Being a slave in the United States was not uncommon in the 19th century. There were many brutalities in being a slave, including physical and spiritual abuse. Slaves were considered property and not human beings. They were mistreated and kept illiterate. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was a bibliography written by Frederick Douglass himself that recounted his experiences as a slave in the United States. It expresses the brutality of the slave owners and how he struggled to escape to become a free human being. Themes of her story include: the ignorance of slaves, the treatment of slaves as property, religion used as justification, and the abuse of female slaves. In The Tale of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick explains that slave owners want to keep their slaves as ignorant and illiterate as possible because the more skilled a slave becomes the more “unmanageable” he will become. He will begin to develop ideas on his own and question the authority of his teachers. For example, Douglass explains that most slaves do not even know the date of their birth: "Most slaves know as little of their age as horses know of theirs, and it is the desire of most masters to my knowledge keep their slaves so ignorant” (Douglass 47). Not knowing their age or date of birth is a way for slave owners to show authority over their slaves and try to keep them as ignorant as possible if their age did not matter, as if they were animals. They were also deprived of the knowledge of who their father was. This deprived the slaves of their individual identity. In the tale, Douglass explains that he will go to live with his new owner of slaves... in the middle of the paper... a passage of Scripture: "He who knows the will of his master and does not do it, will be beaten with many stripes" (99). This shows that he uses the Bible to justify his pain and suffering towards the slave girl who does not obey her master. Douglass states, "I affirm without hesitation that the religion of the South is a mere cover for the most hideous crimes, --- a justifier of the most fearful barbarity, --- a sanctifier of the most heinous frauds --- and a dark refuge under the which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most hellish deeds of slave owners find the strongest protection” (117) For carrying out these horrible crimes, slave owners feel no guilt for their sinful actions because they have the sense that the scriptures of the Bible support their abuse. In the narrative, Douglass explains how female slaves were victimized because they were weaker and easier to abuse.