At that moment he knew that slave masters identified a way to control the minds of slaves and that was too not simply give them there age. Douglass guessed that his father was his first white master, Captain Anthony. His mother, Harriet Bailey, who was a field hand and she was not allowed to see him very often; and she died when he was seven years old. Just because his father was a white man, Douglass did not have any privileges, he was treated like any other slave. Douglass had seen a horrific sight of
Were Freedmen Better off than Slaves? What was the daily life of slaves and how were they treated? What about freedmen? Slaves are also human like the owners, but why are they treated differently? The beginning of slavery began as punishments for crimes in Africa, leading to Europe wanting them.
One of those things was slave codes. Which gave more power to the slave owners and even less power to the slaves on page 434, it says "in existence since the 1700's slave codes were written to prevent the event white southerners dreaded most-became more severe. This shows that the slaves had absolutely no access to freedom to the slave codes another way that the slaves resisted was that they faked an illness, so they can get revenge to their masters on page 437 it gives a specific explanation on how they faked their illness. It says "For the most part enslaved people resisted slavery by working slowly or pretending to be ill. Occasionally resistance took more active forms, such as setting fire to a plantation building or breaking tools.
This means that the master had an impact on the slave experience because it could determine whether or not you had a good experience. Olaudah, although still being a slave was well treated so he eventually bought his freedom. Whereas Ellen Craft was not treated well by her masters so she suffered from slavery. Slaves had different experiences depending on if they were captured or born into slavery. They also had different experiences depending on if they were a man or a women and where they worked.
They could be bought or sold as property in the same way one would sell beasts of burden. Most slaves were put to work cultivating the land in some agrarian way. Yet in Africa some slaves were given positions of moderate respect and responsibility. Some were put to work as soldiers, administrators or even highly placed advisers. “The Songhay emperors, for example, often employed slaves as administrators and soldiers, since the rulers distrusted free nobles, whom they considered excessively ambitious and undependable” (Bentley, and Ziegler ).
Slavery, which was a major uproar from colonial America to the civil war, is the racial epidemic of the enslavement of people for money and cheap labor with extensive abuses. The question that could be asked is were the slaves dignified, did they still keep their dignity? The word dignity is the conducting of self-respect as a person sees himself or herself rather than, how others perceive that person. Slavery has been around for years and slaves have been treated unfairly for countless of reasons and situations. Did they still keep their self-respect?
Also slave in africa were able to work there way out of slavery. This was why some Aficans would become slaves, so they they could have a better life. But some of then did not have a choice for an example africans would capture africans. Most people did this to either get rid of enemys so they could increase the wealth of there communties (The Organization of Slave Trade pg. 3).
In my opinion, the narrative was very well written and it was a great resource when learning about the lives of slaves. Douglass’s Narrative shows how white slaveholders continue slavery by keeping their slaves ignorant. At the time Douglass was writing, many people believed that slavery was a natural state of being. Slave owners keep slaves ignorant of basic facts about themselves, such as their birth date or who their parents were. This ignorance robs children of their natural sense of individual identity.
Chattel Slavery and Indentured Servants Indentured servitude differed from chattel slavery because indentured servants are people who were willing to work to get transportation, land, clothes, food, or shelter instead of money. In chattel slavery, people are considered property instead of workers or servants. They can only be free when they purchased themselves or when their masters allowed them to be. Indentured servants get to be released when they have worked their part of the deal. Slaves don't get much in return for their work.
Did Slavery Cause the Civil War? The claim of historians that the civil war in America was an outcome of slavery is true, as it was the issue of abolition of slavery that was considered not acceptable by Southern states of the country, as their major plantation and trade was there because of African slaves. According to the people of the South, North was trying to eliminate slavery with unjustified reasons. The Southerners regarded the Northerners as their enemies because, they thought that the government of North was interested in subjugating Southern States by ending slavery and by given equal rights to the slaves. There were eleven States of America that were slave states, as they held slaves in a large ratio; they named themselves as “Confederates of America” while the other side was named as “The Union” (Valley of the shadow).