Frederick Douglass Escapes Slavery and Enters the Abolitionist Movement

Frederick Douglass, 20, escaped from Baltimore by dressing as a sailor and traveling by train and steamboat to New York, then New Bedford, Massachusetts. Within three years he was speaking for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. His first autobiography, 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass' (1845), sold 11,000 copies in its first three years and became the most influential slave narrative in American letters.