Frederick Douglass Biography Essay

Frederick Douglass was the most important African American abolitionist in pre-Civil War America and was the first known African American leader in U.S. History. He was born in February 1817 in Maryland. No one knows his exact date of birth. His mother was a slave named Harriet Bailey and was separated from him when he was young. His full name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. He was a slave and didn’t have much of a childhood; he was a slave to the owner named Captain Aaron Anthony. Bailey was owned in the south and they treated their slaves badly but that changed when Anthony let him live with another slave owner in Baltimore, Maryland named Hugh Auld. Mrs. Auld taught him to read and write but Hugh had stopped her. He continued to

A mob broke up one of the schools and he was known as a “slave breaker” which was a group for slave owners trying to control their behavior of being rebellious. But he didn’t listen and continued to resist being a slave. He had an escape plan but it failed and he was sent back to Thomas Auld and imprisoned. Bailey was sent back and forth to Auld then again to Baltimore for many reasons. Once he was sent back to Baltimore he was hired out to a local shipyard to learn the trade of caulker. He was a part of a group that was a society of free black caulkers, he continued to try to free himself but failed once again. He met a free African American woman named Anna Murray in 1837. Frederick Bailey finally escaped from slavery in September 1838, and his first move was to go to New York City. He asked Anna Murray to join him and they got married and had 5 kids together. He found a job as a caulker for whaling ships in New Bedford, Massachusetts, but had to get rid of his last name “Bailey” because he did not want to risk getting caught by the slave catchers and took the name Frederick Douglass. In Massachusetts he started to read a book the Liberator by William Garrison and joined anti-slavery meetings that were held in African American churches, while at these meetings he usually spoke of his past