Certainly there were myriad slave rebellions, in the American South and elsewhere, before Douglass's time. But Douglass came along when the time was right for social change, when the South had been recently defeated and American slavery was in its most precarious state ever. Therefore, Douglass and Abolitionists like him: black and white; male and female, seized the moment, and in 1865 slavery was outlawed. The name Frederick Douglass is a household word in most American households. However, it was not until publication, in 1999, of Alfred F. Young's historical biography of the Shoemaker and the Tea Party (Boston: Beacon Press) that a brave shoemaker who risked his life in the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, George Robert Twelve Hewes was known to history at all. Though he, too, was a man of his era, Hewes was not nearly...

Nor was Hewes's era representative of Hewes: poor and shoemaker, who came to John Hancock's attention by freakish accident. As Young notes of Hewes, for example:
Hewes's role in... events fits few of the categories that historians have applied

To the participation of ordinary men in the Revolution. He was not a member of Any organized caucus, committee, or club. He did not attend the expensive dinners

Of the Sons of Liberty. He was capable of acting on his own volition without being

Summoned by any leaders (as in the Massacre). He could volunteer and assume

Leadership (as in the Tea Party). He was at home on the streets in crowds, but He could also reject a crowd (as in the tarring and feathering of Malcolm). (p. 52).

Hewes