Throughout his personal narrative, Frederick Douglass writes about the different things he experienced throughout his time as a slave for multiple different masters. All the stories Douglass recounts in his narrative show different aspects of slavery and different ways that slavery as a whole is dangerous. One of the reasons why slavery was dangerous was that it dehumanizes slaves. In his second chapter, Douglass tells a story about how slaves were chosen to go to The Great Farm House. These slaves would sing as a chorus, “I am going away to the Great Farm House! O, yea! O, yea!” (Narrative of the Life, 47). Douglass explains in his book that to some these words are simply a meaningless phrase, but to those who really understand, these words would serve as evidence for how horrible slavery was. Douglass recounts that when he was younger, he didn’t really understand what the songs meant. Later in life, however, he learned that this song was sang in tones of woe—they were a song crying out to God for deliverance. Slave songs weren’t sung out of excitement or contentment. …show more content…
By dehumanizing slaves, slaveholders were twisted and warped into unkind and unloving people. They lost their tenderness, and in a way, they lost their grasp of humanity. For slaveholders, slavery is dangerous because it changes them into an apathetic and stone-hearted masters. Because slaves were being dehumanized and treated as breathing property, they received the painful end of slavery’s horrors. Slaves endured physical violence and abuse. Slaves weren’t allowed to learn to read or be schooled. Slaves were generally poorly fed and were given poor and infrequent allowances of clothes. Slavery was dangerous because it not only justified this treatment but encouraged it; it was the right of a white man to mistreat his slave, and it was the purpose of a slave to endure this