1. Mr. Austin Gore was very rightly so named Gore. He was described as possessing all of the right attributes of a first rate overseer. Mr. Gore would punish all of the slaves for a crime weather rightfully prosecuted or not, just to prove the power of his position and the severity of his wrath, no matter how innocent the slave may be. He would often use trickery just to punish the slaves and instill fear among the plantation and cruel enough to use the most severe of punishments. He is described as having no humor and talked with his whip. Once Mr. Gore was whipping a slave named Demby. To escape his punishment Demby jumped into a creek and sank up to his shoulders. Mr. Gore called him to get out of the creek but Demby did not obey. Mr Gore gave him to the count of three to get out. After the third call Mr Gore killed Demby with his musket. I would say that Mr. Gore could not have a better name to descriptive his personality.
2. I do not recall the slaves having any protective via a law or otherwise. The one law I do remember was that a slave was not to be taught how to read or write. This law was justified by the fact that once a slave knew how to read they come to despair there existence and wish to be nothing but free.
A. Douglass learned the building blocks of reading and writing from his Mistress, Ms. Sophia Auld. Ms. Auld stopped teaching Douglass when Mr. Auld told her that it was dangerous and unlawful. Douglass wanted to further his lessons and did so in a very clever and efficient way. Douglass used bread that was readily and plentifully available to him from his masters house to bribe the poor neighbor hood kids to give him short lessons after his jobs where done. Douglass would also tell them of his fears of being a slave for life and the little children would feel bad for him and more readily help him. Douglass taught himself to write in an equally cleaver way. He learned how to write a few words at the ship yard like...