Frederick Douglass's Effect On Slavery

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Slavery: Effective on Slaves and Slaveholders In Frederick Douglass’s autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Douglass recounts his life in slavery to reveal to his readers the horrors of the American slave system. To effectively inform his readers of the corrupt system, he publicizes the slaveholders’ hypocritical practice of Christianity. Although he himself is a Christian, Douglass’s narrative is a scathing commentary on the ironic role of Christian religion in the Southern slaveholding culture. Throughout his book, the author expresses and exemplifies his perspective on religion by illustrating the falseness and hypocrisy of the Southern people. To start off, Frederick Douglass suggests that the Southern people’s religion is false and insincere. For instance, he believes that the Southern “version” of Christianity is not identical, and even opposite, to that of true Christianity. Douglass states that he loves the “pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ” and hates the “corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land”; in fact, he goes as far as to say that “to be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other” (Douglass 101). By saying this, Douglass is undoubtedly declaring that the people of the land claim to be Christians but their ways are corrupt and unjust which is against all that Christ teaches; therefore, he is calling