Frederick Douglass was an influential anti-slavery author and orator who used his own experiences in the chains of slavery to fuel a movement while America was still in the throes of slavery with his well-known autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The book became a transatlantic best-seller and was translated into many languages for many people all over the world to learn about the struggles of being an American slave - as stated by a literary critic of the time, Margaret Fuller: "we have never read [a narrative] more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine feeling. It is an excellent piece of writing, and on that score to be prized as a specimen of the powers of the Black Race, which Prejudice persists in disputing."

     Born around February 1818 on a plantation in Tuckahoe, Maryland, Douglass was separated as an infant from his slave mother and lived with his grandmother until he was eight years old. In the first few chapters of his autobiography, he describes many unspeakable acts of horror he witnessed in his youth upon the slaves of his plantation - this sets the tone for his dreary life story. He was then sent to be a servant for the family of Hugh Auld, an owner whose wife he at first describes in his autobiography as "a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman." This tender-hearted woman was the one who began to teach Douglass how to read and write, but as he wrote soon after, "Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities" - she also had "not only ceased to instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one else" due to the command of her husband. However, she had already sparked a burning desire to become literate inside of Douglass, and nothing would stop him from doing so. As he began to read and write, he learned much about the evils of slavery through the literature of the time. He also found out about the abolitionist, or anti-slavery, movement, and became determined to join it some day.

     However, Douglass soon returned to the plantations where he again found the horrors that he witnessed as a child, however from the perspective of the victims this time. He eventually ended up fighting his overseer, Edward Covey, and is sent to a milder owner. Here, he began to educate his fellow slaves to read and write at a Sabbath school. His will to escape and join the abolitionists was renewed - he hatched a plan to escape his chains, but it ultimately failed and he was sent back to Baltimore to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld again. In Baltimore, he finally found a way to escape and made it to New York around the age of 20, where he gave himself the name of Douglass and married Anna Murray, who he met in Baltimore, and moved with to Massachusetts together. Here, his abolitionist efforts began in the form of the words he painstakingly worked to learn in secret over all his years in slavery - first through powerful speeches, next through the publication of his autobiography in 1845.

​