One of the most influential people in American history tried to use his book to make readers change their views on the classic American ideal: that all men are created equal. In the book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, the author and narrator of the book, Frederick Douglass tries to change his readers view about the essential theme that all men are created equal by showing to readers how, in his life, things were not equal for all men at all. Douglass was an American writer and fierce abolitionist, who spent all of his childhood and early adulthood navigating through the horrible affairs of slavery, and eventually learned in secret how to read and write. After his escape, Douglass wrote his first book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave in 1845, and used stories in this book to attempt to alter his audience’s thoughts about a fundamental American idea.
In the first chapter of
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After telling this tale, Douglass gives his condemnation of how it was handled, saying “His horrid crime was not even submitted to judicial investigation. It was committed in the presence of slaves, and they of course could neither institute a suit, nor testify against him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of the bloodiest and most foul murders goes unwhipped of justice, and uncensured by the community in which he lives'' In this quote Douglass brings up the point that because the only witnesses of the murder were slaves, they couldn’t testify in court, nor could they even express disapproval. This is a direct example of Douglass using examples from his life to show that both legally and in day-to-day practices, some people, specifically enslaved people, were not “created