Reading Notes W8: Frederick Douglass , Part A

Fredrick Douglass born Fredric Augustus Washington Bailey born a slave in the stare of Maryland around 1818.  A young boy with no knowledge of his identity.  Torn from his mother and never knowing the identity of his true father, who was presumed to be his white master. Taught to read by his master’s brother wife, Sophia Auld.  It not this privilege that transformed his life, but the respond of his owner’s anger “discontented and unmanageable” and so “would forever unfit him to be a slave.” He understood that education would be the pathway to his freedom. It is a sad fact that before or a child’s first birthday they were ripped for their mother’s arms and shipped out as a commodity to be sold off.  It’s amazing that the Frederick defined a child as an it back then and not a person. “Frequently, before a child has reached it’s twelfth month, it’s mother is taken from it, and hire out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor (237).   His mother died at the age of seven, Fredrick was not allowed to say goodbye to his mother. He was not able to have closure at her funeral. She was another nothing more than a profitable loss not a mother who had a child that loved her. Neither was he a son that lost the woman that gave him life, nurtured him to be the best of her ability, and probably cried daily for the child she never got a chance to really know. His affections towards the death of his mother was no more than that of a stranger (237).  Slave owners justified their right to own another man was through the bible; they believe that because God cursed Ham that they believed that Africans were descendants of his blood line, yet Frederick points out that many of the slaves were of “ white blood” therefore their justification has no footing, “ If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually who, like myself, owe their existence to white father, and those fathers most frequently their own masters ( 238). It is also ironic that Africans were defined as barbaric, yet the slave owners and overseers were miserable drunkard, profane wearer, and savage masters. Theory were cruel and desensitized; more barbaric than Africans. They had no compassion for a human life. They picked out parts of the bible to bible, but not in it’s entirety.

Hierarchy slave system – Those who worked on the large sloops were manned by the colonel’s own slaves. They were esteemed very highly by other slaves and looked upon as privileged ones of the plantation’ for it was no small affair, in the eyes of the slave, to be allowed to see Baltimore (240). Slaves were given just enough to survive working conditions at most. “The men and women slaves received, as their monthly allowance of good, eight pounds of pork, or it’s equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of lined trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winder, made of course negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of allowance of the salve children was given to their moths, or the old woman having to care of them. The children unable to work in the field had neither shoes, stocks, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year. It’s sad to think that a family lived off only 8 pounds of pork, their clothing was sparse, and kids had no clothing nor shoes, even during the winter. They had no bed after spending sun up to sun down in the fields or in the kitchen; no matter of age or sex. Slaves being happy with slavery at the justification of not being in the field or being beat. Yet they were still owned by the white man. Slaves sing most when they were most unhappy. Fredrick sung to drown his sorrow, but seldom to express his happiness. He understood that no matter what relief, if any, was still no replacement for freedom. 

Slaves were beaten, mistreated, and killed and there was always a satisfied justification even if it was not a legal one. For example, Mrs. Hicks killed a young slave girl, no more than 16 years of age, because she was too exhausted to take care of her mistress child with very little sleep, not to mention she was a child herself.” It was a common saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a half-cent to kill a “nigger,” and a half-cent to bury one.  Meaning a life of a slave was worth nothing. It was not even worth a piece of candy. No matter how innocent a slave was. By the age of twelve, the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon him, at the same time he got a hold of a book entitled “the Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity he educated himself on the dialogue between a slave and his master.  Frederick gained moral, which became a power truth a fuel for which Fredrick would forever stand upon (253).