My Bondage and My Freedom

887 Words4 Pages
In My Bondage and My Freedom, Fredrick Douglass argues that slavery had affected everyone. “Slavery was a brutal experience, from the initial capture in Africa, to the Middle Passage, to a degrading life of labor in America.” (Yazawa, 59) The slaves had it worst during slavery because they were the central part of it. They had their human rights taken away, they were worked until there was nothing left of them, and they were severely abused. Slaves had become a fixture that had no decisions, no ambition, and no purpose. (Douglass, 129) The slave system had mistreated the slaves in variety of ways. But the slave system affected everyone, including people who were and were not involved in it. Although slaves were victimized harshly by slavery, slaveholders and non-slaveholders were also affected by the system. The main way slaves were victimized was being stripped of their identities. They did not know when they were born, how old they were, and did not have any knowledge of their parents or family. “Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves.” (Douglass, 30) When Fredrick Douglas’s meet his brothers and sisters it meant nothing to him because he had no idea who they were. He knew that he should feel some kind of connection between them, but he could not manage to feel that bond because the slave system had taken that away from him and from other slaves. The Masters had belittled the slaves and made slaves believe that God had chosen them to be slaves. They treated the slaves as property because the slave system had made them property. This made Fredrick Douglass believed that he was a slave for life, and he felt that he was “not only the slave of Master Thomas, but…the slave of society.” (Douglass, 140) It was an effective method to obliterate the “mind and heart of the slave as an
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