Frederick Douglass dies of a heart attack

On February 20, 1895, Frederick Douglass, a prominent abolitionist, orator, publisher and advisor to President Abraham Lincoln, dies suddenly at his house in Washington, D.C., from a heart attack. He collapses in the hallway while excitedly telling his wife, Helen, about the day’s activities.

“He grew very enthusiastic in his explanation of one of the events of the day, when he fell upon his knees, with hands clasped,” a reporter wrote in Douglass’ obituary in The New York Times. “Mrs. Douglass, thinking this was part of his description, was not alarmed, but as she looked he sank lower and lower, and finally lay stretched upon the floor, breathing his last.”

Douglass, who had escaped enslavement at age 20 by disguising himself as a sailor, became one of the most well-known and oft-photographed men in 19th-century America. He earned that fame through his bestselling autobiographies, his work as an abolitionist newspaper publisher and his popularity as an orator. In his life, he gave more than 2,000 speeches that framed the hypocrisy of slavery with unmatched ferocity and moral clarity—including his most famous: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

On the day of his death, after meetings with the National Council of Women, an umbrella organization of groups advocating for suffrage, social reform and women's rights, he returned to his home, Cedar Hill (now a national historic site), in the Anacostia Heights neighborhood of Washington. He dined with his wife, who told the Times that the septuagenarian, who showed “unusual vigor” for his age, had been in good health just before he collapsed.

Mrs. Douglass rushed to the front door to call out for help. One neighbor called for Dr. J. Stewart Harrison, the Times reported, and the physician was in the midst of giving Douglass an injection when he died seemingly without pain.

Because of his enslavement, Douglass’ exact birthday was unknown. Some historians speculate he chose February 14 to mark it because, as he recounted in his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom, his last memory of his mother involved her presenting him a heart-shaped ginger cake. He concluded he was born around 1818, so he was likely about 77 when he died.

But while Douglass resided in the nation’s capital the last 17 years of his life, he was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York, a city where he lived for 25 years in a house he used as a refuge stop on the Underground Railroad. He rests there alongside his two wives, Anna Murray Douglass and Helen Pitts Douglass, and his daughter Annie.

According to the Times, Douglass had been scheduled to give a lecture the night he died at Hillside African Church, near his home. The carriage arrived to take him to the event just as he passed away.