Pt 2 Not only were African Americans turned into commodities, but they also endured sever hardships and pain, sometimes distinct to their gender. The slaves were first and foremost treated with the utmost abuse and torture through physical and emotional torture. The slave masters in different regions created different systems to increase the productivity of their slaves, with the most enduring one for the slaves was the pushing system. The slaves were given sometimes impossible quotas to be completed each day, and each day they picked more than their quota, their quota would increase making slaves work as hard as they physically could each and every day (Baptist, 134). The slaves were always under the supervision of an overseer, who would whip …show more content…
One example of a slave who endured many hardships, escaped to freedom, and wrote about it is Frederick Douglass. He was separated from his mother at a very young age, and hardly saw her before she died. He witnessed how his first master severely whipped women more than men, especially his own aunt. He recounts a specific time that Mr. Plummer was whipping her and “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped”, and “not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cow skin” (Douglas, 1845). His second master sent him off to a slave-breaker of sorts, who actually showed him how to guide oxen in the woods, but who would also give Douglass near weekly whippings, because of his clumsiness. Douglass claims that because of Mr. Covey, he was “broken in body, soul, and spirit” (Douglas, 1845). Once, he received a severe blow to head, causing him to bleed, and he was forced to hide in the woods after he ran away to see his master. Compared