Answer:
slavery. This book introduced him to the ideals of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution and
inspired him to perfect his oratorical skills.
At fifteen, following his master’s death, Douglass was returned to plantation life. He was unwilling to show
deference to his new owner, whom he refused to call “Master.” To crush Douglass’s rebellious spirit, he was
hired out to a notorious “slave breaker” named Edward Covey. For seven months, Douglass endured abuse
and beatings. But one hot August morning he could take no more. He fought back and defeated Covey in a fist
fight. Covey never mistreated Douglass again.
In 1836, Douglass and two close friends plotted to escape slavery. When the plan was uncovered, Douglass
was thrown into jail. Instead of being sold to slave traders and shipped to the deep South, as he had expected,
Douglass was returned to Baltimore and promised freedom at the age of 25 if he behaved himself.
In Baltimore, Douglass worked in the city’s shipyards. Virtually every day, white workers harassed him and on
one occasion beat him with bricks and metal spikes. Eventually, Douglass’s owner gave him the unusual
privilege of hiring himself out for wages and living independently. It was during this period of relative freedom
that Douglass met Anna Murray, a free black woman whom he later married.
In 1838, after his owner threatened to take away his right to hire out his own time and keep a portion of his
wages, Douglass decided to run away. With papers borrowed from a free black sailor, he boarded a train and
rode to freedom. To conceal his identity, he adopted a new last name, Douglass, chosen from Sir Walter
Scott's poem, “Lady of the Lake.”
He settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he worked in the shipyards, and began to participate in
anti‐slavery meetings. As a traveling lecturer, Douglass electrified audiences with his first‐hand accounts of
slavery. When many northerners refused to believe that this eloquent orator could possibly have been a slave,
he responded by writing an autobiography that identified his previous owner
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