Frederick Douglass was one of the most important leaders not only of the 19th-century anti-slavery movement but of human rights in general during his time. Both his oratorical and his literary skills - as well as his personal convictions - pushed him into the center of the anti-slavery movement, one of the most important elements of American public life during the 19th century. And yet, despite the eloquence and force of his story, what his words tell us about the nature of slavery in the United States is a limited one, for he could speak only from his experiences as a black man - albeit one who did not ignore the importance of gender in shaping experience. This paper examines the role that he played in helping to bring about the end of slavery in the United States and his work during Reconstruction in the cause of both the rights of freed slaves and for women's rights.
Douglass was of mixed-race heritage - although within the racial politics of the mid-nineteenth century the fact that his mother was black and a slave defined his racial identity in a way that the fact that his father was white and free did not. His own experiences as a child and as a young man certainly influenced his later beliefs and writings, making him aware not only of the injustices that all slaves had faced but of the continuing injustices that all women faced in a country that still refused to give to them the franchise.
As was true of many slaves, Douglass never knew his father. More unusual (although far from rare for slave children), he also never knew his mother: He was separated from her when he was still an infant and was raised by his grandmother, who worked as a slave on a plantation in Maryland plantation. When Douglass was eight, he was sent to Baltimore by his owner to serve as a house servant to the Auld family (Archer 14-17).
His mistress defied state law by teaching Douglass to boy to read; however, when her husband discovered what she wa...