The Understood Laws of Slavery
The development of our great country came at great costs for many. Lives were lost and may people were oppressed for the "greater good" of the county. This oppression is know now, and was then as well, as slavery. This single word, slavery, holds such meaning that the effects and conditions of this one word cannot be explained in words alone. Emotion and feeling are the only way to express such harshness and cruelty. Since so many did not experience slavery many will never feel those emotions or feelings that slavery expresses. But stories can, will and have been told in attempts to enlighten those who were so fortunate not to experience the turmoil and irrational horror many had to suffer during these oppressed times. Frederick Douglass is one man who overcame these horrors and lived to write about it. He has told his story to many in some hopes to express the abnormal brutality of this horrific practice. While pondering the existence of slavery, it is not uncommon to come across the question, "How is it possible to enslave an entire race of people and continue to enslave them for over one hundred years?" Answering this question may not be as obvious as many think. Yet, the answer to th
Doing this made it easier for the white people of this country to enslave the African race because they felt that their illiteracy brought them further away from being human and closer to being animals. For much of his life, it seemed, he was vexed with the question of belonging. Douglass did every thing in his power to learn to read and write. To a slaveholder, keeping his slave illiterate was like "keeping them in the dark. He explains in his narrative that he would actually trick the white children of the plantation to teach him how to spell and write. "Laws functioned to curtail, restrict, and decrease the rights of blacks while insuring the rights and privileges of white property owners. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. ' Laws set in place to facilitate the regime of American Chattel slavery also 'propertized' human life. the legal system underwrote the dominant society's need to preclude blacks from claiming the rights of American citizenship, which included the right to identify as an American (King, 57). This similarity brings with it the fear of equality for the slaveholders. Increasingly, 'white' came to be associated with 'free,' and 'black' with 'slave. " The African race, even if an individual was an ancestor far removed, was denied the protection of the law and also denied the right to citizenship. "Along with Douglass' education, he learned that slavery was a chattel institution, an institution that dehumanized and entire race for the "greater good" of another.
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