Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), an escaped slave from Maryland and a leading spokesman for the Abolitionist Movement, appealed to the Declaration of Independence in seeking freedom from slavery for all African Americans. Douglass’s speech to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, has become famous for its direct challenge to the nation: “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?”