Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–1895) was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, taught himself to read in Baltimore and escaped to the North in 1838. Within a few years he was the most powerful speaker of the abolitionist movement, and his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), written to prove that a former slave could have given his speeches, became the best known of all slave narratives; he expanded it twice in later life. He edited the newspaper The North Star, advised Lincoln, recruited Black soldiers during the Civil War and served as minister to Haiti. He was the most photographed American of the nineteenth century.