The death of Captain Anthony presented a perilous and frightening time for Douglass. When owners of property died, got married, or changed their familial ties, their property often changed hands. Slaves were particularly afraid of being sold to Georgia traders or to other plantations where conditions were reportedly much worse.
Appraisers valued the slaves much the same way they assessed animals. Douglass' description of the evaluation process may well make us feel uncomfortable. Douglass adds: "At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder."
Master Andrew's brutalizing of Douglass' brother is another particularly vivid episode. The fact that it may be one half-brother brutalizing another is an underlying theme. Although Douglass does not mention it, his brother and Andrew could easily have been related since in the beginning of the Narrative, he himself speculates that Captain Anthony could have been his father.
Douglass again criticizes the use of female slaves to populate a plantation. He refers to the episode of his abandoned grandmother with great pain; after having served Captain Anthony for many decades, "peopling his plantation with slaves" ("the source of all his wealth"), she is abandoned. The raping of slaves for profit is an implicit sub-text here.
