Born into slavery in Maryland, Frederick Douglass was separated from his mother during infancy, then taken from his grandparents at the age of six to serve at the "Great House" on the Wye Plantation in Maryland. He never imagined the cruelties he would witness or the indignities of his family being treated like cattle to be sold, divided, and scattered far and wide.Escaping from slavery, Frederick Douglass became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in America, the greatest orator of his day, an influential newspaper publisher, writer, and statesman, and the most important African American of the nineteenth century (1818-1895).