“The dominion of the master had to be absolute…but that absoluteness made the master something other than human as well.” (Colin Dayan)
I agree with Colin Dayan on this quote. In the 1800’s African Americans suffered from slavery. They were held as slaves for the sole reason being that they are colored. Slaves were not paid by their masters and were treated poorly. In the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” by Frederick Douglas, and in the Dread Scott Decision in 1857 we see examples of slaves who were tortured by their masters.
In the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,” Frederick Douglass tells us what he went through while being a slave. Masters made sure their slaves were uneducated and made sure they would never be educated. Douglass mentions to us that he doesn’t even know his age and so do to most slaves. His father was a white man, one who he didn’t know well. His father may have even been his own master, which is just cruel. Douglass tells us a story of when his Aunt Hester went out one night knowing that she would get in trouble for doing so. She was brutally beaten. Her master, Captain Anthony, was known as “a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slave- holding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave.” While beating Aunt Hester we see how little respect he has for her: “Now, you d — -d b — -h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” We learn a lot from Frederick Douglas on how terrible slaves were treated by their masters.
In The Dred Scott Decision of 1857 we learn a lot about a slave who goes by the name of Dred Scott. The Dred Scott Decision was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law. It stated that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into the U.S., and sold as slaves,” whether they were slaves or they were free, were not considered or allowed to be an American citizen and therefore they were not permitted to sue in federal court. Scott unsuccessfully sued for the freedom of himself and his family. Scott said that since he and his wife lived in Illinois, a state in which slavery was illegal, they should be freed. We see from this that people of color were not treated as people by not only their masters, but also by other white citizens.
