Who Was Frederick Douglass?

Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818 Frederick Douglass was determined to gain freedom--and once he realized that knowledge was power he secretly learned to read and write to give himself an advantage. After escaping to the North in 1838 as a free man he gave powerful speeches about his experience as a slave. He was so impressive that he became a friend of President Abraham Lincoln as well as one of the most famous abolitionists of the nineteenth century.