d they pushed each other out of the way to get to the food because they were never fed enough food. What the slaves were fed was "coarse corn meal boiledcalled mush" (16) which is similar to what farm animals were fed. The difference between the farm animals and the slaves was that the animals were taken care of better and always given enough to eat. Douglass repeatedly mentions how often he "(felt) the gnawing pains of hunger." (31) His masters had more than an adequate supply of food but would rather it "lay moldering" (31) than give it to the slaves. Not only is this more evidence as to the cruel and selfish nature of slaveholders, but it shows how animals were treated better than slaves. To know that animals were treated better than certain human beings in the south would hit a nerve with Douglass's targeted audience. Imaging themselves to be treated so worthlessly by another human being, literate northern whites would feel divided from southern slave owners. To force his audience to feel further alienated, Douglass elaborates on the treatment of slaves as animals in his description of the slaves' sleeping conditions. Masters did not give the slaves a bed to sleep on, only a "coarse blanket." (6) So at the end of the day, slaves "old and young, male and female, married and single (would) drop down side by side, on one common bed- the cold damp floor." (6) Douglass was aware that some of his northern readers could relate to the slaves situation because they too had once endured similar circumstances of poor living conditions or even homelessness. But, northern society made it possible for a person to overcome such hardships while the slave masters denied their slaves a better existence. The institution of slavery held each successive generation in poverty, which is an affront to the dream that many northerners held of prosperity in the New World. Douglass hoped that the Northerners would sympathize with the slaves' oppressio...
