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To The Bereaved Mother Analysis

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The rise of slavery in early America was inevitable. African Americas began to arrive in America as early as 1619, but not all of these people were put directly into slave work. As indentured servitude became less and less popular, life began to change from a society with slaves into a slave society. This offered more opportunities and power for poor white men which moreover introduced a nation of race-based slavery. The abolitionist movement in the United States sought to destroy slavery. Many African Americans who were enslaved were not educated enough or have the means to speak about what they had gone through, so many of the writings that we have access to today, are ones written by freed slaves who then became educated, or stories that have been told and were passed down to people who were literate as well as able to publish the reality of what was happening. Writings and collections such as “A Mothers Anguish”, The Anti-Slavery Harp, “To My Former Master”, and Twelve Years A Slave that were written by abolitionists, argued against slavery using emotional pathos in order to …show more content…

In these collections of songs compiled by William W. Brown is one called “The Bereaved Mother”. This song describes a mother whose child is being torn from her arms and being sold to an auctioneer. The mothers sorrows are overwhelmingly worse than the lashes she received as she watched her child be carried off into the distance. Ultimately, the bereaved mother was left with a broken heart which overpowered her will to stay alive. At the end of the song it pleads to the other mothers who are out there to listen to the “cries of the slave” and save the mothers, sisters, and brothers who might be subject to this same torment. A mother dying from a broken heart is rare, but that rarity shoes just how much of an impact it has when slave owners split up

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