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Comparing Douglass Incidents In The Life Of Fredrick Douglas And Harriet Jacobs

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Recommended: Consequences of the abolition of slavery

Essay A:
Before the abolishment of slavery that took place after the American civil war of 1861-1863, slaves used various methods to resist slavery. Some of these methods included performing the work slowly and running away. Slaves employed the method of running away to escape the harsh treatment. They would run away in a nearby forest or visit their relatives in a nearby plantation. The abolishment of slavery in the northern part of the country allowed slaves to move to the northern part of the country to seek freedom. The slave masters used various means to control slavery such as whipping slaves who underperformed in the plantation field. Those who run away were also open to being shot dead. Two of the most broadly read American slave accounts were Frederick Douglass' “Story of the Life of Fredrick Douglas” (1845) and Harriet Jacobs' “Incidents in the Life …show more content…

Her autobiography "Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl" (1861) gives the insight about the struggles and difficulties the slaves went through in an attempt to seek freedom. She faced sexual harassment while she was young which was very common for female slaves. “For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood.” (2013) Her resistant to slavery was her rejection to Norcom thus initiating a relationship with the Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, who was the white neighbor of Norcom. She ran away later after a continuous harassment by Norcom. She hide in small attic spaces as she feared being seen hence being mistreated (Jacobs, 2013). Norcom would later look for Jacobs without any success. She later moved from Edenton to New York. While in New York, she would later develop into female abolitionist and later she becomes an ant-slavery female freedom fighter contributing a lot in the war against

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Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass are two American slave narrative authors. Both were born into slavery, and their real life stories provide a unique insight into the brutal conditions faced by slaves in the 19th century. However, even with their shared experiences, their narratives diverge significantly. Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass’s history need to be compared, to be able to understand how gender influenced their experiences and writing styles, and whether they experience the same kind of freedom.

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The Brutal Taking of One's Peace Fredrick Douglas stated in his narrative, “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end around his own neck”. This darkening illustration of the taking of not only taking the slaves freedom, but taking their “masters” freedom in the process shows just how sick, and twisted slavery had to be to change everyone involved. Harriet Jacobs, a former slave, had similar views to the horrendous changing of each individual. Stating “Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops--not of the blight on their children's souls.”

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Most of history is seen through the eyes of those of privilege, education, and wealth: royalty, nobility, and merchants. There were those of less fortune or lower class that were educated enough to be able to record their experiences and points-of-view, but they were far and few between. Especially in early America, from immigrants, slaves, free blacks, natives, and indentured servants. “In Defense of the Indians” by Bartolome de La Casa, “An Indentured Servant’s Letter Home” by Richard Frethorne, “Ads for Runaway Servants and Slaves”, “The Irish in America” by John Francis Maguire, and “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass are by or about the natives, slaves, indentured servants, and immigrants in the early

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FREDRICK DOUGLASS AND HARRIET JACOBS Slavery and its long brutalizing history. Deep, bloody gashes to an inch-wide or more whip and scarred. Cold with barley enough clothes to cover them in the winter or year round. Half-fed left to starve. Rape, murder, beaten on a daily basis to death.

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After having read both Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and Harriet Jacobs’s Incident 1. How were Douglass and Jacobs similar and different in their complaints against slavery? What accounts for these differences? In both the inspiring narratives of Narrative in the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Frederick Douglass’s and in Incidents in the life of a slave girl by Harriet Jacobs the respective authors demonstrate the horrors and disparity of slavery in there own ways.

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Those that were not within the trade heard rumors of the acts that were committed but many were apathic to the plight of others that did not directly affected them. However, once Douglass began to speak and write about his time as a slave recounting the at times unsolicited violence that occurred, the tides began to turn within the public opinion. It was no longer merely rumor, it was fact being presented by a survivor. Within the “NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE” Douglass brought to life the everyday horrors that he had witnessed such as the treatment of his aunt, “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest” (1184). This image of a woman being whipped and treated with such degradation was appalling to bear to the supporters of the abolition.

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Before the American Civil War there were many acts and movements made to end slavery and to obtain equality for African-Americans. This mainly started with The Second Great Awakening which initially began making people realize the wrongness in slavery and sparked a want to create a change. These people became known as abolitionists and did things like establish anti-slavery societies, publicly circulated moral suasion, sent hundreds of petitions up to Congress, and even created the Liberty Party in efforts to politically involve themselves. More and more slaves started to run away which caused Congress to pass the Fugitive Slave Act following the Compromise of 1850. The Fugitive Slave Act allowed and encouraged the capture and southern return

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The Narrative of Frederick Douglass is a very great perspective for people of today to understand what it was like to be a slave in the 1800’s. It tells the story of the slave Frederick Douglass and how he began as an uneducated slave and was moved around from many different types of owners, cruel or nice, and how his and other slaves presences changed the owners, and also how he educated himself and realized that he shouldn’t be treated so poorly It was at the point later in the book that I realized how some slaves might have felt during slavery in the 1800’s. When Douglass is sent away to Mr.Covey he is treated pretty badly but eventually he stands up to Mr.Covey and demands that he stopped being treated like an animal.

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She had siblings that would soon be sold into slavery and to nearby plantations. She endured physical violence throughout her childhood and some led to permanent injuries. She later married a free black man little knew

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The texts The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass both do well to paint a picture of how slavery was easily accepted in the American Society. These books show us how many white slaveholders were able to justify slavery with religion, dehumanization, and by convincing themselves that the slaves themselves were content with their situations. In both of these books we are shown how many white slaveholders seem to justify their cruelty and the horror that is slavery through religion. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, We are presented with a quote about his master Captain Auld.

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Slavery had been a common trend all over the Eastern part of the world long before the United States began to transfer black African men and women on ships over to the United States for hard working and non-paying labor. Most of the slave owning occurred in the South of the United States, the slave owners were brutal and unforgiving to these slaves, many slave masters used physical tactics such as harsh whippings to the back, yelling, and in some measures, murder. Another strong and effective tactic these owners used on the slaves was emotional and mental abuse, by splitting up their families at a young age and keeping the slaves ignorant to the world, by not letting them read made the slaves easier to control and command. Frederick Douglass explains in his autobiography that he was a witness and a victim to the physical, emotional, and mental abuse by the slave masters. Mental and emotional violence towards the slaves in The Narrative Life of

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She talks about how she was treated by Dr. Flint " But Dr. Flint swore he would kill me, if I was not as silent as the grave." Although in Jacobs narrative she was treated, in Douglass' his grandmother was whipped "The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped, and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped the longest." He also talks about how bad women had it "He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome, would he cease to swing the blood-clooted cowskin." Then he talks about how slavery was like hell "It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass."

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“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.” The institution of slavery was an extremely contentious ideal throughout the 1800’s. Slavery was a regular part of society as the brutal treatment of African Americans was looked upon as acceptable. Prominent figures such as: Abraham Lincoln, Dred Scott, Frederick Douglass truly placed an importance on how inhumane slavery was through speeches, court cases, and narratives. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was an autobiography that tells a story about the life of Frederick Douglass from when he was born a slave to his escape to freedom.

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The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass’s autobiography in which Douglass goes into detail about growing up as a slave and then escaping for a better life. During the early-to-mid 1800s, the period that this book was written, African-American slaves were no more than workers for their masters. Frederick Douglass recounts not only his personal life experiences but also the experiences of his fellow slaves during the period. This book was aimed at abolitionists, so he makes a point to portray the slaves as actual living people, not the inhuman beings that they are treated as. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, slaves are inhumanly represented by their owners and Frederick Douglass shines a positive light

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Many tried to destroy them, but slaves stayed strong and found ways to escape their injustices. The first Africans to reach America landed in Jamestown, the first English settlement in North America. For 250 years, many Africans and African-Americans found ways to resist slavery, ranging from hindrances to violent outbreaks. Resistance to slavery came in many forms. On Southern plantations, some slaves executed small passive acts of resistance, while others ran away.

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