Artwork
On December 3, 1860, anti-abolitionists took over an abolitionist meeting at Tremont Temple. Emancipated slave and renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–1895), pictured here, spoke over the uproar, but the meeting quickly devolved into violence that spread to the African Meeting House and Beacon Hill, targeting Boston’s Black community in particular. Douglass had begun his abolitionist career as an ally to Garrison, but unlike Garrison, Douglass believed the Constitution was an abolitionist document.
Portrait of abolitionist and suffragist Frederick Douglass by an unidentified artist, c. 1845. Oil on canvas.
