In teaching me the alphabet, in the days of her simplicity and kindness, my mistress had given me the “inch,” and now, no ordinary precaution could prevent me from taking the “ell.
Douglass describes how his initial lessons from his mistress, though later forbidden, ignited an unstoppable desire for further knowledge and freedom.
Share
More from Frederick Douglass
He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.
The father might be a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his child ranked with the blackest slaves.
My grandmother was all the world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes.