n while becoming enraged with the slaveholders who held them there. Douglass also wanted his northern audience to be enraged by how slaveholders punished slaves. A northerner with any sense of justice would be furious that it was not considered wrong to whip a slave "till (they were) literally covered with blood" (4) nor was it considered a crime to kill a slave. Masters and overseers justified severely whipping their slaves because "it (was) the duty of a masterto whip a slave, to remind him of his master's authority." (46) Slaves were whipped for the "smallest offences to prevent the commission of larger ones." (46) If a slave became "unmanageable" (14). He was killed to avert other slaves from "copying the example." (14) Douglass detailed these horrific examples of punishment to infuriate the northern white reader that a person was punished in advance of any wrongdoing, was whipped almost to the brink of death, and was murdered without it being "treated as a crime by the courts or community." (14) Treatment of one person by another in these ways was not tolerated in the north. This "fiendish barbarity" (46) would appall the northern reader and would lead them to share Douglass's opinion that southern slave holders were truly the "most wicked of men." (24) To further demonstrate the wickedness of southern slave masters, Douglass wanted his readers to know how religion was used as a "mere covering for the most horrid crimesa dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest and most infernal deeds of slave holders (found) the strongest protection." (46) Masters would beat their slaves and then defend their actions with quotes from the bible such as "He that knoweth his master's will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes." (33) Northerners with any religious background would know that this quote and others like it did not translate into justification for inflicting physical harm on a slave when they did not obey th...
