H. Ford Douglas (1831–1865) was born enslaved in Virginia and escaped to Ohio at age fifteen. After training and working as a barber, he became active in the free Black community in Ohio and participated in multiple Black conventions calling for justice for African Americans. A skilled orator, Douglas addressed Black and mixed-race audiences arguing that African Americans should consider emigration outside the United States because the U.S. Constitution supported enslavement and Blacks should not subject themselves to its authority. In 1856 he moved to Canada West (Ontario), where he became proprietor of the Black weekly Provincial Freeman, but he traveled often to the United States to lecture on antislavery, shocking some audiences by calling for a violent overthrow of slavery. He moved to Chicago sometime after 1857 and later served in the Union Army during the Civil War.