Narrative of an American Slave

Frederick Douglass was trapped in the clutches of the malicious system of slavery. Frederick's introduction to bondage came in 1824, when he was brought to the nearby wheat plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. Eventually, Frederick secretly learned to read and write. Later he escaped slavery and became a prominent antislavery lecturer. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, is an emotional journey into the atrocious system of slavery, and the inspirational triumph against insurmountable odds.

Frederick Douglass is the most prominent abolitionist, civil rights activist and reform journalist in the 19th Century. He was born in February 1817 or 1818 through February 1895, as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton, Maryland. Douglass was the son of Harriett Bailey, a slave, but did not know the identity of his paternal father, though it may have been his former master, this is uncorroborated. After an unsuccessful attempt to buy his freedom, Frederick escaped from slavery in September 1838. Dressed as a sailor and traveled by train and steamboat to New York. There he married Anna Murray, a free black domestic servant from Baltimore who had encouraged his escape. They soon settled in the seaport of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Frederick found employment as a caulker and outfitter for whaling ships, and began a family. At the urging of a local black abolitionist, he adopted the surname Douglass to disguise his background and confuse slave catchers.Soon after arriving in New Bedford, Frederick Douglass was drawn to the emerging antislavery movement. His remarks at an August 1841 convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on Nantucket Island brought him to the attention of Garrison and other leading white abolitionists. Society officials, impressed by Douglass's eloquence and imposing presence, hired him as a lecturing agent. Over the next two years, he made hundreds of speeches for the society. As he matured as an antislavery lecturer, his keen mind even led some to question whether he had ever been a slave. To counter doubts about his life experience, Douglass wrote an autobiography providing full details of his life that he had withheld. Douglass sat down in the winter of 1844-1845 and wrote the story of his life. The result was the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself (1845).