Fredrick Douglass

4 Pages 1077 Words

Slavery Effects on the American People

By his own accounts, Federick Douglass was born into slavery sometime in 1818.(p170) During the twenty years Douglass would endure the wrath of slavery, he would withstand and observe many different trials and tribulation that ultimately lead him to write about his story. In his story, Douglass not only tells how slave owners treated and mentally abused their slaves, but he also reveals how slavery effected not only the slave but the slave owners as well.
Per Douglass, the goal of the slave industry, as a whole, was to destroy the spirit of the slaves. The owners would treat the slaves as if they were a common farm animals. This form of mental abuse would help to ensure that the owners would have authority and control over their slaves. But this was probably not the most damaging form of mental abuse. By preventing the slaves from learning to read or gaining any other form of learning, the owner also hindered the slaves from having any mental leverage against slavery. Douglass believed that learning to read was “The Pathway from slavery to freedom(974).” To further their control they would separate the young slaves from their mother to hamper the baby from forming a bond with her. Douglass would only see his mother a few times before she died and when he was told of her death he said “I received … her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger(p971).” These abuses were just the beginning of a long line of atrocities that the slave owners subjected their slaves to. Another form of mental, and physical, abuse was the practice of sleeping with the slave women. As a result, the slave owner was often both master and father of the slave child. Consequently, these children would sometimes suffer more abuse from the mistress. In most cases the mistress would put so much pressure on these children and her husband, that he w...