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Frederick Douglass: The Power Of A Slave

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Back when there were slaves in America, their owners didn’t realize that they did the wrong. The master’s had a feeling of power, even those that started out nice would soon understand the power that lay in their hands. The impetus of their cruelty, was the feeling of power and control over a person that would swallow even the nicest of the people. Slaves, the creatures of the time that used to be thought of as nothig. To show their control, owners would sometimes beat slaves for no reason at all. Slaves were like animals, but treated even worse, they didn’t have enough food given to them and spent a year basically wearing only one outfit. The slaves would be educated only about the work they would be forced to do. People thought a slave that knowing how to read would become unhappy. At that time, the actions of the christian slaveholders was controversial to their belief. Since the slaves were considered less, the owners believed in having them obey, to instill the knowledge of them being superior the owners would use cruel actions. …show more content…

For those religious slaveholders, religion became only a belief and not their reality. Frederick Douglass, who became a great oratorical speaker against slavery, once wrote in the his own narrative, “We have men-stealers for ministers , women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members (71).” This excerpt uses analogies to describe the possible positions in their society to what punishment the slaves experienced. The Christians followed the Bible, but Frederick saw that they contradicted their own words and were treating living human beings abusively. All slaves were whipped and had to obey. This way of keeping slaves ignorant contradicted the beliefs of the christians, it was forced upon the slavesto obey their master through

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