Douglass asks, "Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it" (Douglass, 1852). However, this statement was simply not true; the humanity of blacks was a seriously debated point at that period of time. He repeats this phrase in two more phrases, "For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race" and "the manhood of the slave is conceded" (Douglass, 1852). Furthermore, he provides a significant amount of evidence that supports his proposition, but those statements only highlight his circular argument, because he always begins not with the proposition that a slave is human, but with the proposition that nobody doubts that slaves are human.
The third fallacy that Douglass employs is the appeal to belief. "Appeal to Belief is a fallacy that has this general pattern: Most people believe that a claim, X, is true. Therefore X is true. This line of 'reasoning' is fallacious because the fact that many people believe a claim does not, in general, serve as evidence that the claim is true" (Nizkor Project, Description of appeal to belief, 2011). Douglass states, "There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him" (Douglass, 1852). However, this does not mean that slavery is necessarily wrong. For example, the same statement could be made of prisoners, but the majority of the population would argue that prison is appropriate for criminals.
To a modern audience, Frederick Douglass' famous speech the Hypocrisy of American Slavery, which he delivered after being asked to speak on the Fourth of July, seems like a reasonable argument...
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