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Frederick Douglass was born in February 1818 in Cordova, Maryland. He was born into slavery and worked as a slave in east Maryland his whole childhood. Frederick barely knew his mother because she had died on a distant labor camp when he was young. His en-slavers often destroyed family relationships. He never knew his father but he was apparently a white man of European descent who may have been his mother's master.

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Frederick lived with his grandmother, Betsy Bailey, who was enslaved, and his grandfather, Isaac, who was free. His grandmother died in 1849. Frederick never went to school but learned how to read and spell from an old Webster's spelling book and posters on the cellar and barn doors.

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Douglass had attempted to escape once before from Freeland, who hired him from his owner. Frederick had fallen in love with a free black woman named Anna Murray. Her status as a free black person gave him a stronger belief in gaining his own freedom. Murray supported and encourage him by providing him with aid and money. On September 3, 1838 Frederick escaped his labor camp by boarding a train in Baltimore. He arrived in Havre de Grace, Maryland but he thought it would be better to continue on the train through Delaware, which was another slave state. He disguised himself in a sailor's uniform that Murray had given him. He also carried identification papers and protection papers that he had gotten from a free black sailor. After traveling through Delaware he arrived in New York City, where he went to the safe house of David Ruggles, an abolitionist.

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Douglass's journey had taken less than 24 hours to get to a safe place in New York City. After he arrived, he told his love about his escape and asked her to come to him so they could be together in New York City. She brought supplies with her for them to set up a house together.

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Just 11 days after Douglass escaped and arrived in NYC, he and Anna got married on September 15, 1838. After getting married they adopted the name Johnson as their married name to prevent drawing attention. The couple later moved to Lynn, Massachusetts in 1841. They stayed with Nathan and Mary Johnson. After, they decided to change their married name to Douglass instead of Johnson. Douglass had grown up using his mother's surname, Bailey but after he escaped he changed it to Stanley, and then to Johnson. However, it was such a common name that he asked Nathan Johnson for a suitable surname. Nathan Johnson suggested Douglass because of a poem he had read, with the two main characters having the surname Douglass.

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Douglass had thought of joining a white Methodist church, but when he found out it was segregated, he was disappointed. He later found the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church (or AME Zion church) that was an independent black denomination that first established in NYC. Some prominent members included Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. Douglass then became a licensed preacher in 1839.

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Douglass joined the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1843 for their Hundred Conventions project. The Hundred Conventions project would last six months, and was a tour of meeting halls throughout the eastern and midwestern United States. During this project, an angry mob had chased Douglass and beat him in front of a local quaker family. This family was the Hardy's, who rescued him. The mob broke his hand in the attack and it never healed properly, and would bother him for the rest of his life.

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, is Douglass's first autobiography, which is also his best known work. He wrote it while he was living in Lynn, Massachusetts, and it was was published in 1845. Some people were skeptical on whether a black man could have made such a powerful piece of literature. The book instantly became a best seller with generally positive reviews. Within the first three years of being published, it had been reprinted nine times, with 11,000 copies in the U.S. alone. The book was also translated into French and Dutch and published in Europe. In his lifetime, Douglass wrote three autobiographies. His 1845 autobiography was his best seller and it made him enough money to gain legal freedom. In 1855, he published My Bondage and My Freedom. In his sixties in 1881, he published Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which he later revised in 1892.

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Frederick Douglass in around his early 30's

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Douglass returned to the U.S. in 1847 after traveling to Ireland and Great Britain. When he returned he began publishing his own abolitionist newsletter call the North Star. He was publishing the newsletter from the basement of the AME Zion church. The AME Church and the North Star joined the freedmen community's opposition to the mostly white American Colonization Society and it's proposal to send free black people back to Africa. Douglass also took part in the Underground Railroad. Him and his wife provided resources in their home to over four hundred fugitive slaves.

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Douglass attended the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention. Douglass was the only black person to attend the convention. During the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution that was asking for women's suffrage. Many people there opposed the resolution, such as influential Quakers and James and his wife Lucretia Mott. Douglass stood and spoke in favor of the women's suffrage resolution. He said he would not accept the right to vote as a black man if women couldn't also claim that right. He said the world would be a better place if women were involved in the political sphere. After he spoke out, the attendees passed the resolution. Douglass used an editorial in The North Star to press the case for women's rights. He briefly conveyed several arguments of the convention and feminist's thoughts at the time.

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Frederick Douglass's gravestone in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester

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On February 20, 1895, Douglass was at a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington D.C. During the meeting, he was brought to the platform and received a standing ovation. When he returned home, Douglass had a major heart attack that caused his death. His funeral was held at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. His coffin was then transported to Rochester, New York, where he was buried in Mount Hope cemetery next to his wife Anna in the Douglass family plot.