Other influences were scarcely less formative in the life of the growing boy. Vermont was also the land of the town meeting. Whatever may be said of the efficiency of town government, it was and is a school of democracy. In Vermont it was the natural political expression of social forces. How else, indeed, could the general will find fit expression, except through the attrition of many minds? And who could know better the needs of the community than the commonalty? Not that men reasoned about the philosophy of their political institutions: they simply accepted them. And young Douglass grew up in an atmosphere friendly to local self-government of an extreme type.
Stephen was nearing his fourteenth birthday, when an event occurred which interrupted the even current of his life. His uncle, who was commonly regarded as a confirmed old bachelor, confounded the village gossips by bringing home a young bride. The birth of a son and heir was the nephew's undoing. While the uncle regarded Stephen with undiminished affection, he was now much more emphatically _in loco parentis_. An indefinable something had come between them. The subtle change in relationship was brought home to both when Stephen proposed that he should go to the academy in Brandon, to prepare for college. That he was to go to college, he seems to have taken for granted. There was a moment of embarrassment, and then the uncle told the lad, frankly but kindly, that he could not provide for his further education. With considerable show of affection, he advised him to give up the notion of going to college and to remain on the farm, where he would have an assured competence. In after years the grown man related this incident with a tinge of bitterness, averring that there had been an understanding in the family that he was to attend college.[7] Momentary disappointment he may have felt, to be sure, but he could hardly have been led to believe that he could draw indefinitely upon his uncle's bounty.
Piqued and somewhat resentful, Stephen made up his mind to live no longer under his uncle's roof. He would show his spirit by proving that he was abundantly able to take care of himself. Much against the wishes of his mother, who knew him to be mastered by a boyish whim, he apprenticed himself to Nahum Parker, a cabinet-maker in Middlebury.[8] He put on his apron, went to work sawing table legs from two-inch planks, and, delighted with the novelty of the occupation and exhilarated by his newly found sense of freedom, believed himself on the highway to happiness and prosperity. He found plenty of companions with whom he spent his idle hours, young fellows who had a taste for politics and who rapidly kindled in the newcomer a consuming admiration for Andrew Jackson. He now began to read with avidity such political works as came to hand. Discussion with his new friends and with his employer, who was an ardent supporter of Adams and Clay, whetted his appetite for more reading and study. In after years he was wont to say that these were the happiest days of his life.[9]