Chapter 3: Plantation life

In this brief chapter Douglass wrote more of life on Colonel Lloyd's plantation. He detailed the temptation faced by the slaves to sneak into the verdant garden for a piece of exotic fruit and further illustrated the unjustness and brutality that characterized a slave's life through the capricious treatment of the slaves who tended the stable – Old Barney and Young Barney. He also explained why most slaves would say positive things about their masters when questioned, for they never knew to whom they were talking. White southerners, known or unknown, could not be trusted, as the poor slave out on the road who did not know Colonel Lloyd's face and accidentally told him directly that he was treated poorly by his master discovered firsthand.