Corruption of slavery

Douglas takes an unusual look at slavery and its effect on people. One of the things that Douglas points out in his autobiography is that slavery has a negative effect on everyone, not just the people enslaved. He discusses directly and indirectly though examples how good people become corrupt because of slavery.
Douglas’ mistress was once a caring, good person who teaches him to read and is very nice to him. His mistress was the first time Douglas experiences kindness and treatment as a human. He talks about how his mistress treated him as an actual human, who deserved the chance to be educated, and one of the ways she did this was teaching him how to read and write. Douglas talks about how slavery corrupts good people like her. He mentions how her husband orders her to stop teaching Douglas how to read. This leads the mistress to be confused. She is not sure why she is not allowed to teach him, but nonetheless she stops. Because she stops, she begins to become cold and distant from him. She also starts to beat him when she finds him reading.
Douglas uses this example to show the effect that slavery has on people. His mistress was a good person to Douglas, but when slavery was brought into the mix, things changed greatly. His master wanted to keep Douglas uneducated so that he was easier to control. This concept of control and slavery is what corrupts the mistress. In other words, slavery is not only oppressive to the slaves, but it is oppressive in a way to the slave owners. It is oppressive to them because it holds them back from becoming good and moral people. It is impossible to become a moral person, someone who gives respect to self and others if you are holding a person’s dignity and freedom. Controlling another’s freedom is contradictory to leading a moral life.
In this way, slavery ends up being hard on Douglas’ mistress. He realizes that she is a good person, but is kept from being a good person because of the slavery. His mistress was a good, tender-hearted woman to Douglas when she was teaching him how to read, but as soon as she had to eliminate his education from him things changed. The slavery corrupted her into treating Douglas like as if he was not a person, by depriving him of his right to freedom both physically and intellectually.