His Farms And Slaves Were Under The Care Of An Overseer

In 2016 we look back at slavery as an embarrassing time. Fredrick Douglass was a slave that wanted to read and write. He was treated terribly until he escaped. He thinks that slavery is terrible for slaves and slavery corrupts slave owners. Douglass thinks that slavery is terrible for slaves. Douglass’s father was a white man. Douglass did not know his mother because she was sold to a plantation down the road. She would walk 8 miles to come and see him every night. In excerpt 1, paragraph 6, the narrative says “His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer’s name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I
In his Narrative, The Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass is working on the great house farm. Clothes were given yearly and food monthly. The slaves did not get much food or clothes at all. There were no beds given to the slaves. In Excerpt 2, Paragraph 2, it says “The men and women slaves received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter, made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes; the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars. The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the old women having the care of them. The children unable to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to them; their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year.” Slaves did not get much food or clothes at all. This is why Douglass thinks slavery is terrible for
When Douglass was 16, he was sent to a new master, Thomas Auld, who owned a plantation in St. Michael’s, Maryland. Mr. Auld is trying to beat Douglass.In paragraph 3, excerpt 4, “Mr. Covey was one of the few slaveholders who could and did work with his hands.He was a hard-working man. He knew by himself just what a man or a boy could do. There was no deceiving him. His work went on in his absence almost as well as in his presence; and he had the faculty of making us feel that he was ever present with us. This he did by surprising us. He seldom approached the spot where we were at work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed at taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning, that we used to call him, among ourselves, "the snake." When we were at work in the cornfield, he would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and all at once he would rise nearly in our midst, and scream out, “Ha, ha!”Mr. Covey was was a terrible slave owner. He could do his own work with his own hands. This shows how slavery corrupts slave