Frederic Douglas was born into slavery in 1818 in the state of Maryland, years before the Civil War that would put an end to slavery in the United States. Although there were a few sympathetic individuals in the South and the abolitionist movement burgeoning in the North, Douglas’s journey to literacy was fraught with peril and required him to invent many clever, unique ways to learn to read and write.
The first sympathetic influence in his journey to literacy, his Mistress, also turned out to be a great nemesis who attempted to thwart his later efforts to learn. Douglas writes, “When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman,” who “had kindly commenced to instruct me” in learning to read and write (100-101). However, under the influence of her husband, Douglas’s Master, she became the fiercest of opponents in Douglas’s quest for literacy. The social and cultural circumstances in the slave-holding South were such that it was “almost an unpardonable offense to teach slaves to read in this Christian Country,” Douglas writes with irony (102). He describes his Mistress as an “apt” woman, who through her husband’s influence and evidence she saw realized that the education of slaves was incompatible with slaves remaining the ignorant chattel they were meant to be by their Masters (101).
Thus thwarted at home, Douglas looked to others for instruction, no matter how piecemeal this training was. The street urchins of Philpot Street and the ship-yard of Durgin and Bailey, as well as any books he could find and read secretly became his teachers. He was always aware of the need for his quest to become literate to remain a secret, for the slave masters of the time felt that education would lead to unhappiness and rebellion among slaves. Douglas found this to be true enough, writing, “that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sing my soul to unutterable anguish” (103). However, the meaning behind this “discontentment” was very different for a slave holder like Master Hugh and a slave like Douglas. To Master Hugh and other Masters, education represented the route to discontent that would cause slaves to rebel, completely undermining the Masters’ desire to control a group of ignorant chattel. The Masters did not want to acknowledge their slaves as human beings, but preferred to see them as beasts of burden not unlike a horse or an ox. To Douglas, education was a weapon against ignorance, one that would increase his discontent with his present situation and allow himself to see that as a human, he deserved rights and freedom, not the life of a beast of burden.
The idea of abolition, at first a mystery to Douglas, became clearer to him as he read books such as “The Columbian Orator” in which he read Sheridan’s “bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights” (102). He also saw in the newspapers the petitions of abolitionist groups from the north “praying for the abolition of slavery” and for and end to the slave trade between states (104). An episode with two Irishmen on a wharf illustrates the caution with which Douglas approached his situation as a slave; they advise him to run away to the north, but Douglas pretends to be uninterested in what they have to say. This is because he was afraid they were using him as bait, so he would run away and they could catch him to get a reward from his Master.
The period in which Douglas was learning to read was a dangerous one for educated slaves. It was dangerous enough to even try to learn to become literate, but other forces such as falsely friendly people offering assistance in escaping to the north who were really simply trying to recapture slaves and get rewards for their return made a flight for freedom almost impossibly intimidating. Cultural, social, and political forces in the south were almost unanimously against progress for slaves, in spite of the abolitionist movements in the north. It took a mind and soul of great perseverance such as Douglas’s to overcome those forces, gain literacy and education, in order to rise to the force for abolition he eventually became.
Works Cited
Douglas, Frederick. “Learning to Read and Write.” Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas. 1845. 100-105.
