9781422274217

Overview of Plantation Slavery Frederick Douglass was about twenty years old when he fled successfully to New York City and then Massachusetts, eluding slavery. Five years earlier, his plot to escape with several other slaves had been discovered and foiled. Douglass had changed his last name from Bailey to better hide from those who might be looking for him. The former slave would go on to become one of the most prominent speakers for abolition in the United States, and he had the experience to back him up. Earlier in his life, Douglass had been separated from his mother, who was also a slave. His father had been a white man whom Douglass never met. For eight years, Douglass lived with his grandmother on a Maryland plantation. At that point, he was sold to a home in Baltimore. There, his mistress taught him how to read in spite of state laws prohibiting such education. When Douglass was sixteen, his master died. The teenage slave was sent back to the fields in Maryland. It was in 1833 that Douglass made his first attempt to escape slavery, but it would be five more years before he was successful. Soon, Douglass was called to speaking engagements to discuss his anti-slavery stance, establishing himself as a prominent figure in the abolitionist movement. By this point, he had endured more than anyone’s fair share of pain, but he would prove an enduring force in the fight against slavery in America.

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