Although Frederick did not work in the field as a child, he still suffered as a house slave. “Slave children” (Chap 5) were only given a “long linen shirt”. The winter was so severe, that without shoes on his feet Douglass describes being able to “insert the pen…..into the cracks of his flesh.” The children also had to fight to eat the corn mush out the communal trough. Douglass sent to live with the slave master's son-in-law brother “Hugh Auld” in Baltimore. Douglass thought this transition to Baltimore as “a gift of providence.” This is the place he learned to read and write with the help of mistress “ Sophia Auld”. In his book, he wrote that he believed he would still have been a slave, rather than a man freely in his home writing his