Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland, and escaped to the North in 1838. He became a leading speaker for William Lloyd Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society and published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, in 1845. He later broke with Garrison, founded the newspaper The North Star and argued that the Constitution could be read as an antislavery document. During the Civil War he recruited Black soldiers and met President Lincoln. Afterward he held federal posts, including U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia and minister to Haiti.

Douglass is widely regarded as one of the most important American reformers of the 19th century. Admirers across the political spectrum cite him: liberals and progressives for his advocacy of racial equality, voting rights and women's suffrage, and conservatives and libertarians for his emphasis on self-reliance, property, constitutionalism and self-made achievement. His autobiographies remain standard texts on slavery. In his own time he faced intense hostility from defenders of slavery. He also had critics among allies: Garrisonians objected when he embraced political action and an antislavery reading of the Constitution, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony broke with him when he supported the Fifteenth Amendment, which enfranchised Black men but not women. Some later Black nationalist writers questioned his firm integrationism and opposition to emigration schemes. Scholars continue to debate how his views on assimilation and national identity apply today.