young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he
learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In
1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married
Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon
thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he
addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in
Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately
employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous
persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he wrote NARRATIVE OF
THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS. During the Civil War he assisted in the
recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments
and consistently argued for the emancipation of slaves. After the war he
was active in securing and protecting the rights of the freemen. In his
later years, at different times, he was secretary of the Santo Domingo
Commission, marshall and recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia,
and United States Minister to Haiti. His other autobiographical works
are MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM and LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
published in 1855 and 1881 respectively. He died in 1895.



CHAPTER I


I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from
Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my
age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the
larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of
theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep
their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave