“I have often been utterly astonished…to find persons who could speak of the singing, among the slaves as evidence of their contentment and happiness” (242). According to Fredrick Douglass, the songs are sung when the slaves are unhappy, contrary to what white slave owners think. In the song that slaves sang, Fredrick Douglass knew that they were full of sorrow and what he described as rude. “Every tone was a testimony against slavery”(242). When Fredrick Douglass wrote about the songs, he express how angry he is and his hatred toward slavery.
By “persons who could speak of the singing”, it refers to the white slave-owners justifying themselves and what they are doing by convincing others (the North) that the songs meant “happiness”, but also to prevent others from understanding the severity of how wrong slavery is. Having slaves, and doing what they did, such as whipping is considered a sin, no matter how the slave owners tried to defend themselves. The slave owners don’t mind the singing of the slave on the plantation because it enforces the idea that the slaves are happy. As a result, many white northerners are deceived, just as how the slaves are deceived and ignorant of what is happening to them. With both northerners (defenders) and the victim also deceived it was easier for the Southern slave-owner to keep doing what they are doing.
One question I have is whether or not the slave owner really thought the songs showed happiness or contentment. Slave songs have a bit of African language so I can see why the white wouldn’t understand what the slaves are singing about. Though I think that slave-owner to some extent understand that the songs that their slave sang weren’t meant to show “contentment” or “happiness”, at the same time, the slave owners can be just as delusional believing that their slaves are happy.
You raise an interesting question about whether the slave owners could possibly have really thought that these songs were an expression of contentment. Obviously, we have no way of answering it conclusively, but I think you are right to suggest that there had to have been some willful misunderstanding or delusion at hand. Clearly the slave owners preferred to maintain the fiction that the slaves were content.