In the book Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave, the author Fredrick Douglass recounts his experiences as a man born into slavery and the ordeals he suffered before escaping. His aim was to expose the horrifying and brutal nature of slavery on both the salve and slave owner and how slavery reduced the slaves animals. Douglass also writes using a sort of reflective rhetoric, to add more significance and power to his writing. One such use of this reflective rhetoric is the quote “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man” (Douglass 107). But I believe that this use of reflective rhetoric also serves another purpose in Douglass’ narrative. That this reflective rhetoric is used to give the reader an idea that slavery doesn't only turn the slaves into brute and animals, but it also affects the slaveowners in much the same way.
We can see this explicitly when Douglass talks about his experience within a salve action. One of this first and very vivid descriptions is how we illustrates how the slaves were valued as livestock. “We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horse, sheep, and swine… all holding the same rank in the scale of being” (Douglass 89-90). Yet only a few lines later he sees these same effects happening to the slaveowners. “I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (Douglass 90). So from these two passages alone we can see Douglass’ belief that the slaveowners are undergoing the same exact human degradation into beasts that slavery requires.
However this alone doesn’t prove that Douglass is trying to convey the idea that the degradation of humans to animals happens for both slave and slaveowner. We need some other characterization of the slaveowners themselves to see this. When exploring into the literature I found rhetoric that was animalistic in nature for Mr. Thomas Hamilton, Mrs. Hugh, Master Andrew and Covey. Often when describing the punishment the slaveowners would deal out upon their slaves, there would be some use of “savage” or “brutal” like adjectives used. One such example describing Master Andrew can be seen on page 91.
“Master Andrew—a man who, but a few days before, to give me a sample of his bloody disposition, took my little brother by the throat, threw him on the ground, and with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the blood gushed… committed this savage outrage upon my brother” (Douglass 91)
For any compassionate and decent human being, we would never expect them to be described as an animal. Yet Douglass intentional describes their action as such to convince the reader that these slaveowners are just as barbaric and brutish as any common animal. But Douglass doesn’t only describe their actions in this way, but also their personalities as well as their souls. When describing Mrs. Hughs transformation into a typical slaveowner her soul “became stone” and her once “lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness” (Douglass 82). As such we can that once a white man becomes a slaveowner, their souls turn to stone, and they harbor a personality much like an animal.
Douglass further illustrates this connection by stating that religious slaveowners are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly” (Douglass 117). In this case, basest is being used to refer to these men as something lower than human, like an animal. With all of these contextual references it is safe to assume that as Douglass describes the process in which he is forced to become a brute, he is also trying to show the reader that the slaveowners are brutes themselves. This would match Douglass’ use of reflective rhetoric as Douglass illustrates that if one ttys to force another to become a brute, they themselves must act as an brute as well.
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