Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, Frederick Douglass was determined
to gain freedom--and once he realized that knowledge was power, he
secretly learned to read and write to give himself an advantage. After
escaping to the North in 1838, as a free man he gave powerful speeches
about his experience as a slave. He was so impressive that he became a
friend of President Abraham Lincoln, as well as one of the most famous
abolitionists of the nineteenth century.