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Frederick Douglass: Abolishing Slavery

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Frederick Douglass was born as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey around the year 1818 in Tuckahoe, Maryland; he states in his autobiography “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday… A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages.” Douglass did attempt to find out his age because he could not understand why he was deprived of the same privilege …show more content…

The narrative was an instant success and this was not because it was the first time a slave had described his experiences in the system but because of the questions he posed to Americans at that time. He speaks of how slavery not only demeans African Americans but also makes the white man a worse person in whole using one of his mistresses as a prime example writing “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” He wonders why the ‘land of the free’ is only free for white people and what it takes for the ‘human spirit’ to truly be free. Douglass uses his narrative as a means to show us that he won his freedom, he made himself free but as long as anyone else is still enslaved, he is not a free man. I believe the provocative questions posed by Frederick Douglass along with the experiences he suffered in slavery work together to make his narrative a hit and this why it sold many copies in the United States of America and Europe also. However it is highly ironic that Douglass required the services of William Lloyd Garrison, a white man, to ensure the masses he, a black man, was the true writer of the thoughtful piece of

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According to the materiel Of The People, Frederick Douglass was born as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Talbo Country, Maryland, in 1818. He was born into slavery and at the age of seven he was sent to Baltimore and became a ship caulker. He hired out his labor, paying his master three dollars a week and keeping the rest for himself per their agreement. Frederick planned his escape when his master told him to pay him all his earnings rather that just the three dollars a week. After he escaped to the north he started attending and speaking at antislavery meetings.

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Fredrick Douglass was born Fredrick Augustus Washington Bailey, in Maryland in 1818 to Harriet Bailey. There were two mysteries surrounding Fredrick’s early life: one, the actual date of his birth and two, the identity of his father. Even though his father has not been confirmed, it is believed that Douglass’ father was Harriet’s slave master. At the very tender age of ten, Douglass’ mother died suddenly. Shortly after her death, Fredrick was sold to Hugh Auld, where he began working on his plantation.

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Douglass’s biological father is unknown, but there is a suspicion the father was his slave master. (Douglass Narrative 15)

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Douglass focuses on how he doesn't seem to know his age at the beginning of his autobiography. I know this because in paragraph 1 he said "I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it", Douglass also said he never met a slave that knows his birthday/age but what he did know is where he was born in which was in Tuckahoe, near by Hillsborough. It was very sad for Douglass lived an unhappy childhood the reason why it wasn't just that he was a slave it was that he didn't know much about his childhood. Douglass was very confused why slaves did not have privilege. As you can see Douglass didn't have many privileges since he wasn't like the white children.

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His “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, (Document G) makes emotional reading (lurid descriptions like "bitterest dregs of slavery" or "broken in body, mind, and soul" elicited reactions of disgust and dejection, which is the what abolitionists were hoping for) and showed that ultimately a slave, long thought to be a possession and less than human, was very much a person with reason and intellect. It provides unsurmountable proof that like any man, a slave deserved a life of dignity and liberty. His work shed light on the constant hard-working and abusive lifestyle that slaves

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By examining Douglass’ narrative his resilience to educate white audiences about the horror of slavery can be seen through his own story. Douglass’ narrative is set up in order for him to give an example of someone who has suffered through slavery and has witnessed first hand the harsh lives of slaves. Although the narrative feels like a success story, Douglass understood that his freedom wouldn't truly feel like freedom until slavery was abolished. By writing, “Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds … relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice, for success in my … efforts and solemnly pledging myself anew to the sacred cause, I subscribe myself” (Douglass 76). Sheds light on the idea that slavery was good for the slave.

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In “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass narrates in detail the oppressions he went through as a slave before winning his freedom. In the narrative, Douglass gives a picture about the humiliation, brutality, and pain that slaves go through. We can evidently see that Douglass does not want to describe only his life, but he uses his personal experiences and life story as a tool to rise against slavery. He uses his personal life story to argue against common myths that were used to justify the act of slavery. Douglass invalidated common justification for slavery like religion, economic argument and color with his life story through his experiences torture, separation, and illiteracy, and he urged for the end of slavery.

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Frederick Douglass was a boy who was born from slavery and his mother was a slave woman and his father is a unknown white man. Frederick’s originated name was Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey but known as Frederick Douglass.. Frederick was born in February 1818, on Maryland’s eastern shore. He spent his early years with his grandpa and with an aunt and seeing his mother four or five times before her death when he was seven years old and all Frederick knew about his father as he was an unknown white man. During his early years, he was exposed to slavery and brutal whipping and spending much time in the cold and starving.

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When Frederick Douglass published his self-written narrative, people finally got a fully comprehensive view of the life of a slave. To debunk the mythology of slavery, Douglass presents the cold, hard truth, displays slaves true intelligence,

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Douglass points to the vast unwillingness from the group of whites that refuses to fully perceive and accept African-Americans as deserving and equal citizens of the nation. Based on his personal experiences as a slave, Douglass is abundantly aware that the battle to abolish slavery is not an easy task. For the first twenty years of his life, he witnessed firsthand the abject cruelty of that institution in our country. Tactfully, Douglass seizes this opportunity to publicly highlight the unmerited and coarse differences in the treatment between the whites as opposed to the blacks living in the United States during this time period. He makes a “powerful testaments to the hypocrisy, bigotry and inhumanity of slavery” (Bunch 1).

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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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Douglass uses his Narrative to share his position is by telling his audience how unfairly Douglass is treated and how white men or slaveholders take control of the life of a slave because in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on page 1 paragraph 1 it says, The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.” What this piece of evidence is demonstrates is that Frederick Douglass did not even now his own birth and that he had to guess on what his master said and that his master knows more what Frederick knows about his life. Another way that Douglass’s uses his Narrative to share his position is by telling their audience how unfairly Frederick and many other slaves were treated because because in the Document “‘ Pro Slavery Arguments South’’ on paragraph 6 it says,”Southern slaveholders pro-slavery arguments defended the interest of the plantation owners against attempts by abolitionists, lower classes, and non-whites to institute a more equal social structure.”

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He became a public speaker and more to try to stop it. He believed that if he showed people what slavery was really like, people could understand why it was such a big problem. Douglass’s Narrative isn’t just about slavery. As a historical document, it paints a powerful picture of what it was like to be a slave, how the world looked from the eyes of a slave, and what kind of place America was when

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In the book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass reveals his life as a slave and the valuable lessons he learned from his experience. Douglass wants the truth about slavery to be revealed and wants to eliminate the lies that portray slavery as beneficial. Douglass exposes the reality of slavery by criticizing the “romantic image” of slavery, showing the intellectual capabilities slaves had, and revealing the reasons why slaves were disloyal to each other. Douglass criticizes the southern, romantic image of slavery by exposing the harsh treatment and sadness that slaves endured. It was southerners who thought slavery as beneficial, because it benefited themselves and white society.

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Frederick Douglass was a great writer, but he wasn’t always. He was an escaped slave who used that in his speeches as a topic to gain the attention of his audience. His audience was a seemingly sympathetic one and got to them through rhetorical questions. Douglass wanted to convey the message that there are many changes that need to be made.

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