Douglass Method of Persuasion My Bondage and My Freedom essays

Douglass' Method of Persuasion My Bondage and My Freedom essays My Bondage and My Freedom is widely considered to be one of the most historically influential documents produced in the midst of the abolitionist movement. Written by a former slave, the memoir served as a moving argument against the inhuman institution of slavery in American history. Interestingly, however, although Douglass was an incredibly educated man, he did not resort to arguments of reason or philosophy in the work in an attempt to illustrate the immorality of slavery. Instead, perhaps because of his education and natural intelligence, coupled with a keen awareness of public (white) sensibility, he refrained from attacking those responsible for using slaves, as well as those responsible for supporting the institution, itself. Instead, recognizing the limitations of his time and dominant social culture, he used the device of emotion to convey the brutality to the sympathetic side of his reader's psyches. The genre of the "slave memoir" was hardly a novel form during the years of the abolitionist movement. Indeed, several accounts exist of the experiences of emancipated or escaped slaves. However, during that time, although such accounts did gain popular readership, and even greater readership within anti-slave circles, the accounts were often regarded with some amount of suspicion. Indeed, many charged that the stories coming from the pens (or oral accounts) of former slaves were either negatively skewed or fabricated, or were outright fictional propaganda, forged by white abolitionists with political (as well as economic) motives. However, in spite of this fact, many educated former slaves were thrown into a quandary when they considered their options for communicating their heartfelt opinions about the brutality of slaveryfor even in the North, dominant white culture was not ready for "attacks" literal or literary against the white...