“Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d—-d b—-h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d—-d b—-h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet.”
This passage just demonstrates one of the incidents that got written down by Fredrick Douglass. This is just an incident that we have been told of, imagine how many people suffered the same fate. The slave owners did not care if they were whipping slaves in front of their children begging for mercy as that begging feeded the barbaric souls of the slave owners. This passage shows that this whipping and blood dripping had become a common practice for the slaves.
It reveals that at a young age he had to see these horrid scenes and by the time he got old he got accustomed to it. Seeing these things since childhood can affect a child in many ways, one of those ways could be for the child, in our case Fredrick Douglass would be to see these things happening to be normal. Yes he didn’t become numb but he knew it was inevitable so he wasn’t holding on to some false hope.
The way Douglass narrated this whole scene in his narrative shows that he was just writing about any other days as this passage lacks emotion. He describes this horrifying scene so casually cause for him it did become a normal thing. On top of that, he saw this incident as a kid and by the time he learned how to read and write, he had seen so many worse things happening to people that this incident just made it to the top but it was nothing out of the ordinary for him.
Why did they have to be so cruel when the work slaves were asked to do was done. Why did he have to torture her in front of a child. Where was human decency. And most importantly who came up with the idea of racism that oh because they are of a darker skin they don’t get to have rights, who started all of this. And so many more questions cause this whole narrative is so troubling.
Zain, I think it’s crucial that we continue to ask these questions and to be troubled by accounts like Douglass’. Your comments actually touch on questions that are very much a part of the public discourse around American identity and American history today, with different groups having different opinions about what our relationship to this chapter of our history should be, but as you suggest, it’s important not to become numb to the indecency of American slavery.