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Aidan O’Brien
History 442
March 28 2018
Over the course of the life of Frederick Douglas, he witnessed the brutality, cruelty, and
fundamentally oppressive nature of slavery up close and personal. The slaveholders of the early
19th century went to extraordinary lengths to dehumanize and humiliate their slaves to keep them
in line. In his own words, Douglass writes, “I have found, to make a contented slave, it is
necessary to make a thoughtless one… He must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can
be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”1 Though through the eyes of Douglass we
see these attempts to oppress to and dehumanize slaves by their slaveholders take many forms,
most notably through of the deprivation of education to slaves, through harsh and inhumane
living conditions, and through psychological abuse designed to convince slaves that they
themselves were incapable of thinking in the way that their masters did. In this way, slaveholders
took control not only over what their slaves were physically doing, but also over how they
thought about the world, leading to the ‘ceasing’ of being a man as Douglass would describe it.
Or at least, how they attempted to, because over the course for Frederick Douglass’ life, he also
showed plenty of ways to resist this control as well. Specifically, when Douglass was told that
reading would make him unfit to be a slave, he responded by learning to read and write and
1
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2003,
103
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become educated in secret. When he was starved, whipped, and beaten by white men, Douglass
kept himself going with ideals of freedom, and when his masters attempted to break him
coming to the conclusion that it would be better to die attempting to be free, then to cease to be a
man.
The first and most important aspect of oppression necessary for this transformation was
making sure slaves could not receive the education necessary to learn about their true condition.
For Frederick Douglass and many other slaves, this manifested particularly in the form of
learning to read. Should a slave learn to read, all of a sudden, doors could become open to him.
His world would expand well beyond the plantations he had likely lived on for the entirety of his
life, and he, unfortunately, would learn how pitiful and deprived his existence was, be it through
newspapers or perhaps even natural rights literature of the time. Depriving the slave of this
knowledge meant, of course, that the slave was then forced to receive all knowledge of the
outside world at the mercy of the master’s discretion. Education would free a slave’s mind, and
because of this, slaveholders felt that their bodies would follow. For Frederick Douglass, this
manifests itself in the form of Hugh Auld, when he when he found his wife teaching Douglass to
read, saying “If you teach that nigger how to read… It would forever unfit him to be a slave”2.
As for Douglass, he felt the same as Master Auld, so naturally he began learning to read and
write in secret. Not only that, but Douglass also began to help liberate the shackles on other
slaves’ minds and teach them to read themselves in his own school.3 If he could help it, no
2
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 73
3
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 93
O’Brien3
But this is not the only form of oppression Douglass encountered in his life. Throughout his
existence, although primarily while he was living on a plantation as a young boy, Douglass
encountered the countless inhumane and physically abusive aspects of slavery first hand. In one
passage, Douglass mentions children eating their food from a trough similar to a pig’s. 4In
another, he says that slaves were permitted but two coarse shirts a year, no pants for those too
young to work, and only one blanket per adult.5 This is without even getting into how Douglass
mentions specific instances of slave owners not feeding their slaves well, particularly in the case
of when he lived with Thomas Auld and described himself as ‘nearly perishing from hunger’.6
And this is without even mentioning the countless physical beatings slaves received at the hands
of whites. Clearly, it was the goal of slave owners to, exactly as Douglass mentions in the initial
paragraph, reduce their slaves to the same status as animals. Douglass resisted all these tactics in
a few ways, but they all shared a common theme: survival. Douglass admits to stealing when he
was hungry7, and for the most part he just stands back and takes any punishment he received
from slave masters. Since his goal was escape, his resistance primarily entailed him surviving to
do this, but his stealing did lead to one final, and more terrible type of oppression he
encountered.
After being declared careless by Master Thomas after eating to not starve, Douglass is rented
“to be broken”, to Mr. Covey,8 the famed “Nigger-Breaker”, who plays new kinds of tricks on
Douglass and the other slaves by way of the mind. Covey would never let the slaves know when
he was in their midst, even going as far as to crawl into their midst while they were working to
4
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 58
5
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 58
6
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 76
7
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 77
8
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 77
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surprise them so they never knew when he was or wasn’t watching.9 This kind of a mind game is
cruel, as the slaves know well enough what should happen if Covey or any slave holder catches
them slacking, but these types of mind games were, as Douglass describes, all too common
among slaveholders at the time. This is meant to, in Douglass’ words, “Disgust the slave with
freedom”. 10Designed to essentially bully the slave into thinking his master knows best, this kind
of tactic was both effective and quite common. Douglass himself fell victim to Covey’s cruelty,
having openly acknowledged that he at one point had become the beast he wanted so badly to
eradicate. To become a man again for Douglass required him to, after a near death experience,
fight Mr. Covey. 11After a standoff of two hours, Douglass emerged having drawn Covey’s
blood with no consequence. In doing this, he told himself that the next white man who attempted
to beat him would have to kill him, and that freedom, now, was more important to him than ever.
Over the course of Frederick Douglass’ life, the oppression he both suffers and observes
others suffering at the hands of slavery is nothing short of horrific, and his ability to resist, even
when appearing to be totally broken, is truly extraordinary. His referral of broken slaves as
‘brutes’12 akin to livestock goes to even convey the reality of their treatment at the hands of
slaveholders. The extremely inhumane day to day living conditions slaves suffered were meant
to produce exactly that. In his effort to escape, Douglass inadvertently found the road to escape
through education. Learning to read and write was not only ultimately the key to what eventually
lead to his wholehearted hatred of slavery and escape, but also the key to something more. In his
account, Douglass describes himself not just a slave waiting for escape, but also as a teacher
9
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 80
10
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 89
11
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 86
12
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 70
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seeking to open the minds of other slaves, and this is possibly his greatest contribution. With the
ability to read, any one of Douglass’ 40 students could have their eyes opened as Douglass’
were. They could be given, for the first time in their lives, a choice. They could accept the
shackles that bound them into slavery, as Douglass did, decide that to risk it all for freedom.