Josiah Henson was born into slavery in the year 1789 in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm owned by Francis Newman.(pg 1) His family, worked for owner Newman for a couple of years during his youth. Josiah lived in a world filled with labor and fear, including the fears of being beaten for his disobedience and “wrongdoings”, instead of a world filled with fun and boyish childlike activities. Life was hard for him as a slave child as it was for any slave child, and the things he experienced were those that no one could handle, especially a young child. His father, a morose and disobedient man was sold, and sent of to Alabama, and because of this his mother returned to the estate of the doctor, who was very much kinder to his slaves than the…show more content… Than as he aged, a hoe was put into his hands, and he was soon required to do the day's work of a man; and it was not long before he could do it, at least as well as my associates in misery. (pg 6) These were average jobs for a slave boy at his age, while slave girls would do the cleaning, babysitting, and cooking, slave boys were sent out to the fields for what was described as “man's work”. As Josiah grew, he became smarter and larger, and became a very hard working man.…show more content… I imaged they thought of their lives as prisons rather than lives worth living, that they were put under the pressure of obeying someone else, even if it denied their own rights. The experiences of Josiah confirmed this for me, his childhood was one filled with fear, and even though his own owner thought of him as intellectual and did not hit him often, others only saw him as an “animal,” an example of this was on (pg 17) of the reading, where it is said that “the cowardly overseer was availing himself of every opportunity to hit me over the head with his stick, which was not heavy enough to knock me down, though it drew blood freely.” This all happened to Josiah because he had protected his owner in a fight against this man, and while delivering letters to them, he was attacked. It is unfair that these people were forced to live in fear of others, the idea of not knowing what will happen to them if they go outside.The text also confirmed my belief that the slaves felt like it was their complete duty in life to serve their owners, and their confidence had been so beaten down that they believed they would never do anything else. Josiah stated on (pg 19) that “I had no reason to think highly of his moral character, but it was my duty to be faithful to him, in the position in which he placed me; and I can boldly
