The Passing of Grandison

The thing that most stuck out to me in this story is how deluded and hypocritical Dick and his father are in reference to the slaves. The father sees slavery as a beautiful relationship of trust and dependence, but seems ignorant of the violence and horror of slavery, like in the case of the abused runaway slave in the beginning of the novel. Dick seems to be the ultimate hypocrite - he seems to agree with Charity that such treatment of people is wrong, but doesn't really show this attitude towards his slaves. He only attempts to free one of the slaves to impress Charity and doesn't have any real goodwill towards them. This is most evident in his treatment of Grandison. Throughout the whole trip up north he tries to get rid of Grandison thinking that he's doing such a good deed by giving him his freedom. Dick never takes into account that Grandison has a family in Kentucky that without whom his freedom wouldn't really mean much. If Dick really wanted to do something good for Grandison he'd try to free his family as well. As for Grandison, he's the perfect actor throughout the whole story. While reading it I actually got to a point where I thought he might be sincere in his despise for abolitionists. The fact that he played his "masters" so well and that his masters were such selfish hypocrites makes the ending, when Grandison and his whole family escape to Canada, all the more enjoyable. Not only do they get their freedom, they shatter the colonel's delusions of justified slavery.