Martin Amando History 17 Diana Reed 13 November 2013 Frederick Douglass Paper Frederick Douglass was a man of immeasurable

proportion. From the beginning of his life, he did not have it easy. Throughout captivity, he had to endure many hardships and saw slavery it from the cruelest perspective: as a slave. While slavery heavily influenced who Douglass became to be, he eventually had an impact on slavery once he escaped the chains of racism. Slavery, being an institution heavily used by the white plantation owners, took control of their lives and had an enormous impact on the views and attitudes of whites towards blacks which in turn led to their dehumanization of slaves. Douglass and other slaves alike resisted to their masters efforts to dehumanize them by any means possible. Slavery, the peculiar institution, that was mainly exclusive to the southern states of America, had particular influences over the white slave owners that adopted it. White people in the south believed that they couldnt live without slavery. They thought that it was necessary and the only way of economic growth. Slavery essentially controlled southern life. Southern white planters really didnt want to look to the north as an example that a society could live without slavery, even though the north was flourishing and moving forward. After his escape to freedom Douglass correlates the economic

growth with the nonexistence of slavery: I strolled around and over the town, gazing with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful dwellings, and finelycultivated gardenssuch as I had never seen in any part of slaveholding Maryland. However, slave owners in the south refused to rid themselves of slavery. This was because the slave owners were making profits themselves. Though they made money and slavery was a sustainable way of living, many didnt realize how deep of a rut slavery had caused them to be stuck in. This rut was the mentality of most whites and the foundation of the southern economy. White slave owners and their children learned to harbor a kind of racism and hatred that said that blacks were by nature, inferior and had different colored skin to indicate this to others, which whites tried to justify by using the bible. This prejudice led to many efforts to set a clear and distinct line between which blacks were different than whites. This led to the dehumanization of the slave, so that they were broken in mind and compelled to obey their master. Slavery skewed the views and attitudes of whites and much of these views have lingered in society today, by means of parents passing down their own views through their children. You have seen how a man was made a slave, you shall see how a slave was made a man, (Douglass, 60). From the birth of a slave until the end of their life, efforts were made to dehumanize them. Immediately after birth, slave babies were taken away from their mothers to, hinder the development of the childs affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child, (Douglass, 10). Another method employed by slaveholders was to not let their slaves know their age or birthday, which invariably left them in the dark about a huge aspect of their identity. To not know such a trivial morsel of information about oneself such as

age, the slave was pushed down to the same tier as an animal and were worked as such. Douglass states that, Slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirsI do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday, (Douglass, 9). In addition to separating the slave from their mother and not letting them know their age, rape was yet another cruel tactic of dehumanization. Slave owners raped their slaves for their own enjoyment and even to impregnate them to breed more slave children as if cattle. Through rape, slaves self-esteem was lowered and the will to fight back, extinguished. Perhaps the greatest and most significant method of dehumanizing slaves was not giving slaves the chance to attain literacy or intelligence. This was also one of the most hypocritical things that slave owners didthey argued that slaves were mentally inferior, yet this was because of the simple fact that the slave owners themselves forbade slaves from learning in order to keep them as better slaves. Throughout Douglasss life, one instance of dehumanization in this manner takes the spotlight. As one of Douglasss masters said, Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now, if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave, (Douglass, 34). Upon Douglasss transfer from Colonel Lloyds plantation to Mr. Aulds plantation, he was greeted by Mrs. Auld, who was in all senses of the word, a kind Christian woman. As such, she was perhaps the first person to show Douglass any kind of equality to that of a white person and treated him like a human being. She began to educate Douglass herself by teaching him the alphabet. When her husband found out, he was furious at Sophia and forbade her from teaching any more. If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell, said Mr. Auld, believing

that Douglass would develop a thirst for knowledge and an appetite for rebellion and disobedience as well (Douglass, 34). Mrs. Auld then became as vigilant and strict as ever in her efforts to dehumanize Douglass in this manner, keeping any form of literature out of his reach. Despite having even less access to literature than before, Douglass managed become an educated and prominent abolitionist of his time. This happened to be his greatest resistance to slaveholders efforts of dehumanization. Slave owners may have been able to control most of their slaves actions by strictly confining them, but no slave owner was able to extinguish a slaves desire for freedom and thirst for knowledge. The manner in which Douglass acquired his intelligence was a rather long and arduous process, but he nonetheless taught himself to read and write. Following Sophia Aulds new disposition about educating Douglass, he went on to find other means to teach himself. He was able to coax other white children to pass their knowledge on to him, developing a system of barter. Douglass would take bread from home and give it to poor white children in his neighborhood who would, in return, give [him] that more valuable bread of knowledge. In this manner, he fought back the oppressi on of slavery; becoming an educated individual was the epitome of resistance. To conclude, slavery was an institution that not only impacted slaves, but impacted slave owners as well. It caused slave owners to become stuck in their ways simply because it was profitable to them and allowed racism to develop that has been passed down even until today. In order for slave owners to operate their plantations and keep slaves, they dehumanized them until they were almost not considered human, but animal. Slaves essentially became property. Though it would be futile for Frederick

Douglass and other slaves to openly oppose their circumstances, he found his own way to fight back at the horrible institution that ruled the south. His greatest personal triumph in antebellum America was to become educated. Despite the facts that slavery had such a deep hold on the south, and its efforts to extinguish the humanity of the blacks, Douglass and the other slaves that he taught to read fought back in the greatest way of all.