preview

Fredrick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs

Good Essays
Open Document

During the 1800s, slaves received treatment comparable to that of livestock. They were mere possessions of white men stripped of almost every last bit of humanity in them. African-Americans were constricted to this state of mind by their owners vicious treatment, but also the practice of keeping them uneducated. Keeping the slaves illiterate hindered them from understanding the world around them. Slave owners knew this. The slaves who were able to read and write always rebelled more against their masters. Frederick Douglass, author of "A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," and Harriet Jacobs, author of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl," were prime examples. Both slaves had been taught how read and write at a young …show more content…

Douglass never received another beating throughout his last four years of slavery after that incident. Harriet Jacobs on the contrary to Douglass, had no idea she was a slave until she was six years old. Her first mistress treated her very well, almost as if she were white. She was taught how to read and write. The majority of Jacobs' family, excluding her father, served the family of her first mistress very well, and the family returned the favor by treating their slaves with a little bit of dignity. Her mistress also taught her the Bible. This teaching allowed for Jacobs to know the rights and wrongs being done to her and other slaves. Harriet picked up on the conversations around her after her mother died, and she figured out she was a slave from the discussions. After her first mistress died, Jacobs was put on the auction block for sale as a farm tool. A man named Dr. Flint purchased her and her brother. Jacobs depicted a gruesome scene of the auction block: "These God-breathing machines are no more…than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend." (Jacobs, p.11) Jacobs' real father was such a skilled craftsmen that he had more feelings of a freed slave than most others, and in the raising of his children, this thought pattern reflected especially William. This proved to make things rougher for both Jacobs and her brother William with their new master. Jacobs

Get Access