Frederick Douglass Cruel

Frederick Douglass was a slave who was brought up in Maryland and even though the treatment for the slaves were less harsh as compared to the Deep South, but that does not mean that what Douglass has suffered were less in punishment and torture than the slaves in the Deep South. Douglass was raised in a slave plantation. The multiple slave holders that Douglass has experienced have a goal, which was to break their slaves. This means to basically emotionally and physically torture their slaves, so that they have no hope to be free from servitude and do not even think to rebel and question their masters. Where white men can enjoy their freedom and their manhood due to their superiority, however, Douglass demonstrates that black slaves
Covey, was given Frederick Douglass by Master Thomas to “break” him. Mr. Covey had a particular interesting and shocking encounter with one of his slaves, Frederick Douglass. Mr. Covey’s discipline had tamed Douglass to be emotionally damaged and his, “natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died” (Douglass 38) and from this quote the goal for Mr. Covey or for any other slave holder has been completed. Slave holders tame their slaves to feel exactly what Douglass just said, but Douglass was not like any other slave. He did not want to be like any other slave and had the courage to even think like no other slave would. Frederick wanted to be in servitude for no long and had a desire, to “…be free...I will run away. I will not stand it” (Douglass 38). He rebelled and fought Mr. Covey, when he tried to knock him down, but failed to do so and was shocked with Douglass’s rebellion against him, as Douglass described, “My resistance was so entirely unexpected, that Covey seemed taken all aback” (Douglass 42) and after this encounter Douglass said, “It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood” (Douglass 43). According to this, Douglass proved that after his fight with Mr. Covey, a slave must have the courage to think and execute actions like no other slave in order to gain his freedom for his
He still had the title of a slave rather than a free man. For Douglass being free required action of being gallant and to execute that courageous behavior. As Douglass described, “I talked to them (other slaves) of our want of manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement without at least one noble effort to be free”. To access his words, Douglass wanted to earn his freedom by implementing a courageous plan to be free and that was a sense of manhood for him because to achieve your manhood, an individual must make a noble effort and an act of valiancy to grasp their manhood. When Douglass wanted to escape to the bay with his fellow slaves, we see that Douglass had portrayed his manhood when he had the responsibility over the success of his plan and said, “I probably felt more anxious than the rest, because I was, by common consent, at the head of the whole affair” (Douglass 52). Responsibility can also be a factor for being a man as that requires pressure and taking charge of the plan and situation for himself and others. Only a man can think and make a plan like Douglass, while a slave would be hopeless and thoughtless about such things. Douglass explained that, “to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one….and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man” (Douglass