Frederick Douglass
Lexie Montez
Nothing is harder than living without family, in a home filled with strangers who these slaves will now become a part of. Hardly seeing the women who gave birth to them, and only knowing these people who will only beat these slaves for their hard work. At the age of eight Frederick Douglass lived with his owners’ relatives, in Baltimore, Maryland, learning the first few letters of the alphabet, shortly after being torn from this so called family and now, the love created from the knowledge given to him, to work for them in plantation.
In September 3, 1838, after a first escape plan failed, Frederick Douglass decided he would disguised himself as a sailor, using one of friend’s passport, and travel out to become a free man. After landing in New York, Douglass was now a free man he had hoped to become for as long as anyone can imagine. Although Douglass was now a free man he had left behind his people in pain of capture. Douglass thought of his people who were possibly bleeding in pain from the beating they took so many times before, but went on speaking to people of these horrible ways of living they were all going through, all under a different name to prevent chances of being caught again. Because at the age of eight he was taught the alphabet and became in love with the language, after speaking about the way he was living before his escape, people didn’t even believe he was captured before because of how educated he had sounded.
One abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, heard of Douglass and asked to join the Anti-Slavery Society, and later on touring with this group and speaking again of the struggles he had gone through. Since people didn’t believe he had been captured because of how educated he sounded to prove them wrong he wrote an autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), but because he used his birth name he was now at danger of becoming captured again, and had to take off and went off to England, Scotland and Ireland.
Even after he took off he had still continued to speak of his life as a slave. After a few years British supporters of Anti-Slavery were so impressed with how he spoke and how he had turned out, they purchased his freedom and allowed him to be declared a free man without any worry of being recaptured. Soon after his affirm he had traveled back to the United States, bought a printing press and started a newspaper. Although Douglass’ life as a slave was more successful than others, slaves like Nat Turner who was hung for hiding for six weeks. Not every slave is able to escape and not every slave is treated the same.