Frederick Douglass

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Recommended: Slavery from 1500 to 1800

It has become apparent that the anti-slavery standpoint is the best option to pursue for this publication. This is based on a large number of factors that all show the flaws and evils of slavery. However, none of them can make it more apparent than a biography of a slave from our own state of Maryland.
Frederick Douglass was a slave who was held on numerous plantations and saw every evil angle of slavery first hand. Through countless years and countless trials, Mr. Douglass managed to teach himself to read and write making it possible for him to document these horrors in a realistic fashion. This first hand documentation account swayed opinions more than any object or script ever has, as it is a fair unbiased account of a life in slavery.
There are many places we could begin in Mr. Douglass’ personal story of his years in slavery, but the easiest place to start is at the very beginning. Douglass was born in Maryland, he was never allowed to know what year but he assumes it was around 1818. Soon after birth, Douglass was ripped from his mother’s arms and taken to a different plantation, owned by Colonel Lloyd but overseen by Capitan Anthony. “It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a young age.” (Pg. 20)
Douglass recalls his first introduction to the evils of slavery being when, he watched Capitan Anthony frequently and savagely whip his Aunt Hester. “After crossing her hands he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put there for a purpose…Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the end of her toes. He then said to her, ‘Now, you d---d b---h I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!...

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... that allows one human being to promote himself above others and to own another human being. Ripping children from their mothers arms weeks after being born, starving them and forcing them to work long hours day after day, even beating them to near death experiences. None of these things should be acceptable to any community and especially not those who claim to be men of God. These are the reasons why this newspaper publishing has decided to take an abolitionist’s stand and it is all thanks to the testament of Mr. Frederick Douglass, hopefully the horrors he experienced and has now told of will bring an end to them and for the rest of the slaves.

Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
New York: Signet Classics, 2005. Print.

"Frederick Douglass." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, 06 Dec. 2008. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.

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