aided by his mistress but later by sneaking into the
Auld’s library and reading whatever he could find,
including the Baltimore American, The Columbian
Orator, and the Bible. He would also work on his
penmanship in the margins of Tommy’s discarded
copybooks and trick white boys on the street into
writing or reading contests to aid in his learning.
As his knowledge and independence grew,
Douglass was sent back to Thomas Auld in St.
Michael’s, Maryland, where, gaining a reputa-
tion as a problem slave, he was sent to live with
Edward Covey, who was paid to break rebellious
slaves. After a particularly vicious beating, Doug-
lass was able to stand up to Covey, in one instance
beating the slave breaker to such an extent that his
victory over Covey was a major turning point of
self-awareness and empowerment.
After his involvement in an escape plan with
five other slaves, Douglass was sent back to Bal-
timore, where he made his escape. In September
1838, with the help of a freedwoman, Anna Mur-
ray, who would later become his wife, he disguised
himself as a sailor and boarded a train to New
York. He and Anna were married in New York
and then, with help from an Underground Rail-
road agent, they moved farther north to their new
home in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He trav-
eled under the name Frederick Johnson, but upon
arriving in New Bedford he found that Johnson
was far too common a name, so he took the name
Douglass from a character in Sir Walter Scott’s
Lady of the Lake.
In New Bedford Frederick Douglass first sub-
scribed to William Lloyd Garrison’s antislavery Lib-
erator: In the summer of 1841 Douglass attended
an antislavery convention organized by Garrison
in Nantucket, where Douglass was approached by
William C. Coffin, who asked him first to speak
to the convention and, after Douglass’s wildly suc-
cessful speech, to become an agent for the Massa-
chusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
In 1845, Douglass wrote down the story of
his life that he had been recounting in his ora-
tions over the previous four years. The resulting
book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
an American Slave, was a best seller on two conti-
nents and became the most significant writing of
his entire career. His narrative is remarkable for its
content, its stylistic sophistication, and its exten-
sive detail and documentation (naming specific
people, places, and events), and it serves as both a
life story and a historical document of the times.
Clearly influenced by the wide range of reading
material Douglass found in the homes of his ser-
vitude, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
employs eloquent figurative language, classic rhe-
torical structures, sophisticated sentence structure,
and vivid details to paint the brutal and inhumane
picture of life under slavery. In the wake of such
successful publication, his fear of recapture grew,
and he fled to England, where he spent the next
two years lecturing throughout the British Isles be-
fore British friends arranged through an attorney
to pay Thomas Auld $750 for Frederick Douglass’s
freedom. Thus, he sailed home to America in the
spring of 1847 as a free man.
Upon returning to America, he began his career
as a publisher with his own antislavery newspaper,
the North Star, which, along with other publica-
tions at this time, signaled his independence from
white-controlled antislavery organizations. While
publishing and editing his paper, Douglass also
served as the Rochester, New York, station agent
for the Underground Railroad, helping many
other former slaves to freedom. In 1848, he would
be the only man invited to speak to the Seneca
Falls Women’s Rights Convention; a forward-look-
ing social reformer, Douglass enthusiastically sup-
ported the women’s movement in addition to the
antislavery movement.
The North Star would change its name to Fred-
erick Douglass’ Paper in June 1851 while adhering
to Douglass’s insistence on the highest editorial
standards, but the paper continued to struggle fi-
nancially. In 1858, Douglass established Douglass’
Monthly, an abolitionist magazine primarily aimed
at the British audience, in hopes of raising finan-
cial support for the cause.
Throughout the 1850s, Douglass was at the
center of the abolitionist cause, working with such
notables as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Beecher
Stowe. By 1855 he had revised and republished his
autobiography as My Bondage and My Freedom,
inserting into this second version more of his ownDouglass, Frederick 145