The Relationship Between Frederick Douglass and Mrs. Auld

By Iriana Cossio

When you think of a slave’s mistress and captain, you think about one who is owned and forced into service by another, and also not getting paid for the work he or she completed. Now, when Frederick Douglass was seven and he first laid eyes on his mistress, his first thought was that she was “a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings.” He was amazed by her ostensible graciousness.

Douglass knew there was no woman like her around in that period and he knew exactly how to approach her. She was the complete opposite of all other white woman he came in contact with and he could tell for a fact that she had never owned slaves. He knew he need not approach her the way he approached other white women, with extreme caution,r because he could automatically tell she was a gentle soul.

Douglass, in his narrative, notes that “the meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and none left without feeling better for having seen her face of heavenly smiles and her voice of tranquil music.” Soon after living with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she introduced Douglass to the alphabet, and also to spell words of three to four letters. As soon as Mr. Auld found out what his wife was doing, he put it all to end at once.

Mr.Auld let Mrs. Auld know that it was “an unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read and as to himself it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm.”  Mrs. Auld became more educated about white enslavement and she started to see the reality around her, which was the way a slaveholder should behave towards their slave; she cruelly adjusted her approach to those she and her husband enslaved. Nothing seemed to make her more angry than to see Douglass with a newspaper because she knew he was reading to better himself.  

It only took a few minutes for Mr. Auld to turn Mrs. Auld’s tender heart into stone. This did not stop Douglass from bettering himself, because he learned a meaningful fact, which was why slave masters are so determined to keep their slaves from fleeing from them. Slaveholders are only capable of enslaving African Americans if white slave owners discourage and enslaved individuals from learning about how the white dominant world operates.

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Iriana Cossio is a current student at North Harris College.