Fredrick Douglas Institution of Slavery and Abolition Movement Term Paper

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Religion and Slavery

Sometime around the year 1818, in Talbot county, Maryland, a child was born to a slave woman named Harriet Bailey. This child, named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was a slave the moment he was born, but through sheer determination, would die a free man. In between his birth and death, Frederick, who later changed his name to Frederick Douglass, suffered under the yoke of slavery, escaped to freedom, and became a great writer, orator, and leader of the abolitionist movement. During his life he wrote three autobiographies, the first, entitled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, is a graphic description of his early life as a slave, and his struggle to be free. (Douglass) While Frederick Douglass was not an overly religious man, religion played an important part in his story. Religion brought him comfort and kindness, it helped him to read, but it also was twisted to justify the most heinous acts of cruelty and murder.

Frederick Bailey, prior to his becoming Douglass, lived the first part of his life as a slave in the South during the early part of the 19th century. He did not even know the exact date of his birth as his mother had been separated from him as an infant. She was sold to another plantation and he never actually met her, and as he had also never met his father, he also had no idea as to his identity. Instead he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Betty Bailey, until he was seven, when he was sent to Baltimore. He remained there, under the ownership of several masters, until 1833 when he was sent to work for a notorious "slave-breaker," During his time in Baltimore, he had, under the tutelage of a caring white woman, learned to read, which became both the source of his current sufferings and the means of his later escape.

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After several failed attempts, Frederick Bailey finally succeeded in 1838 to make his way to New York and an abolitionist safe house.

Frederick Bailey labored for many years both to support himself, and help support the abolitionist movement. He became an eloquent orator and writer, as well as statesman and spokesman for the abolitionist cause. His first autobiography, called "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," was first published in 1845, was an immediate bestseller, and with in three years more than 11,000 copies had been printed. While skeptics promoted the idea that a former slave could not have written such an eloquent piece of work, his subsequent works proved beyond a doubt that this former slave was indeed a literary and intellectual genius.

After changing his name to Frederick Douglass, and becoming famous as an orator, writer, statesman, and spokesman, continuing his work in the abolitionist movement. During this time Douglass was not an irreligious man, but he was not an overly religious man either. He attended churches, mingled with pastors, reverends, and other religious individuals, but unlike Martin Luther King Jr. A hundred years later, Douglass was not a minister or a church leader of any kind. However, while he may not have been a religious man, religion has played an important part in Douglass' story.

During his life as a slave, Douglass experienced cruelty and violence much earlier than he experienced kindness usually associated with religion. His first master, whom he referred to as "Captain Anthony" was "a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster." (Douglass, Chapter 1) Douglass recounted how his aunt would be whipped for this white….....

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