The Institution of Slavery in America - Case Study Example

– This is where I am now. The rest goes into the specifics of education and critical source but is not ready to be turned in. As I wrote earlier, a little more time will be necessary. Student name Instructor name Course name Date Frederick Douglass The institution of slavery in America was much different from the concepts of slavery as it had been known in the past. Unlike slavery in ancient Greece or several locations in Europe and Asia, slavery in America developed quickly to be a lifetime curse that passed down to future generations. It gave ultimate rights of life and death to the master without any choice or viable alternative to the slave. Slaves could be separated from their families at very young ages, were regularly beaten as a means of keeping them in line and were forbidden to learn how to read or write in spite of widespread insistence that they were an inferior species of man. All of these restrictions had the effect of reducing people to the base survival instincts of animals, serving to reinforce concepts that this was all the darker race was capable of achieving. Much of this might not have been understood if it weren’t for some black people acquiring the knowledge forbidden them and sharing it with the world. Frederick Douglass was the first black man to appear on a presidential ticket in America after having lived the first half of his life as a slave. In his autobiography Frederick Douglass: Life of an American Slave, the author reveals the details of his early life and education in such a way that he illustrates both the dehumanizing effects of slavery as well as what how the restrictions against him served to indicate the true attitudes of white people to the concept of black abilities enough to drive him out of the slave mentality. Although no one knows his exact birthdate, best estimates indicate Frederick Douglass was born in February of 1818. He died on February 20, 1895 after a long life of advocacy and change. His birth name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and he was born in Maryland. “He spent his early years with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven” (People and Events, 2008). Maryland was fully a part of the slave states at the time of Douglass’s birth and he witnessed many brutal slave beatings during his first seven years. Even as a very small child, he was often required to endure cold and hunger in his northern home. By the time he was eight years old, he was sent as a slave to Baltimore where he worked for a ship’s carpenter while his wages were sent back to his master. However, it was during this experience that he was given his first introduction to reading and writing and realized that not everyone felt the idea of slavery was normal or acceptable (People and Events, 2008). However, when he was 15, his protector, owner and probably father Douglass Aaron Anthony died and Douglass was again sent to the farms where his more confident demeanor earned him the attention of his owners who were determined to break him. He was cruelly beaten every day by Edward Covey, a known slave breaker, but he continued to resist (People and Events, 2008). After an incident where he beat up Covey and attempted to escape, Douglass was captured and sent back to Baltimore still as a slave. Back in Baltimore, though, Douglass gained the identification papers of a sailor friend of his and made a second, time successful, escape attempt on September 3, 1838 (McElrath, 2008). Douglass settled quickly in New Bedford, Massachusetts as a free man with a new wife, a free black woman from Baltimore named Anna Murray. The couple eventually had five children together, but his past continued to haunt him. Beginning in 1841, Douglass started speaking to abolitionist groups about his experience and what he’d learned about slavery and its relationship to education. He began writing in 1845, producing Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and touring the world on speaking engagements encouraged by William Lloyd Garrison (McElrath, 2008). He finally returned to the United States in 1847, moving to New York and publishing a weekly paper called North Star (McElrath, 2008). During the Civil War, he worked to recruit black soldiers for the Union Army and added women’s rights to his agenda of black freedom. “From 1877 to 1881, he was the U.S. Marshall of the District of Columbia, from 1881 to 1886 he served as the recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia and from 1889 to 1891 he was the minister to Haiti” (McElrath, 2008). He was nominated to be vice-president of the United States on the Equal Rights Party Ticket in 1892, making him the first black man to appear in the presidential race (McElrath, 2008). Douglass died of heart failure at his home on February 20, 1895 leaving rare and valuable written understandings of slavery from the perspective of one who had experienced it directly in all its horrors and degradations yet could still communicate these ideas in a way the educated white public could understand and respect. Douglass’s narrative highlights the degree to which black people were considered beasts of the field by simply relating his earliest knowledge about himself, little more than one might know about a bred animal. Douglass expresses regret that he is uncertain of the day he was born and conveys the profound sense of loss in realizing that, at age 7, he had almost no reaction to the news that his mother had died as he had been separated from her since infancy. “Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of [my mother’s] death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger” (Ch. 1). Although one might feel sorry for a child that had been separated from one parent at an early age, Douglass reveals his orphan status as he explains his only hint of a father was the rumor that it had been a white man. Instead of trying simply to win the pity of his readers for his own situation in life, though, Douglass introduces these early chapters as a means of illustrating how slaves are created from birth, raised in the knowledge that they are only important to others to the degree that they can please their masters. The black infant is separated early from his family purposely to sever any natural human feelings of attachment and then cruelly treated to keep him always in fear. At 7 years old, Douglass had been informed of his mother’s death, watched his aunt be cruelly whipped for a small infraction and had been put to work in the master’s fields. In these chapters, Douglass describes his life as a slave, illustrating the bestial level of existence forced upon him and the expected behaviors he should exhibit in the presence of his masters. Although the white people liked to indicate that they were ‘saving’ the brutes from their ignorant and ignoble positions in Africa, Douglass’ account of his early life reveals the extreme measures the masters took to ensure that the image fit their ideal rather than allowing the true nature of the black man to be revealed. Read More