Douglass, FREDERICK

Douglass, FREDERICK, an American orator, was born at Tuckahoe, near Easton, Maryland, in 1817, his father being a white man, his mother a negro slave. Permitted to work in a shipyard in Baltimore, he in 1838 escaped to New York, and thence to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where his negro employer, who had just read Scott's Lady of the Lake, induced him to substitute Douglass for the name of Bailey, conferred on him by his mother. In 1841 he attended an Anti-slavery Convention at Nantucket, and spoke so eloquently on the subject of slavery that he was employed as agent of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society, and lectured for four years with great success. In 1845 he commenced a lecturing tour in Great Britain, where a contribution of £150 was made to buy his freedom. Returning to America, he established in 1847 Frederick Douglass's Paper, a weekly abolition newspaper, at Rochester, New York. He was appointed assistant-secretary to the Santo Domingo Commission (1871), a presidential elector (1872), United States marshal for the District of Columbia (1876-81), and recorder of deeds there (1881-86), and U.S. minister to Hayti (1889). He died in February 1895. He published several works, including his Life and Times (1881).