My Bondage and My Freedom

Content warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and enslavement.

“The reader will pardon so much about the place of my birth, on the score that it is always a fact of some importance to know where a man is born […] In regard to the time of my birth, I cannot be as definite as I have been respecting the place. Nor, indeed, can I impart much knowledge concerning my parents. Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves. A person of some consequence here in the north, sometimes designated father, is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice.” 

In a conciliatory tone, Douglass explains the deficiencies in his personal history, establishing the reasons why his autobiography—and that of any enslaved person—would differ from that of a free person. He emphasizes time, place, and paternity but only offers definitiveness regarding the setting of his birth. Every enslaved person knew that their lives began on a plantation, which is where most of them remained.

“The practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring the latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting, except at long intervals, is a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the slave. But it is in harmony with the grand aim of slavery, which, always and everywhere, is to reduce man to a level with the brute. It is a successful method of obliterating from the mind and heart of the slave, all just ideas of the sacredness of the family, as an institution.”

Douglass illustrates how enslaved people often did not have the ability to foster bonds with blood relations. This denial of bonding rituals associated enslaved people with livestock, which enslavers similarly bred, sold, and separated, demonstrating The Dehumanizing Effects of Enslavement. The separation of an enslaved person from their mother was a key aspect of the system of enslavement. Denying mothers their maternal role—that is, the desire to look after the well-being of their children—made enslavers the sole determinants of the enslaved person’s well-being. The enslaved laborer feared the enslaver but often knew no other caretaker.

“I was a slave—born a slave—and though the fact was incomprehensible to me, it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will of somebody I had never seen; and, from some cause or other, I had been made to fear this somebody above all else on earth.”

Douglass defines his origins within enslavement. Though he had not yet met Colonel Lloyd, the plantation owner’s authority loomed all around Douglass, who conveys the feeling of the enslaver’s omnipresence.