For years he appeared on lecture platforms with William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, leading lights of the antislavery movement. Without money, there’s no leisure, without leisure no thought, without thought no progress.'Ĭritics considered Douglass stubborn, arrogant, and overly sensitive to slights, but he earned respect from friends of freedom. Knowledge, wisdom, culture, refinement, manners, are all founded on work and the wealth which work brings. 'Property,' he wrote, 'will produce for us the only condition upon which any people can rise to the dignity of genuine manhood. He supported women’s suffrage, saying 'we hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man.' He urged toleration for persecuted immigrants-'I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity.' Overseas, he joined the great Daniel O’Connell in demanding Irish freedom, and he shared lecture platforms with Richard Cobden and John Bright, speaking out for free trade.ĭouglass believed that private property, competitive enterprise, and self-help are essential for human progress. When it became clear that the Civil War was only a bloody benchmark in the struggle, he spearheaded the protest against Northern prejudice and Southern states that subverted the newly won civil liberties of blacks.ĭouglass embraced the ideal of equal freedom. After he escaped to freedom, he tirelessly addressed antislavery meetings throughout the North and the British Isles for more than two decades. In the antebellum South, it was illegal to teach slaves how to read and write, but Douglass learned anyway, and he secretly educated other slaves. He suffered as his master broke up his family. Frederick Douglass made himself the most compelling witness to the evils of slavery and prejudice.

Diary of frederick douglass