Cruelty and Control: Tactics of Slaveholders

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“He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes.” said Douglass “ he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood came dripping to the floor.” Slaveholders had many different strategies to control their slaves. In both Frederick Douglass slave narrative “ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and in Jacobs's slave narrative “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” the slaveholders were smart and had many techniques to control the slaves. The most apparent slaveholding strategy in both texts is physically hurting the slaves. In the Douglass text a very vivid …show more content…

The slave owners would limit the amount of food the slaves got or they would give them an abundance until the were sick. From a female view and working in the kitchen, Jacobs explained how the mistress would spit in the food so the slaves wouldn't eat any of the leftover food.(4) By the mistress spitting into the food it ensured that each slave got the same, little, amount of food. Although the owners limited the amount of food given to the slaves, on certain occasions the master would make the slave eat all of the food in his presence which resulted in the slave getting sick. This occurred if the master didn't like the food that was made for him, so many of the slaves were scared to bring the food out to him.(5) A cook was a hard job because not only did they have to make good food for the owners, they had to make food for the dog. Jacobs expounded about and instance where the cook had to make Indian mush for the dog, but the do would not eat it. So the master, Mr. Flint, made her it all of the dog food. It caused her to be very ill and Mr. Flint gave her consequences like tying her up in the barn away from her nursing baby for days.( Overall, the slaveholders were very smart and tricky with how they controlled their slaves. They had a variety of different strategies to control the slaves like controlling how much food the slaves could have, physically hurting the slaves and intellectually playing mind games

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