Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

"My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant -- before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result." -- Excerpt Douglass spent his first 20 years in slavery before escaping north. As a slave he experienced both the kindness of his master's wife, who taught him to read, as well as the cruelty of sadistic overseers. This powerful story helped recruit many to the abolitionist cause.