Some books are both hopeful and absolutely depressing at once, and this is one of them. It's a short piece, almost novella-length I think, and I understand that in later autobiographies Douglass goes deeper into the story of his life. (He's an excellent writer, so they're going on my list of things to read.)

In his story of escape from slavery, however, I think what struck me most was the claim - put forward first in the introduction - that Douglass lived in one of the more moderate(!) slave-owning states, and thus escaped the full horror of what life as a slave could be deeper in the American South, for instance. Frankly, his life seemed horrible enough to me already, and if he didn't suffer quite as much as some of the fellow slaves whose lives he described, it is certainly far more than any human being should have to live through. Also notable was his scathing assessment of the religious lives of the slave-holders, whose hypocrisy on how they behaved towards their fellow man, and how they claimed one should behave, was both painfully evident and repugnant.

The introduction also made much of the fact that Douglass used the real names of the people who abused him. I hope they read this book and it pricked their conscience, although one wonders whether or not they had any to begin with. I honestly doubt it.