Frederick Douglass: Abolitionist, Author, Editor, Orator, Publisher, & Statesman
Image courtesy of Library of Congress - Manuscript Division
Frederick Douglass began his speaking career as an abolitionist when he was hired by the Massachusetts Antislavery Society to give lectures in 1841. He was an eloquent speaker who delivered well thought out and forceful speeches. As a result, he was able to inspire those who heard him. Some Harvard students who had heard him speak were so impressed that they persuaded him to write his autobiography. To counter skeptics who doubted that such an articulate spokesman could ever have been a slave, Douglass felt compelled to do so and published The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. His account became a classic in American literature, as well as a primary source about slavery. Ten years later an enlarged autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, appeared. His third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, was published in 1881 and enlarged in 1892.
Fearful that he would draw the attention of his former owner, whose name and location he had given in his book, Douglass left on a two-year speaking tour of Great Britain and Ireland to avoid recapture. Abroad, Douglass helped to win many new friends for the abolition movement and to cement the bonds of humanitarian reform between the continents.
Douglass returned to the U.S. as a free man in 1847, thanks to his British friends who bought his freedom. Upon his return, he launched his publishing career which spanned nearly three decades. In 1851, he merged his first paper, the North Star, with another journal, The Liberty Party Paper, and formed Frederick Douglass’ Paper (FDP). In January 1859, in addition to the FDP, he began to publish another journal, Douglass’ Monthly (which had been originally produced as a supplement to FDP). He stopped publishing Douglass’ Monthly during the Civil War, but in 1870 he purchased 50% interest in the Washington, D.C. paper, the New Era. In September of that year, its first issue was published. Source: Encyclopaedia of World Biography
Photo: courtesy of Library of Congress - Manuscript Division
After his death, Douglass' Washington, D.C. home and personal papers were preserved by the tireless efforts of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Association, a group composed almost entirely of African-American women. When "Cedar Hill" was turned over as a historic site to the United States National Park Service, Department of the Interior, The Park Service asked the Library of Congress to house the papers that were found in Douglass' home. Chronicled as The Frederick Douglass Papers, the Library of Congress's Manuscript Division, contains approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images) relating to Douglass' life as an escaped slave, abolitionist, editor, orator, and public servant. The bulk of the material is from 1862 to 1895 and consists of correspondence, speeches and articles by Douglass and his contemporaries, a draft of his autobiography, financial and legal papers, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous items. These papers reveal Douglass' interest in diverse subjects such as politics, emancipation, racial prejudice, women's suffrage, and prison reform. Source: Library of Congress