Slavery within the Eyes of Frederick Douglass

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What would it be like if we were a part of the slave years? To get an inside look of slavery we look through the eyes of a former slave Frederick Douglass. Through his experience of being grown into slavery in the south made him re-evaluate his life knowing he was worth more than being treated as someone else’s property. Not only was Douglass a part of the plantation system, city life, and brutal whipping but he was put into history as a great role model defining the true meaning of life. All people today should show respect to African Americans due to their struggle in reaching freedom and coming across difficulty.
Thomas Jefferson added an anti-slavery statement within the declaration of independence but was deleted by the southern delegates due to the pressure. As plantation systems developed, the south began to depend on the slaves even more to carry out the work of its large factory farms. Southerners saw slavery as a necessary part of the economy. Slave trade was over in 1808 by law, but the smuggling of slaves in the U.S continued until the outbreak of the civil war in 1860( Skiba pg. 319).Out of the three million African Americans in the U.S. two million five hundred thousand of them were forced as agricultural laborers. The number of African Americans increased to four million in 1860. Slavery itself was very brutal as slaves worked from sunrise to sundown, lived in flea infested shacks; were often whipped for minor “offenses” (Skiba pg. 319). Learning how to read and right was forbidden to slaves by law, they had limited knowledge and were forced to work as laborers on the plantations. One thousand slaves were gathered together by the Virginia militia to form a revolt in 1800 near Richmond. A man named Denmark Vesey wa...

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...mericans sought their freedom in the northern states but now freedom is everywhere. We as a whole have matured into better and understanding people over time and will continue to view Douglas, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa parks, and all the other memorable African Americans as courageous souls striving for success

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Dover Publications, 1995.

Skiba, L., ed. Literature and the Language Arts: The American Tradition. St.Paul: EMC/Paradigm Publishing, 2005.

Douglass, Frederick. (1857) Frederick Douglass “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress”. http://www.blackpast.org/1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle-there-no-progress

Douglass, Frederick. Biography of Frederick Douglass-Champion of Civil and Women’s Rights.
http://www.frederickdouglass.org/douglass_bio.html

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