Frederick Douglass was born a slave but died an important official, holding multiple public offices in the United States Government after his many accomplishments in the abolitionist movement. He was both an example of the typical slave, and also a prototype of the potential of what anyone could accomplish with an education and enough personal determination. Through his writings Frederick Douglass was able to expose the truths and horrors of slavery for the typical slave, the damaging effects of slavery upon not only the slave but for slave owner as well, the hypocrisy of a so-called Christian society which enabled the institution of slavery, and revealed through his writings that through education anyone can overcome all obstacles.
The horror of the typical slave experience was not completely appreciable until those who experienced it firsthand as Frederick Douglass did were able to make themselves heard. Frederick Douglass was separated from his mother while still an infant, as was a typical custom of slavery. Taken from its mother before “the child has reached its twelfth month”, Douglass states, “the child is placed under the care of an old woman” (1749). Douglass proposes the reason for this is to “hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child” (1749). After this early disruption from the child’s natural parent, the slave child is introduced to the world of horrors that comprises slavery, witnessing not only the cruelty of whites upon other slaves, but also becoming a victim as well. Douglass relates through his narrative the cruelty of whites upon blacks on several different occasions. One of the first beatings that Douglass witnessed as a child was of his Aunt Hester who was “stripped naked from neck to waist”, had her hands bound, then the slave master whipped her with a “heavy cowskin” until “warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor” (1751). Frederick Douglass had himself suffered many brutalities under several slave masters, in one instance before he was able to become a free man, was beaten so severely that his attackers only stopped after his “eyeball seemed to have burst” (1789). Until Frederick Douglass and others like him were able to record their experiences, the grim reality of slavery would be unknown to the larger awareness of America and the world.
Slavery not only was physically and psychologically damaging to the slave, but also had a detrimental effect on the slave owner as well. As rape was an institutionalized part of slavery, Douglass states that mulatto children are “a constant offence” to the slave owner’s wife, and such children must be sold “to human flesh-mongers” in order to avoid having to personally administer upon the slave owner’s own offspring the brutality that slavery inevitably requires (1750). Douglass himself suspected he was the offspring of his original master, a fact that probably caused both father and son much chagrin.
To keep slaves in line, slave owners often employed such characters that took pleasure in their cruelty. Douglass relates the tale of several such characters in his narrative, one example is of a Mr. Severe, “a cruel man” who “seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity” (1753). The presence of Mr. Severe brought to the fields “blood and of blasphemy”, where he “from the rising till the going down of the sun”, was “cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field, in the most frightful manner” (1753). Douglass gives us Mr. Severe as one of several examples of such types that were hired by slave owners to terrorize the slaves.
Douglass relates how slavery was detrimental to the slave owner as well as the slave. One wife of a slave owner who originally looked upon Douglass with kindness, impressed him so much that he “scarcely knew how to behave towards her” (1762). After trying to teach Douglass how to read, this pursuit by his mistress was discovered by her husband, and his master forbade this practice as at the time it was “unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave how to read” (1762). Now that she was instructed in the reality of slavery by her husband, Douglass states that his mistress turned against him, her “tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness” (1764). It was the philosophy of the slave owner Douglass states, “that behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his master’s authority” (1781). The institution of slavery led the slave owner to believe that it was necessary to lower himself to the level of a savage in order that he may control his slaves, destroying his own soul in the process of brutalizing those who the slave owner was compelled to believe were less than human.
Frederick Douglass, through his writings, exposed the hypocrisy of a so-called Christian society that allowed and maintained the inhumanity of slavery. Douglass states,
I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere
covering for the most horrid crimes, -- a justifier of the most
appalling barbarity, -- a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, -- and
a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most
infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection (1781).
Douglass relates multiple examples in his narratives of the behavior of so-called Christians that condones the terrorism and savagery against one’s fellow human beings. One such example is of a time when slave owners discovered a clandestine prayer group to which Douglass belonged. These slaves who were trying to understand the word of God, and were being denied this right by their masters. They had their improvised “little Sabbath school” broken up “with sticks and stones” by slave owners who considered themselves Christians and “humble followers of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1783). Douglass exposes to the world the hypocrisy of a society that calls itself Christian, that holds in high esteem the word of God, while permitting the worst inhumanities to be perpetrated against others, often in the name of religion.
Frederick Douglass disproved the belief that a slave is uneducable and less than human by his many accomplishments which resulted from his persistence and determination in teaching himself to read. Frederick Douglass was first taught the fundamentals of reading by the wife of one of his masters, until she was forbade to continue, the reasoning being that “learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (1762). Douglass was determined to pursue this ignited desire to learn until he could read as well as any white man. He discovered the “The Columbian Orator” around the age of twelve, which became his literary bible, reading it “every opportunity I got” (1764). He tricked and bribed white children to teach him the writing lessons which they were being taught in school, “which it is quite possible” Douglass states, that “I should never have gotten in any other way” (1766). During this time Douglass made every “board fence, brick wall, and pavement” his writing tablet, while his “pen and ink was a lump of chalk” (1766). He used the abandoned lesson books of his master’s son to learn what the boy was being taught in school, then Douglass surreptitiously copied “what he had written” (1767). Douglass states that he “continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas” and after “a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write” (1767). With persistence and determination Douglass proved that not only was a slave educable, but through his sustained effort to read he demonstrated to the world that he as a black slave did not have diminished mental capacities as the slave owners wanted everyone to believe.
Frederick Douglass overcame many obstacles in his arduous life of being born into a slavery. Due to the effect of his literary capacity in relating his and other’s experience of slavery, and the importance with which he played a part in the abolitionist movement, he was able to become a distinguished office holder in the United States Government in his later years. Despite his early life as the typical slave, who despite his circumstances, earned through his dream of being able to learn the English language, a freedom not only for himself, but also played an important role in gaining the freedom of other slaves as well. Through his writings Frederick Douglass was able to expose the institution of slavery for all its horrors, not only upon the slave but for the slave owner as well. Through his writings Frederick Douglass exposed the hypocrisy of a so-called Christian society that supposedly stood for freedom while still allowing for certain races to be legally oppressed in the supposed “land of the free”. Frederick Douglass proved through the example of his writing that anyone, with enough persistence and determination, can overcome any and all obstacles.
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Ed. George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. 1747-1801. Print.
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