The Tale of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a former slave who would later become one of the most well-known members of the Abolitionist Movement during the mid-19th century. He was born into slavery in February of 1818 and worked for many plantations for many different owners throughout his early life. What was most surprising about Douglass is that he learned how to read and write at the age of 12 with the help of a slave owner's wife and the help of other white children in the streets. After two failed attempts to escape from slavery, Frederick Douglass eventually managed to escape from slavery in 1838 first by heading to New York and then to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where there was a free black community living there. After living abroad in Britain and Ireland for two years, he managed to obtain his legal freedom and returned to the United States in 1847 as a free man. He would later become a member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, speaking at many anti-slave lectures throughout the United States and would create an abolitionist newspaper known as The North Star. Although he faced many dangers throughout his later life as an abolitionist, such as insults and violent attacks by people in the south, Frederick Douglass never gave up in his mission to end the horrible institution of slavery in the United States, and would later help President Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. government come up with ways to end slavery after the end of the Civil War in the later years in his life.