The slaves are not happy, the white people can go unpunished when they harm the slaves, Hugh told Douglass that he could never read because it is the destiny of the slaves to be uneducated. The masters gave whiskeys to their slaves to get them drunk and brainwashed into believing that freedom is painful. The erroneous conclusion that many white people make when they hear slaves sing is that they think the songs of the slaves are happy, but in reality the slaves sing when they are very unhappy.