I was struck by the sympathy that Douglass displays toward the slave owners. Douglass speaks extensively about the good nature of his mistress in Baltimore, Sophia Auld, who teaches him how to read. However, Auld quickly becomes inconsiderate in her treatment of Douglass, enraged at the mere site of him reading. Sophia Aulds complete change in character serves to emphasize that the institution of slavery is destructive to not only the slaver but to those who are given the power over another’s life. Douglass views Sophia Aulds shift in character with sympathy. He speaks of the harm that slavery has caused her by noting that “slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities” (1187). Douglass illustrates that slavery can transform good citizens into one who is completely inconsiderate, acting to uphold the established rules of slavery without consideration of what is humane. Douglass sympathizes with slave holders as they are likewise corrupted by slavery and rid of their once pure soul. Furthermore, Douglass’s account of the complete change in Sophia serves as a warning to the reader illustrating that slavery is a sickness that can affect anyone handed the power. Similarly, Douglass notes that the valuation process, particularly brutal for the enslaved, who were ranked alongside animals and inspected unmindfully, also displays the loss in humanity of the slave holders. He argues that at the valuation, “he saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder” (1191). The slave holders in treating the enslaved with a complete loss of respect have simultaneously rid them of their own humanity.