The reading of these
documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the
arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they
relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even
more painful than the one of which i was relieved. the more
i read, the more i was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. i
could regard them in no other light than a band of successful
robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to africa, and
stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us
to slavery. i loathed them as being the meanest as well as the
most wicked of men. as i read and contemplated the subject,
behold! that very discontentment which master hugh had
predicted would follow my learning to read had already come,
to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. as i
writhed under it, i would at times feel that learning to read
had been a curse rather than a blessing. it had given me a
view of my wretched condition, without the remedy.
it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon
which to get out.

what did douglass believe his ability to read had caused? what evidence shows why he felt that way?