Frederick Douglass

What is it like to be enslaved, held against your will, and being treated like nothing? Can you imagine standing beside Frederick Douglass while he is going through the hardships of his life? Douglass uses his life struggles to demonstrate the inhumanities of slavery. His tireless efforts and his brave actions helped break the barrier between slavery and freedom.

Frederick Douglass is taken away from his mother at a young age for many reasons. It is the law in the 1800s to do that for white Americans. They usually leave when the child had reached its twelfth month. The children do not get to see them because they don't want slaves to create emotional bonds. The mother is "hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor." Douglass only sees his mother about four or five times. His mother has the journey to walk by foot at night.

Douglass Aunt Hester was beaten to death by a master in the company Lloyd's Ned. The master is known for protecting the innocence of Frederick's aunt but people don't suspect him of any such virtue. "Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her in the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked." Aunt Hester would not do anything and suddenly would be beaten by her master, it was painful to everybody especially her. She has never disobeyed his orders she would always do what she was told when she was told to do it. The master has claimed that she disobeyed his orders so he decided to tie her hands with a strong rope and would tie her hands to a hook and calls her dirty words. Shortly after he tied her with rope blood came down to the floor. Douglass could have never seen anything like it before, he thought he was going to be next but he never was.

Douglass once lived at one of his master's houses Mr. Severe. They gave him that name for a reason for being a very cruel man. He would usually whip woman and make them bleed for a half and an hour at a time. Mr. Severe was a profane swearer to everybody at the plantation. Working on the plantation you could always catch him and witness his cruelty and profanity. "From the rising of the sun, he was cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field, in the most frightful manner." Mr. Severe's death was regarded by the slaves as the result of a merciful providence. He being a master was very short; soon after he died Douglass was sent to live at Mr. Hopkins plantation.

How would you of felt going through the hardships of Douglass losing his mother, seeing his aunt being beaten, and watching one of his master's whip many of the women at a plantation? Being a slave was painful. He always wanted to escape from slavery. He tried and tried to get away from the inhumanities of slavery soon Douglass became a caulker in Boston.