The Maryland plantation stretched before him, vast and unforgiving. Frederick Douglass, at age twelve, pressed his finger against the page, tracing letters by candlelight. His master's wife had begun teaching him, then stopped abruptly. Reading was forbidden. Knowledge made slaves "unfit," they said.

So he taught himself in secret. He traded bread with white children for reading lessons. He copied words from discarded newspapers. He studied Webster's spelling book hidden beneath floorboards. Every stolen lesson was a seed planted.

He would spend twenty years in slavery. His entire youth. From age twelve, when he first traced those forbidden letters, to age twenty, when he finally escaped north, he never stopped cultivating his mind. He memorized speeches. He practiced rhetoric in his head. He studied every scrap of text he could find. He trained himself to think, speak, and carry himself as though he were already free.