Frederick Douglass As A Reformer

Frederick Douglass was an African American reformer, Author, Orator, and Statesman. After Fredrick escaped from the Wye Plantation in 1818 in Maryland, he became a political national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts. Douglass was born into slavery in 1818 in Talbot County, most slaves have the same experience when it comes to birth, but the date of Douglass’s birth have been forgotten and are unknown, As a result, later in his life, he chose to celebrate it on February 14. Douglass lived with his maternal Grandmother Betsy Bailey, who was a slave that nurtured Master Andrew since he was a baby till he died of old age. His mother Harriet Bailey was barely in Douglass’s life, she only met Douglass and saw her four or five times during the first seven years of his life, but died in 1825.

The majority of slave owners were ignorant because they had the right to and no one would stop or get in the way of their wrongdoings. White people believed that African Americans were incapable of living in civil society and should be kept as workers for whites. Slave owners kept slaves clueless of basic facts about themselves, such as their birth date or their past. Now that African Americans have the ability to read, write, and comprehend their heritage and history they are looked at as capable to live in a civil society. Douglass saw a lot of hatred whipped into the backs of innocent slaves. The role of violence in slavery was extremely feared by African Americans and was used in different ways for different reasons. The punishments took many forms, including whippings, torture, impregnation, and being sold away from the plantation to plantation. Slaves were even sometimes murdered when they didn’t obey their master, some slaves don’t have to do anything and still get killed because of their shade of skin.

Labor in 1818 was good for some and bad for most because of the age differences and body build. The infants weren’t whipped or worked at all because they didn’t have the ability and the knowledge to process whats needed to be done. The children at the age of five were able to be whipped if they didn’t follow directions and acted out of line with the small amount of maturity that the regular child already owned. The teenage slave was treated like any other adult on the plantation because of the age of the adult-like appearance and the age number, even though slave masters didn’t keep up with the years nor calender. Adults and Teenagers were both whipped with the same amount of hate and neither gained sympathy from the slave owner. Douglass was too young at the time to be whipped when he was on his first plantation but witnessed the torture and the extreme pain from other slaves when they made small mistakes.

Slaves of different shades had different jobs to do, For example, the lighter-skinned slaves did chores like Dusting, Sweeping, Vacuuming, Washing dishes, Feeding pets, Doing laundry, Preparing meals, and cleaning bathrooms. The darker shaded slaves were in the fields picking cotton, rolling hay, and fought in wars.

Without slaves, white slave owners would economically be broke because the African American slaves wouldn’t be picking cotton and making them any money. The slave owners and planters would have been highly fearful of the impact of these new ideas on slaves and how intelligent African Americans have become over the decades.