In Chapters V and VI, Douglass advances the idea that slavery is not only damaging to the slave, but also to the slaveholder. He does so in two ways. The first one is through the character of Sophia Auld. She is a kind mistress who treats him well and wants to teach him how to read and write. However, after scolding from her husband, she turns into a cruel person.
The second case is that of Mrs. Hamilton. The woman owns two slave girls, Mary and Henrietta. She is extremely cruel to them as well. Douglass cites these examples in order to show that owning slaves causes slaveholders to become cruel people, and it eliminates everything that is human, kind and compassionate from their personality (thus, dehumanizing them). In this way, slavery damages the owner as much as the slave.
