Frederick Douglass: A Life Of A Former Slave

Frederick was a man of many things. African-American social reformer, abolitionist, writer, orator, and a former slave. But what made him become this great man. The fact that he was a former slave allowed him to understand firsthand the terrors of slavery. He could read and write, which was instrumental in his life. The time he fought back against his owner. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery. He was separated from his mother in first few months of living. He saw a women being whipped as her daughters cried and watched. The slaves would only have just enough clothes to get by, and some children would even go around naked. Some children would even have to eat out of a trough like pigs. He was repeatedly whipped by one of his masters. The same master even almost killed because he couldn’t get up do to exhaustion. He eventually his master broke him. The happiness in him faded as his spirit was broken. Many times he would look out at the Chesapeake Bay and complain at ships in the water. He would say, “You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom 's swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free!” Because

and Mrs. Auld. Sophia Auld, his mistress, started teaching him how to read. Not long into their lessons Mr. Auld found out and forbade any other lessons to take place. He said that it was illegal to teach a slave, and that “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.” Every chance he got Frederick Douglass would read. In one book he read called the "The Columbian Orator" there were speeches from Sheridan. In these speeches he spoke out against slavery and pushed for human rights. Because of these speeches Frederick began to question slave owners and to see freedom in everything he saw and