Life of a Slave

Working, from sunrise to sunset, with little nutrition, while being whipped and beaten all throughout the day, this was the everyday life of a slave. Slaves lived in usually harsh environments and were treated poorly by their masters and the plantation owners, causing a slave’s life span to be shorter than of the white people. Frederick Douglass was born around 1818 and this book is his narrative of his life as a slave and a portion of his life after he was declared a free man. Primary sources provide a great insight to the happenings of historical events. It gives us a firsthand view from someone who had lived and experienced everything that occurred in a certain time period. From the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to The Diary of Anne Frank, we learn a great deal about how it was to be a slave in America to being a Jew during the holocaust. With primary sources, more is known about not just slavery and the holocaust, but various battles, wars, and other significant events that have occurred all throughout history, in all parts of the world. Historians read and combine primary sources to get a better view and understanding on what happened. When they compile all the information into one source, it becomes a secondary source. A secondary source is still a historically correct document, but it was not someone who experienced, say slavery, personally. Rather, it is someone reflecting on the historical event after reading one or a few primary sources. Both sources are extremely insightful to the events, but the primary source gives us a personal, more emotional look on the event. The narrator can walk us through his or her personal experiences, and can help us feel and understand his or her emotions a little easier than through a secondary source. With Frederick Douglass’s narrative, we can see his journey as a slave, and then as a freeman. Included in his narrative is a preface written by William Lloyd Garrison and a letter from Wendell Phillips. These