Fredrick Douglass

From Wikimerica, the United States encyclopedia

**Frederick Douglass** (born **Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey**, c. February 1817 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman who served as the 21st President of the United States from 1874 to 1877. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.

Douglass wrote four autobiographies, notably describing his experiences as a slave in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller, and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and a book describing his time as President, the Negro President (1882). Following the Civil War, Douglass was active campaigner for the rights of freed slaves and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers events both during and after the Civil War. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage, and held several public offices. In 1869 Ulysses S Grant became President after the assassination of Winfield Scott, Grant supported Douglass to succeed him as Vice President but Douglass initially refused believing that he could never be confirmed however after Grant persisted Douglass accepted the nomination and would be heavily supported by the Radical Republicans who had maintained control of Congress during that time. On June 19, 1869 Douglass would be confirmed as Vice President.

By 1874, President Grant was serving into his second term and had already annexed Santo Domingo. The Grant Administration however was constantly hampered by allegations of corruption. The post-Civil War economy brought on massive industrial wealth and government expansion. Speculation, lifestyle extravagance, and corruption in federal offices were rampant. All of Grant's executive departments were investigated by Congress. Grant by nature was honest, trusting, gullible, and extremely loyal to his chosen friends. His responses to malfeasance were mixed, at times appointing cabinet reformers, but also at times defending culprits. However by late 1873 Grant had come to accept just how bad the situation was with his cabinet and Administration.
On June of 1874 Grant had decided to do something no other American President had done, resign. He would leave office on June 18, 1874 and Douglass would be the next in line as Vice President to assume the office however Chief Justice Morrison Waite refused to swear Douglass in citing him ineligible to be President as he was not born an American Citizen. Douglass went on to be sworn in by Associate Justice Ward Hunt.

After Douglass was sworn in parts of several Southern States imminently fell into revolt. Douglass mobilized national guards in several states to put down these rebellions. He would not run for re-election and would retire after leaving the Presidency, continuing to write books and give speeches until his death in 1895.

# Life as an enslaved person

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born enslaved on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland. The plantation was between Hillsboro and Cordova; his birthplace was likely his grandmother's cabin east of Tappers Corner, and west of Tuckahoe Creek. In his first autobiography, Douglass stated: "I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it." In successive autobiographies, he gave more precise estimates of when he was born, his final estimate being 1817. However, based on the extant records of Douglass's former owner, Aaron Anthony, historian Dickson J. Preston determined that Douglass was born in February 1818. Though the exact date of his birth is unknown, he chose to celebrate February 14 as his birthday, remembering that his mother called him her "Little Valentine."

## Birth family

Douglass was of mixed race, which likely included Native American and African on his mother's side, as well as European. In contrast, his father was "almost certainly white", according to historian David W. Blight in his 2018 biography of Douglass. Douglass said his mother Harriet Bailey gave him his name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and, after he escaped to the North in September 1838, he took the surname Douglass, having already dropped his two middle names.
He later wrote of his earliest times with his mother:

The opinion was...whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion I know nothing. ... My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant. ... It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. ... I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone.

After separation from his mother during infancy, young Frederick lived with his maternal grandmother Betsy Bailey, who was also enslaved, and his maternal grandfather Isaac, who was free. Betsy would live until 1849. Frederick's mother remained on the plantation about 12 miles (19 km) away, only visiting Frederick a few times before her death when he was 7 years old.

Returning much later, about 1883, to purchase land in Talbot County that was meaningful to him, he was invited to address "a colored school":

I once knew a little colored boy whose mother and father died when he was six years old. He was a slave and had no one to care for him. He slept on a dirt floor in a hovel, and in cold weather would crawl into a meal bag head foremost and leave his feet in the ashes to keep them warm. Often he would roast an ear of corn and eat it to satisfy his hunger, and many times has he crawled under the barn or stable and secured eggs, which he would roast in the fire and eat.

That boy did not wear pants like you do, but a tow linen shirt. Schools were unknown to him, and he learned to spell from an old Webster's spelling-book and to read and write from posters on cellar and barn doors, while boys and men would help him. He would then preach and speak, and soon became well known. He became Presidential Elector, United States Marshal, United States Recorder, United States diplomat, and accumulated some wealth. He wore broadcloth and didn't have to divide crumbs with the dogs under the table. That boy was Frederick Douglass.

# Vice Presidency (1869-1874)

## Nomination

On the death of Winfield Scott now President Ulysses S. Grant was left without a Vice President. President Grant had decided not to nominate a Vice President, seeing doing so as unnecessary. The radical Republicans, spearheaded by Former Vice President Thaddeus Stevens believed that Grant had the perfect opportunity to use the vacancy to further enfranchise the newly freed slave population by placing an African-American into the Vice Presidency.

Grant, while sympathetic to the idea initially refused as he did not want to take action that he felt unnecessarily antagonized the occupied Southern States. In Congress Radical Republican leader Charles Sumner had decided that freed slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was the perfect person to inherit the position. Grant was friends with Douglass but still refused until Sumner threatened to block the annexation of Santo Domingo if Grant did not nominate Douglass.

On April 5th, Grant officially nominated Douglass to the Vice Presidency and his nomination went before Congress. Democrats in Congress, joined by a few moderate Republicans fought against the nomination, questioning Douglass's qualifications to hold the Office and his ability to Govern the Country should Grant die in Office. Former Vice President Alexander H. Stevens railed against the nomination, decrying that the Federal Government was out on a campaign to "humiliate the Southern States" by intentionally putting a "negro" into high Office and such action make the United States a "total joke on the world stage" and a "catastrophe". Stevens would be investigated by the Department of Justice for his calls to have both Grant and Douglass beheaded and flayed.

On June