2

630 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

instruction. Michael Grant, Greek and Roman Historians: Information and
Misinformation (London, 1995), 9-10; Kelly Boyd, ed., Encyclopedia of Historians
and Historical Writing, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1999), 2:1343-44; Cannon, Blackwell
Dictionary of Historians. 459-60.
3. 10 Thucydides] Thucydides (c. 460/455-c. 400 BCE), Greek historian and
Athenian general, wrote The Peloponnesian War, a contemporary history covering all
but the last seven years of the war in which he participated. Because of his interest in
numbers, chronology, and causation, he is considered the first "scientific historian."
Thucydides's history is often studied for its literary value as well as for its historical
accounts. Grant, Greek and Roman Historians, 7-9; Boyd, Encyclopedia of
Historians, 2:1193; Cannon, Blackwell Dictionary of Historians, 412-13.
3.15 Pantheon] A group of illustrious persons, but originally a term used for a
temple to officially recognized gods.
3.16 sui generis] Of one's own class; singular.
3. 19 of negro extraction] Douglass's mother was Maryland slave Harriet Bailey
(1792-1825 ). The identity of his father is not certain, but since his skin color was
considerably lighter than that of his siblings, Douglass concluded that it was a white
man. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 5, 8.
3.29 a high officer in the National Government] At the time that George Ruffin
composed this introduction. Douglass had held the following federal posts: assistant
secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission (1871); marshal of the District of
Columbia (1877-81); recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia
(1881-86).
McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 276-77, 289, 291-92, 306, 335.
3.30 a husband, father] Douglass married Anna Murray (c. 1813-82) in
September 1838. The couple had five children: Rosetta Douglass Sprague (1839-
1906); Lewis Henry Douglass (1840-1908); Frederick Douglass, Jr. (1842-92);
Charles Remond Douglass (1844-1920); and Annie Douglass (1849-60).
McFeely,
Frederick Douglass, 73, 81, 97, 103, 161, 207, 365.
4.1 Douglass has now reached and passed the meridian of life] At the time that
Ruffin composed this introduction, Douglass was approximately sixty-three years of
age. As nearly as can be determined, Douglass was born in February, 1818. Ledger
books kept by his master, Aaron Anthony, contain a table, "My Black People," with
the notation "Frederick Augustus son of Harriott Feby 1818," Aaron Anthony Ledger
B, 1812-26, folders 9, 165, Dodge Collection, MdAA. Further evidence for the year
1818 is presented in Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 31-34, 218.
4.2 Garrison] William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist
of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as
a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an
apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison
became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a
year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated
reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write