Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey c.?February 1817 or 1818– February 20 1895) 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 becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to enslavers' arguments that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.