Frederick Douglass Abolitionism

In Learning to Read and Write by Frederick Douglass he explains the word abolition. He explains ways he learned what it meant. Douglass was good listener, this was the way he learned what abolitionists was. He explains in paragraph 7 "I was eager to hear anyone speak of slavery. I was a ready listener... I could hear something about abolitionist. It was some time before I found out what the word meant." Although he heard it very often he was still confused about the full meaning. Douglass didn’t want to ask anyone what the meaning was. He stated "it was something they wanted me to know very little about." After awhile Douglass was able to get city papers that contain petitions from the north for the abolition of slavery. This is when he fully
understood what abolition was.
Douglass was a very smart man the way he learn the word abolitionist without asking anyone. It was dangerous for him to ask or do anything that involved him learning but he still wanted to know what was going on. At the end of paragraph 7 he talks about a conversation he had with an Irish man. The Irish man asked Douglass if he was a slave in which he answered yes, then he asked if he was a slave for life in which Douglass again answered yes. "They advised me to run away to the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should be free." Douglass explains at the end of paragraph 7. Douglass was worried he pretended to be uninterested and as if he didn’t understand them. He did this because he was afraid that they would advise him to run away then find him and return him to his master for money. This shows that he did things with caution to avoid any trouble. Although he remembered their advice and he did run away he learned to first so he stayed to do that.