Supplemental Letter - Question and Answer Session with My Oldest Daughter on Chapters 3 & 4 of 'My Bondage, My Freedom' by Frederick Douglass

The following is an excerpt from a question and answer session concerning Chapters 3 and 4 of Frederick Douglass’ historical book “My Bondage, My Freedom” which occurred on July 16, 2013 between my daughter and me.

Question #1:

Did Christian preachers own slaves?

Answer #1:

Some American Christian preachers did, and some did not.  Some Christian preachers supported the institution of American slavery, and some supported the abolitionist movement.  There were Christian preachers who not only owned slaves, but received significant amounts of financial support (generated from slave labor) from wealthy slave owners in exchange for so-called spiritual guidance.  Many of the Christian preachers, and Christian slave owners, during Frederick Douglass’ time justified slavery through twisted biblical verses such as the curse placed on Ham.  It is important to understand that when the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire began the transatlantic slave trade in the 15th century, with the issuing of Papal Bull Dum Diversas, that Portugal was given the monopoly to trade for, and kidnap, non-Christian ‘heathens’ and tribal war captives, which would then be enslaved and supplied to the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean.  After the Protestant Reformation and the climax of the British Empire, Britain had elevated the transatlantic slave trade to new heights in supplying the North American colonies with Africans.  After the American Revolution, in the first decade of the 19^th century, the transatlantic slave trade was abolished in the United States (more to damage Britain economically than out of moral reasons) and the process of reproducing slaves domestically was increased (although the illegal import of African slaves continued) in the U.S.  Due to slave revolts in places like Jamaica and Virginia (Nat Turner), slave owners began to utilize Christianity on American slaves to imbue them with a passive, submissive, and accepting ideology based on an afterlife heaven which would reward the physical sufferings of this world.  Since the majority of slaves in early 19^th century U.S. were now raised on American soil and indoctrinated with Christianty from youth, many overzealous and devout Christian slave owners (especially the slave owner wives) began to question the afterlife penalty of Christian enslaving Christian.  During this period, the original religious-based slavery transformed to race-based slavery and Christians began to use biblical justifications (toward the enslavement and inferior position of black slaves) such as the curse placed on Noah’s son, Ham.

Question #2:

What would happen if an overseer was disguised as an abolitionist?  (Note: I had to instruct her that this question made no sense, but took the time to explain overseers and the economic levels of white American society during slavery).

Answer #2:     What is indeed the difference between a land owning slave owner and an overseer?  One main answer of distinction, among many similarities, is capital.  Not every white immigrant in the colonies or the young United States had capital to buy land or slaves.  While the modern media purposely leaves Jewish capital out of the history lessons and attempts to paint a basic black-white historical picture of slavery, the economic structure is often neglected.  There are no excuses for the atrocities committed within the institution of slavery, whether by owner or by machine part, but the economic structure needs to be understood.  Overseers, in the vast majority of cases, owned no capital to buy land or slaves and were reliant of those with capital (the landowners and slave owners) for employment.  Often, the overseers were poor, uneducated white men with no trade or technical skills.  They were often bitter about their plight and position in society, and often brutally took it out on slaves.  It is important to be able to identify whites who brought capital from the old world, whites who owned capital generated in the new world, whites who had no capital and worked within the system of slavery to generate capital through labor, and the poor unskilled whites of great ignorance.  As Marx states in his multi-volume book entitled “Capital”, one must own capital to generate capital.  With this being said, a person with no capital has only one way to generate capital: labor/work.

Question #3:

Did slave owners agree when overseers treated slaves?  (Note: this was another question that I instructed her needed refinement)

Answer #3:

I assume you mean when an overseer punished a slave in excess.  This would probably depend on the personage of the slave owner.  As Douglass mentions, slave owners viewed their slaves a mere property no different than horses or cattle.  Today, some car owners do not take care of their vehicles while others take very good care of their cars.  I would assume in some scenarios that slave owners would endorse heavy punishments for incidents such as running, drinking, or being late to the fields, etc. (anything decreasing profits) in order to maintain estate discipline.  At the same time, slave labor was what generated capital for the slave owner and if an overseer implemented excess damage or starvation (for disgruntled personal reasons) to the slave owner’s property that devalued it or decreased the profits generated from it, I would assume that the overseer would have been disciplined, docked pay, or dismissed.  Again, the overseer class in America usually consisted of the most uneducated class of poor whites.

Question #4:

Why did Frederick Douglass have to learn the Lord’s Prayer?

Answer #4:

As mentioned previously. Frederick Douglass (somewhere between the age of 8-10) and the other slave children in that age group were forced to learn this prayer, and Christianity in general, in order to indoctrinate slaves from a young age to except their position as slaves in this physical world (based on the Bible and an afterlife promise in heaven) in order to discourage slave revolts and encourage submissive productivity.  Christianity is the perfect religious ideology to create a passive/submissive population of laborers.

Question #5:

Would the slave owner punish Frederick Douglass like he did Esther if he saw him spying?

Answer #5:

You clearly did not understand what Esther was being punished for, which is the real topic here, although we have discussed this before.  In past conversations, we talked about the vulnerability of female slaves who faced the lust of their slave owners.  The female slave had no protection from the slave owner’s advances or rape, since by law she was his property.  Many slave owners took slave women and, as we spoke about in Chapters 1 & 2, this often brought the vengeance of the slave owner’s Christian white wife down of the slave woman who was victimized (and in many cases impregnated by the salve owner).  After all, if you recollect Chapter 2 or 3, there were whispers around Colonel Lloyd’s plantation that Frederick Douglass’ father may have been the slave owner himself.  In the particular case of Esther’s whipping, which Frederick Douglass spied, the slave owner was in lust of her.  We do not know through the written account if the slave owner had taken her previously, but the fact remains that Esther had fallen in love with a male slave of her own age (on the plantation) and the slave owner, in his pathetic blind jealously, forbid her to ever see him.  Love can be a strong human element, and Esther defied the slave owner’s demands and was caught with the slave that won her heart.  She was whipped with the lash and the flesh torn on her back, broken open and bloody, because of that slave owner’s lust and jealousy.  This topic will be discussed again in this book, and the Harriet Jacobs book which we will read later.  To answer your original question, I highly doubt that the slave owner would pay much attention to Douglass since he was so young.  At the same time, I suppose it would depend on the personality and the mood.