Mary Chesnut and Frederick Douglass

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the lives of both Mary Chesnut and Frederick Douglass, one a wealthy aristocrat, and one a black slave, in order to examine the relationship between white Southern women and slaves. It looks at how, through a literature review, it is clear that, while slavery was a thriving "business" in the South, there was a growing feeling, not yet a movement, per se, among Southern women that slavery was truly an evil system, which would one day be illegal. It also shows, although born to different worlds, how both Mary Chesnut and Frederick Douglass had a relationship born of shared values; another link to a time when America still tolerated an immoral, evil system.

From the Paper:

"He was born Frederick Baily, a slave, in 1818 in Maryland. The man who owned the plantation on which his mother worked was among the wealthiest men in Maryland, and was rumored to have been Frederick's father (a point made by Frederick later in the paper). His mother, Harriet Baily, worked the cornfields; the slaves on the second plantation where Frederick was enslaved were fed cornmeal mush which was placed in a trough, and eaten with spoons made out of oyster shells, "like so many pigs" Frederick would later write (Douglas, 1845). The last time Douglass saw his mother, he was seven years old. Because he was a charming young man, he caught a break: he was chosen to be the companion of his master's youngest son, Daniel Lloyd."

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