Abolitionist and preacher Frederick Douglass and
Anna Murray Douglass 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. of the Johnsons, where Douglass and his wife lived in New Bedford, Massachusetts 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." Although Garrison's ideas shaped Douglass's early activism, Douglass soon developed his own political views. Charles H. T. Lesch has shown that Douglass created a theory, which Lesch calls "natural rights from below", based on the experiences of enslaved people. Instead of relying on ideas from European philosophers, Douglass argued that, in order to understand freedom and equality, they must be seen from the perspective of those to whom they had been denied. Douglass's activism extended beyond abolition. He supported equal rights not only for African Americans but also for women, immigrants and poor people. His speeches and writings called for fairness and dignity for everyone which shows his belief in universal human rights, as it is shown in studies like "Frederick Douglass, Supporter of Equal Rights for All People." In many of his speeches, Douglass exposed the gap between America's promises of freedom and the reality of slavery and racism. Scholars like Eduardo Cadava have made connections between Douglass's work to modern criticism of human rights, which shows how he challenged the ways the ways powerful groups such as American Democracy sometimes use rights to hide injustice. 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. , abolitionist and one of Douglass's first friends in the North 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 , where Douglass lived in 1846|thumb 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. The feeling of freedom from American
racial discrimination amazed Douglass: 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!'' Still, Douglass was astounded by the extreme levels of poverty he encountered in Dublin, much of it reminding him of his experiences in slavery. In a letter to
William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass wrote "I see much here to remind me of my former condition, and I confess I should be ashamed to lift up my voice against American slavery, but that I know the cause of humanity is one the world over. He who really and truly feels for the American slave, cannot steel his heart to the woes of others; and he who thinks himself an abolitionist, yet cannot enter into the wrongs of others, has yet to find a true foundation for his anti-slavery faith." 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, 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 July 31, 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 US. 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 at 33 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 () given to him by English supporters, Douglass enlisted
Pittsburgh journalist
Martin Delany as co-editor, but they soon severed ties, and whether they "were ever really 'co-editors,' as the masthead claimed, is doubtful". 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 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."
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. In the wake of the Seneca Falls Convention, Douglass wrote 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 of 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. He criticized opponents of women's rights: "A discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency by many of what are called the
wise and the
good of our land, than would be a discussion of the rights of woman." He also 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 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.
Ideological refinement In 1850, Douglass was elected the vice president of the
American League of Colored Laborers, the first Black labor union in the United States, which he had also helped found. Meanwhile, in 1851, he merged the
North Star with
Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party paper to form ''Frederick Douglass' Paper'', which was published until 1859. 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.
John Brown 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. Shortly before the raid, Douglass, taking Green with him, traveled from Rochester, via New York City, to
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Brown's communications headquarters. He was recognized there by Black people, who asked him for a lecture. Douglass agreed, although he said his only topic was slavery. Green joined him on the stage; Brown,
incognito, sat in the audience. A white reporter, referring to "Nigger Democracy", called it a "flaming address" by "the notorious Negro Orator". There, in an abandoned stone quarry for secrecy, Douglass and Green met with Brown and
John Henri Kagi, to discuss the raid. After discussions lasting, as Douglass put it, "a day and a night", he disappointed Brown by declining to join him, considering the mission suicidal. To Douglass's surprise, Green went with Brown instead of returning to Rochester with Douglass. Anne Brown said that Green told her that Douglass promised to pay him on his return, but
David Blight called this "much more ex post facto bitterness than reality". 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, at age 10. Douglass sailed back from England the following month, traveling through Canada to avoid detection. Years later, in 1881, Douglass shared a stage at Storer College in
Harpers Ferry with
Andrew Hunter, the prosecutor who secured Brown's conviction and execution. Hunter congratulated Douglass.
Photography Douglass considered photography an important tool 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, 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. In the early 1860s, Douglass wrote four essays on the theory of photography, three of which are published in
Picturing Frederick Douglass, and they are discussed in
Pictures and Progress. ==Civil War years==