Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

With freer strictures on slaves in Maryland in the period before the Civil War, writer, orator, advocate and statesman Frederick Douglass was able to become literate and establish contacts with educated free blacks in the area. He would use this later on in life when he escaped north, eventually marrying and settling in Massachusetts, where he became active in the abolition movement. In his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass defied expectations by producing a work of eloquent magnitude, an instant bestseller so beautifully rendered that many refused to believe a black man had written it.