Long Term Effects Of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born in Talbot County, Maryland in 1818 to a slave, Harriet Bailey, and a white slave master. As a slave, Frederick Douglass was deprived of all his inalienable rights and dignity by potentially his “father” and other white slave masters. Douglass was further subjugated by the slave master withholding his age and actual birth date because “it was the wish of most masters within [his] knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant”. Through a systematic process practice by slave owners during the 1800s, Douglass was separated from his mother; the slave owners concubine as an infant the same way a dog breeder today splits a litter without regard to the long term effects. In fact, this act of derision was

Thus, around twenty years of age, Douglass was restive, had seen and experienced enough of the cruelties of slavery, and successfully devised a plan to escape from bondage and find freedom in New York City. In New York City, he created his own newspaper the North Star, he authored three outstanding autobiographies, and developed into one of the most important abolitionist of his time period.Through his penetrating writings, Frederick Douglas was able to persuade many people that slavery was cruel, thus empowering him to promote the abolishment of

Douglass emphasized the absurdity of the legal system’s failure to consider slave murders criminal acts. For example, Douglass described Mr. Gore, the overseer of Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and his murder of Demby, a slave who tried to avoid a whipping. Mr. Gore “took deadly aim at his...victim” after Demby refused to face the lashings. Shamefully, “his horrid crime was not even submitted to judicial investigation”. Douglass likely intended for the reader to be appalled by this disregard for human life–asking the reader to envision their own fight for justice if a family member suffered the same unwarranted, unjustified end of lift thrusted upon Demby. Ideally, the reader’s sense of humanity brought them to the conclusion that reprehensible acts of violence against enslaved people should not only be considered punishable under the law, but also be seen as egregious use of power. Moreover, Douglass stated that “killing a slave, or any colored person...was not treated as a crime, either by the courts or by the community”. Perhaps the reader realized dark skin and chained ankles were not permission slips to murder. Douglass emphasized that slave lives should be valued equally, and murder based on skin color was unjustifiable. He noted “it was a common saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a half-cent to kill a ‘n–,’ and a half-cent to bury one”. While the life and