Born a slave, Frederick Douglass raised himself, escaped, and became one of the greatest leaders in American history. Here, in this volume of the Library of America, his three autobiographical narratives, now recognized as classics of American history and literature, are compiled. Writing with the eloquence and fierce intelligence that made him a brilliantly effective spokesperson for the abolition of slavery and equal rights, Douglass shapes an inspiring vision of self-actualization in the face of monumental odds. The narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), published seven years after his escape, was written in part as a response to skeptics who refused to believe that such an articulate speaker could have been a slave. A powerfully compressed depiction of the cruelty and oppression of the Maryland plantation culture in which Douglass was born, brought him to the forefront of the anti-slavery movement and drew thousands, in black and white, to the cause.