Frederick Douglass bought Cedar Hill in 1877, the home of the most important African American political figure of the nineteenth century.
Douglass was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland, around 1818. He was separated from his mother as an infant — a common practice on plantations to prevent emotional bonds that might complicate the sale of either child or mother. He escaped slavery at the age of twenty, boarding a train with borrowed identification papers, making it to Philadelphia in a single day after years of planning.
He became the greatest orator of the abolitionist movement, lecturing across the North and in Britain. His 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, became a bestseller that changed minds about slavery in both countries. British friends later purchased his legal freedom from his former enslaver, ending the risk of recapture.
During the Civil War, Douglass advised Abraham Lincoln, who referred to him as 'my friend Douglass.' After the war, he campaigned for Black voting rights, women's rights, and Chinese immigrant rights — a radical intersectionality for the 1870s and 1880s.
He bought Cedar Hill in 1877 and lived here until his death in 1895. The house has been preserved exactly as it was — his reading glasses still on his desk in the library, his walking stick by the door.
From this porch, look toward the horizon. The Capitol dome rises white against the sky across the Anacostia River. He could see the Capitol of the country that had once counted him as property.