Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1818 - 1895) was an African-American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Many Northerners also found it hard to believe that such a great orator had been a slave. In this book: The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave My Bondage and My Freedom Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass Abolition Fanaticism in New York John Brown, An Address at the 14th Anniversary of Storer College