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Sophia Auld's Lesson
Douglass credits his new mistress Sophia Auld's early kindness with teaching him the alphabet, and identifies the moment her husband Hugh forbade it as the moment he first understood reading as the pathway out of slavery.
Sophia Auld's initial kindnessHugh Auld forbidding Douglass's lessonsDouglass’s realization about literacy and freedomSlavery’s corrupting effect on enslavers themselves