What was the status of a slave child born to a slave woman and a white man according to the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass?

In the South during the time before the Civil War, any child born to a slave was a slave for life just as his or her mother was.  It made no difference who the father of the child was.  Even if the father was white -- in fact, even if the father of the child was the plantation's master himself -- it made no difference.  The child would be a slave for life unless the master set that child free.

It was not at all uncommon for white slave owners to own children who were their own children -- ones that they had had with one of their slaves.