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Frederick Douglass Research Paper

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Frederick Douglass, originally named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into an enslaved family in Tuckahoe Maryland. His mother Harriet Bailey was also a slave. Frederick self-taught himself since he could not go to school (Douglass, Frederick) . When he escaped slavery he had to change his name from Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to Frederick Douglass. Frederick was always a man of rights. Frederick Douglass was the most important man to start the abolitionist movement, he was a self-taught slave and he also fought for colored troops in the union army while struggling with his hard life as an adult and child.
Frederick did everything in his power to get everyone to understand and abolish slavery like he did himself. He performed …show more content…

He was a slave at birth he was born in either 1818 or 1817, but no one really knows for sure, because none of the slaves have any idea when exactly they were born. The slave’s masters prefer them not to know as it creates less importance and that is what they desire. When Frederick was born in 1800s there were about 1.5 million slaves, not only just adults whom are men but young men and women and even children (Douglass & McCurdy, 1994). Frederick did not know much about his family, because Frederick and Harriet Bailey (Frederick's mother) were separated when he was just a little baby, so he never really got the chance to find out anything about his father, but only that he was a white man. Rumor said that his master was his father but he would have not been able to know. When Frederick was just about the age of 16 he arrived in Baltimore on a Sunday morning. Mr. and Mrs. Auld were waiting for Frederick at the door with little Thomas he was ordered to take care of little Thomas. In the meeting with Sophia Auld and Frederick he got this new feeling when he saw Sophia. The sight of Sophia’s face made him joyful. When Frederick was sent to Baltimore he overheard Sophia reading the bible and he wanted to learn how to read and write and he finally got the courage to ask her if she could teach him and she agreed. During the successful process she was very pleased. But Mrs. Auld was secretly was teaching Frederick has A B Cs and learning how to read and write words of three and four letters without Mr. Auld knowing. Just at the point where he was learning how to spell Mr. Auld found out about the lessons and he forbade Mrs. Auld to keep teaching Frederick how to read and write. Mr. Auld kept on telling Mrs. Auld that teaching a slave to read and write is dangerous and if they know how to read and write they are worthless. Around the age of twenty Frederick defeated slavery and surmounted most of his fears

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