Frederick Douglass: The Institution Of Slavery

Slaves usually felt deprived of their necessary human rights. Frederick Douglass a slave himself wrote an autobiography stating the things he has went through and the life experiences he had being a slave in 19th century America. Douglass was born in Talbot County, Maryland, the year of his birth is not known due to the fact that slaves were not allowed to know their age nor ask of how old they were. He accounts for overhearing his master saying that he was born in or around 1818.

Douglass was separated from his mother a short while after he was born, this was a common occurrence that happened to slaves. Douglass assumed this was to break the natural connection between a mother and child. He saw his mother very rarely because she has to walk twelve miles after dark to lie next to him at night. His mother died when he was only seven years old, when he was told he was barely affected by the news. It is assumed that Douglass’s father is his master; he states that slave owners often raped their female slaves. A law during that period was in place that stated mixed-race children become slaves like their mother. This made the masters a profit so they continued to rape in order to increase the

Slavery appeared to be a natural practise, to people who were not abolitionists of course. To them religious and economic arguments had demonstrates that whites were more superior to blacks and that blacks belonged as an enslaved labour force. Douglass argues that slavery is not sustained through the natural superiority of whites, but through many concrete and contrived strategies of gaining and holding power of black people. An example of this shows how slave owners purposely separated slave mothers and their children in order to increase the vulnerability of the slaves. Black people are not subhuman to start with but were dehumanised because of the horrific practises of