Douglass -- The Narrative

8 Pages 1945 Words

children were slaves despite their paternal heritage because their mother was a slave. The effect of this revelation was to shock and offend the morals of the conservative northern whites. Northern society scorned people in adulterous and interracial relationships. By portraying these Southerners as immoral and adulterous, Douglass wanted to cultivate in his audience a damaging opinion of southern slaveholders (Quarles ix).
Continuing with the theme of family values, Douglass shifts to the basic family unit. Their master separated Douglass and his mother when he was an infant, for what reason he “does not know” (Douglass 2). No one gave Douglass an explanation because this situation was customary on plantations. Douglass wanted to horrify his northern white readers by informing them that slaveholders regularly split slave families for no apparent reason. This obviously would upset Northerners because the family unit was the foundation for their close-knit communities. Multiple generations and extended families lived together or near each other. It was unimaginable to the readers that a society existed that took children away from their mothers without reason. Northerners would think of anyone who was part of such a society as a heartless monster (Quarles ix). Douglass wanted the northern whites to lash out against these heartless monsters and abolish slavery, thereby ending the cruel practices associated with the institution.
Another example of how Douglass used family values against southern slaveholders was in the treatment of his grandmother. When Douglass’s master decided his grandmother was too old and no longer useful, “they took her to the woods, built her a little hut … and then made her welcome to the privilege of su...