PSAT Reading Practice Test 43: Great Global Conversation: Frederick Douglass

Questions 1-9 refer to the following information.

Below is the beginning of the autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which was published in 1845 and became significant to the abolitionist movement.

I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot
County, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic
record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses
know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves
05thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday.
They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time,
or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me
even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to
be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master con-
10cerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and
evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-
seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time
during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.
My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey,
15both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother
or grandfather.
My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my par-
entage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness
of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and
20I were separated when I was but an infant-before I knew her as my mother. It is a common
custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at
a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken
from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under
the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not
25know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to
blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.
I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and
each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart,
who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night,
30travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was a field
hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special
permission from his or her master to the contrary-a permission which they seldom get,
and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not recollect
of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down
35with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication
ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived,
and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old, on one of
my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her
death, or burial.
40She was gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable
extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of
her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.