Frederick Douglass, who passed away on 20 February
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 slaveholders' arguments
that slaves 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 a slave. It was in response to this disbelief that
Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
