A 1899 biographical study by Charles Waddell Chesnutt, one of the most ambitious and influential African American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An author and political activist, he is best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity. Today he is considered to have been an innovator of American fiction and an important contributor to de-romanticizing trends in post-Civil War Southern literature. This book commemorates an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman, minister and reformer, Frederick Douglass. The author describes this "self-made man" as a brilliant orator and intellectual. He narrates of his life beginning with his birth in slavery, tells about Douglass’ escape to New York disguised as a sailor, his career as a lecturer on the antislavery circuit and his relationship with William Lloyd Garrison, his political activism, work for African American civil liberties and so on.