Frederick Douglass

The son of a black slave and an unknown white father, Frederick Douglass (c.1817-1895) knew firsthand the privations and brutality of America's "peculiar institution." After his second, and successful, attempt to escape he went on to become a leading abolitionist, a militant spokesman for African-American rights, a friend to Abraham Lincoln and other presidents, the holder of three major government offices, as well as a remarkable writer, orator, and editor.
Quarles goes beyond Douglass's own three autobiographies to examine his impact on the anti-slavery movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, women's suffrage, and the Republican Party during its first forty years, and to explore his personal and family life, including his then-controversial second marriage to a white woman. Frederick Douglass is a vivid realization of the man and the age in which he lived.