Frederick Douglass Slave owners and their sympathizers described blacks in terms of negative stereotypes to justify treating them as property. These stereotypes provided the foundation for the idyllic mythology of the plantation. Slave owners liked to think of themselves as the paternalistic masters of a class of inferior, childlike people who simply could not survive without the kindly guidance of their white superiors. According to the masters' mythology, slaves sang out grateful praise for their …showed first 75 words of 891 total…

…showed last 75 words of 891 total…a slave. This required him to educate himself at the risk of brutal punishment and then to take the even greater risk of an escape attempt. After one failed try that could easily have cost him his life, he succeeded the second time. Douglass' story is one of self-reliance, a popular theme in nineteenth-century American literature. Thus, he made the experiences of the least privileged resonate with the values of the wealthiest and best-educated Americans.