I began to address my companions on the subject of education, and the advantages of intelligence over ignorance, and, as far as I dared, I tried to show the agency of ignorance in keeping men in slavery.
Douglass recounts how he began teaching fellow enslaved people, emphasizing the power of education and intelligence in overcoming the bonds of slavery.
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Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.
I believed I should get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects, and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with indifference.
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.