From the scene
in which Douglass learns how to read and encounters the printed word for the first time, we find
that Douglass' attitude toward slavery is one of profound hatred. Furthermore, he couches his
critique of slavery in the Enlightenmentof human rights. After recruiting the local white
children to help him attain literacy, Douglass reads a book entitled "The Columbian
Orator." In the book, he tells us:
I met with one of
Sheridan's mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice
documents to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave tongue to
interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away
for want of utterance. The moral which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over
the conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold denunciation of
slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.
Douglass, here, identifies his own situation ("interesting thoughts of my own
soul") with that of oppressed Catholics in Europe through the text's "speeches on and
in behalf of Catholic emancipation." From Catholic oppression, Douglass gains the
"moral" of both the "denunciation of slavery" and a celebration and
"vindication of human rights."
From this rights discourse and
critique of slavery, Douglass gains the desire to emancipate himself, as his own enslaved
situation becomes intolerable:
The more I read, the more I
was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of
successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes,
and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the
most wicked of men.
His reading leads Douglass to believe
slavery is immoral, calling those who hold and traffic in slaves "successful robbers"
and "the most wicked of men." Further, from this passage we can see that Douglass'
attitude toward slavery is one of hatred; he "abhor[s] and detest[s]" slaveholders and
the peculiar institution for which they stand.
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