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Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas

The Underground Railroad
Frederick Douglass
The Dred Scott Case

Captive Passage
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possible in part by:
National Endowment for the Humanities
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AbolitionOutlawing the Trade: Fighting Illegal Slave Trading
A Growing Hunger for FreedomThe Struggle for Emancipation: Africans Becoming American

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Born a slave in Maryland in 1817, Frederick Douglass ran away to freedom in 1838. He eventually made his way to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he pursued his education while working as a laborer. In New Bedford he began to learn more about the abolitionist movement and to define his life's mission, largely by reading William Lloyd Garrison's paper, Liberator. About his first exposure to the Liberator Douglass wrote: "The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds - its scathing denunciations of slaveholders - its faithful exposures of slavery - and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution - sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I had never felt before!"

Douglass joined in the anti-slavery movement through black abolitionist groups in New Bedford. After making a moving speech in 1841 at the annual meeting of the Anti- Slavery Society in New Bedford, Douglass was invited to become a full-time agent of the Massachusetts Anti Slavery Society. This marked the beginning of his remarkable career as an extraordinary orator, author, editor, and later diplomat and public servant. Frederick Douglass was a life-long crusader for freedom, justice, and equal rights for African Americans.


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The Dred Scott Case
 
 

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