Negative Effects Of Slavery In Frederick Douglass

572 Words3 Pages

Slavery: Negative for slaveholders, as well as, slaves. In the mid 1800s Frederick Douglass grew up, suffered, and conquered slavery. He matured into a brave young adult and went forward with writing his personal experience of slavery, and shared with the readers how slavery impacted his life, his family’s lives, and the slave-holder’s lives. This Narrative has truly been a blessing to generations, and has opened the eyes of all ethnicities around the world. In this autobiography, “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, by Frederick Douglass, slavery is introduced as a negative effect in many different ways. Although slavery is a tough subject to talk about, the reader believes that it should be addressed and considered as one of the most negative events in history. A moral effect from the autobiography, is from Frederick’s perspective of Mrs.Auld, a wife to a slaveholder. He states, “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery soon became red with rage; the voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; …show more content…

Douglass and his mother were separated when he was just an infant. “It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached his twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off...” (Douglass 57). Douglass had no idea of who his mother was. He says later on in his autobiography, “Very little communication ever took place between us…I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial…I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger” (Douglass 26). In the times of slavery families were split up and moved far away from each other, resulting in them not knowing their family at