Slavery In Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass

At the end of his 1845 memoir, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass explains that he hopes his book “may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds…” (95). Throughout his memoir, Frederick Douglass expertly expresses the true effects of slavery not only on the slaves but also on the slaveholders. This is most evident after Douglass is sent to Baltimore where he is given some education until Mrs. Auld stops teaching him how to read. Douglass also reveals the cruelty slaveholders, the majority of whites inflicted on slaves facing no punishment either physically or emotionally. This is most evident when he is nearly beaten …show more content…
Most people know the extent of their hate only to whippings and lynchings, not to beatings and murder. Even outside of the plantations slaves and free blacks experienced daily tortures and acts of cruelty. For example, when Douglass is sent back to Baltimore for the second time to work for Mr. Auld, he is allowed to work at one of the harbors. While at the harbor Douglass is tormented by the poor white workers and free blacks who do want him taking their jobs and wages. They yell racial slurs, threaten him, and keep him from his work. The white workers move from hateful words to physical beatings, and there is nothing Douglass can do to stop them. Douglass is almost beaten to death and when he tries to get the men arrested he found “it was impossible to get any white man to volunteer his testimony [on his] behalf, and against the white young men” (75). He finds that no matter the magnitude of the crime committed by a white person against a slave the white man would always get away with it. The reader also sees that even “if [Douglass] had been killed in the presence of a thousand colored people, their testimony combined would have been insufficient to have arrested one of the murderers.” (75) All throughout slave society murder and torture was occurring, and because those who committed the crimes were never convicted, their cruelties were never brought to light. This aspect of the book is effective to the narrative because it brings to light the crimes committed by whites against slaves, it does not shield the truth. Readers gain a new insight into the torture slaves had to live through every day, an insight most depictions of slavery do not