Assignment #8
"The wife who inherits no property holds about the same legal position that does the slave on the southern plantation. She can own nothing, sell nothing. She has no right even to the wages she earns; her person, her time, her services are the property of another. She cannot testify, in many cases, against her husband. She can get no redress for wrongs in her own name in any court of justice. She can neither sue nor be sued. She is not held morally responsible for any crime committed in the presence of her husband, so completely is her very existence supposed by the law to be merged in that of another.”
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton

 What is meant by this quote is that women were virtually slaves. Since they did not have any rights such as to own land, sell anything or even work they were reduced to servants. They had to rely solely on men to provide everything for them. Which meant that they had to do what ever they were told to do. Women of this era had to obey men because they themselves were not people and their entire existence was merged with that of another.

 “It was a long, lean, gaunt, shivelled looking creature, stretched out on two chairs, and his legs resting on the prostrate bust of Washington; projecting from behind was a cat o’ nine tails knotted at the ends; around his person he wore a belt in which were stuck those truly American implements, a bowie knife, dirk, and revolving pistol; behind him was a whipping post, with a naked woman tied to it, and a strong- armed American citizen in the act of scourging her livid flesh with a cow skin. At his feet was another group;—a sale going on, of human cattle, and around the auctioneer’s table were gathered therespectability,…” Fredrick Douglas

 What Douglass does with this quote is he tries to show the brutality of slavery. He does this by showing the slavers as creatures who tormented and sold slaves as if they were cattle. What he also does is with this short quote is show the resolve of the slaves. He shows how they have grown accustom to these unbearable conditions and how they no longer resist. They gather around the table not forced but by choice because they know there is no hope in resistance. Their spirit has been destroyed.