Therefore, a slave’s life seemed worthless in the world, and this stopped many slaves from trying to escape because they knew that if they were caught they would most likely be killed. As a result, slave owners dominated slaves by using fearful antics and by severely punishing slaves. This complete domination over slaves caused the ruling class to be very confident in their social status. However, only clever slaves realized that the benefits of escaping slavery outweighed the consequences. Clever slaves knew that if they did not try and free themselves that their social standing would always remain the same and nothing would ever change.
But what John W. Blassingame is really trying to do in this book is that slavery is so severe that it destroyed the ways the slaves lived and made them honor their masters. The book
“If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master- to do as he is told to do. Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.
He was particularly not very fond of Thomas Jefferson, who he thought to be a racist. In his “Appeal in Four Articles” we can detect the tone and seriousness in his voice right away. This is obviously not a topic he takes lightly. He blasts the institution of slavery right away when he says, “But we, (coloured people) and our children are brutes!! and of course are and ought to be slaves to the American people and their children forever“ ( Walker 792).
I honestly think his intensions are good, but the people around him are not. He is being pressured into being this horrible person because he feels like an outsider and he is trying to fit in. Even though Lindo did sell her baby and neglected to tell her, I think he was just trying to find someone that wouldn’t judge him for someone that someone else was making him. Later on in the story when Lindo and Appleby try to claim ownership of Aminata, he was trying his hardest to save her from going back to Appleby’s plantation. “You came all this way to manumit your slave?
Chapter 7 Quote 7: “Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her to these heavenly qualities” (Douglass, Page 43) In this quote its explaining how his mistress was a very good person to the poor and then when slavery started it stopped her from being able to do good deeds. He is explaining how selfish slavery is and how unfair it is that his mistress can’t do good things for un lucky people all because slavery begun. Slavery wasn’t fair to any colored Americans, especially for ones like her. Chapter 8 Quote 8: “We all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that would be our inevitable condition-a condition held by us all in the utmost horror and dread.” (Douglass, Page
Douglass’ narrative is a recount of the tough life on the plantations before his escape to New York. Douglas describes in this narrative the senseless acts of cruelty on the part of the masters as well as the debased lives of the slaves. In this book he also stated how his master forbade Mrs. Auld to teach him any further, because he felt that once Frederick Douglass learned to read, it would do him no good, but a great deal of harm, it would make him discontented and unhappy, it would forever unfit him to be a slave, and there would be no keeping him. This very much, somehow inspired Frederick Douglass to learn at whatever cost of trouble. Frederick Douglass would bring bread from his home and give an exchange for knowledge with the poor white boys, who was contribute to him being
“Most antebellum whites firmly believed that Africans were ignoble savages who were innately barbaric, imitative, passive, cheerful, childish, lazy, cowardly, superstitious, polygamous, submissive, immoral, and stupid” (227). Most of these perspectives were brought upon by fear of the slaves and from the antebellum Southern literature of the slave’s portrait. The two major slave characters, Sambo and Nate, gave the whites more reasons to fear the slaves. "Like most men, Southern white men learned to live with their fears. After all, they were more numerous, better organized, armed, educated and more mobile than slaves"(235).
Slaves they said weren’t a real citizen, they have no rights or freedom, they said they weren’t equals to them. So how could they say they treated them like they were family. One method of protest that a slave would use to survive was to just say “yes master” I will do that, but when the would do what they were told they would do it really slow. The slave owners couldn’t
Much of the plantation and slave owner’s power came from the slave’s dependence on the owner for survival. Education was seen as a way to establish an independence; thus weakening the slave owner’s control. Several laws were passed in the Deep South, which forbid slaves to learn to read and write as well as making it illegal for any persons, white or black, to educate slaves. In 1740,