Our national history is a saga of freedom and the fight for freedom that the people of the United States have undertaken. Great freedom fighters have included George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson but the fight for freedom and equality for all did not end in 1783. It continued in many different ways. One particular freedom fighter who fought valiantly for the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the “inalienable rights” of all men was Frederick Douglass.
Douglass was born in 1818, into slavery in Maryland. He tried to escape several times, unsuccessfully. At last his opportunity came in 1838 when he boarded a train bound for New York dressed in a sailor’s uniform that had been given him by a free black woman named Anna Murray, his future wife. Upon arriving safely in New York, Douglass described the feeling of having a “whole new world open up to him”.
Frederick and Anna settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts and in 1841 Frederick met white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison encouraged Douglass to speak at abolitionist meetings and Douglass did. He spoke on the Hundred Conventions tour and was even attacked by a mob in Pendleton, Indiana. His autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” was a bestseller and a monumental work in the abolitionist movement. Douglass also supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s campaign for women’s rights but Stanton and Douglass split when suffrage was granted to African-American men but the women’s movement failed to gain this suffrage. Stanton supported a “universal suffrage” and did not support a separate law to allow only black men to vote. This caused a falling-out between Stanton and Douglass.
Douglass continued to campaign for suffrage for freemen after the Civil War and until his death, worked to advance the rights and privileges of African-Americans. He died in 1895. The following are quotes by Frederick Douglass:
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
“One and God make a majority.”
“The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous.”
“A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.”
Quotes found on brainyquote.com