Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1881

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Part 1, Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Life as a Slave”

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “A Slaveholder’s Character”

For the first time, young Frederick begins to see the darker side of Captain Anthony, and yet Douglass, in retrospect, describes his “Old Master” with magnanimity and even pity. Anthony was “not by nature worse than other men” (27). Indeed, had he been raised in the North, in a free society, Anthony “might have been as humane a man as are members of such society generally” (27). Instead, he appeared an “unhappy man” who “wore a troubled and at times a haggard aspect” and often was seen “walking around, cursing and gesticulating as if possessed by a demon” (27-28).

On one occasion, Anthony refuses to protect a young slave woman, Frederick’s cousin, who has been beaten by the overseer, Mr. Plummer. “Old Master” blames the young woman for the beating, tells her she probably deserved it, and orders her to return to work. Another young slave woman named Esther, who possesses the “curse” of “personal beauty,” is brutally whipped by Anthony because she is being “courted” by Ned Roberts, one of Colonel Lloyd’s slaves, and she refuses to stop seeing Ned even when Anthony orders her to do so (29-30). Douglass strongly implies that Anthony wanted to keep Esther for himself.

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “A Child’s Reasoning”

After witnessing Captain Anthony’s cruelty, young Frederick begins to wonder why anyone must be a slave. When he learns that his Aunt Jennie and Uncle Noah have fled to the North, Frederick thinks of one day escaping as well. More atrocities follow. Nellie, a slave woman “with a predominating share of the blood of the master running in her veins” (32), is whipped for “impudence” by the overseer, Mr. Sevier, albeit not without putting up a fight.

Masters and overseers encouraged their slaves to sing while toiling in the fields. Slavery’s apologists often cited these melodies as proof that slaves were content. Frederick knows better: “Child as I was, these wild songs greatly depressed my spirits. Nowhere outside of dear old Ireland, in the days of want and famine, have I heard sounds so mournful” (34). In fact:

[…] the mere hearing of these songs would have done more to impress the good people of the north with the soul-crushing character of slavery than whole volumes exposing the physical cruelty of the slave system, for the heart has no language like song (35).

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “Luxuries at the Great House”

The scene inside Colonel Lloyd’s home betrays none of the suffering and privation endured by the plantation’s slaves. There, the Lloyds and their guests enjoy “blood-bought luxuries” (38). The Colonel hires a scientific gardener from Scotland and indulges in French brandy, Chinese tea, and coffee from the South Pacific. Every conceivable advantage and amenity known to the era can be found at the Great House. Even the slaves there “constituted a sort of black aristocracy” (39).

Appearances, however, neither conceal nor diminish the slave system’s barbarity, which Colonel Lloyd himself perpetuates. On one occasion—among the most “humiliating” he ever witnessed—young Frederick sees Colonel Lloyd whipping “old Barney,” an older slave who manages the stables (41). Another slave named William Wilks, who “was about as white as any one on the plantation” and “bore a striking resemblance” to Murray Lloyd, the Colonel’s eldest acknowledged son (42), is sold to a slave trader for no apparent reason besides Murray Lloyd’s obvious jealousy, or perhaps Colonel Lloyd’s shame (42). (Wilks’s friends in Baltimore and Annapolis helped purchase his freedom.) Lloyd also is known to sell his slaves to the Deep South if he discovers that they have expressed any discontent with their situation or with him. When asked whether they are happy, therefore, slaves seldom respond in the negative.

Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “Characteristics of Overseers”

Mr. Sevier, the overseer who whipped Nellie in Chapter 6, is replaced by Mr. Hopkins, a gentler man who unfortunately does not remain long in the position and is himself replaced by Austin Gore, whose grotesque and bloodthirsty nature, even at a distance of half a century, leave Douglass at a loss for words: “I hardly know how to bring this man fitly before the reader” (45). Gore’s “malign and tyrannical qualities,” “sternness of glance,” and "piercing black eyes” terrify young Frederick (46). Indeed, the new overseer seems barely human. He “never said a funny thing or perpetuated a joke,” for he “needed no higher pleasure than the performance of the duties of his office” (46).

One day, Gore attempts to flog a slave named Bill Denby, but Denby, young and physically powerful, escapes his tormenter, flees into a nearby creek, and refuses to come out of the water. Gore raises his pistol and shoots Denby in the face. For this cold-blooded murder, Gore receives chastisement from his superiors but no actual punishment. There were other murderers of slaves in Talbot County—Mr. Thomas Lanham, Mrs. Giles Hicks, and Mr. Beal Bondley all were known to have killed slaves, their own or others—yet Douglass “never knew a solitary instance where a slaveholder was either hung or imprisoned” for these crimes (48).

Part 1, Chapters 5-8 Analysis

Slavery encouraged miscegenation. A slave woman’s consent, however, made no legal or practical difference. She might give consent, and her consent certainly determined the encounter’s moral dynamic, but the slave system offered her no protection from rape. Captain Anthony, for instance, has every legal right to whip Esther and demand absolute sexual control of her. William Wilks, rumored son of Colonel Edward Lloyd, illustrates slavery’s success in filling plantations with slave children, as does Frederick himself. Though we cannot know if their mothers gave consent, the mere fact that withholding consent would not have checked the master’s will proves that slavery, at its core, constituted a system of social control and sexual privilege masquerading as an economic system.

Onlookers often misinterpreted slaves’ behavior, resulting in false assertions of contentedness. Singing while working in the fields, for instance, flowed from feelings of mournfulness rather than joy. Likewise, when asked if they were happy and well treated, slaves nearly always answered in the affirmative, not because it was true but because they feared that word of their discontent might reach the master, who might then sell them to the Deep South, as Colonel Lloyd did.

Courage in the face of tyrants represents one of Douglass’s major themes and a quality he most admires. The slave woman Nellie’s spirited-yet-futile resistance to the overseer serves as an example. Her willingness to fight back dissuades the overseer from attempting to flog her again, for the slave “was whipped oftener who was whipped easiest” (33). On the other hand, slaves know that resistance does not always end well, as evidenced by the murders of Bill Denby and others.