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Frederick Douglass And Slavery

Frederick Douglass and Slavery


Abolitionist Frederick Douglass was the most distinguished and
influential black leaders of the nineteenth century. Douglass focused his
writings on the harshness and brutality of slavery. He describes in many of his
books accounts of his own experiences as a slave. A reader is able to perceive a
clear image of slavery through Douglass' words. His writings explain the effects
of slavery and the struggle to overthrow it, as well as the condition of free
blacks both before and after the Emancipation, the politics of the Civil War,
and the failed promise of Reconstruction the followed.
As a child, Douglass was taught how to read by Sophia Auid. She was
drawn to the questioning mind of Douglass. Her husband however, put a stop to
this stating the teaching of Douglass to read would, "Spoil the best nigger in
the world... forever unfitting him for the duties of a slave."
As a slave child some experiences were hard to describe. Douglass
witnessed, as a child, what he called a "horrible exhibition." He lived with his
Aunt in one of the master's corridors. The master was an inhumane slave holder.
He would sometimes take great pleasure in whipping a slave. Douglass was often
times awakened by the screams of his Aunt. She would be tied and whipped on her
back. The master would whip her till he was literally covered in blood. "No
words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart
from its bloody purpose." The louder she screamed, the harder the master seemed
to whip her. Douglass witnessed this first as a child. As he grew older, many
more of these incidents would occur. "It struck me with awful force. It was the
blood stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, though which I was
about to pass."
An old slave master of Douglass was Captain Anthony. Captain Anthony was,
at times, a kind and gentle man. However, slavery made him treat slaves as
inferiors. "Under the whole heavens there could be no...