Enter the world of a slave with all the pathos brutal honesty and striving of the heart to breath free.<br> Frederick Douglass was born in slavery in Talbot County Maryland. During service to masters cruel and kind he nevertheless learned to read and write. After suffering whippings hunger heat cold and grueling labor he escaped from slavery in 1838. In 1841 he addressed an Anti-Slavery Society convention and spoke so eloquently that they immediately employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave. In response he wrote this his first autobiography.