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Fredrick Douglas

Fredrick Douglass describes many demoralizing tactics that the slave owners used to keep the salves feeling less than human. Slave owners used these tactics not only to dehumanize the slaves, but because they were afraid that with enough knowledge the slaves would realize how much power they truly had which would ultimately end slavery. There are three main tactics used that seemed to have effect in keeping slaves ignorant: robbing them of knowing their mother, using religion to make them feel that God was only the white man’s God, and by keeping educations such as: reading and righting our of their grasp.
At twelve months of age the slaves were robbed of knowing their mother. They were separated by miles and rarely, if ever, knew what ones mother looked like let alone what a mother‘s tender touch, and loving words fell like. This action reminded me of when a dog has puppies, and usually the puppies are picked over, and given away never to even be nuzzled by their mother. Some may argue that you can’t compare humans to animals, but that is exactly how slaves were treated, like animals. Slaves were treated as if they had no feelings, no heart, as if the same red blood did not run through their bodies just as is it did the white mans. This action was taken to rip the slave from any deep emotion that is connected with having a mother; they wanted to take the slaves support system. A mother could not sit back and watch their son or daughter be whipped repeatedly without taking some sort of action. These actions would have been to either flee with their child, urge their children to flee when they were old enough, or some type of rebellion would have risen up among the mothers. The white men knew this, and for that reason separated mother and child.
Religion was not only used by the slave owners to justify their cruel actions, but to make the slaves feel that God was not on their side, but only the white mans. One slave owner would even quote verses while...