Frederick Douglass

Bibliography

The only original sources of information concerning the early life of Frederick Douglass are the three autobiographies published by him at various times; and the present writer, like all others who have written of Mr. Douglass, has had to depend upon this personal record for the incidents of Mr. Douglass's life in slavery. As to the second period of his life, his public career as anti-slavery orator and agitator, the sources of information are more numerous and varied. The biographies of noted abolitionists whose lives ran from time to time in parallel lines with his make very full reference to Douglass's services in their common cause, the one giving the greatest detail being the very complete and admirable _Life and Times of William Lloyd Garrison_, by his sons, which is in effect an exhaustive history of the Garrisonian movement for abolition.

The files of the _Liberator_, Mr. Garrison's paper, which can be found in a number of the principal public libraries of the country, constitute a vast storehouse of information concerning the labors of the American Anti-slavery Society, with which Douglass was identified from 1843 to 1847, the latter being the year in which he gave up his employment as agent of the society and established his paper at Rochester. Many letters from Mr. Douglass's pen appeared in the _Liberator_ during this period.

Mr. Douglass's own memories are embraced in three separate volumes, published at wide intervals, each succeeding volume being a revision of the preceding work, with various additions and omissions.