Frederick Douglass: Life and Legacy
Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Bailey in Maryland around 1817-1818. His mother was an enslaved woman, and his father was believed to be a white man, possibly his mother’s enslaver. Family separation was a devastating aspect of slavery—Douglass saw little of his mother, who lived on a plantation twelve miles away, and she died when he was only seven. Historian Walter Johnson notes that of the two-thirds of a million interstate slave sales before the Civil War, twenty-five percent destroyed first marriages and fifty percent broke up nuclear families, often separating children under thirteen from their parents.
Douglass’s path to literacy began when Sophia Auld, the wife of one of his enslavers, taught him the alphabet and basic words. However, her husband Hugh quickly stopped these lessons, declaring that literacy would make Frederick “unfit to be a slave.” Despite this prohibition, Douglass continued learning to read and later conducted secret meetings to teach other enslaved people literacy.
A pivotal moment in Douglass’s life occurred during his time with Edward Covey, a notorious “slave-breaker” known for his brutal methods. In 1833, after months of severe beatings, Douglass collapsed from heat exhaustion while working. When Covey beat him until blood streamed from his head, Douglass vowed this would never happen again. The next time Covey attempted to whip him, Douglass fought back so fiercely that Covey never touched him again. Douglass later wrote that this confrontation was “the turning point in my career as a slave” that “rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom” and “revived within me a sense of my own manhood.”
On September 15, 1838, Douglass married Anna Murray, a free Black woman who played a crucial role in his escape to freedom. Anna provided financial support and emotional strength, though her contributions are often overlooked in historical accounts. Using borrowed papers and a sailor’s uniform as disguise, Douglass made a harrowing journey from Baltimore to New York City. Upon arriving, he wrote, “A new world had opened upon me… I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life.”
In Massachusetts, Frederick and Anna adopted the surname Douglass, and Frederick became a prominent abolitionist orator. His powerful speeches caught the attention of white abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, and he began working on Garrison’s publication, The Liberator. In 1845, Douglass published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which was so eloquent that some questioned whether a formerly enslaved person could have written it.
After two years in Europe, Douglass returned in 1847 to establish The North Star newspaper with Martin Delany. The paper’s motto reflected Douglass’s broader activism: “Right is of no Sex – Truth is of no Color – God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren.”
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 intensified the crisis facing Black Americans. This law, part of the Compromise of 1850, required citizens to aid in capturing runaway slaves and imposed severe penalties for interference. When the Dred Scott decision further threatened Black freedom, Douglass responded defiantly: “My answer is, and no thanks to the slaveholding wing of the Supreme Court, my hopes were never brighter than now.”
During the Civil War, Douglass actively lobbied President Lincoln to prioritize Black freedom and allow Black men to serve in the Union army. He believed military service would demonstrate Black patriotism and worthiness for citizenship, even recruiting his own sons Lewis and Charles to fight. Douglass’s advocacy influenced Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.
After the war, Douglass continued his activism through writing and speaking while serving in various political appointments, including President of the Freedman’s Savings Bank, U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia, and minister to Haiti. Some historians argue that Douglass should be considered a founding father for his role in helping America confront its failure to live up to its founding promises.
Abraham Lincoln: From Illinois Lawyer to National Leader
Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, the son of a farmer who could barely write his name. Despite humble origins, Lincoln became a legislator at twenty-four and a successful attorney in Springfield, Illinois. After a difficult courtship, he married Mary Todd, daughter of a slaveholding banker. For Lincoln, the Declaration of Independence was literal truth—all men possessed the right to rise according to their abilities, as he himself had done.
While Lincoln detested slavery, he initially advocated for its restriction rather than immediate abolition. By mid-century, the nation faced deep divisions over slavery’s expansion. Southerners feared Northern prohibition of slavery, while Northerners worried about slavery spreading westward. Each new state’s admission threatened the delicate balance of power in Congress.
Several events accelerated the national crisis. In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin powerfully depicted slavery’s cruelty, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide within a year and moving readers including Queen Victoria to tears. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed territorial settlers to decide slavery’s fate for themselves, leading to violent conflict in “Bleeding Kansas” where 200 men died in three months and violence continued for a decade.
The 1857 Dred Scott decision further inflamed tensions when the Supreme Court refused to free an enslaved man despite his years on free soil. Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that Black people had “no rights a white man was bound to respect.” Lincoln responded to this moral crisis by warning: “As a nation we began by declaring that all men are created equal. We now practically read it all men are created equal except Negroes. Soon it will read all men are created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.”
Violence even reached the Senate floor when Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina brutally beat abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner with a cane. Southern sympathizers sent Brooks replacement canes, while members of Congress began carrying weapons into the chamber. Meanwhile, President James Buchanan took no action to address the escalating crisis.
Lincoln articulated his famous position in his “House Divided” speech: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the union to be dissolved… but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” This speech crystallized the fundamental incompatibility between freedom and slavery within a single nation and predicted the coming conflict that would determine America’s future.