Frederick Douglass points out in his book,” Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass,” that slavery was not only negative for slaves but also the slaveholders. The slaveholders had big responsibilities by keeping their reputation, keeping the slaves ignorant, and it also turned good people into cruel human beings. The negative effects on slavery had an impact on everyone involved throughout the process. The slaveholders had to keep a good reputation so they could keep buying slaves. Often masters would whip their slaves. They had to be careful about how and where they were whipped. If someone felt they were treated unfairly the masters reputation would be on the line. In douglass’ book he and his master,Covey, gets into a fight because he wanted to whip him but douglass resisted, causing a physical fight that lasted hours. Covey stated after the fight that “if Douglass had not resisted he would have whipped him bad but he was saving his face.” What Covey meant by saving face was he was looking after his reputation, if he would have been caught it would look bad on his part. …show more content…
The slaveholders were to believe that slavery was a natural state of being. Therefore, the whites were meant to be smarter than the blacks so they could keep power. They had to keep slaves from learning to read or write, which was a difficult task. In Douglass’ case he had several methods of learning. The first method of learning Douglass came to was one of the mistress’ from his master’s house. She taught him until she was told to stop. Next Douglass gave food to some of the boys from a school in change of teaching him to read. Even though the task might seem so simple for the slaveholders, slaves like Douglass sometimes found was around their