Self-Made Men (Frederick Douglass)
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Self-Made Men (Frederick Douglass)
"Self-Made Men" is a lecture, first delivered in 1859, by Frederick Douglass, which gives his own definition of the self-made man and explains what he thinks are the means to become such a man. Douglass's View Douglass stresses the low origins of the self-made man, who has not inherited his social position by birth or other favourable circumstances, but who achieves everything without any outside assistance: Self-made men ... are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any of the favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results. (pp549-50) In addition, Douglass does not believe in what he calls the "good luck theory" (p552), which attributes success to chance and friendly circumstances. He believes that "opportunity is important but exertion is indispensable" (p553). It is not luck that makes a ...
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Frederick Douglass, Head-and-shoulders Portrait, Facing Right, Ca 1850-1860 Edit
Frederick may refer to: People * Frederick (given name), the name Nobility Anhalt-Harzgerode *Frederick, Prince of Anhalt-Harzgerode (1613–1670) Austria * Frederick I, Duke of Austria (Babenberg), Duke of Austria from 1195 to 1198 * Frederick II, Duke of Austria (1219–1246), last Duke of Austria from the Babenberg dynasty * Frederick the Fair (Frederick I of Austria (Habsburg), 1286–1330), Duke of Austria and King of the Romans Baden * Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden (1826–1907), Grand Duke of Baden * Frederick II, Grand Duke of Baden (1857–1928), Grand Duke of Baden Bohemia * Frederick, Duke of Bohemia (died 1189), Duke of Olomouc and Bohemia Britain * Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), eldest son of King George II of Great Britain Brandenburg/Prussia * Frederick I, Elector of Brandenburg (1371–1440), also known as Frederick VI, Burgrave of Nuremberg * Frederick II, Elector of Brandenburg (1413–1470), Margrave of Brandenburg * Frederick William, Elect ...
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Rags To Riches
Rags to riches refers to any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth, and in some cases from absolute obscurity to heights of fame, fortune and celebrity—sometimes instantly. This is a common archetype in literature and popular culture, such as the writings of Horatio Alger, Jr. Pre-20th-century fictional examples * Fairy tales, such as ''Cinderella'' and '' Aladdin''. * The Dickens novel '' Oliver Twist'', whose protagonist rises from a workhouse to child labour to a gang of pickpockets to being adopted by a wealthy family. * The Arthurian story of Sir Gareth, who rises from a lowly kitchen boy to a prominent Knight of the Round Table. * The folklore tale of Dick Whittington and His Cat, who, with the help of his cat, rises from orphaned poverty to become thrice Lord Mayor of London. Historical examples * Abdalonymus was a gardener who was appointed king of Sidon by Alexander the Great due to his possible royal ancestry. * Baibars, a slave who rose to become ...
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Men In The United States
A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the father. Sex differentiation of the male fetus is governed by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome. During puberty, hormones which stimulate androgen production result in the development of secondary sexual characteristics, thus exhibiting greater differences between the sexes. These include greater muscle mass, the growth of facial hair and a lower body fat composition. Male anatomy is distinguished from female anatomy by the male reproductive system, which includes the penis, testicles, sperm duct, prostate gland and the epididymis, and by secondary sex characteristics, including a narrower pelvis, narrower hips, and smaller breasts without mammary glands. Throughout human history, traditional gender roles have often defined ...
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1859 Speeches
Events January–March * January 21 – José Mariano Salas (1797–1867) becomes Conservative interim President of Mexico. * January 24 ( O. S.) – Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexandru Ioan Cuza (Romania since 1866, final unification takes place on December 1, 1918; Transylvania and other regions are still missing at that time). * January 28 – The city of Olympia is incorporated in the Washington Territory of the United States of America. * February 2 – Miguel Miramón (1832–1867) becomes Conservative interim President of Mexico. * February 4 – German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf rediscovers the ''Codex Sinaiticus'', a 4th-century uncial manuscript of the Greek Bible, in Saint Catherine's Monastery on the foot of Mount Sinai, in the Khedivate of Egypt. * February 14 – Oregon is admitted as the 33rd U.S. state. * February 12 – The Mekteb-i Mülkiye School is founded in the Ottoman Empire. * February 17 – French naval forces under Charles Ri ...
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Library Of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.; it also maintains a conservation center in Culpeper, Virginia. The library's functions are overseen by the Librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the Architect of the Capitol. The Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its "collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages." Congress moved to Washington, D.C., in 1800 after holding sessions for eleven years in the temporary national capitals in New York City and Philadelphia. In both cities, members of the U.S. Congress had access to the sizable collection ...
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Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
''Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'' is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. In factual detail, the text describes the events of his life and is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the United States. ''Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass'' encompasses eleven chapters that recount Douglass's life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man. It contains two introductions by well-known white abolitionists: a preface by William Lloyd Garrison, and a letter by Wendell Phillips, both arguing for the veracity of the account and the literacy of its author. Chapters 1–4 Douglass begins by explaining that he does not know the date of his birth (he later ...
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Nina Baym
Nina Baym (1936–2018) was an American literary critic and literary historian. She was professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1963 to 2004. Before her retirement at the University of Illinois Baym was a Swanlund Endowed Chair, a Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences and a Center of Advanced Study Professor of English. Her work in US literary criticism and history is widely credited with expanding the field to include women writers while taking the focus off "great" writers according to a supposed unchanging value judgment and placing it instead on the dynamics of literary professionalism. She is the author or editor of a number of groundbreaking works of American literary history and criticism, beginning with ''Woman's Fiction'' (Cornell, 1978), and including ''Feminism and American Literary History'' (Rutgers, 1992), ''American Women Writers and the Work of History'' (Rutgers, 1995), and ''American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-Cen ...
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Novus Homo
''Novus homo'' or ''homo novus'' (Latin for 'new man'; ''novi homines'' or ''homines novi'') was the term in ancient Rome for a man who was the first in his Roman gens, family to serve in the Roman Senate or, more specifically, to be elected as Roman consul, consul. When a man entered public life on an unprecedented scale for a high communal office, then the term used was ''novus civis'' ( ''novi cives'') or "new citizen". History In the Roman Republic#Patrician Era (509–367 BC), Early Republic, tradition held that both Senate membership and the consulship were restricted to Patrician (ancient Rome), patricians. When plebeians gained the right to this office during the Conflict of the Orders, all newly elected plebeians were naturally ''novi homines''. With time, ''novi homines'' became progressively rarer as some plebeian families became as entrenched in the Senate as their patrician colleagues. By the time of the First Punic War, it was already a sensation that ''novi homines ...
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Madison Washington
Madison Washington was an American enslaved man who led a slave rebellion in America on November 7, 1841, on board the brig '' Creole,'' which was transporting 134 other slaves from Virginia for sale in New Orleans, as part of the coastwise slave trade. On the night of Nov. 7, 1841, Washington led 18 of his fellow slaves into rebellion, killing slave trader John R. Hewell and subduing the crew. Taking control of the ''Creole,'' they commanded that it be sailed to Nassau, which was a British colony. The United Kingdom had already abolished slavery in 1833 in the British Empire. Despite American protests, the British declared the slaves to be free persons under their law and refused American demands for their return. The British authorities in Nassau took Washington and his 17 conspirators into custody under charges of mutiny. A special session of the Admiralty Court heard the case, but ruled in favor of the men and freed them in April 1842. The remaining 116 slaves had achieve ...
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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography. Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as a slave in his ''Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave'' (1845), which became a bestseller and was influential in promoting t ...
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The Heroic Slave
''The Heroic Slave, a Heartwarming Narrative of the Adventures of Madison Washington, in Pursuit of Liberty'' is a short piece of fiction, or novella, written by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, at the time a fugitive slave based in Boston. When the Rochester Ladies' Anti Slavery Society asked Douglass for a short story to go in their collection, ''Autographs for Freedom'', Douglass responded with ''The Heroic Slave''. The novella, published in 1852 by John P. Jewett and Company, was Douglass's first and only published work of fiction (though he did publish several autobiographical narratives). ''The Heroic Slave'' is a fictional work inspired by the Creole case, in which Madison Washington, an enslaved cook on the brig ''Creole'' led a ship-board rebellion of 19 slaves in November 1841. They succeeded in taking control of the ship en route from Virginia to New Orleans (known as the coastwise slave trade), and ordered it sailed to Nassau, Bahamas, a British port. A total of 135 sl ...
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My Bondage And My Freedom
''My Bondage and My Freedom'' is an autobiographical slave narrative written by Frederick Douglass and published in 1855. It is the second of three autobiographies written by Douglass, and is mainly an expansion of his first, ''Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave''. The book depicts in greater detail his transition from bondage to liberty. Following this liberation, Douglass went on to become a prominent abolitionist, speaker, author, and advocate for women's rights. The book included an introduction by James McCune Smith, who Douglass called the "foremost black influence" of his life.Davis, David Brion. ''The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014:: 218. See also *''Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave'' (1845), Douglass's first slave narrative memoir. *'' The Heroic Slave, a heartwarming Narrative of the Adventures of Madison Washington, in Pursuit of Liberty'', (1852), a fiction boo ...
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