Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818 - February 20, 1895) was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, 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 writings. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.Even many Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.