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Frederick Douglass: The System Of Slavery

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The system of slavery caused many southern slave owners to believe that without this system American progression would not be as prosperous. The system of slavery was not only a benevolent institution for black slaves but for slaveowners as well. Southern slave owners valued making profit rather than seeing slaves as equal, therefore, would treat slaves as animals causing the slaveowners to have little to no morals. Famous president Thomas Jefferson stated in a letter, “Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigation of Euclid” Jefferson’s tone …show more content…

By telling his story of being enslaved, Frederick Douglass sheds light on the lies many slave owners had been telling the public. For years slaveowners stated that they would take care of their slaves and that the slaves were happy to work. During a speech, Douglass rebutted by arguing, "My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her she supposed one human being ought to treat another." Frederick Douglass also states "Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness." Here, Douglass is able to persuade the reader by using credibility and causes the reader to feel a sense of empathy towards the enslaved. In Fredericks early years as a slave he remembered that this mistress was as he described a "warm and tender-hearted woman" a woman who opened her arms to him in the beginning, but through the system of slavery, she dramatically transformed into a violent and angry being. In another speech, Douglass told the story of a slave named Henny who was the main victim of his master’s

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