ery. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, depict many memorable incidents that led to the opposition of slavery.Frederick Douglass has woven many themes into his narrative, all being tied with a common thread of man’s inhumanity towards man. As depicted in America’s History, “white masters had virtually unlimited power, both legal and physical, over their slaves” (p. 297). A slaves relationship with his or her master usually went no further than the master thinking of that slave as no more than an animal that worked in the field, and that is what slaves did. They worked in the fields like animals. Children were uprooted from the arms of their mothers, "before the child has reached it’s twelfth month, it’s mother is taken from it and sold to other slave holders" (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave p. 48). Brutal whippings occurred for even the smallest imagined offense, "a mere look, word, or motion" (Douglass p. 118), women were treated as no better than common concubines and the slaves were forced into living quarters, "on one common bed… cold, damp floor" (Douglass p. 55) worse than some of the farm animals. The slaves were not allowed even the most meager portion of food, "eight pounds of pork and one bushel of corn meal" (Douglass p. 54) to last a month. Clothes were scarce and illness was never tolerated. It was unthinkable for the slaves to practice any type of religion, hold any gatherings, become literate to any degree, "unlawful… unsafe, to teach a slave to read" (78) or even make the simple decision of when to eat and sleep. Usually masters would try to find the slightest wrongdoing in order to punish the slave with a whipping. They enjoyed whipping people for two main reasons. The first reason was to punish a slave, and the second reason was to use the slave being whipped as an example to the other slaves. Whipping them and makin...
