FREE ESSAY ON EXAMINATION OF THE SLAVE EXPERIENCE

EXAMINATION OF THE SLAVE EXPERIENCE

Ryan G Davis
History 211
Section 13W
Examination of the Slave Experience
Most African Americans of the early to mid-nineteenth century experienced slavery on
plantations similar to the experiences described by Frederick Douglass; the majority of
slaves lived on units owned by planters who had twenty or more slaves. The planters and
the white masters of these agrarian communities sought to ensure their personal safety
and the profitability of their enterprises by using all the tactics-physical and
psychological-at their command to make slaves obedient. Even Christianity was manipulated
in a way that masters communicated to their slaves that God had commanded them to obey
their masters. Hence, by word and deed whites tried to convince blacks that they had been
ordained superior thus affording them the right to rule over blacks. However, it is a
great tribute to the extraordinary resourcefulness and spirit of African Americans that
most of them resisted these pressures and managed to retain an inner sense of their own
individuality and worth. Still, the reason why African Americans were able to maintain a
sense of individuality and worth remains disputed.
Only a tiny fraction of all slaves ever took part in organized acts of violent resistance
against white power. Most realized as Frederick Douglass did that the odds against a
successful revolt were very high, and bitter experience had shown them that the usual
outcome was death to the rebels. Consequently, they devised sublime, safer and more
ingenious ways to resist white dominance. For Frederick Douglass, it was clear that his
way of fighting the power was to become educated so that he may better understand his
predicament and the wrongfulness of slavery. However, he described that knowing that:
wit...[was] the pathway from slavery to freedom. (pg. 58) ...Reading... enabled me to
utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but
while [it] relieved me of one difficulty, [it] brought on another even more painful than
the one of which I was relieved. The more I read the more I was led to abhor and detest
my enslavers. (pg. 61) The knowledge which Frederick Douglass gained, did not free him
from his horrible situation, but rather compounded his discontentment as a slave. It is
hard to determine how other slaves were able to maintain a sense of individuality and
worth, despite not having the opportunity or possess the resourcefulness to obtain the
knowledge of Frederick Douglass. 
Nevertheless, most slaves had established and participated in a subculture separate from
any other in the United States at that time. One might argue that it was from the realm
of this subculture and fundamental beliefs, derived from the horrible experiences of
slavery, that provided African Americans the strength necessary to hold their heads high
and look beyond their immediate condition. Religion was the essence of the newly emerging
African American subculture. Borrowed from the fiery revivalism of white participants of
the first Great Awakening and their own African religions, slaves created their own
version of Christianity. Miraculously, they broke away from the teachings that their
white masters had bestowed upon them, which taught them that blacks were commanded by God
to obey their superior white masters. Instead they developed beliefs that they were not
inferior, but were created equally in the eyes of God, and thus deserved equality. Their
new religion stressed fellowship, brotherly love, equality, and salvation from slavery.
Frederick Douglass' observations of some of the songs sung at church and in the fields
are as follows:
They [the songs] told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble
comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and
complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony
against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. (pg. 47)
The true religion was practiced at night, often secretly, and was led by black preachers.
The underground slave religion was a highly emotional affair that consisted of singing,
shouting, and dancing. For Frederick Douglass and all other slaves, the singing of songs
and religion were more of an affirmation of the joy in life rather than a rejection of
worldly pleasures and temptations. They spoke out against the perils of bondage and
asserted their right to be free.
Despite the success of African Americans to develop a subculture, which afforded them an
escape from their hardcore reality, pain and struggle persisted. There are many
similarities, which can be drawn from the experiences of slavery as described by
Frederick Douglass and the analogy to a Nazi prison camp included in the Stanley Elkins
Thesis. Elkins asserted that slavery in the United States was similar to the conditions
of a Nazi concentration camp because both exerted total physical and psychological
control over its subordinates. In both cases, the subordinates were not allowed any
personal freedoms, which included education, leisure, or any other personal allowance.
Thomas Auld, the master of Frederick Douglass in Baltimore, said A nigger should know
nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told to do. (pg. 57) He was referring to
the wrongfulness of his wife's attempt to educate Frederick Douglass. Implicitly, this
was the view held by most whites toward African Americans. Consequently, other adjectives
such as: lazy, irresponsible, childlike, and simple-minded, were used by whites to
describe the African American character. These reports coincide with observations made by
Frederick Douglass referring to the attitude whites possessed toward African Americans.
Of course the main goal, as seen by Elkins, and Douglass, of the whites was to suppress
any notion of African American individuality. Furthermore, it stole the African American
sense of independence and created the false image of black childlike dependence on their
white masters. That combined with the fact that most African Americans were born into
slavery disallowed them any experience of freedom or of Africa by which they may make
comparisons to their situation of total bondage. 
Again, this takes us back to the problem to what extent African Americans were able to
retain a sense of individuality and worth. If Elkins' postulation is correct, it would be
hard to believe that any identity at all could be retained under such harsh conditions.
However, in the accounts of Frederick Douglass and other slaves it is obvious that there
was indeed evidence of individuality, which included the religious subculture developed
by African Americans, and the fact that Frederick Douglass as well as other slaves had
escaped or aspired to escape the perils of slavery. Therefore, I would assert that it was
merely the fact that whites so desperately tried to keep blacks from achieving the
freedom enjoyed by whites, which served as the example by which blacks were able to
derive their notion of equality. After all, it was written in the Declaration of
Independence and the Bible that humans were created equally and had the right to pursue
happiness. The notion of human equality existed in theory but not in practice; whites had
it, slaves wanted it. I would also argue that African Americans knew this and that is how
an African American subculture and any other evidence of individuality developed and
afforded them the notion of equality. Hence, these developments arose out of the African
American's need to survive psychologically. By the time of the movement toward abolition
had developed, there was an obvious schism of opinion about slavery, which had developed
between abolitionist whites, slaves and white slaveholders. People like Frederick
Douglass who preached abolition of slavery, only had to nurture the already existing
spirit within slaves to strive for freedom.