Frederick Douglass Romanticism

1546 Words7 Pages

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in 1818 a runaway slave, a supporter of women 's rights, and probably the most prominent abolitionist and human rights leader of the nineteenth century. Douglass favored the use of political tactics to work for abolition. During the Civil War, he offer a suggestion to President Lincoln to let former slaves fight for the North, and helped organize two black regiments in Massachusetts. Douglass was committed to make the war a direct confrontation with slavery. A literate runaway slave, Douglass began his speaking career in 1841, when he delivered some extemporaneous remarks on his experiences under slavery at a Massachusetts antislavery convention. Abolitionist activists recognized his talent and made …show more content…

In 1845, douglass wrote his autobiography—Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself— as a response to critics who argued that such a well-spoken man could never have been a …show more content…

Douglass focused on the true aspects of his life and showing what his life was really about. Douglass also contributed to this period while he did show some qualities in romanticism. He never softened the blow of his harsh words for the unsuspecting reader. Douglass spoke his mind and did not care who he offended by it, and this is how Frederick Douglass contributed to the Realism period in Literature. "The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slave the double relation of master and father” (947). “Douglass ' Narrative begins with a few facts about his birth and his parentage. Douglass father is a slave owner and his mother is a slave named Harriet Bailey. When Douglass