FREE ESSAY ON FREDERICK DOUGLASS

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Term Paper
Frederick Douglass
The injustice of slavery damaged the individual slaves and slaveholders. In the
nineteenth century the number of slaves and slaveholders was at a numerous amount,
because of this you must ask yourself what was going on through the minds of these
people. One of these people was named Frederick Douglass (abolitionist) who was basically
self-taught, but he knew enough to read the powerful writers of his day.
Douglass was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough Maryland. He never knew the true
identity of his father, but it was said that it was his master. Douglass mentioned "this
to show how the slaveholder in many cases, sustains to his slaves the double relation of
master and father" (Douglass 2). Frederick grew up having no knowledge of his birthday
and didn't ever find records on it; his closest knowledge is that sometime in 1835
Douglass master said he is about seventeen years of age. You must ask yourself how can a
man who doesn't even know his own age be able to be unquestionably the foremost black
American of the nineteenth century. This man did not know anything until his owner's wife
Mrs. Auld taught him how to read and write. The husband found out and forbid it he said,
"teaching slaves is unlawful, as well as unsafe" (Jacobus p.107). The owner Mr. Auld
thinks that because once a person has knowledge he has the power to question his life and
everything around him. The book The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass written
by Frederick Douglass himself an age of between twenty-seven and twenty-eight; this book
is filled with the injustice of slavery.
Douglass had lived some very hard times growing up in his life as a slave he said, "I
have seen a women get whipped so bad that it cause her to bleed for a half an hour at the
time…crying children pleading for their mother's release." (Douglass 8) Frederick
Douglass was whipped and abused by his owners as well. The owners also hurt the slaves
mentally as well as physically by manipulating the slaves mind by telling them that there
are going to work in the Great House Farm. It was no different than working anywhere else
but the point was to give it a good name so slaves can work in pride thinking because the
place has a fancy name. Douglass wrote an important phrase in one of his papers:
Two hostile and irreconcilable tendencies, broad as the world of man, are in the open
field, good and evil, truth and error, enlightenment and superstition. Progress and
reaction, the ideal and the actual, the spiritual and the material, the old and the new,
are in perpetual conflict, and the battle must go on till the ideal, the spiritual side
of humanity shall gain perfect victory over all that is low and vile on the world.
(Martin JR. 107)
This phrase is very important because he is expressing what he feels. That the world has
got to stop all of this hatred against each other and we must learn to live in a place of
no injustice and come to grips with this era's race problem. "The relation subsisting
between the white and black people of this country is the vital question of the age"
(Martin JR 109). Douglass should not have lived such a bad life growing up as a child
neither should all of those slaves that have gone through the same thing. You can't treat
a person different just because of their color. 
The brutality that slaves endured form their masters and from the institution of slavery
caused slaves to be denied their god given rights. In the Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, he has the ability to show the psychological battle between the white
slave holders and their black slaves, which is shown by Douglass' own intellectual
struggles against his white slave holders. Throughout the Narrative Douglass uses the
word 'brute', to form the image that slaves were nothing more than beasts. This is only
one of numerous examples in which Douglass creates the image of a dehumanized slave
though the use of his vocabulary. Douglass states, " I was broken in body, soul, and
spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, and the disposition
to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of
slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!" (Douglass 73).
Douglass makes it clear to you that slavery degrades a man, and makes him loose his
manhood. Frederick Douglass salvages his human nature through education and
self-determination. When Douglass first got a taste of knowledge, he then understood the
power in which it held. Douglass states, "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
47). This was Douglass' first step towards freedom, doing what he had to do to get there,
that was to learn and gain the white man's knowledge.
Douglass noticed that Christianity also played a role in the southern slaveholders that
were so called Christians. Douglass would cry out, "…O, why was I born a man, of
whom to make a brute…let me be Free! Is there any God?" (Douglass 74). Douglass
started to see a pattern with his masters, in which the more religious, the more brutal
their actions became. Ask yourself how could a man call himself a Christian and still act
out so much hate on an individual? This is a question that would come up often in the
discussion of Christianity when viewed with slavery. An author quotes, "between the
Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest
possible difference-so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of
necessity to reject the other as bad corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of one is of
necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial
Christianity of Christ" (Bloom 4). A good question was stated, "whether a true Christian
civilization can be established, maintained, and made to flourish in this professedly
Christian country" (Martin JR 113). Being that these people from the south were living in
such different ways was Christianity really going on at this time of period?
Douglass noticed when he went up to the north and became free that the north is very
racist so his intent was not trying to achieve equal rights but basic human rights.
Douglass hoped to gain compassion for those still in slavery by relating experiences such
as being separated from his mother when he was an infant and not knowing whom his father
was, how slaves were treated as if they had less value than an animal, and the fact that
slaves were brutally beaten and sometimes killed without it being considered a crime.
Douglass stated, "Slavery was a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one must
experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances…then, and not till then,
will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the toil worn
and whipped-scared…slave" (Douglass 64). These words by Douglass are meant as a
plea for his readers to imagine themselves in his situation to better understand the
hardships he and other slaves endured. Douglass shows the injustice of slavery by knowing
that to gain freedom, involves more than simply running north, but the road to freedom,
is instead, shown to be a power struggle and a long draining intellectual process of
learning and maturing. You can also see that Douglass' determination to be free was a
result of gaining knowledge. 
In closing stages I would like to say that Frederick Douglass is a brilliant man after I
read this quote, "Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something
toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of
deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds…relying upon the power of
truth, love, and justice, for success in my…efforts and solemnly pledging myself
anew to the sacred cause, I subscribe myself" (Douglass 76). With these words, Frederick
Douglass end one of the greatest pieces of propaganda of the 19th century. The injustice
of slavery damaged the slaves and slaveholder but it made one of history's best American
literature writer and speaker. 
Bibliography: 
Douglass, Frederick, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Signet,
1968.
Martin Jr., Waldo E., The Mind of Frederick Douglass. North Carolina: University of North
Carolina, 1984
Jacobus, Lee A., A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers. Boston:
Bedford, 1998
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Ed. Bloom, Harold. New
York, 1988