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Frederick Douglass Was An American Abolitionist

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Hundreds of years ago, the country we now call the United States of America, was built upon a single principle; That single principle was freedom. Frederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, a social reformer who sought to end slavery. Before slavery was abolished in 1865, slaves were not treated as humans, they were simply seen as property that could be worked to death. Families were ripped apart, people were working all day long, and humans were being whipped to work faster, this was the life of a slave. With these tragic events that happened to slaves, Frederick had a goal. Frederick wanted to abolish slavery once and for all, and for America to acknowledge slavery was a sin. Frederick had long desired the liberation of all …show more content…

This causes the audience to think and conclude that he is logically correct. By swaying the audience with reasoning, he makes the audience believe that they came to the conclusion by themselves. This further reinforces his argument that “blacks” are men. After making the audience come to the conclusion that “blacks” are equal men, Frederick further expands on why it 's wrong to strip them of their rights. He does this to prevent any counterarguments, from the audience. Soon after demonstrating that “blacks” were men, Frederick declares, “What, am I to argue that it is wrong to... such arguments would imply,”. Frederick draws this eidetic imagery in the minds of his audience, the torture that slaves have gone through, and all the work they have done only to be granted nothing. By doing so, Frederick appeals to the audience’s emotions. With this use of pathos the audience can only feel sympathy towards the slaves, in addition, his use of rhetorical questions make the audience continuously doubt slavery. He manages to plants these seeds of doubts into the audience’s mind. By doing so, the audience begins to question slavery and start to see the faults within the system. With the combination of pathos and logos, Frederick 's claims were very hard to deny. He had appealed to the audience through reasoning and emotions. This had

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