The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass.
Intelligent, calculating and a tendency to make actions with great foresight; these attributes are frequently found in spies or villains from stories. Though Frederick Douglass was neither a villain nor spy, he also had those attributes. He was born in a time when people like himself were usually not allowed to use their abilities to full potential, especially if their abilities were not useful for manual labor. By using his intelligence, and being cold and calculating, he was able to escape the world that he was born into, and lead a successful life. .
Frederick Douglass was born in 1818, the child of Harriet Bailey and an unknown white man. Because he was black, he was put into slavery. He was separated from his mother at birth, which caused him to be less dependent on others. His grandmother, who was too old to work in the fields, raised him. He grew up on a plantation, where conditions are harsher than in the city. This is because in the city how you treat your slave shows what kind of person you are. As a child, he witnessed many horrific events, like watching his aunt get brutally whipped or a slave getting shot because he wouldn't get out of the water. These events must have must have scarred him for life. He was sent to live in Baltimore, Maryland with his master's son-in-law where he soon found that it was much easier it was for slaves in the city. There he learned how to read, which was quite uncommon for slaves at the time. His ownership was traded between a few different masters before he was sent back to Baltimore, where he later escaped. He married soon after his escape and was discovered by prominent abolitionists who asked him to write a book to help the movement.
Douglass was exposed to horrible events when he was young. Because of his intelligence he understood why some of them were committed by the masters to keep the slaves under control.
