hites" (67). Literacy is clearly a serious threat to slavery.
Therefore, the book focuses on the situation of Douglass himself as a slave on a journey toward freedom, beginning with education and continuing with a lifelong struggle to control one's own destiny in the context of God's will. In fact, when he is sent to Baltimore, still as a slave but in improved circumstances, Douglass sees the move as a gift from God, or Providence. His faith in a loving God is as much a part of his growth toward freedom as is his eventual education and literacy. That the woman who first teaches him the alphabet becomes increasingly evil as a part of being a slaveholder does not matter. What matters are that Providence sent him to her and that his literacy commences. Her husband, however, tries to stop Douglass' education:
If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nig
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