After establishing that it is conceded that African-Americans are humans, Douglass moves on to the proposition that he should not be called upon to prove that humans are entitled to liberty. He points out that Americans have already declared that man is entitled to liberty and freedom. He points out that all men resist slavery and feel it is wrong for another person to claim ownership of them. He also points out the brutal side of slavery, and argues that no person could argue that those things were somehow right including: beatings, lashings, shackling, hunting them with dogs, split out families, knocking out their teeth, selling them at auction, and starvation. He believes that it is ridiculous to expect him to argue that a system that includes all of these horrors is wrong.
Douglass' also tackles the common argument during the time that slavery was a divinely ordained condition or institution. He believes it to be blasphemy to suggest that slavery is divine. He does not flesh out this argument, simply stating that the inhuman cannot be divine. Instead, he states that slavery is a crime against both man and God.
In making his speech, Douglass tackles the three most commonly used excuses justifying slavery: the alleged inhumanity of slaves, the idea that slaves were not entitled to liberty, and the idea that slavery was divinely ordained. However, instead of making his own arguments in favor of these factors,...
"To degrade and stamp out the liberties of a race" signified the "studied purpose" of linking social and civil equality. Douglass concluded that if the Civil Rights Law attempted to promote social equality, so did "the laws and customs of every civilized country in the world," including the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, and the Apostles' Creed. He warned
Stressing the shackles that slavery could latch to a man's mind, Douglass was given insight into the inherent transgression behind the bondage. And his ability to adopt such a perspective, while easy to underestimate from the distance of over a century, is quite remarkable given the overwhelming social constructions designed to deter that sort of thinking amongst his demographic. One of the more effective messages that he conveyed both
Frederick Douglass Introduction One of the key figures in the United States in the nineteenth century was Fredrick Douglass (c. 1817–1895). Fredrick Douglass was born to a slave woman in 1817. This automatically made him a slave. It is thought that his father was the white owner of his mother (Lee, 13-30). Douglass is most famous for escaping from the shackles of slavery in the year 1838 and becoming one of the
Narrative of Frederick Douglass Slavery is perhaps one of the most common forms of human justice in the history of the world. Although the phenomenon has existed for centuries, across many cultures, a particularly brutal form of the phenomenon was perpetrated in the United States before its abolition. It is, however, a testament to the human spirit that some, like Frederick Douglass, had the inner will and drive to escape overwhelming
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
King and Douglas Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King were truly great men and great public speakers, and King was also a hero and martyr to the cause of nonviolent resistance who quite possibly was assassinated by Southern racists with the complicity of the federal government. As far as ethos is concerned, both had immense moral authority, since Douglass was an escaped slave who became the leading black abolitionist in the
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