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Frederick Douglass

The institution of American slavery was fraught with many heart wrenching tails of inhuman treatment endured by those of African descent. In his autobiography Frederick Douglass details the daily horrors slaves faced. In Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave he depicts the plight of slavery with such eloquence that only one having suffered through it could do. Douglass writes on many key topics in slave life such as separation of families, punishment, and the truth that would lead him to freedom, and how these things work to keep slavery intact.
In the words of Frederick Douglass, "My mother and I were separated when I was only but an infant…It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age." (22) The bond between mother and child was broken before it had chance to form. He went on to say how his brothers and sisters knew they were such, but the early separation of them made them strangers to each other. He, himself a witness and victim of separation, wrote of the horror the thought of severance from loved ones and friends inspired among the slaves. Slaves thought to be unmanageable by their masters were sold as a way of keeping the others inline.
A very sad tail of separation Frederick Douglass spoke of was that of his grandmother from her family. His grandmother was not sold, but instead deemed useless do to old age. In his words, "If any one thing in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable loathing for slaveholders it was their base ingratitude to my poor grandmother." (61) She had been with her recently deceased master all his life. She and her twelve children "peopled" his plantations and brought much wealth to him. Upon her masters death freedom was not her reward for years of service. She had to watch as her children and grand children were sold off....