Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass – Frederick Douglass

"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man."

Frederick Douglass recounts his harrowing life as a slave in Maryland, his brutal treatment at the hands of slavebreakers, his self-education in secret, and his eventual daring escape to freedom in the North. He exposes the hypocrisy of Christian slaveholders and the dehumanizing effect of slavery on both the enslaved and the enslaver.

Douglass's memoir is the most famous slave narrative in American literature. Written with eloquence and power, it destroyed the myth of the 'happy slave' and proved the intellectual equality of African Americans. It was a potent weapon in the abolitionist movement.