Summary: The Dehumanizing Effects Of Slavery

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Holt asserts that slavery can “rescue [the barbarian] from the wrongs and miseries of barbarism” and make him “happier and better.” However, slaveowners treated their slaves like animals, serving to degrade slaves and making them miserable. In Douglass’ account, he recalls a valuation, in which slaveholders ranked the slaves and then divided them based on their apparent worth -- much like how a farmer sorts through his livestock. Douglass strengthens this comparison by describing how “men and women . . . were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine,” implying that the slaveholders saw the slaves as unthinking brutes. After this event, Douglass claims that the “brutalizing effects of slavery” became clear to him. Not only did the slaves face dehumanizing

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