Frederick Douglass: life, writings, and historical significance

Frederick Douglas

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave recounts the horrible conditions that led to Douglass's contempt for slavery. Douglass suffered poverty, brutality, separation from family, and civil injustice all for what he believed to be for the financial benefit of white slave owners. Fear and educational and religious controls were instruments used to keep slaves in their place. But, with his strength and determination, Douglas would rebel against and overcome these controls. And, in the end, Douglass would find the accumulation of material wealth used to justify the atrocities of slavery was an illusion.

As a child, Douglas was underfed and forced to eat cornmeal must from a trough as though he was a pig. The only clothing the slave children had were two linen shirts per year which hung to their knees. When these failed them, the children were forced to go naked. In winter, the children had to huddle in the kitchen to keep warm because they had no beds or blankets. Slave master Thomas Auld starved his slaves, and they had to steal food from neighboring farms to survive. In sharp contrast, slave owner Colonel Lloyd kept ten to fifteen house servants and a thousand slaves on a plantation resembling a country village with magnificent gardens and spending riding equipage

To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal to describing the riches of Job. He kept from ten to fifteen house-servants. He was said to own a thousand slaves,

Douglass was subjected to witnessing brutal beatings, one of which was the lashing to the bare back of his own aunt. One slave overseer aptly named Mr. Severe would bloody women woman in front of their crying children who were begging for their mother's release. Douglass thought that Severe took pleasure in his fiendish behavior. Frederick would himself receive many beatings. The harshest was from a master named Edward Covey who continually whipped Frederick until he began to feel that he was broken. After collapsing in the field, Covey continued to kick and beat Frederick. Growing tired of Covey's months of abuse, Frederick defied the master and fought back even though legally a slave could be murdered for resisting his master.

Isolation from family was one of the many injustices of slavery that Douglass experienced. Frederick's mother was unable to visit her children on a frequent basis because of the distance between the farm where she worked and the slave plantation where the children lived. Frederick did not even learn of his own mother's death until much time had passed. Property division would often separate slave families and after Frederick's grandmother was deemed too old to work, she was evicted from her cabin and sent into the woods to die. Yet another property division would separate Frederick from a black preacher named Charles Lawson who had taken Frederick under his wing and adopted him as his spiritual son. And, to escape to the North, Frederick had to leave behind his friends and his wife who he was not sure if he would ever see again.

Slave owners thought they could best control their slaves by taking measures to keep them ignorant. But, Frederick was taught to read by his mistress, Sophia Auld, at the Auld Home in Baltimore. Although Sophia was delighted with Frederick's abilities, her husband became furious because he felt that if a slave could read and write, the slave would no longer obey his master without question or thought and could forge papers that would give the slave freedom.

Hugh instructed Sophia to discontinue the reading lessons. Realizing that reading was a key to gaining freedom, Douglass would continue his own reading efforts even though this would outrage his mistress. Later on Douglas would organize a religions service for slaves, but they were soon stopped by a mob led by his slave master.

Blacks had little hope of obtaining justice through the southern court system, which refused to accept a black person's testimony against a white person. After being hired out to a local shipbuilder so that he could learn the caulker trade, Frederick was harassed by white workers who did not want blacks competing with them for jobs. One afternoon, a group of white apprentices beat up Frederick and nearly took out one of his eyes. Attempts to press charges were unsuccessful because none of the shipyard's white employees would testify and because the black man's word was useless in a court of law.