Slavery was the largest atrocity committed against a human being in America. “The Fires of Jubilee,” a book written by Stephen B. Oates, helps further this thesis with gruesome details about the heinous and brutal practice of slavery. It describes the long working hours, the loss of dignity and the destruction of the opportunity to improve oneself. Slaves were forced to toil in scorching fields for countless hours into their lives without the opportunity to improve their occupation, their social status, or the way they lived their lives. The brutalization that slaves had to endure is more evident than that suffered by slave owners. Fredrick Douglas stated, "At this time, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effect of slavery on both the slave and the slave owner." It appears that slavery was beneficial to the slave owner. This is far from the truth. Slavery caused slave owners to degrade into brutes after being brutalized by the evil of slavery. The validity of Fredrick Douglas' statement is unquestionably accurate. The most obvious type of suffering that slaves had to endure was the brutal physical load placed on the slaves' shoulders. The large amount of intense and exhausting work brought many slaves “due to overwork and I was sick for a long time.” (Bailey 356). Many slaves were forced to work so hard that their bodies could no longer handle the physical toll. While they were ill, they were finally given much-needed rest, but soon after they recovered they were put back to work. One of the main tasks that slaves were forced to do was picking cotton. “They took until their shoulders and fingers ached to the bone” (Oates 22). Slaves also had to endure brutal and typically unwarranted physical conditions... middle of paper...h pens and ledgers moved along the line, examining both slave and animal alike and assigning each a value." (Oates 30).Although extremely rare, there were also brutal acts of violence committed by slaves against their owners. Filled with anger and a desire for revenge, some, albeit very few, slaves poisoned their masters' food, killing them there was at least one slave uprising. The most brutal and horrific was Nat Turner's Rebellion. During Nat Turner's Rebellion many atrocities occurred against white slave owners. One of these murders included slaves tearing apart “Joseph and Sally both, bringing his ax down again and again" (Oates 70). The brutal effects that slavery had on African American slaves were miserable. Slaves were born human beings, but stripped of their seemingly inalienable right and treated as if they were brutes.