How much autonomy could slaves attain and what did slave owners do to control them ?

Autonomy
is control over one's life. Slaves in the American South, by definition, had very little
autonomy. However, conditions varied by place and by owner. Frederick Douglass, for example,
records how much more relative freedom he had in Baltimore city than on a rural plantation on
Maryland's Eastern Shore. Being sent to run errands in the city gave the young Douglass the
opportunity to stop, talk, and visit with people, and even to have others help him with his
reading. On the plantation, he would not have had that autonomy. He argued that, in general,
slaves were treated better in urban...