IP-4050

 Frederick Douglass - 14 February 1818 - 20 February 1895

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive anti-slavery writings. In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.