Frederick Douglass: A Slave Life

Douglass was a slave that was not treated horribly. A slave life was a very difficult situation, but there were other slaves that had it worse than he did. Mrs. Auld was very friendly to Douglass by teaching him how to read and write. He had a lot of wisdom to continue to learn different skills. Other slave owners would have gotten rid of him if they knew he was learning. “Wisdom, as commonly understood, prompts us to increase our resources, to multiply our riches, to enlarge our frontiers” (Jacobus). When Mrs. Auld found out that Douglass became intelligent she didn’t want him to be a slave anymore. She stopped teaching him and began acting cruelly to all the other slave owners in Maryland during this time. He could have made it in the real world by himself because he was intelligent. His owners did not want to lose him since he was doing all the work around their property, so they began to act cruel, in hopes he would stop teaching himself. Douglass kept continuing to teach himself because “although laws vary, good men naturally follow the true, authentic path of justice, and not merely what is thought to be just”. (Cicero, page 150) …show more content…
People reading this story today can understand more about the challenge to try to be educated in a slavery community. Many slaves were beaten so horribly during this time period that some would even die. In the article From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (page 157), there was a slave owner named Arthur that was very cruel to his slaves. Everyone was scared that they were going to get chosen to work for him. All the slaves would get beaten, such as Douglass’s brother who got his head slammed against a wall and was severely hurt. Later on, when Douglass had run away he was scared that he would get chosen by Arthur, but he never did and went back to his old