists naturally must be secretive. After their acts, however, they are likely to openly (but anonymously) brag about their crimes.

Terrorism also has a political context. This is particularly important to see when we try to make the distinction between terrorism and revolution. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson set out a series of principles that justified violent overthrow of the government. One was a "long train of abuses."

Even more important for Jefferson and his colleagues was the lack of access to the political process to change things peacefully. From the American perspective, in 1776, there was not a political solution to the crisis because Americans had no voice in the British government. In addition, the American Revolution was a response to attacks initiated by the British.

Thus, where there are no political avenues for change, violence-such as the American troops firing at the British-becomes revolution. But where the political processes are open, violence becomes terrorism. This was even true for the 9-11 terrorists. Nothing prevented them from politically organizing, demonstrating, and educating the American public about the changes they wanted. Their choice was to short-circuit the political options in favor of violence and terrorism.

With these general understandings, let us turn to John Brown, first to understand what he did, and second to see if it fits in the context of terrorism.
What Brown Did
Brown is connected to terrorism for two events in his life: the Pottawatomie raid in the Kansas Territory in 1856 and his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859. Both involved violence and killing. Both have led some people to claim Brown was a terrorist.

On the night of May 24, 1856, Brown led a raiding party of four of his sons, his son-in-law, and two other men to Pottawatomie Creek. For the most part, this raid was unplanned and almost spontaneous. Brown acted in retaliation for a raid on the free state settlement at Lawrence, the killings of free state settlers in Kansas, and persistent threats by the proslavery settlers along Pottawatomie Creek. Brown and his men entered three cabins, interrogated a number of men, and eventually killed five of them, all with swords and knives. Some were killed quickly, while others, who resisted, were cut in many places. Brown and his men then departed.

Significantly, although Brown and his men killed five proslavery settlers, they did not kill all the Southern settlers they encountered. They spared the life of the wife and teenage son of one of the men they killed, even though these people could have identified the raiders. At another cabin, they interrogated two men and let them go, convinced they had not threatened free state settlers or been involved in violent actions against the free state settlers. At a third house they also spared the wife of one man, even while they killed him.

Three and a half years later, on the evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown and 18 "soldiers" seized the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's plans were fantastic-some would say insane. He would use the arms in the arsenal-as well as old-fashioned pikes he had had specially manufactured-to begin a guerrilla war against slavery. The core of his army would be the mostly white band of raiders who seized the arsenal. But soon, he hoped-he believed-he just knew-that hundreds or even thousands of slaves would join him in the fight against the "peculiar institution." He predicted that once word of his raid got out, slaves from throughout the region would appear at his side, as bees "swarm to the hive."

During his raid, Brown and his men had captured a number of slave owners in the area, including Lewis Washington, the great-grand-nephew of President George Washington. Brown did not kill any of these captured men, and he went out of his way to protect them and make sure they were not harmed.

While in Harpers Ferry, the raiders killed a railroad baggage handler, who ironically was a free black, when he refused their orders to halt. In a firefight they killed a few townsmen, including the mayor. At one point Brown stopped a passenger train, held it for a while, and then released it. The train continued on to Washington, D.C., where the crew dutifully reported to officials that Brown had seized Harpers Ferry. The next day, October 18, U.S. marines, under the command of Army Brevet Col. Robert E. Lee, captured Brown in the engine house on the armory grounds. By this time, most of the raiders were either dead or wounded.

Ten days later, Brown's trial began in Charlestown, Virginia (now West Virginia). He was charged with treason, murder, and conspiring with slaves to rebel. He was convicted on November 2 and sentenced to death. Before his sentencing, Brown told the court that his actions against slavery were consistent with God's commandments.

"I believe," he said in a speech that electrified many Northerners who later read it, "that to have interfered as I have done in behalf of His despised poor, is no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say 'let it be done.'"

In the month between his sentencing on November 2 and his execution on December 2, Brown wrote brilliant letters that helped to create, in the minds of many Northerners, his image as a Christ-like martyr who gave his life so that the slaves might be free. Indeed, Frederick Douglass would later say that he lived for the slave, but John Brown was willing to "die for the slave." Brown welcomed his end, declaring: "I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose."

For abolitionists and antislavery activists, black and white, Brown emerged as a hero, a martyr, and ultimately, a harbinger of the end of slavery. Most Northern whites, especially those not committed to abolition, were aghast at the violence of his action. Yet there was also widespread support for him in the region. Northerners variously came to see Brown as an antislavery saint, a brave but foolish extremist, a lunatic, and a threat to the Union.

The future Republican governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew, summed up the feelings of many Northerners when he refused to endorse Brown's tactics or the wisdom of the raid, but declared that "John Brown himself is right." But most Republican politicians worried that they would be tarred by his extremism and lose the next election. Democrats and what remained of the Whigs (who would become Constitutional Unionists), by contrast, feared that Brown's raid would polarize the nation, put the Republicans in power, and chase the South out of the Union.

For white Southerners, Brown was the worst possible nightmare: a fearless, committed abolitionist, armed, accompanied by blacks, and willing to die to end slavery. Indeed, in the minds of Southerners, Brown was the greatest threat to slavery the South had ever witnessed. Most Southerners had at least a vague fear of slave rebellions. But Southerners had convinced themselves that most slaves were content with their status and that, in any event, blacks were incapable of anything worse than sporadic violence. Brown, however, raised the ominous possibility of armed black slaves, led by whites, who together would destroy Southern white society.

Who was this lunatic, this mad man, this abolitionist hero, this saint, this martyr to freedom? Was he America's first terrorist?
Who Was John Brown?
In many ways Brown was a typical 19th-century American. He was born in Torrington, Connecticut, into a family of deeply religious Congregationalists who were Puritan in their heritage and overtly antislavery in their views. When he was five, the family moved to what was then the "West." They migrated to Hudson, Ohio, which was in the Western Reserve between Akron and Cleveland. The region was full of New Englanders, especially from Connecticut.

Brown grew up in an atmosphere in which everyone despised slavery. Both Brown and his father were early supporters of the new abolitionism that emerged in the 1830s. Brown's father, a prominent businessman with a large tannery, was involved in trying to make Western Reserve College into an antislavery stronghold. When that failed, the elder Brown supported the creation of Oberlin College as a racially integrated coeducational institution of higher learning with an antislavery bent.

Despite his father's association with colleges, Brown had little formal education. Early in his life he considered becoming a clergyman, and he returned to Connecticut to attend a preparatory school as a prelude to going to a seminary. But that possibility ended when he flunked out of the school. By age 20 he was married and a foreman in his father's tannery. His bride, Dianthe Lusk, gave birth to seven children before she died in 1832. Five of those children lived until adulthood. In 1833 he married Mary Ann Day, an uneducated 16-year-old, half his age. She would have 13 children, but only six would survive to adulthood.

In 1825 Brown moved to western Pennsylvania, where he was a successful tanner and a postmaster (under President John Quincy Adams). Despite his own poor education and struggles with schooling, he helped start a local school. A proper burgher of the community, he became a church leader and joined the Masons. In 1834 his business went bad, and he moved back to Ohio, starting a tannery in Kent. There he speculated in land and won a contract to build a canal from Kent (then called Franklin Mills) to Akron. He formed the Franklin Land Company with 700 acres for building houses.

As we recall Brown's future activities, it is fascinating to also contemplate the image of John Brown as a suburban developer. But the panic of 1837 changed everything. By the end of the year, Brown was bankrupt. For the next five years he dodged creditors before finally declaring bankruptcy in 1842 and losing almost everything he owned.

Up to this point in his life, Brown had done nothing to indicate he was particularly political or unusually antislavery. He was, in fact, a fairly conventional Jacksonian, trying to increase his status and wealth and always looking for the next opportunity: tanner, canal builder, suburban developer, and in the wake of the panic, bankrupt.

By 1844, Brown was back in the business world, raising sheep with a wealthy business partner in Akron. But his inept business skills did him in again, especially an attempt to sell 200,000 pounds of wool in England, which was an exporter of wool. Oddly, while his creditors sued him, no one accused him of dishonesty or lacking integrity. Even people whose finances were almost ruined by his behavior liked him.

In 1854-at age 54-Brown was a failed businessman, an impoverished farmer with a few head of cattle in Ohio and some land in Upstate New York-at North Elba-that he had not yet paid for. That year five of his sons and his son-in-law moved to Kansas. In part they went to improve their economic status and find new, virgin soil for farming. But they also went to spread freedom in the West.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had organized the new Kansas Territory without banning slavery. Under that law, the settlers themselves would decide the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty. Thus, when the Browns moved to Kansas, they were making a political statement to help ensure that Kansas would be a free state.

During this period, Brown had gradually emerged as an unyielding opponent of slavery. He participated in the underground railroad and in 1851 helped found the League of Gileadites, an organization of whites, free blacks, and runaway slaves dedicated to protecting fugitive slaves from slave catchers.

In the 1840s Brown was in contact with such antislavery leaders as Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass. Yet as late as 1855 Brown remained a marginal figure in the antislavery movement and in all other ways historically insignificant. In 1855 Brown joined his sons and son-in-law in Kansas, settling along the Osawatomie River. In December 1855 he helped defend Lawrence, the center of antislavery settlers, from an armed attack by proslavery forces.

On May 21, 1856, though, when Brown was elsewhere, proslavery men sacked and burned the free-soil town, destroying the printing press there, burning buildings, and terrorizing the residents. Three days later, Brown and his band of free-state guerrillas killed five Southern settlers along the Pottawatomie River, decapitating some of them with swords. Later that summer, a proslavery minister, working as a scout for the U.S. Army, murdered Brown's unarmed son Frederick, shooting him in the heart at close range. His body, when discovered, was riddled with bullets.

Throughout the rest of 1856, Brown and his remaining sons fought in Kansas and Missouri. Some of these encounters were pitched battles between Brown's small army and proslavery forces, which were sometimes abetted by the U.S. Army.

By the end of 1856, Brown was one of the most renowned (and either hated or adored) figures in "bleeding Kansas," and in the East he became known as "Osawatomie Brown" or "Old Osawatomie." For some New England abolitionists he was approaching the status of a cult figure. Taciturn, blunt, gruff-and armed-Brown had become a symbol of the emerging holy crusade against slavery. Those in the East knew he fought against slavery, but few were aware of the exact nature of his role in the gory events at Pottawatomie.

Within two weeks after the incident, the play Osawatomie Brown appeared on Broadway. The play accused Brown's enemies of the massacre at Pottawatomie and suggested that the real killers had blamed Brown in order to discredit him. Moreover, ever since the massacre, James Redpath, an English journalist who later wrote Brown's biography, had been assuring readers that Brown was not responsible for the murders. Thus, when Brown went on a fund-raising trip to Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1857, no one saw him as a killer. At the time, he denied any role in the Pottawatomie murders, and his abolitionist supporters in the East gladly accepted his disavowal at face value. Brown's eastern contacts thought their donations to him would go to support the war against slavery in Kansas. Actually, Brown was already planning a raid on Harpers Ferry.

As early as 1854, Brown had been thinking, and talking, about an organized war against slavery in Virginia. His focus, from the beginning, seems to have been on Harpers Ferry, the site of a federal arsenal and armory. By 1857 his plans were beginning to take shape. In March 1857 he hired a Connecticut forgemaster to make a thousand pikes, allegedly for use in Kansas but actually to be given to slaves who he believed would flock to his guerrilla army once he invaded the South.

In January and February 1858 he spent a month at the home of Frederick Douglass, planning his raid and writing a provisional constitution for the revolutionary state Brown hoped to create. Brown begged Douglass to join him. Douglass was sympathetic to Brown's goals but believed the plan was suicidal: "You're walking into a perfect steel-trap and you will never get out alive," he told Brown. Nevertheless, Douglass introduced Brown to Shields Green, a fugitive slave from South Carolina who joined Brown-and whom Virginia authorities hanged after the raid.

In the early spring of 1858, Brown began raising large amounts of money for his raid, writing potential backers that he was planning some "[underground] Rail Road business on a somewhat extended scale." However, in person he made it clear that he intended to do more than merely help large numbers of slaves to escape. On February 22, 1858, Brown revealed his general plans-and his provisional constitution-to Gerrit Smith and Franklin Sanborn. Brown also contacted black leaders to help recruit free blacks. In March 1858 Brown met in Boston with the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, George Stearns, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Franklin Sanborn. These five, along with Smith, made up the "Secret Six," Brown's primary financial backers. In June 1858, traveling as "Shubel Morgan," Brown headed west, raising more money and recruiting more raiders in Cleveland. While Brown continued on to Kansas, John E. Cook, one of his raiders, moved to Harpers Ferry, where he found work and learned what he could about the community, the armory, and the lay of the land. He also fathered a child and married a local woman.

In December 1858 Brown once again made headlines for his exploits in the West. He invaded Missouri, where he killed a slave owner, liberated 11 slaves, and brilliantly evaded law enforcement officers as he led the freed blacks to Canada. There Brown met a black printer, Osborne Perry Anderson, who would later take part in the Harpers Ferry raid. Although a wanted man with a price of $250 on his head, Brown returned to the United States, traveling and speaking in Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Brown also contacted the "Secret Six" who were financing him.

In June 1859 Brown visited his home in North Elba, New York, for the last time, where he said good-bye to his wife and daughters. Brown probably knew that he was unlikely to see his family again, something he stoically accepted as a cost of his crusade against slavery. He was less accepting of his son Salmon, however, who decided he would not join his father on an apparently suicidal mission into Virginia.

Brown and his sons Oliver and Owen arrived in Harpers Ferry on July 3, 1859, and Brown rented a farm in Maryland, about seven miles from Harpers Ferry. He expected large numbers of men to enlist in his "army," but by September only 18 had arrived, including another of Brown's sons, Watson. By mid-October, a few more arrived.

On Sunday, October 16, Brown and his men began their raid. They made a strange assortment: veterans of the struggles in Kansas, fugitive slaves, free blacks, transcendental idealists, Oberlin College men, and youthful abolitionists on their first foray into the world. The youngest was 18. The oldest, Dangerfield Newby, was a 44-year-old fugitive slave from Virginia who hoped to rescue his wife from bondage. But most of the raiders were in their 20s, half the age of their leader, the 59-year-old Brown. Brown left three of his recruits to guard their supplies and arms at the farmhouse in Maryland. The remaining 18 raiders, 13 whites and five blacks, marched with John Brown to Harpers Ferry.

Brown's small army arrived in Harpers Ferry at night and quickly secured the federal armory and arsenal and later Hall's Rifle Works, which manufactured weapons for the national government. With the telegraph wires cut, Brown might have easily seized the weapons in the town, liberated slaves in the neighborhood, and then taken to the hills. Or he might have destroyed the armory and literally blown up the town.

Inexplicably, though, he remained in the armory, waiting for slaves to flock to his standard. They never came. Instead, townsmen and farmers surrounded the armory. These civilians were probably not strong enough to dislodge Brown, but they kept him pinned down. Although Brown tried to negotiate with the civilians, his emissaries, including his son Watson, were shot while under a white flag. By the morning of October 18, eight of Brown's men were dead or captured, and that same day militia from Virginia and Maryland arrived. President James Buchanan had dispatched U.S. marines and soldiers to Harpers Ferry, with Brevet Colonel Lee in command. Directly under Lee was another Virginian, Lt. J.E.B. Stuart.

That morning, marines stormed the engine house of the armory, capturing Brown and a few of his raiders and killing the rest. By the end of the raid, of the 22 who had been involved in the plot, 10 of Brown's men, including his sons Watson and Oliver, were dead or mortally wounded; five, including Brown, had been captured. Seven escaped, but two were later captured in Pennsylvania and returned to Virginia for trial and execution. The other five, including Brown's son Owen, made their way to safe havens in Canada and remote parts of the North. All but Owen Brown later served in the Union Army.

Brown's capture on October 18 set the stage for his trial and execution. Severely wounded, Brown had to be carried into court on October 25 for a preliminary hearing and on October 27 for his trial. The judge would not even delay the proceedings a day to allow Brown's lawyer to arrive. The trial was speedy. On November 2 Brown was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on December 2, and on December 8 he was buried at the family farm in North Elba, near Lake Placid. Many Northerners interpreted the hasty actions of the Virginia authorities in trying and executing Brown as another example of Southern injustice. The apparent lack of due process in his trial thus contributed to the Northern perception that Brown was a martyr. The most absurd aspect of the trial was the charge against Brown. He was indicted and convicted of "treason" against the state of Virginia. But as Brown pointed out, he had never lived in Virginia, never owed loyalty to the state, and therefore could not have committed treason against the state. Most Southerners, however, saw Virginia's actions as a properly swift response to the unspeakable acts of a dangerous man whose goal was to destroy their entire society.

By the time of his execution, the entire nation was fixated on this bearded man who spoke and looked like a biblical prophet and whose deeds thrilled-whether with fear or admiration or both-an entire generation.

Indicative of this fixation is a shared aspect in the otherwise divergent responses of Wendell Phillips and Edmund Ruffin-the great abolitionist orator and the fire-eating Virginia secessionist. In the year following the raid, each of them prominently carried and displayed a "John Brown pike" that Brown had ordered from the Connecticut foundry. For Phillips the pike symbolized the glory, and for Ruffin the horror, of a servile insurrection led by a resurrected Puritan willing to die to overthrow slavery.
Terrorist, Guerrilla Fighter, Revolutionary?
Brown's actions in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry were clearly violent. He killed people or at least supervised their death. But was he a terrorist? At neither place do his actions comport with what we know about modern terrorists.

The Harpers Ferry raid was his most famous act. Brown held Harpers Ferry from late Sunday night, October 16, until he was captured on the 18th. He was in possession of almost unlimited amounts of gunpowder and weapons. He had captured prominent citizens, most famously Colonel Washington. He stopped a train full of passengers and freight.

What would modern terrorists have done in such circumstances? They might have let the train go, only after they had robbed all the passengers to fund further acts of terror, and then blown up the bridge as the train crossed from Virginia to Maryland. They might have planted explosives on the train and let it proceed, as terrorists did in Spain a few years ago. What did Brown do? He boarded the train, let people know who he was, and was seen by people who might later have identified him. Then he let the train continue on to Washington. These were not the actions of a terrorist.

While in Harpers Ferry, Brown might have blown up the federal armory (or indeed most of the town) after taking as much powder and weapons as his men could carry. He might have broken into homes of prominent people and slaughtered them. Brown did none of these things. He waited, foolishly for sure, for the slaves in the area to flock to him. He was caught in a firefight with local citizens, and he was captured by the U.S. forces. He proved to be a disastrous military leader and a failed "captain" of his brave and idealistic troops. But he never acted like a terrorist. He ordered no killings; he did not wantonly destroy property; and he cared for his hostages. This is simply not how terrorists act.

The events at Kansas are similar. Brown targeted a number of individuals who had been leading-violently leading-proslavery forces in the area.

At the home of James Doyle, the raiders did not kill his 16-year-old son or his wife, Mahala, even though both could have identified Brown and his men. Brown's men killed Allen Wilkinson, but not his wife, Louisa, who recognized one of Brown's sons from his voice. Mrs. Wilkinson was ill at the time, and after killing her husband, Brown asked her if there would be neighbors who could help care for her.

Surely, as Robert McGlone notes, it might seem "bizarre" that Brown was concerned about her health after he had just killed her husband. But her husband was guilty of attacking free state men and threatening the Browns, and so he was (in John Brown's mind) justly executed. But his wife was innocent and not punished. This was not the behavior of a terrorist.

Kansas-Bleeding Kansas as it is known-was in the midst of a civil war. Between 1855 and 1860 about 200 men would be killed in Kansas. Not all were politically motivated, and historians disagree on what constitutes a "political" killing. But even the most conservative scholar of this violence finds 56 killings that were tied to slavery and politics. I think this number is low, and that most of the 200 deaths were actually politically motivated and tied to slavery and Bleeding Kansas. But the actual number of political killings is less important than the understanding that in Kansas there was a violent civil war being fought over slavery; men on both sides were killed. Brown's actions are most famous because there were five killings, and he strategically used swords, rather than guns, which would have alerted neighbors. This is the nature of guerrilla warfare. It is brutal and bloody, but it is not terrorism.

There is also a political context. In Kansas there was no democratic government. Elections were notoriously fraudulent and violent. The majority of the settlers were from the free states, but the national government recognized a minority government that was proslavery. That legislature made it a crime to publicly oppose slavery. There was, at least under the formal law, no free speech in Kansas for abolitionists. This was also true in Virginia, when John Brown raided Harpers Ferry. He could not have gone to Virginia to denounce slavery or even urge Virginians to give up slavery. Thus, in this sense Brown was not fighting against democratic institutions in a free society; rather he was fighting against an unfree society that denied him basic civil liberties and, in Kansas, even the right to have a fair election.
Remembering, Honoring, John Brown
So, what in the end can we make of John Brown? If he was not a terrorist-what was he? He might be seen as revolutionary, trying to start a revolution to end slavery and fulfill the goals of the Declaration of Independence. As proslavery border ruffians tried to prevent democracy in Kansas, and were willing to murder and assault supporters of freedom, John Brown surely had a right to defend his settlement and his side. Brown did not carefully plan the Pottawatomie raid the way Terry Nicholas and Timothy McVeigh planned the Oklahoma City bombing. He reacted to specific threats and the sacking of Lawrence by a proslavery mob. This was not terrorism, but a fact of warfare in Bleeding Kansas. Nevertheless, modern Americans are uncomfortable endorsing his vengeful violence in Kansas, however necessary it may have been.

Similarly, no one, not even the slaveholders, could deny that slaves might legitimately fight for their own liberty. If slaves could fight for their liberty, then surely a white man like Brown was not morally wrong for joining in the fight against bondage. Thus Harpers Ferry is in the end a blow for freedom, against slavery. Who can deny the legitimacy of such a venture, however foolish, poorly designed, and incompetently implemented? But in a society of democratic traditions, Americans recoil at the idea of violent revolution and raids on government armories, even when, as was the case in Virginia in 1859, democracy was something of a sham, and there was neither free speech nor free political institutions.

In the end, we properly view Brown with mixed emotions: admiring him for his dedication to the cause of human freedom, marveling at his willingness to die for the liberty of others, yet uncertain about his methods, and certainly troubled by his incompetent tactics at Harpers Ferry.

Perhaps we end up accepting the argument of the abolitionist lawyer and later governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew, who declared "whether the enterprise of John Brown and his associates in Virginia was wise or foolish, right or wrong; I only know that, whether the enterprise itself was the one or the other, John Brown himself is right."

Paul Finkelman received his B.A. from Syracuse University and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. He is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy at Albany Law School. He is the author or editor of more than 25 books and over 150 scholarly articles. His legal history scholarship has been cited by numerous courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
Note on Sources
The very best discussion of Brown in Kansas is found in Robert E. McGlone, John Brown's War Against Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

The quotation from Brown's speech in court is from Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia, ed. Franklin B. Sanborn (1885), p. 585. Quotations of Frederick Douglass and Brown are from Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown, 2nd ed. (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), p. 335. For more on Brown's self-created martyrdom, see Paul Finkelman, His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995), pp. 41-66.

For the conservative estimate of the number of political killings in Kansas, see Dale E. Watts, "How Bloody was Bleeding Kansas? Political Killings in the Kansas Territory, 1854-1861," Kansas History, 18 (1995): 116-129.

John Andrew's declaration that "John Brown himself is right" is quoted in Owald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years Later (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1943), p. 557.

Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.

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Spring 2011, Vol. 43, No. 1 By Paul Finkelman Enlarge For Southerners, Brown was the embodiment of all their fears-a white man willing to die to end slavery. For many Northerners, he was a prophet of righteousness.

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John Brown's Holy War | Article

As with everything John Brown did, he approached business with an unyielding insistence that his way was the right way. He was consumed by his work; he had no hobbies, no romance. He gave orders, said a younger brother, like "a King against whom there is no rising up." But Brown's inflexibility -- exacerbated by poor judgment and bad luck - would lead to a lifetime of business failures and broken dreams.

As a young man, Brown worked for his father, learning the business of running a tannery. But he was too ambitious and headstrong to take orders from anyone, even his father. At age 17 he left to start a competing tannery of his own.

At first he prospered. In 1826 he built an even larger tannery in Pennsylvania. He employed fifteen men. He was respected as a businessman and leader in the community.

But Brown began to feel the strains of providing for his ever expanding family. His first wife, Dianthe, had died from a fever. He remarried a year later to sixteen-yezr-old Mary Day who would look after his five children and bear thirteen of her own.

By spring of 1835 Brown was desperate for cash. He borrowed heavily. Unable to support his family, he began looking for ways to make money fast.

Like many Americans, he wanted to be part of the great adventure that was transforming the nation at that time. Inventions like the telegraph and steam-powered locomotive were changing the world. The success of the Erie Canal created a "canal boom." Thousands of dollars were being made in land speculation.

Brown convinced family and friends to entrust him with their money. He anticipated the prosperity a new canal would bring in Ohio -- the new towns and trading centers - and bought land, spending thousands of dollars. It looked like a sure thing; the first Ohio canal had sent land values skyrocketing. Land that had originally sold for $11 an acre was going for up to $7,000 for a 10 acre lot. All Brown and his investors had to do was sit back and wait for their canal to arrive. Unfortunately, a great economic downturn was about to rock the nation.

"The panic of 1837 was the largest bankruptcy that the United States had ever had," comments historian, James Stewart. "Brown was swept along in a current of default and collapse. Brown would be a typical story of someone who invested, as thousands did, and lost thousands, as thousands did...."

The Pennsylvania Canal Company changed their plans, making Brown's properties nearly worthless. His business associates wanted to sell, but Brown stubbornly told them to hold on, that the market would recover.

Things only got worse. Creditors foreclosed and dragged him into court. Brown was found to be negligent and shortsighted in his business transactions, but all agreed was not dishonest. A business acquaintance described him as having "fast, stubborn and strenuous convictions that nothing short of mental rebirth could ever have altered."

With his land scheme in pieces, he tried breeding sheep. He started another tannery, bought and sold cattle. Each time he failed. But Brown stubbornly refused to give up.

Although England had enough wool to export some to America, Brown believed he could sell American wool there. He traveled to London -- and promptly lost $40,000.

In 1842 Brown applied for bankruptcy. Lawsuits against him piled up in four states. In the final settlement, he lost almost everything he owned. He was left only with living essentials, and eleven Bibles and Testaments.

Brown's temperament and business acumen did not make a good combination. When things went bad, he would place his fate in the hands of divine providence and hope that his creditors shared his faith. Surprisingly, those he owed most seemed most forgiving.

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John Brown's Failures | American Experience | PBS

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John Brown's inflexibility - exacerbated by poor judgment and bad luck - would lead to a lifetime of business failures and broken dreams.

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The Abolitionists | Clip

From the Collection: The Library

After moving to Brunswick, Maine, Harriet Beecher Stowe was deeply disturbed by the Fugitive Slave Act. In March 1852, Stowe's novel about the evils of slavery sold 10,000 copies in its first week. In U ncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe made millions of Americans see slavery for the first time through the eyes of its victims.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin | American Experience | PBS

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Harriet Beecher Stowe made millions of Americans see slavery through the eyes of its victims.

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Agitation and Activism: The Life and Legacy of Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass died of a heart attack on the evening of February 20, 1895 after attending a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. Throughout his life, Douglass remained a vigilant activist, agitator and supporter of human rights. In the 1907 biography on Frederick Douglass, scholar and African American historian Booker T.