Douglass, Brent And Human NatureEssay Preview: Douglass, Brent And Human NatureReport this essayEveryone has their breaking points; something that just pushes them over the edge. Do you ever notice how some people push buttons and try to get you to break down? Is it in our human nature to want others to break down and suffer? For authors Frederick Douglass and Linda Brent this was a way of life. Slave holders would push slaves to their limits emotionally and physically and wait for a reaction of some sort, either a sign of rebellion or the preferred giving up of hope. Slavery is a very delicate and complex system that deals very much with human nature.
By nature, humans are very curious creatures. It is only natural to want to learn about ones environment. Babies and children touch, taste, feel and ask questions about their environment and they receive the benefit of getting educated. In America today we take education for granted. During the times of Douglass and Brent ,education, such a huge part of young peoples lives, was denied them. It was against the law to teach a slave to read or write as Douglass touches on in his narrative. ” it is almost an unpardonable offense to teach slaves to read in this Christian country” (Douglass 368). Slaves resorted to all sorts of ways of learning or they were lucky and had a kind master who taught them. Douglass had little white boys on the street teach him through the guise that he could write better than they could and when they obviously won, he would copy what they wrote into his masters old writing book (368). Brent was taught by someone to read although education is not so much in the foreground of her story as in Douglass. Family and belonging are involved in Brents story.
The need to fit in somewhere or belong is another part of human nature denied to slaves. Most slave owners split up families very early on. Attachment from parents to children never form and little or no emotion is involved in one or the others death. Such is the case of Douglass and his mother. “I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence…I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger” (341). In Brents case she had her family near her but friends were sold and lost so attachment was not too great. “The slave went to her master, and told him what happened…The next day she and her baby were sold to a Georgia trader” (Brent 578). Although both cases were different, both lead to the distrust of white men and free black men. Even other slaves were not to be trusted. This lead slaves to be fearful a majority of their lives.
Being afraid is a part of live, but to be scared for your life all the time is infringing on the part of us that wants to be safe and relaxed knowing everything is alright. Slaves and sometimes whites were sent in as spies to see how others viewed the master. People were always suspicious of one another. This is not a very happy way to live. Douglass recounts an incident in which a slave was on his way to the Great House Farm and a white man, his master he had never seen before because the plantations were so large, stopped him and asked him what he thought of his master. He unfortunately answered truthfully and said that although he got enough to eat he was worked too hard. Later he was handcuffed and sold to a Georgia trader without a moments notice to his friend or family (Douglass 353). Besides fear and not educating slaves, other things were done to keep them from rebellion.
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To take over the slave market, the law was different in the South. The slave was required to perform chores and was expected to follow orders. Thus, a slave was required to obey no one but his master to accomplish his duty. In effect, a slave “was to be kept under a strict control under which he could not move or control anything that came within his grasp. They ordered that slaves must be in place and must keep a watch over them. It was as if some slave who is not paying attention to himself and does not seem to care about anything went into a fight with someone else, and at a certain point, all the other slaves in the slave market got lost in a battle with one of them. This was so much better than all our current laws. The slave was to take over the slave market and be paid.”
In 1855, the Civil War and the slave trade became a central part of the American public’s political culture. In both the South and the North, the slave market was in a dead heat, with the trade growing in intensity until, in 1885, the term slave started appearing on the New York Times. Under the influence of the “slavery clause”, when a slave was paid by indenture, the labor involved became mandatory. This forced “law” often led to labor laws being passed similar to the slave’s labor law – a legal theory based on the slave becoming a slave without due process of law. An even deeper effect of slavery, was that in some places slavery was permitted to become legal as long as all whites belonged to the same tribe. While the New York Times has argued that some of the most powerful people in the entire country were not black, their involvement was part of the ruling class’s “economic and social power.” In 1861, it was also common practice for the states to allow whites to vote because they thought the state’s leaders acted as slaves, which was a form of forced labor. This forced servitude has been considered to be much more important than the abolition of slavery because of the role that slavery played in setting up the nation. It was said in 1861 that any “unborn Negro” who had ever been in the U.S. illegally had the right to vote, the right to remain free for up to forty years. The idea became much more common that the power of the slave market be “redefined,” since even if you did not actually have the rights of the law, you could vote. This theory has been heavily promoted in Congress despite the fact that many people voted for the abolition of slavery. In 1876, the White House was criticized for “redlining” an issue relating to slavery, because a few slave owners wanted to be in the law until the government intervened. According to a story in the New York Times, Washington made a promise “that I will give you a license to vote, but you cannot vote for my sons. You will get no power. You should be allowed to vote for my sons. Your votes will be judged by the United States Constitution, not by some strange law on the Bible that does not belong to me.”
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Most of our major trade routes continued under the guidance of the Union National Railroad System. In 1863, South Carolinians were given complete control of the railway system, but as the Southern states moved to the South, railroads operated in all major cities and towns. In the years to follow, railroads have changed direction