This paper argues that enslaved people in the United States were made into chattel slaves through force, institutional perversion, and systemic dehumanization — not born into a natural or destined condition of servitude. Drawing on Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Wilson's Our Nig, and Frances Harper's Iola Leroy, the paper examines themes of intellectual resistance, physical defiance, sexual violence, intraracial complicity, and the moral distortions of slavery. Together, these literary sources demonstrate that the condition of slavery was constructed, imposed, and — crucially — capable of being undone.
The paper demonstrates comparative textual analysis in service of a historical-philosophical argument. Rather than treating each literary work in isolation, it cross-references slave narratives to reinforce a single claim from multiple angles — intellectual capacity, physical will, social psychology, and moral philosophy. This technique, anchoring literary close-reading to an overarching thesis, is a strong model for humanities research papers at the undergraduate level.
The paper opens by situating chattel slavery historically and introducing its central claim. It then develops evidence section by section: Douglass's literacy and physical resistance establish individual humanity; the Hughes episode introduces institutional psychology; the abolitionist newspaper passage confirms that freedom was a natural aspiration; Jacobs and Wilson add gender and childhood dimensions; and Harper's Iola Leroy addresses the social perversions of mixed-race offspring under slavery. The conclusion synthesizes these threads and anchors them in the Emancipation Proclamation as the definitive proof that slavery was a made — and unmakeable — condition.
The sense of proprietorship held by slave traders, owners, and other propagators of chattel slavery in the United States until the middle of the 19th century would be absurdly laughable — were it not steeped in a legacy of perversion, anguish, tragedy, and perniciousness. The notion that one had the right to actually own another person — whose sole existence would be to serve the owner in any way the owner deemed appropriate — has been disproved as largely imaginary, and not something based on any sense of right or morality, numerous times, both during the tenure of slavery in the United States and well afterward. A casual examination of the wording of the Declaration of Independence confirms this fact (McAuliffe, 2010, p. 78), although it should be noted that at the time of the document's composition, African and West Indian slaves were largely regarded as three-fifths of a man for the purposes of taxation and representation.
However, those distinctions have largely faded with the passing of chattel slavery in this country. The conception that someone could be born solely for the purpose of being a slave is highly inaccurate, and can be demonstrated in a number of ways — not the least of which is the historical fact that when African rulers sold a number of slaves to European slave traders in the 15th and 16th centuries (Baraka, 1991, p. 21), those people were already free. It was only the dogged insolence of European and American slave traders and owners that persisted in making those of African and West Indian descent into chattel slaves in this country, as a body of literature and historical sources readily proves.
Some of the most powerful examples of this fact may be gleaned from literature, particularly when such literature is founded upon a historical basis that combines a non-fictional approach with a narrative in which slaves are depicted as full human beings — a perspective that was widely unpopular in certain regions of the United States for the first century both before and after its founding. It may be asserted that slave narratives, which illustrated the actual person and character of someone repeatedly dehumanized to be made into another's property, were among the contributing factors that led to the eventual abolition of slavery in the United States (Bland, 2001, p. 11). Of the first-hand chronicles of slavery, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave is certainly among the most eminent. The first reason for this eminence is the eloquence of Douglass's writing — which in and of itself serves as a defense of the notion that one is not born a slave, but is rather made into one — while other contributing factors include the narrative's brutal rendering of the perverse behavior of slave owners and traders, as well as its depictions of the genuine humanity that each and every slave undeniably possessed.
When attempting to demonstrate that slaves were made into human property and were not born that way, it becomes necessary to define and outline the logic behind this argument, as well as any proofs offered to support it. To do so, one can compare the sentiment, intellect, and overall humanity of slaves to that of their owners, and examine whether there are any qualities in the latter that are lacking in the former, and vice versa.
To this end, Douglass's narrative proves quite beneficial, as the following quotation demonstrates his humanity and intellect — which happened to be confined to a variety of slave owners since he was deemed to be their "property."
"Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further… I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty — to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man" (Douglass, 1845, pp. 28–29).
This quotation readily demonstrates Douglass's intellectual prowess, which is as adept as any human being's. It displays his inclination toward scholastic pursuits and the learning of writing, as well as his ability to draw instructive lessons from everyday occurrences — here characterized by Mr. Auld's forbidding his wife to teach Douglass to read, which was a fairly common dictum among slave owners. It is in this latter aspect that the quotation actually proves that slaves were simply made into a life of servitude and not born that way. Douglass's understanding of the white man's "power" to enslave the black man implies that this power has a source, one that may be overcome. Douglass exemplifies this by dedicating his thought process and his life to pursuing his own freedom after this revelation. If he were truly born to be a slave, he would not attempt such an undertaking.
There are quite a number of factors and anecdotes within the narrative that allude to the fact that slaves were not born to be in bondage, but had simply been made that way due to unfortunate circumstances — which could largely be attributed to either themselves or their ancestors having been sold into slavery in parts of Africa or the West Indies (Baraka, 1991, p. 23). If the preceding quotation indicates that Douglass possessed the powers of reasoning and intellectual capacity that would behoove any freed man, the following quotation alludes to a sense of virility instilled within him despite the best efforts of numerous slave owners to break his will, render him docile, and keep him both physically and mentally in bondage.
"…he left Covey and myself to fight our own battle out. We were at it for nearly two hours. Covey at length let me go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much. The truth was, that he had not whipped me at all. I considered him as getting entirely the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him" (Douglass, 1845, p. 62).
This quotation underscores the intense physical resistance Douglass rallied against his slave master, Covey, largely because he was tired of being physically abused. Such physical resistance is fairly convincing evidence that slaves are not born to their condition. Douglass was born into the lot of a slave — yet he exerted such strong physical resistance for "nearly two hours" that Covey had to "let" him "go." In doing so, Douglass demonstrated that he was refusing to accept his position as a slave and that he would fight with all his willpower to resist the abuse that slaves so typically and wantonly endured. Had he chosen to acquiesce to the cruel hand life had dealt him, he would have confirmed a kind of born submission. But he did not acquiesce — which indicates that he was not simply born to be a slave, despite the fact that he was a slave when he was born.
What is of immense interest in the preceding passage is that Covey actually called upon another slave to help him during his confrontation with Douglass. That slave, a man by the name of Hughes, promptly came to his master's aid, as the following quotation illustrates: "Hughes came, and, while Covey held me, attempted to tie my right hand. While he was in the act of doing so, I watched my chance, and gave him a heavy kick close under the ribs" (Douglass, 1845, p. 62). In this passage, Hughes — another slave — exercises a degree of complicity in his master's acts of violence against Douglass. Yet Hughes did so because, as a slave, he had been conditioned to heed his master's command lest he face violent retribution. Nevertheless, Hughes's complicity in attempting to help his master bind Douglass is merely part of a lengthy tradition of preferentialism within chattel slavery that inherently affected the psychology of slaves, and which reinforces the notion that slaves were made and not born that way.
The following quotation from Jones (1966) emphasizes this tradition and its effects upon slaves:
"In a sense, however, the extension of 'special privileges' to Negro house servants ('house niggers'), did early help to create a new class of Negroes within the slave system. The 'house nigger' not only assimilated 'massa's' ideas and attitudes at a rapid rate, but his children were sometimes allowed to learn trades and become artisans and craftsmen" (p. 73).
This quotation implies that Hughes's willingness to help Covey subdue Douglass was simply part of a tradition of assisting one's master in order to earn what Jones refers to as "special privileges." Hughes was not helping Covey out of any desire to see harm done to Douglass; he was simply trying to maintain his own favorable standing with his master in hopes of receiving preferential treatment. The fact that Hughes would help a man of a separate race subdue a member of his own race, so that incalculable physical harm could be inflicted upon Douglass without any means of defense, is indicative of the perverse nature of slavery — a system that would drive a wedge between two men who more than likely resembled each other far more than either resembled Covey.
Such a perversion — aiding in the bludgeoning of another in order to gain small favors — is so unnatural that it had to be taught, or in the case of Hughes, learned. Had slavery not been in existence, there is very little likelihood that Hughes would have assisted this Caucasian landowner in subduing someone who was in all likelihood far more similar to Hughes than Covey ever was. That behavior must be learned and reinforced through the institution of slavery, which is further evidence that slaves are made, and not born.
There are numerous instances in which Douglass's narrative underscores the point that slaves should be more loyal to themselves than to their masters. The very fact that he does not provide abundant details regarding his eventual escape from bondage — because he might ruin the chances "by which a brother slave might clear himself of the chains and fetters of slavery" (Douglass, 1845, p. 86) — illustrates that Hughes should have been considering Douglass a "brother slave" and aiding him, not Covey. Yet so great was the perversion of slavery, which absolutely desecrated and frequently made a mockery of traditional values, morals, and ethics, that when house slave status or some form of favoritism was at stake, slaves would readily assist their masters — often to the neglect and downfall of their fellow enslaved people.
It may be sufficiently illustrated that slaves are definitely made to conform to the depraved state of degradation that encompassed chattel slavery in the United States from before the nation's inception to the midway point of the 19th century. Slaves are certainly not born for this vocation, or this state of abjectness from which few were lucky to escape — and virtually none were able to escape completely. The very fact that slavery could end — in circumstances other than death, and as a result of a liberating journey to northern states where slavery was disallowed — is a testament to the fact that it is a condition which can be readily made, or unmade, by the vacillating hands of man. The most salient proof that slaves are made and not born can be evinced from the discontinuance of legal chattel slavery in America, effected by Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
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