Frederick Douglass Sentence Outline

Hudson Schobel
I. Introduction
a. Attention-Getter: Douglass’s origins would traditionally foretell a grave future,
one of only pain and darkness in light of his brutal reality in slavery. But
Douglass was different, he would not let his beginnings determine the outcome of
his life.
b. Thesis: Frederick Douglass accomplished a great deal in his life, more than any
normal man could dream. Frederick Douglass took the long, hard-fought road
from slave to leader.
c. Context: February 1818: Frederick Douglass was born into slavery on the Eastern
Coast of Maryland.
i. He was raised knowing almost nothing of his family.
ii. His father was a white man, most likely his master, and his mother was a
slave.
iii. Through immense suffering in servervitude, Douglass took hold of the
reigns of his life and brought himself out of slavery.
iv. He did not stop there, Douglass then educated himself, and dedicated his
life to the emancipation of all enslaved peoples who deserve a better life
than the ones into which they were born.
d. Transition: His journey began in the town of Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, in
Talbot county, Maryland.
II. Body
a. Born a slave, Douglass had no knowledge of his birthday, for there were no
records of such, and was consequently unaware of his true age.
i. Douglass was also kept separate from his family, mentioning in his book
that he only knew his mother because he never saw her “more than four or
five times in [his] life; and each of these times was very short in duration,
and at night” (Douglass, 1845, 2).
1. He learned her name was Harriet Bailey, the property of a Mr.
Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from Frederick Douglass’s
home.
2. Unfortunately, his mother died when he was about seven years old.
a. He was not allowed to be present during her illness, death
or burial.
b. In fact Douglass had not heard of her passing until she was
long gone.
3. His father was just as distant.
a. He had heard rumors that he 2 was the son of his master,
Capt. Aaron Anthony, but they were only rumors.
 ii. This was often the case for many slave children, so too was it often for the
master-fathers to sell their slave sons and daughters to avoid troubles at
home with their lawful family.
1. This was not the case of Frederick Douglass however, as he was
raised and worked on the farm where he was born.
2. Instead of his mother, who had been sent away from her son,
Douglass was brought up by his maternal-grandmother, who was
tasked with raising young enslaved children.
a. By the age of five or six, Douglass was sent to work at the
home plantation of his master’s boss, Colonel Edward
Lloyd.
3. In his book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he
describes horrendous conditions, where slaves had to fight
amongst themselves for food, water, clothing, and shelter.
a. The allowance of the slave children was given to their
mothers, or the old women having the care of them. The
children unable to work in the field had neither shoes,
stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their
clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year. When
these failed them, they went naked until the next
allowance-day. Children from seven to ten years old, of
both sexes, almost naked, might be seen at all seasons of
the year.
iii. Transition: When Douglass was approximately eight years old, he was
sent to live in Baltimore with the son-in-law of Douglass’s owner, Hugh
Auld, and his wife Sophia.
b. Sophia began teaching Douglass how to read, along with her son. The lessons
ended abruptly, however, when Hugh discovered what had been going on and
informed Sophia that literacy would “spoil” a slave.
i. In Maryland, as in many other slaveholding states, it was forbidden to
teach enslaved people how to read and write.
1. Douglass continued his learning in secret, by exchanging bread for
lessons from the poor white boys he played with in the
neighborhood and by tracing the letters in Thomas’s old school
books.
ii. After his time in Baltimore, life grew bleeker.
1. In January 1833 Douglass was leased to local farmer Edward
Covey, who was known as a “slave breaker,” someone who abused
slaves physically and psychologically in order to make them more
compliant.
2. After the time he spent learning to read and write, Douglass leaned
the value of education in the fight for freedom and did what he
 could to aid in the strougle, and so he “educated other slaves”
(“Frederick Douglass,” 2021).
a. Covey did not like this.
iii. After some time, according to Douglass, Covey’s abuse led to a climactic
confrontation six months into Douglass’s time with the farmer when
Covey attacked Douglass, and Douglass fought back.
1. The two men engaged in an epic two-hour-long physical struggle
which Douglass won.
2. Douglass emerged from the incident determined to protect himself
from any physical assault from anyone in the future.
a. Not feeling safe, Douglass then “plotted an unsuccessful
escape” (“Frederick Douglass,” 2021).
b. It seems that Covey wanted Douglass to leave as well,
because soon after this, Douglass was sent back to
Baltimore to work in the shipyards as a ship’s caulker.
iv. Transition: It was in this profession where Douglass was able to mount his
escape.
c. After twenty years of being bound by the chains of slavery and at least one escape
attempt, in 1838, Frederick Douglass once again had enough.
i. With the help of Anna Murray, a woman who he had been courting,
Douglass devised an escape plan.
1. As black sailors often traveled at that time, he had “papers that
allowed him to pass for a sailor” (“Frederick Douglass-Full
Episode,” 2019).
2. He goes by train to Wilmington, Delaware and then boards a steam
ship for Philadelphia.
ii. Once he arrived in the City of Brotherly Love, Frederick Douglass had
reached a free state, at last.
1. He continued to New York and there married the woman who had
helped him in his quest for freedom, Anne Murray.
2. From there they continued to New Bedford, Massachusetts where
Douglass struggled to find work due to the fact that many in the 4
north were still racist and would refuse to work alongside black
men.
a. It is heartbreaking that a man who had struggled and fought
through so much pain and so much cruelty was still turned
away from honest work only for the color of his skin.
b. Forced to work as a general laborer, Frederick Douglass
realized more needed to be done.
iii. In New Bedford he discovered the Abolitionist Movement and an
outspoken proponent of the cause, William Lloyd Garrison, an
immediatist who wanted slavery to end immediately.
 1. Douglass became interested in the Abolitionist Movement and
began digging deeper into the cause.
2. Soon after, he discovered an abolitionist paper published by
Garrison, called The Liberator.
a. He was profoundly struck by its ideas and ideals saying,
“The Liberator became my meat and my drink.
b. My soul was set all on fire” (“Frederick Douglass-Full
Episode,” 2019).
iv. Transition: Inspired by what he had heard and what he had read, Douglass
traveled to Nantucket to attend a large anti-slavery convention put on by
Mr. Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society.
d. When Mr. Garrison finished speaking, he learned an escaped slave was in the
audience and called Douglass forward to speak on experiences of slavery.
i. Frederick Douglass then went on to tell stories of his time as a slave,
describing what life was like in the south, and for two hours, “the audience
will be just hanging on every word, just a huge crowd, and he will work
that crowd like a preacher” (“Frederick Douglass-Full Episode,” 2019).
ii. This moment brought Frederick Douglass to the forefront of the anti-
slavery movement and marked the beginning of Douglass’s work as an
activist for the abolition of slavery.
1. Soon after becoming involved in the Abolitionist Movement,
Douglass wrote and published his first biography, Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass, wherein Douglass described in great
detail the story of his life.
a. This came at great risk to him because in the biography
Douglass named the name of his owners and identified
himself as an escaped slave.
b. In an effort to stay out of the grasp of slave catchers planted
in the north, Douglass fled to England, for a span of
months.
iii. In that time, his allies in the states raised enough money to finally and
totally buy Douglass’s freedom.
1. And so Frederick Douglass returned home, free.
2. He was free to speak, free to preach, free to lead. He published
newspapers, spoke at rallies, decried to the people that the “voice
of no worker should be suppressed at this time and personal
feelings should not and shall not stand in the way of the
emancipation cause so far as I am concerned” (Douglass, 1857).
iv. His activism warranted an invitation to the White House to speak and meet
with the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.
1. He grew to respect the president for the work he was doing for the
emancipation of enslaved peoples and the preservation of the
union.
 2. As time went on, the world changed.
a. A war between the states was fought and won by the
Union, by thousands of white and thousands of black
Americans, many of whom were recruited by Frederick
Douglass himself.
b. And so, the war, in tandem with the Emancipation
Proclamation signed by Lincoln, ended the evil of slavery
in America.
v. Transition: From there Douglass never relented in his pursuit for equality
for those repressed by society, continuing to fight for African-American
issues and adding to his spectrum, the issue of women’s rights.
1. But on the issue of racial equality, Douglass’s goal was always to
have a world where people “do make color the criterion of
fellowship,” but the content and quality of the human soul
(Douglass, 1887, 41).
III. Conclusion
a. Summary: Frederick Douglass lived his life for all people, not just black, not just
white, not just women, not just men, but all people.
i. He knew every living person deserved certain inalienable rights, especially
a right to equality.
b. Clincher: “All men are equal in the eyes of God, so why should that not be true
for the eyes of man.”
IV. Sources Cited
a. Douglass, Frederick. “Frederick Douglass Diary (Tour of Europe and Africa).”
The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mfd.01001/, 1887.
b. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American
Slave, Written by Himself. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845.
c. Douglass, Frederick. “The Frederick Douglass Letters.” New York State Library,
https://www.nysl.nysed.gov/mssc/douglass/index/html, 1857.
d. “Frederick Douglas.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior,
https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/frederickdouglass.htm.
e. “Frederick Douglass-Full Episode.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television,
12 Apr. 2019, https://www.biography.com/video/frederick-douglass-full-episode-
2186641949.