Slaveholders Over The Slaves example essay topic

In Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Mr. Douglass gives many examples of cruelty towards slaves as he shows many reasons that could have been used to abolish slavery. Throughout the well-written narrative, Douglass uses examples from the severe whippings that took place constantly to a form of brainwashing by the slaveholders over the slaves describing the terrible conditions that the slaves were faced with in the south in the first half of the 1800's. The purpose of this narrative was most likely to give others not affiliated with slaves an explicit view of what actually happened to the slaves physically, mentally, and emotionally to show the explicit importance of knowledge to the liberation of slaves. Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in 1818 in Tuckahoe, Maryland, entered slavery from birth.

Unaware of his actual date of birth, like most all the other slaves at that time, Douglass was forced to face the dread of being a slave early in his life. The very fact that the slaveholders did not give their slaves an actual birth date was one of the first examples not of brainwashing but a form of brain molding that was customary for all slaveholders to take part of. Since the slaves did not know their birthday, they were more easily treated like cattle or other property of the plantation, which was the objective of the slaveholders. The slaveholders felt that the more ignorant and little minded that slaves were, then the more effective they would be in the fields. This example of depriving the slaves of their natural right as humans to know their date of birth was just the beginning of the many examples that Frederick Douglass used to show reasons for the abolishment of slavery.

Douglass' mother, slave Harriet Bailey, was immediately separated from him while he was still an infant. Frederick's father was said to be a white man, but throughout the entire narrative, Douglass does not positively confirm it. He does this probably for the fact that if he does not acknowledge that his father was white, then he is not forced into thinking his mother was most likely raped by a white man. A majority of southern slaveholders took part in sexual relations with their slaves because it was their property and they felt should be able to do whatever they wanted to do with it. This idea of the slaveholder was an evil example of the condition of slavery and how it was such a necessity that it be abolished. The total disrespect by slaveholders towards the slave families is overwhelmingly sinful.

How could one person be so oblivious to the wickedness of their actions to their families of slaves by impregnating their women and separating them from each other? The shear absence of any respect for Africans or mankind in general, makes those certain slaveholders the worst humans on this earth. As a young child, Frederick Douglass was introduced to the acts of violence towards the slaves including the all too common whippings. He says, "I have often been awakened at the down of day by the most heart-rendering shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood". One could only imagine the horrid pictures that slaves would have seen on a daily basis of other slaves nearly being beaten to death by their masters. For the black children growing up on the plantation, the master was seen to be a man of great power and not to be taken lightly.

This was exactly what the master wanted, a form of mental control over the youngest of the slaves that would last a lifetime. A fact from the narrative that was unexpected was that there was discrimination between slaves from different plantations concerning the wealth of their masters. This information was proof that the slaves were kept as ignorant as possible by their masters so that they would never figure out the true evilness of slavery. The slaves were so terribly in the dark that they did not feel a need to unite with every other black person in their position, so they felt that they could be able to find a lower class than they if the wealth of their master was more than the next slave's.

One can only feel pity for the slaves though, since most of them were raised from birth by these wretched slaveholders and they were not taught anything other than how to perform their duties on the plantation. As Frederick Douglass continues in his narrative, he writes about a slave at the Lloyd plantation by the name of Demby. Demby was receiving lashes by the overseer, Mr. Gore, and could not take the pain any longer and ran to a nearby creek and immersed himself to help his pain. Feeling no remorse, Mr. Gore, ordered Demby to get out of the creek to receive the rest of his lashes, Demby refused. Gore gave Demby to the count of three to exit the creek and on "three" he raised his gun and took Demby's head off with one shot of his musket. With this extreme example of absolute cruelty of the overseers and masters, Douglass gives an excellent example of the total abuse of power and total disregard for slaves' lives that the slaveholders had with their slaves.

As each of these horrid events occurred, the power of the masters over the slaves grew. This happened due to the fact that with each death that occurred, the slaves grew more and more terrified with their masters for fear of what they would do next and to whom they would do it. When Douglass was about seven or eight years old, he left Captain Lloyd's plantation to live in Baltimore with the Auld family. Upon arriving to his new home, Frederick thought that he was going to like it much better than his previous home, however that changed gradually after some time. A short time after he moved to Baltimore, Mr. Douglass began to learn his A, B, C's and small words with the guidance of Mrs. Auld.

However, when Mr. Auld heard of this, he put an end to it. He says in regard to teaching a slave, "If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master - to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world". With these words, the objective of the slaveholders in regards to their slaves' mental capacity was to keep in as much darkness as possible. This was one of the most awful things that slaveholders did to their slaves, however was regarded as a satisfactory action by Mr. Douglass once he was semi- educated.

He felt that with no knowledge at all the slaves were content to be slaves since they knew of no reason why they shouldn't be. However, once Douglass himself gained knowledge on life, he was more miserable than before he gained that knowledge. As the slaves' whipping got more frequent on the plantation, the master's excuses for the whippings became more and more idiotic. Frederick explains that the masters and overseers on the plantation would come up with an excuse to beat a slave anytime that they could. Excuses had bogus reasons with them too. For example, is a slave looked dissatisfied to the slaveholder then the slaveholder would whip the slave because the sense of dissatisfaction on the slaves face supposedly meant that the devil was inside him, so the slaveholder was forced to beat it out of him.

A slave was thought to be wanting in reverence if he forgot to pull off his hat when a white person approached him. For this offense, a slaveholder would lash his slave. This example of the torture that masters put their slaves through is one of the top reasons that slavery was abolished. The masters had more respect for their horses and cattle than for their slaves. Towards Fredrick Douglass' end of being an owned slave, he faced his hardest dilemma yet. He was faced with the thought that if he escaped and was to be a free man then he would be forced to leave his friends and this idea was very painful.

If he had been an average slave with no education and was faced with this dilemma, then he would have probably chosen to stay with his master and his friends. However, since Douglass was educated he knew that there was nothing else he could do since it was his dream to become free. Many slaves who were contemplating escape probably faced this problem and since they didn't know what they could possibly do with their lives, they stayed with the rest of the slaves. This was an awful reality of the slaves that was made effective by the slaveholders because of the lack of education the slaves received if they received any at all.

With every one of these awful events that occurred during Frederick Douglass' life, he still managed to steer clear of the mental and emotional scarring that took place on the plantation and made a name for himself as an abolitionist. The themes that Douglass discusses throughout the narrative about the cruelty to the slaves and the blatant injustice of slavery altogether give reason enough for the abolition of slavery. The very fact that Douglass wrote this book is a feat among others since he learned to read and write by sacrificing his meals for knowledge. He should definitely be admired for that fact. Ultimately, Douglass wanted to emphasize the total importance of literacy among slaves as the key to freedom and he did so by writing his narrative that accented both the importance of knowledge and his success from a slave to a free man.