Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Instead of blaming individuals who committed acts of cruelty, Douglass blames slavery itself. “Old Master” Captain Anthony, who whipped the beautiful young slave girl Esther because she dared to meet with the man she loved and thus denied “Old Master” exclusive sexual possession of her, nonetheless comes across as a human being victimized by a monstrous system: “Had he been brought up in a free state, surrounded by the full restrains of civilized society […] Captain Anthony might have been as humane a man as are members of such society generally” (27). Edward Covey, the “negro-breaker” with whom Frederick spent one miserable year, purchased a slave woman named Caroline, hired a field hand named Bill Smith, and then “locked the two up together every night” for one “revolting” purpose:

No better illustration of the unchaste, demoralizing, and debasing character of slavery can be found, than is furnished in the fact that this professedly Christian slave-holder, amidst all his prayers and hymns, was shamelessly and boastfully encouraging and actually compelling, in his own house, undisguised and unmitigated fornication, as a means of increasing his stock. It was the system of slavery which made this allowable, and which no more condemned the slaveholder for buying a slave woman and devoting her to this life, than for buying a cow and raising stock from her, and the same rules were observed, with a view to increasing the number and quality of the one, as of the other (97).