Alexander Hay Ritchie, engraver. Frederick Douglass. Hartford, CT: Hartford Pub. Co., 1868.
After fleeing slavery in Maryland in 1838, abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) resided in several Northern cities including New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Rochester, New York. Douglass was heavily involved in the antislavery movement, speaking on the abolitionist lecture circuit in the United States and Britain, writing about his life during enslavement, and editing two antislavery newspapers. After the U.S. Colored Troops was established in 1863, he recruited African Americans, including two of his sons, to fight in the Union Army. At the time of the Syracuse convention, Douglass was arguably the most famous black man in America.
Delegates elected Douglass to serve as president of the convention. In his opening address, he proclaimed that the convention’s “sacred” purpose was to “promote the freedom, progress, elevation, and perfect enfranchisement, of the entire colored people of the United States.” He thus helped set the tone for racial solidarity between black Northerners and Southerners.
After the Civil War, in addition to remaining at the forefront of the African American civil rights struggle, Douglass held a number of positions in the federal government, including U.S. Marshall for Washington, DC and U.S. Minister to Haiti.