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William Wilberforce's Informative Speech

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Over hundreds of years, people have continually repeated the statement “The pen is mightier than the sword”. However, only a few people have proven the truth in this statement, including William Wilberforce. Wilberforce’s mastery of rhetoric and passionate Abolition Speech caused the abolition of slavery in Europe without the amount of bloodshed and death caused during the Civil War. In order to successfully persuade people, Wilberforce needed to figure out how to correctly appeal to hundreds of people in order to gain their agreement. Thankfully, he did so successfully by painting an incredibly vivid picture of the horrid conditions that slaves lived in. William Wilberforce peacefully ended slavery by using physical and emotional descriptions in his speech, as well as showing the cruelty that slavers showed to their slaves. William Wilberforce helped his audience to realize the physical conditions that the slaves lived in. Early …show more content…

Around the middle of his speech, Wilberforce calls the slaves “wretched” (Wilberforce), showing his audience the true state of these enslaved people. Additionally, Wilberforce speaks of how the slaves “are so wrung with misery at leaving their country, that it is the constant practice to set sail at night, lest they should be sensible of their departure” (Wilberforce). After this, he tells his audience about how the slaves sing “songs of lamentations” (Wilberforce) and how whenever they sing, they “are always in tears” (Wilberforce). However, Wilberforce continues beyond a simple description for this singing, and tells his audience about how this mournful singing caused the ship’s captain to threaten one of the singers because “the mournfulness of her song was too painful for his feelings” (Wilberforce). This sad tale helped Wilberforce to further convince his audience how the slaves felt while in these

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The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows the imbalance of power between slaves and their masters. In his book, Douglass proves that slavery is a destructive force not only to the slaves, but also for the slaveholders. “Poison of the irresponsible power” that masters have upon their slaves that are dehumanizing and shameless, have changed the masters themselves and their morality(Douglass 39). This amount of power and control in contact with one man breaks the kindest heart and the purest thoughts turning the person evil and corrupt. Douglass uses flashbacks that illustrate the emotions that declare the negative effects of slavery.

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he uses bold words and biting criticism to call attention to the gross injustices and hypocrisy of slavery in the United States. In the opening remarks of his speech, Douglas provides heart-wrenching descriptions to pull his audience into the lives of their fellow

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Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a first hand experience into the imbalance of power between a slave and a slaveholder and the negative effects it has on them both. Douglass proves that slavery destroys not only the slave, but the slaveholder as well by saying that this “poison of irresponsible power” has a dehumanizing effect on the slaveholder’s morals and beliefs (Douglass 40). This intense amount of power breaks the  kindest heart and changes the slaveholder into a heartless demon (Douglass 40). Yet these are not the only ways that Douglass proves what ill effect slavery has on the slaveholder. Douglass also uses deep characterization, emotional appeal, and religion to present the negative effects of slavery.

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From this, derives a bond with the reader that pushes their understanding of the evil nature of slavery that society deemed appropriate therefore enhancing their understanding of history. While only glossed over in most classroom settings of the twenty-first century, students often neglect the sad but true reality that the backbone of slavery, was the dehumanization of an entire race of people. To create a group of individuals known for their extreme oppression derived from slavery, required plantation owner’s of the South to constantly embedded certain values into the lives of their slaves. To talk back means to be whipped.

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