Monday, October 18, 2010
THANK YOU
Slavery was a cruel time for my race it was a time where we had no rights and only existed to be controlled. Frederick Douglass was one of the first groups that realized that there was another way of living and actually achieved it. Douglass’s Narrative of Life was a very graphic and very descriptive of the cruelty that they had to endure. He describes the first time he witness this cruelty, “I remember the first time I ever witness this horrible exhibition… [I]t struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery” (Douglass 925). This cruelty was life for slaves, the beatings, the living conditions, not enough to eat and nothing of their own. During this time they had no rights, they did what they were told or was punished. He describes on incident were a slave refused to be beaten and his was killed. This cruelty was justified by this statement “He argued that if on slave refused to be corrected, and escaped with his life, the others would soon copy the example; the result of which would be the freedom of the slaves and the enslavement of the whites” (933). My race lived this way for generations to come. But those like Douglass and Harriet Tubman fought for freedom and achieve it and help other’s to obtain freedom. I can say that I’m thankful to those that suffered and fought for freedom because without them enduring the cruelty and overcoming I would not have the freedoms that I have today.
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While I find the physical abuse and cruelty described in Douglass’s account to be appalling, I think it pales in comparison to the mental abuse and destruction done. While certainly not excusing the conduct, there is a small amount of refuge for the slave master in their physical abuse (being often driven by passion), however the extent of premeditated malice that must be present to conceive of and execute a scheme to destroy an entire race and deprive them of any decent thing in life, is beyond my ability to comprehend. The premeditation and absolutely wicked intent of Mr. Auld when he tells his wife “A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master -to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (Douglass 937), is shameful. It was not some act of physical violence born of passion, but a carefully thought out scheme (entered into by the entire society), with the aim of financial gain at the expense of an entire race of people. Douglass gives voice to my own feelings about this when he writes, “Will not a righteous God visit for these things?” (Douglass 945).
ReplyDeleteTo many times in life we don't realize what someone else has had to go through to be where they are. For example in this class room we do not have a clue of what the student to the right or left of us has had to endure. The trials and tribulations they had to suffer through in life just to be able to attend this class. We take things for granted and if we did not we would respect more the people we call our classmates and everyone else as well. This was much the same way in slavery. We hear the words slave but we fail to recognize the true meaning of the word. The sadness, the lonliness and most of all the needless punishment and torture of human beings. You can not own a soul. Slave owners tried to not only own the person but tried to break the spirt and soul of the slave and that was on of the most injustices of all."I suffered much from hunger, but much more from cold. In the hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost naked-no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a coarse tow linen shirt.treaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must have perished with cold, but that the coldest nights, I used to steal a bagwhich was used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into the bag. and there sleepon the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out. My feet had been so cracked from the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes (Douglass 934)".
ReplyDelete“The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran faster, there he whipped harder” (Douglass 924) sums it up. To describe the way my people were treated the word cruel and unusual is an understatement. The beatings aren’t the worst part of the nasty brutality that my people faced. The mental effects that the abuse had would leave the biggest scar. “His reply was,(as well as I can remember,) that Demby had become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other slaves- one which if suffered to pass without some such demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total submersion of all rule and order upon the plantation: (Douglass 933). This example struck fear in the souls of all who heard of the story man and woman alike. I’m sure the next time a slave thought of denying his master the right of whipping him, he probably changed his mind. These types of horrors where embedded in the minds of all the slaves and made them a lot more agreeable to their master’s will not because of what he did but because of what he could possibly do to them. Fear was used as a tool of order. It was also used to control the population of slaves and to gain power over them.
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ReplyDeleteAs I stated in my blog, I am appalled by the treatment that slaves had to endure during this time period… “He rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore off my clothes, and lashed me till he had worn out his switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks visible for a long time after” (Douglass 949). We do not think of the trails other people have to endure; not only back in the past, but today also. We all come from very different backgrounds and I am thankful for people like Frederick Douglass that have recorded his past so that all people will know the brutality he and others experienced.
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