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Life as a Slave
Chapter 17
Covey, the Negro Breaker
Douglass's first months under Edward Covey — an ox-driving accident, a savage beating, and six months of exhausting field labor — leave him, in his own words, ‘broken in body, soul, and spirit,’ a boy transformed into what slavery meant him to be: a brute.
The ox-cart disaster and Douglass's first flogging by CoveyCovey's method of surveillance and psychological controlCaroline, forced into breeding by CoveyDouglass's despairing apostrophe to the ships on the bay