Slavery In Frederick Douglass Essay

The Cruelty of Masters toward Slaves

During the nineteenth century, masters brutally mistreated their slaves. The masters abused their slaves by whippings, a lack of food, a lack of clothing, and malicious language directed at the slave. The injuries that the slaves received could never heal because before the wounds could heal, they were beaten again. Frederick Douglass, a slave during the 1800s, in his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, strives to persuade Americans to realize that slaves were treated brutally by their masters no matter if their masters were male or female, rich or poor, or religious or nonreligious.

Slaveholders, masters, and overseers, both male and female, acted savagely

toward their slaves. Frederick Douglass (1845/1995) in his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, writes about when the overseer Mr. Gore shot a slave named Demby because Demby was trying to relieve some of the pain in his back from receiving a scourging by jumping into a creek (p. 14). No compassion is shown to the slaves by Mr. Gore. Douglass (1845/1995) tells of two females who also treated slaves brutally such as Mrs. Hamilton who hardly ever let an hour go by when her two slave girls, Henrietta and Mary, were not whipped which left constant festering sores on the girls’ head, neck, and shoulders (p. 21). In addition to the oppression the girls under Mrs. Hamilton’s care faced, they rarely received a full meal and often fought with the pigs for food (Douglass, 1845/1995, p. 21). Not only did Mrs. Hamilton repeatedly severely injured her slaves, she starved them to the point that the animals were getting more food than the girls. The wife of Giles Hick not only abused a fifteen-year-old slave, but she beat the girl so severely that she died (Douglass, 1845/1995, p. 15). Typically, people viewed women as the softer and kinder gender. However, Mrs. Hick obviously felt no kindness toward this slave. She did not even feel badly that she had killed a slave. Cruelty of those who had authority over slaves was not limited to a gender.
The wealth of a master never impinged on the maliciousness that he showed toward his slaves.

Fergus M. Bordewich, holds degrees in American history from the City College of New York and Columbia University, writes in his book Bound for Canaan about a slaved named Josiah Henson, whose master had been Adam Robb, a poor man, left dead slaves lying on the ground for days without giving the corpses a second glance (p. 13). This man did not even care enough to remove the dead bodies of the slaves. The dead bodies that were lying in the fields, rotting away, had absolutely no effect on him. Another poor man named Edward Covey did not even own the farm on which he lived. He was known as a slave-breaker who corrected the ways of difficult slaves (Douglass, 1845/1995, p. 34). Douglass (1845/1995) tells of the whippings Covey inflicted on him. The cuts were as long and deep as Douglass's little finger (p. 35). Covey was merciless to the slaves. Covey sent his slaves on missions that caused near-death experiences, and he did not care the slightest about the slave's injuries. Captain Thomas Auld was poor and cruel. He never gave his slaves a sufficient amount of food and Douglass even compares him to a lion with his leading characteristic being meanness (Douglass, 1845/1995, p. 31). The worst punishment for a slave was not getting enough to eat. Captain Auld never provided Douglass with a full meal and hardly even enough time to eat the minuscule portions that Captain Auld gave to them. Douglass (1845/1995) tells of one of the richest men in Maryland named Colonel Lloyd. He owned around four hundred slaves that worked only on his plantation, more slaves that worked on his other twenty farms, and had one of the most plentiful plantations of the state. Even though Colonel Lloyd was one of the wealthiest men in Maryland, his slaves only received minimal food, sparse clothing, and no beds (pp. 5-6). Cristin Ellis (2014), an Assistant Professor of English at the University of

Mississippi and who holds Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, writes in her article “Amoral Abolitionism: Frederick Douglass and the Environmental Case against Slavery” from American Literature, that Colonel Lloyd called his slaves “human crop” or “human stock” and thought of them only as a means of profit. Colonel Lloyd definitely had enough money to buy all of his slaves an ample amount of clothing. Oftentimes the clothes either became too small for children or became deteriorated from the excessive work, and the slaves had to go naked because they did not have an adequate amount of clothing. Colonel Lloyd did not see the slaves as humans and only saw them as a way to enlarge his wealth. A rich master was just as pernicious as a poor one.
Whether or not a master had religion or not did not affect the inhumanity they inflicted on his slaves. Thomas Peyser (2011), a professor of English at the Randolph-Macon with a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of Virginia, writes in his article, “The Attack on Christianity in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave” from The Explicator, that Douglass does not appreciate Christian masters and never even mentions a single priest or religious person of which he approves. The religious people in Douglass’s life did not have a positive influence on him. In his opinion, Douglass felt that a religious master was more cruel and hateful than a master that did not claim religion. Douglass appears to believe that Christians fully believe in and support slavery (Peyser, 2011). Douglass (1845/1995) tells how the masters justified the bloody punishment. For example, they said, “He that knoweth his masters will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes” (p. 33). Religious slaveholders were the worst because they were the most cruel, cowardly, and most evil of all slaveholders (Douglass, 1845/1995, p. 46). Five months after Douglass (1845/1995) became a slave under Captain Auld, Auld went to a Methodist camp meeting and obtained religion. (p. 32). After Captain Auld received religion, he changed, but not for the better. He became more cruel and hateful. Often he beat his slaves and used the Bible to defend his reasoning for the punishment. Even if a master claimed to have religion, they were not any more compassionate than a master who did not have religion.
Rarely were slaves thought of as human, and their masters never showed thoughtfulness to them. Frequently, they were minimized to less than the animals. Bordewich (2005) mentions that some of the burdens that the slaves had to experience were that a common sight was that a master had cut off a slave’s ears, toes, and/or fingers as a punishment and that one-third of all of the slave children were separated from their parents and sold to a different slaveholder (pp. 23-24). The brutal punishments that masters exerted on their slaves were not only handed out by certain people groups. No matter the master’s gender, wealth, religion or the lack of it, the slaves under his or her care were still abused unnecessarily and excessively.