Overcoming Slavery Frederick Douglass was one of the most successful abolitionists who changed America’s perception of slavery through his ability to share his challenges and experiences. Frederick Douglass had many accomplishments throughout his life. His life as a slave had a great influence on his writings. His great persuasiveness skills left the largest impression during the Civil War time period literature. Douglass was considered a brilliant speaker and was asked by the American Anti-Slavery Society to engage in a tour of lectures, doing so, allowed him to become recognized as one of America's first great black speakers. He won world fame when his autobiography was published in 1845. Douglass was born a slave in 1817, on a plantation …show more content…
Through slavery, he was able to acquire the necessary emotion and experiences for him to become a prosperous abolitionist writer and speaker. Douglass grew up as a slave; he had all the knowledge and experience that entailed being a slave, such as whippings, scarce meals, and other harsh treatment. His desire for freedom, and his strong animosity of slavery drove him to write Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, and other similar writings as well. In his Narrative, he wrote the complete story of his unhappy life as a slave and his never-ending effort to obtain not only his own freedom but to put an end to slavery as well. The main motivational influence behind his character was to make it through another day so that someday he might be able to see freedom. All of Douglass’s book starts with him coping with slavery. He had a strong motivational reason to write these books relating to such a strong topic. As an abolitionist with very strong motives, he wanted to show the world how bad slavery really …show more content…
This type of writing, which used common resolutions, came to be known as "slave narratives." The American-based genre became very well known due to the harsh conditions imposed by the slave society of the New World; the denial of freedom to African Americans. Once they became free, many slaves, rather than turn their backs on their past, fought hard to abolish enslavement by writing about their own life experiences. In his introduction to The Classic Slave Narratives, scholar Henry Louis Gates provides a very convincing history of the formation of this particular African-American literary tradition. Gates claims "the black slave's narrative came to be a communal utterance, a collective tale rather than merely an individual's autobiography." Slave narratives were written mostly as a testament to the horrors of slavery and the slave's ability to surpass or overcome such hardships. Works of this genre, as noted in "Framing the Slave Narrative / Framing Discussion," by scholar Russ Castronovo, "seek to educate a largely white audience about the horrors of slavery by revealing what the fugitive has learned during his or her 'career' as a