The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: Mr. Plummer, my attention had not been called, especially, to the
gross features of slavery. I had, of course, heard of whippings
and of savage _rencontres_ between overseers and slaves, but I
had always been out of the way at the times and places of their
occurrence. My plays and sports, most of the time, took me from
the corn and tobacco fields, where the great body of the hands
were at work, and where scenes of cruelty were enacted and
witnessed. But, after the whipping of Aunt Esther, I saw many
cases of the same shocking nature, not only in my master's house,
but on Col. Lloyd's plantation. One of the first which I saw,
and which greatly agitated me, was the whipping of a woman
 My Bondage and My Freedom |