Detrimental Effects Of Slavery On The Slaveholder's Family

With confidence, Thomas Jefferson stated that slavery “destroys the morals” and the “industry” of slaveholders. Like Jefferson, Fredrick Douglass claimed that slavery did in fact have detrimental effects on the slaveholders. In the narrative Douglass explained the effects slavery had on the slaveholder’s family, his community, and himself. Fredrick Douglass analyzed how slavery had effects on the slaveholder’s family. Douglass was born from a white man, but explained that a child born from a white man and a black enslaved woman must follow the condition of their mother. Slaveholders would rape women slaves and even impregnate them all while married. This created problems in the family because the wife would become angry and take it out on the slave. Douglass pointed out that the wife of the slaveholder would never be pleased until she saw that the slave received lashings and that the masters are compelled to sell the mixed children “out of deference to the feelings of his white wife” (pg. 4). Additionally, slavery had effect on the slaveholders community in conjunction with their family.

The slaveholders believed what they were doing was morally right. They even used religion as a way to justify what they were doing to the poor slaves. Without compassion, they made many claims that the bible states that the slaves have no rights and that they deserve to be beaten; “my master found religious sanction for his cruelty” (pg. 55). Douglass exclaimed that “the slave prison and the church stand near each other” (pg. 120) and that they go hand in hand. Young Fredrick Douglass knew this wasn’t the ways of Christians; this was the way of the slaveholders making their own religion to excuse slavery. The community of slaveholders were blinded by their own brutal ways and supported those ways with their own religion. Slaveholders were effected themselves as