FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
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 Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Fred- |
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| erick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in |
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| Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the |
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| exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 |
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| or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, |
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| to be a house servant, where he learned to read and |
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| write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In |
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| 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York |
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| City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored |
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| woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon there- |
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| after he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. |
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| In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massa- |
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| chusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so |
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| greatly impressed the group that they immediately |
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| employed him as an agent. He was such an impres- |
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| sive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had |
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| ever been a slave, so he wrote NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE |
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| OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. During the Civil War he as- |
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| sisted in the recruiting of colored men for the 54th |
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| and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and consistently |
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| argued for the emancipation of slaves. After the war |
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| he was active in securing and protecting the rights |
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| of the freemen. In his later years, at different times, |
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| he was secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, |
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| marshall and recorder of deeds of the District of |
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| Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti. His |
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| other autobiographical works are MY BONDAGE AND |
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| MY FREEDOM and LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK |
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| DOUGLASS, published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. |
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| He died in 1895. |
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