 Frederick Douglass was born into slavery on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1818, and was given the name Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey (Baly), after his mother Harriet Bailey. During
the course of his remarkable life he escaped from slavery, became
internationally renowned for his eloquence in the cause of liberty, and
went on to serve the national government in several official capacities.
Through his work he came into contact with many of the leaders of his
times. His early work in the cause of freedom brought him into contact
with a wide array of abolitionists and social reformers, including William Lloyd Garrison,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Brown, Gerrit Smith
and many others. As a major Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad he
directly helped hundreds on their way to freedom through his adopted home
city of Rochester, NY.
Renowned for his eloquence, he lectured throughout the US and England
on the brutality and immorality of slavery. As a publisher, his North
Star and Frederick Douglass' Paper brought news of the
anti-slavery movement to thousands. Forced to leave the country to avoid
arrest after John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, he returned to become a
staunch advocate of the Union cause. He helped recruit African American
troops for the Union Army, and his personal relationship with Lincoln
helped persuade the President to make Emancipation a cause of the Civil War. Two of
Douglass' sons served in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment,
which was made up entirely of African American volunteers. The storming of
Fort Wagner by this regiment was dramatically portrayed in the film
Glory! A painting of this event hangs in the front hall at Cedar
Hill.
All of Douglass' children were born of his first marriage, to Anna
Murray. He met Murray, a free African American, in Baltimore while he was
still held in slavery. They were married soon after his escape to freedom.
After the death of his first wife, Douglass married his former secretary,
Helen Pitts, of Rochester, New York. Douglass dismissed the controversy
over his marriage to a white woman, saying that in his first marriage he
had honored his mother's race, and in his second marriage, his father's.
In 1872, Douglass moved to Washington, D.C. where he initially served
as publisher of the New National Era, intended to carry forward the work
of elevating the position of African Americans in the post-Emancipation
period. This enterprise was discontinued when the promised financial
backing failed to materialize. In this period Douglass also served briefly
as President of the Freedmen's National Bank, and subsequently in various
national service positions, including U.S. Marshal for the District of
Columbia, and diplomatic positions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Photo and text taken from the website of the Frederick Douglass National Historic
Site.
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