Frederick Douglass played one of the most extraordinary roles in American history. Born a slave, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, whose counsel was sought by the President of his country. He remembered his mother only when she slipped at night into the slave children's hut to hold him close in her arms before being summoned to the fields. In his teens, he worked as a slave calking ships beside free men. At twenty-one, he escaped the cruelties of slavery by an evasive flight to Philadelphia, disguised as a sailor. He found sanctuary in New Bedford, Massachusetts, with his new bride, the plain, dark Anna who had the glamor of freedom, while he must be haunted through the years by the threat of capture and return to slavery. Douglass's eloquent description of life as a slave soon became the inspiration of abolitonist meetings organized by such white leaders as William Lloyd Garrison and William A. White, who would rhetorically ask the spellbound audiences, "Is this a Man or a Thing?" at rallies similar to those held on campuses today. With his autobiography a best seller at home and abroad, Douglass toured the anti-slavery meetings of the British Isles where for the first time he was accorded the respect due an honored white man. It was two English women who arranged to purchase of his freedom and another who disrupted the tranquility of his home. Publisher of The North Star and active underground agent, he became implicated in John Brown's plot that aborted at Harpers Ferry, forcing Douglass to flee abroad. On is return he pursued his campaign for the emancipation of his race. President Lincoln invited him to his inaugural reception and called him "my friend," Johnson made him Marshal of the District of Columbia, and Harrison appointed him Minister to Haiti. He bought Robert E. Lee's home and on the death of the long-suffering Anna he took a white bride to the consternation of his friends. Arna Bontemps has drawn a vivid portrait of this unique champion of the freedom of his people.