Frederick Douglass Compare And Contrast

Douglass taught himself on how to read and write at the age of 7. “And escaped from the north at the age of 21 and changed his name to Douglass. He became involved in the abolitionist movement and became an agent of the massachusetts anti-slavery society by 1851.”(nps.gov) Later on in life he was asked if he wanted to write a speech for the 4th of july. To talk about what it was like to be a slave. But later on into the speech he goes

Robert Hayden described Douglass as someone who “grown out of his life , the lives fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing[freedom] ( SB pg. 70)”. Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass both improved the world for the greater good when they fought for freedom.

Fredrick Douglass was born a slave so he didn’t go to school, but he would always make time to lean to read. He loved to read and he would read many of the same books over and over again, he read many of the same books as Lincoln. He was a slave so he worked for his master and was sent to a profectional slave breaker, when he was older he took a job to pay to live on his own while he was still a slave. Abraham Lincoln was poor so he only had about 1 ½ years of formal education. He also loved reading and like Douglass he read many of the same books over and over again, he read many of the same books as Douglass.

During the years Washington was a slave, his masters were exceptionally nice. Washington was always sufficiently fed and not abused. On the contrary, Douglass endured hunger pains most days of the week. He toiled long and hard while the hot southern sun beat down on him. Also, Douglass mentioned on page 7 "Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man.

We all need a little bit of ingenuity in our lives to keep us going. Frederick Douglass had more than a little bit, he relied on it. He convinced poor white children to teach him in exchange for bread, convinced slaveholders to pay him more than other slaves, and he felt that the Underground Railroad was too obvious as means of escaping. Douglass was the type of person who thought things through before he acted, which is why the best personality trait to describe him would be; ingenious.

1. Douglass taught himself how to read and write. At first, Douglass’s mistress taught him how to read the alphabet before her husband prohibited her from doing this. After that he started to teach himself how to read by reading books and newspapers, and how to write by copying his little Master Thomas’s written in the spaces left in the copy-book when his mistress goes to the class meeting every monday afternoon. However his most successfully way of teaching himself how to read was to make friends with the white boys whom he met in the street. He bribes them with food to get them to teach him. He also learned how to read and understand the meaning of the name on the timber.

Frederick douglass was abandoned by his grandma at the age of 6 at the plantation of his master. At age eight, Douglass was sent to live with Hugh and Sophia Auld , relatives of douglass’ master, in Baltimore to work as their houseboy. Sophia taught Douglass the alphabet until (because of the law against teaching slaves) her husband forbade her to continue. Douglass depended on himself to learn by exchanging food for reading and writing lessons from neighborhood boys. From The Columbian Orator, which he paid for at the age of twelve or thirteen, he was able to understand the power of spoken and written word and it's ability to bring positive change that will remain.

Frederick Douglass was determined man. He was born into slavery, but this did not stop him from learning how to read and write, becoming a free man, and giving multiple speeches about his opinion on slavery before his death in 1895. I read this in “Frederick Douglass” by Ed Combs. In “Oration” by Frederick Douglass, he gave a speech on slavery. He told the crowd that that the 4th of July was a mockery, as long as people were still held as slaves. Slaves were not allowed to learn how to read or write, but he became literate despite the fact that he could be whipped by his slave owner if he was caught. “He began reading everything he could lay his hands on” (Combs 163). This helped Frederick gain the knowledge that he would later use to become a

Douglass himself said that if he had not been transported to Baltimore that he would’ve been stuck in slavery and that “Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all (his) subsequent prosperity” (Douglass p.27). It was here that Sophia Auld started to teach him how to read, not knowing that slaves were not allowed to know how to. When her husband, Hugh Auld discovered this, he forbade it from happening again, basically saying that it would “spoil” them because they would become “unmanageable”. Douglass managed to continue to learn how to read and write on his own though, by trading bread with the poor white boys in exchange of lessons. When he was twelve, Douglass stumbled upon the book, The Columbian Orator which he said “enabled (him) to utter (his) thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery” (Douglass p.35).

While on one end slave-owners did their best to deprive slaves of education, on the other side, Douglass constantly stresses the importance of slaves acquiring knowledge and education in any way possible. While in Baltimore, Douglass comes to the realization of just how important education is. His master, Mr. Auld, becomes angry with his wife when he discovers she is trying to teach Douglass how to write. This is a life changing moment for Douglass and from then on, he understood that education was linked with freedom. He would go to extremes to educated himself. Douglass would walk the streets of Baltimore with a book, and a piece of bread. He describes how he would meet up with young white boys and trade his loaf of bread for tips on how to read (Douglass

Frederick Douglass was one of the smartest slaves there was he knew how to read and he would every chance he got. Douglass was reading

Douglass lived in the slave times. It was illegal to a slave to read and write. Any slave caught reading or writing would be severely punished or even killed. Slave owners felt that if they learn they will soon rebel and start to fight back. Douglass even grew up not even knowing his own age. His master’s wife is what

Frederick Douglass was a young slave with an aspiring dream to learn and further his life of knowledge and education. There was only one thing stopping him: his lack of freedom. The ability to read and access to an education is a liberating experience that results in the formation of opinions, critical-thinking, confidence, and self-worth. Slave owners feared slaves gaining knowledge because knowledge is power and they might have a loss of power, which would result to the end of cheap labor. Slave owners made the slaves feel as if they had no self-worth or confidence. If the slaves got smarter they could potentially begin to learn how unjust and wrong slavery was and they would have enough reason to rebel against it. Douglass was learning how to read and write from his slave owner’s wife. Unfortunately, both of them were told how wrong it was for him to be learning because a slave was not to be educated and was deemed unteachable. There was also another fear that the slave owners had. They feared that slaves would have better communication skills which would lead to escape and ways to avoid slavery. Reading opens your mind to new ideas and new knowledge one has never had the opportunity of knowing.

He was so thrilled to leave the life of the field work behind him. “I had been treated as a pig on the plantation: I was treated as a child now”, he says that “troops of hostile boys” he would wish that he could be back on “the home plantation”. Auld’s wife Sophia was teaching Douglass how to read, when all of a sudden, Auld walks in and he insisted that she stop immediately, he said “a slave, should know nothing but the will of his mater”, “would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave”. Douglass heard and was able to understand the message, but he got so much out of his crucial statement. “In learning to read, therefore, I… owe quite as much to the opposition of my master, as to kindly assistance of my amiable mistress”. Douglass was to determined to learn so he would exchanging bread for reading lessons, from hungry white children from the streets of Baltimore. “For a single biscuit” he states, “any of my hungry little comrades would give me a lesson more valuable to me than bread”. One of many instances where Douglass own audacity when he was still young, was when he was sent by Master Auld to the planation, as Covey aka The Negro Breaker. Auld’s objective was that the Willy and resentfulness of Covey would break Douglass’s unconquerable emotions. Auld almost achieved that. Douglass would sometimes defend himself to one of his temporary master’s. His temporary master would brutally

Throughout the history of slavery in the United States, it was common practice not only for slaveholders to neglect to teach their slaves to read or write, but also for them to outright forbid literacy among slaves. This was done in order to limit the slaves knowledge and modes of communication, making it more difficult for them to learn about the abolitionist movement or for for them to share their situation with the world outside of slavery. Like many other slaves, Frederick Douglass was not allowed to learn to read or write. In his autobiography; “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass retells how he managed to become literate in a time where most African Americans were forbidden from literacy, and how this knowledge allowed him to eventually escape slavery.