Up to this time he had never, to his recollection, seen his mother.  All his impressions of her were derived from a few brief visits made to him at Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, most of them at night.  These fleeting visits of the mother were important events in the life of the child, now no longer under the care of his grandmother, but turned over to the tender mercies of his master’s cook, with whom he does not seem to have been a favorite.  His mother died when he was eight or nine years old.  Her son did not see her during her illness, nor learn of it until after her death.  It was always a matter of grief to him that he did not know her better, and that he could not was one of the sins of slavery that he never forgave.

On Colonel Lloyd’s plantation Douglass spent four years of the slave life of which his graphic description on the platform stirred humane hearts to righteous judgment of an unrighteous institution.  It is enough to say that this lad, with keen eyes and susceptible feelings, was an eye-witness of all the evils to which slavery gave birth.  Its extremes of luxury and misery could be found within the limits of one estate.  He saw the field hand driven forth at dawn to labor until dark.  He beheld every natural affection crushed when inconsistent with slavery, or warped and distorted to fit the necessities and promote the interests of the institution.  He heard the unmerited strokes of the lash on the backs of others, and felt them on his own.  In the wild songs of the slaves he read, beneath their senseless jargon or their fulsome praise of “old master,” the often unconscious note of grief and despair.  He perceived, too, the debasing effects of slavery upon master and slave alike, crushing all semblance of manhood in the one, and in the other substituting passion for judgment, caprice for justice, and indolence and effeminacy for the more virile virtues of freemen.  Doubtless the gentle hand of time will some time spread the veil of silence over this painful past; but, while we are still gathering its evil aftermath, it is well enough that we do not forget the origin of so many of our civic problems.

When Douglass was ten years old, he was sent from the Lloyd plantation to Baltimore, to live with one Hugh Auld, a relative of his master.  Here he enjoyed the high privilege, for a slave, of living in the house with his master’s family.  In the capacity of house boy it was his duty to run errands and take care of a little white boy, Tommy Auld, the son of his mistress for the time being, Mrs. Sophia Auld.  Mrs. Auld was of a religious turn of mind; and, from hearing her reading the Bible aloud frequently, curiosity prompted the boy to ask her to teach him to read.  She complied, and found him an apt pupil, until her husband learned of her unlawful and dangerous conduct, and put an end to the instruction.  But the evil was already done, and the seed thus sown brought forth fruit in the after career of the orator and leader of men.  The mere fact that his master wished to prevent his learning made him all the more eager to acquire knowledge.  In after years, even when most bitter in his denunciation of the palpable evils of slavery, Douglass always acknowledged the debt he owed to this good lady who innocently broke the laws and at the same time broke the chains that held a mind in bondage.