Frederick Douglass: “Men of Color, To Arms!”

About the Author

Frederick Douglass was a prominent abolitionist and outspoken advocate for black equality, who had himself been born into slavery on a Maryland plantation sometime in February 1818, under the name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. His mother was enslaved, and his father was an unknown white man, who at one point Douglass believed may have been his mother’s owner. As a child he was separated from his mother, living instead with various other relatives. At age eight he moved to Baltimore to work for a carpenter named Hugh Auld, and it was in Baltimore that he first learned to read and encountered abolitionist newspapers that would inspire him to make an escape.

After enduring harsh whippings and other mistreatment at the hands of white overseers and slave owners—including an infamous encounter with a cruel slave breaker named Edward Covey—the twenty-year-old Douglass finally made his escape on September 3, 1838. He fled by steamboat and then by train to New York City, and from there he settled in Massachusetts to begin his new life as a free man, taking the new name “Frederick Douglass.” While he was in Massachusetts, he cultivated a friendship with his fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who published an influential and controversial newspaper called The Liberator, the same paper that had first inspired him to seek freedom in the North. With Garrison’s encouragement, in 1841 Douglass delivered his first public lecture in Nantucket, to a packed crowd that had assembled for the annual convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

His experience at that abolitionist meeting set him on a course that would make him a leading national advocate of emancipation; he began a widespread lecture tour that made him a prominent voice in the movement thanks to his personal experiences as a slave. The attendant publicity (both negative and positive), however, made Douglass fearful that his former owner might capture him, so in 1845 he moved to Britain, where he spent two years making connections with British supporters of black equality; he returned to the United States in 1847, after English abolitionists purchased his freedom. After settling in Rochester, New York, he established a series of abolitionist newspapers, including The North Star (1847–1851), Frederick Douglass’ Paper (1851–1860), and Douglass’ Monthly (1858–1863). When full-scale civil war broke out in 1861, Douglass eagerly suggested that free blacks be allowed to fight and help free their enslaved brethren who lived in the South. He assisted with the recruitment of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, encouraging two of his sons—Lewis and Charles—to join the regiment. During the war Douglass consulted with the Lincoln administration and was a constant advocate for black equality. He continued to proclaim his support of black troops until the war’s end in 1865, at which point he could easily have been described as the most famous African American of his time. He worked for full racial equality until his death in Washington, D.C., on February 20, 1895.

Douglass authored several books, including three versions of his autobiography, in addition to numerous editorials and newspaper articles in many of the leading abolitionist papers like The Liberator, the Anti-Slavery Advocate, and other publications. The best known of these works was his first autobiography, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, published in 1845. This narrative is still considered one of the most moving accounts of slave life in the American South.