Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself was authored by a self-educated former slave and advocate for abolition, and published at a time when the topic of abolition was often terminally controversial. In the excerpted chapter “Learning to Read and Write”, Douglass engages parties interested in civil rights dialogue with the painful history of his slavery and attainment of literacy. Douglass roots appeals to emotion in praise-and-blame rhetoric. Each passage is nuanced by arguments for virtue or wickedness. The reader is persuaded to accept the virtuousness of doing unto others as you would have others do unto you. Logic follows that to deny such an attitude would be vicelike. This persuasion is achieved …show more content…
One great influence upon Douglass was one such civic discourse which presented a praise-and-blame argument against slavery: “Dialogue Between a Master and Slave”, excerpted from The Columbian orator. Says the slave to the master (and by saying convinces the master to emancipate him), “Humane! Does it deserve that appellation to keep your fellow-men in forced subjection … only to your pleasure and emolument? Can gratitude take place between creatures in such a state, and the tyrant who holds them in it? Look at these limbs; are they not those of a man? Think that I have the spirit of a man too” (Bingham 241). Similarly, Douglass argues the case for abolition of slavery in the vernacular of morality. As a youth, he queries the young white boys who are yet innocent, “’You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, but I am a slave for life! Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?’ These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would occur by which I might be free” (Douglass 102). Here, his indignant tone appeals to the sympathy of the reader, eliciting the mood that they might reclaim their