Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis

This excerpt illustrates the difference between Christianity and the Christianity of the slaveholders and draws a daunting hiatus between them that cannot be crossed. Douglas said knowing true, pure faith necessitated the rejection of the accepted, wide-spread slaveholder religion as the “enemy”. The establishment that slaveholders called Christianity was simply not Christianity as it validated the actions of whipping, killing, and subjugation of fellow human beings. It was “hypocritical” because it allowed people to commit atrocities in the name of faulty high moral standards and was “the climax of all misnomers”. It was a ruse to call their system Christianity since it was manipulated into whatever it was needed to for, making it “corrupt”

This excerpt appeared in the Appendix of his autobiography and labeled the trends that he detailed in previous sections with examples from his own masters. As a freed slave, Douglas remarked on his experience in order to further the anti-slavery movement and did so by stripping down the religious defenses that were appealed to as justification for the slaveholding religion. In highlighting the hypocrisy, he was able to influence a larger audience with logic and first-hand accounts of pain and sorrow, bruising many peoples’ conceptions of the United States. His work reached the United Kingdom and was translated into other languages. The distinctions that were outlined were not made to exaggerate aspects of the institution but to share a conclusion based on explicit evidence, and it made audiences uncomfortable. Douglas expected to reach those that condemned slavery but wished to provide the motivation to make moves to end

Margaret Fox asked the noise if it was a human or a spirit, requesting two knocks for the latter. It immediately revealed that it was a spirit with two raps, indicating understanding and intelligence. Fox stated that “many called in that night” meaning that numerous neighbors wanted to experience this strange phenomenon for themselves and repeated her line of questioning to confirm the story that they had been told. It became a trending topic. The following day the spirit was not communicated with until the evening, and a “committee” was assembled to investigate this occurrence because it was provoking wide-spread curiosity and confusion as it was supposedly a spirit. Witnesses craved to understand what was happening and sought answers. The excerpt establishes the beginning of interaction with the dead and depicts a contact that was initiated by the spirit. The fact that Margaret Fox did not believe in hauntings lent itself to spiritualism because it promoted the idea that the spirit was not plaguing the household with malicious intent but attempting to bridge the physical gap and simply talk. During this time period, many people were interested in talking to those that they had lost to the Civil War, making spiritualism a popular movement. It became a religion of proof. The document was vital to spiritualism because it suggested to the followers that the religious movement was