What Is Frederick Douglass An Advocate Of Persuasion Against Slavery

Douglass, an Advocate of Persuasion against Slavery

Frederick Douglass’s narrative portrays a time when slavery and oppression where the order of

the day for blacks. Douglass narrates the struggle that slavery brings upon blacks in his time to

how he escapes from slavery. His personal experience as a slave and how not only he but all

slaves are treated unjustly by the white slave owners. He ventures to his educate readers about the

dehumanization, oppression and unfair treatment which accompanies slavery and that it is a

system which should be abolished for there should be equality amongst men despite the color of

their skin. Slavery means a lot more than ownership, it aspires prejudice. The most influential

slave narratives

But Douglass’s narrative defines slavery to be something different

“I was kept almost naked-no shoes, no stalking, no jacket,…but a coarse linen shirt, reaching

only to my knees”( Douglass 28).

Slaves were basically treated as non-factors. They were treated like nonliving property that

could be neglected and disposed of at any time. Douglass supports this idea he writes about the

killing of Demby, “Mr. Gore then, Without consultation or deliberation with anyone… raised his

musket to his face… and in an instant poor Demby was no more” (Douglass 25). He also describes

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the killing of his wife’s cousin who according to the narrative died due to severe beating,”…seized

an oak stick of wood from the fireplace, and with it broke the girl’s nose and breastbone, and thus

ended her life“(Douglass 27). He later goes on to state, “…I say this,- that killing a slave, or any

colored person, in Talbot county, Maryland is not treated as a crime”(26). He also points out the

unfair factors and bias treatments they face as slaves. In the narrative he describes two of

Majority of slaves could not read or write and were

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persuaded against freedom by slave masters “The white children could tell their ages. I could not

tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege” (Douglass 13).

The narrative also reveals the ingratitude the slave owners had towards their slaves. At times

slaves were giving little food and inadequate clothing or kept hungry and expected to work their

backs off in return, “ …we were allowed less than half of a bushel of corn meal per week, and

very little else…. We were therefore reduced to the wretched necessity of living at the expense of

our neighbors. This we did by begging and stealing”(Douglass 42). Douglass also writes about

how he was robbed of his wages by his master, “When I carried to him my weekly wages, he

would after counting the money, looked at me in the face with a robber like fierceness, and ask,

“is this all?””(Douglass 71). He also writes about what happened to his grandmother, and how she

was sentenced to a lonely fate which was sealed by the death of her master, ”And, to cap the climax

of their base ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother who was now very old…