Frederick Douglass's Rebellion

In the year 1826 Fredrick Douglass realized that he would eventually escape slavery. He would recount this thought four times in his life when he has to become most rebellious in order to survive slaveholders attempting to establish control and dominance in different ways. Each time one comes along Douglass responds using a different form of retaliation or rebellion to show his masters that they don’t own as much control over him as they think they do. All of these attempts to resist his masters control, slavery, and what slavery stood for were detrimental to Fredrick’s escape but the most influential one, the resistive act that started, and kept, the ball rolling was Fredrick’s determination to become literate. Knowledge is power and without his ability to read and write Douglass would have never escaped slavery or written a Narrative of his life.
When Fredrick Douglass was just a small boy his master, Captain Antony, supplied him with only a coarse linen shirt in the dead of winter as a way of establishing control and dehumanizing his young slaves. As a response to this little Fredrick Douglass steals a corn meal sack for the barn and sleeps inside of it with only his feet sticking out, “I used to steal a bag which was used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into this bag, and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out.” This is important because it the first instance in his life where he feels the need to steal and rebel in order to survive. He steals the corn meal bag even though he knows if his master found out he could get into serious trouble.
After Douglass is lucky enough to be selected out of hundreds of slaves to be shipped to Baltimore he meets his new masters and adopts to slave life in the city. His new mistress is a first time slaveholder and is very compassionate towards Fredrick she even teaches him his ABC’s