Frederick Douglass Research Papers

Moreover, Edward Covey was also a slaveholder like Thomas Auld and he pretended that he was a Christian. Douglass talked about Covey that “Everything he possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made conform to his disposition to deceive. He seemed to think himself equal to deceiving the Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning, and a long prayer at night…I do verily believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, that he was a sincere worshipper of the most high God…shocking as in the fact, he bought her, as he said, for a breeder” (Douglass, p. 82). Covey was a very cruel master and even bought a woman for a breeder as calling himself as a Christian. He was really

To begin with, Douglass talks about how they witnessed abuse. One example, Douglass writes about is when, he witnessed his master abusing a slave named Henny. It stated, "I have known him to tie her up early in the morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to the store,

In Baltimore, almost everyone had slaves, and all of these slaveholders were extremely religious. They used their religion to justify slavery, but one particular slave knew that what they were doing was not what God wanted for him. He knew that there was something wrong with how they were dehumanizing all these poor, innocent people. This slave’s name was Frederick Douglass. Douglass was held as a slave for a long time, but he was eventually able to become strong and courageous and escaped the home he was being held in. But not all slaves were strong enough to overcome the struggles of slavery. But Douglass was able to use these hypocritical people’s own words and beliefs against them.

Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass illuminates the horrors of slavery in his memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. There is so much evil transpiring from Douglass' intrinsic story that it is difficult to understand how such a cruel thing can happen in the not too distant past of American history. Douglass continuously illustrates the dehumanization of black slaves and how it played a tremendous role in the continual proliferation of slavery and the unhuman practices that came laterally. He touches the emotions of the readers through his short analyses following his stories, and while doing so, he emphasizes the violence and difficulties that were faced by black slaves in addition to the false notions that people have already had. Though some believed that violence was uncommon in the institution of slavery, Douglass

When Frederick Douglass published his book, many read it and had their own ideas from the themes he referred to. One thing that was related to the theme of his book was how he said religious slaveholders were the cruelest to slaves. Religious slaveholders used the bible to prove that slavery was right. They quoted from the bible, Colossians 3:22, slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord. They said that the bible tells slaves to be obedient to their masters, in which case, means that there are going to be slaves. They also looked back into the Old Testament and found times where the old prophets had slaves. At one point, a prophet returns a runaway slave back to another prophet who was his master. The Southerners saw that since the bible did not condemn slavery but mentioned it in many places, that they were right to have slaves. That is the reason they were so cruel to slaves; they thought that they had religion on their side backing them to do what they pleased to their slaves, since the bible tells them to follow all of their master’s commands. Mr. Covey, who was a slave breaker that possessed Frederick Douglass for a while, was a religious man. Frederick Douglass said that Mr. Covey forced a woman to break the commandment that a person should not commit adultery, but since the woman was a slave, the commandment meant nothing

Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and former slave, endured a painful life as an enslaved person and in his memoir, he addressed that the worst treatment often came from Christian masters. Douglass also explained that his critics always referred to what he called the “Christianity of the South”. He did this because he did not want to generalize as he respected true Christians but he strongly condemned those who used to call themselves Christians and were mean to enslaved people. In the memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglas says, “Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject

In one chapter of his autobiographical publication Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, the abolitionist activist Douglass shares his experience as a field hand under one white slavemaster Mr. Covey. Covey was a more volatile and violent man than Douglass was used to, who prided himself in his ability to “break negroes” through harsh lashings. Douglass recalls that hardly a week went by in which he was not whipped once. One day, he finally retaliated, seizing Covey by the throat, fighting with him, and ultimately emerging victorious from a two hour altercation. Despite his actions being violent, threatening, and rebellious, Douglass is never punished for it and in fact never whipped again for the remaining duration

During the time of slavery, black men were not known to be human and therefore, slaves were thought to be undeserving of the same freedoms as whites; this caused them to be disciplined in unpleasant and harsh ways. Christianity was distorted by slave owners as an excuse that the slaves must submit to their masters. In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, the author, Frederick Douglass (1845/1995) proves that slaves deserved their freedom because of their humanity, religionists supported their actions with misinterpreted beliefs, and blacks received their punishment in many different forms.

The inconsistencies and importance of religion are reocurrences in both The Narrative and Life of Frederick Douglass and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Augustine St Clare (a character from Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and Frederick Douglass (who is at this time is a slave) seem to have similar viewpoints on religious slave owners. Both St Clare and Douglass see religion as being defiled by the twisted words of slave owners. Frederick describes an incident of a slave beating to portray his message. “I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. He’d tie up a lame young woman and whip her...cutting her in places already made raw with his cruel lash.(p33)” All off this Master Thomas justifies by quoting scripture. “He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.(p33)” This

In many obvious ways, slavery was extremely toxic for those held in its chains. However, it is less evident how this evil institution affected slaveholders themselves. In Frederick Douglass’s book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he describes both the horrors that he and other slaves experienced and the way slavery changed masters.

Frederick Douglass like many African Americans during the 1830s and 1840s experiences the crucifying levels of slavery but like a very few of these slaves Frederick made it his business to learn how to read and write. Learning how to read or write opened his eyes to the finer things and with this ability that was self taught, he became to write about the trials and tribulations he went through using emotion.  In the Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, Mr.Douglass explains the brutality he endured from a slave breaker known as Mr.Covey, he often feared for his life and safety.

) Douglass has some harsh words about slave-owners who claim to be Christians. He believes that religious slave-owners are worse than those who pretend to be religious. He believes a person cannot be a slave-owner and a Christian. It didn’t affect the treatment of slaves at all they were still treated poorly, not exactly how god wants people to be treated. For example, Mr. Covey portrays to be a devoted Christian but it is all an act. Mr. Covey is known for whipping slaves until they can barely remember their name. Mr. Covey and Douglass get into an altercation and he lets him get away with it. Since I’ve explained the influence of Christianity has on the treatment on slaves, I will move on to the trickery used against the slave-owners.

Although there may not have been excessive amounts of slave owners, the archetypes Douglass cites imply that there is no one type of slave owner or master. Douglass mentions the cruel religious convert twice, with Captain Thomas Auld and Reverend Rigby Hopkins. Douglass writes about common traits specific to slaveholders of that character. He mentions that Captain Auld was “one of the many pious slaveholders” who would take care of slaves to make them seem like better people as well as the inhumane brutality of the religious slaveholders (61). He claims that all the slaveholders he has met are “the most cruel” (77). Douglass is able to identify specific characteristics of a

Thus early in the Narrative, an overseer, Mr. Severe, is known for his swearing as well as for his sadism, his fiendish barbarity as Douglass calls it. And later in the Narrative, Thomas Auld, who after his conversion, found religious sanction and support for his cruelty to justify his sadism when he ties up a young lame woman and whips her until blood drips off her naked shoulders. In these and other passages where white Christians break up black Sabbath schools, Douglass clearly associates access to the written word (and sometimes to the Word of God) with control of one's situation. Despite the generic conventions that mold into types all the characters and even the protagonist's voice in most slave narratives Douglass does, in fact, manage to stamp his individuality onto his Narrative. In this, his Narrative stands apart from most of the other extant

Slaveholders showed inhumanity towards their slaves by abusing and mistreating them. Frederick Douglass, a slave from Tuckahoe, was born into slavery and was in captivity for over twenty years. During his years of captivity Douglass was brutally beaten by a slaveholder named Covey. Mr. Covey was said to be a poor farm renter, who had the reputation of a “nigger breaker.” While Douglass was staying with Covey, to be broken in,