FREDERICK DOUGLASS’S POWERS OF APPEAL
After his escape from slavery, Frederick Douglass chose to promote the abolition of slavery by speaking about the actions and effects that result from that institution. In an excerpt from a July 5, 1852 speech at Rochester, New York, Douglass asks the question: What to the slave is the Fourth of July? This question is a bold one, and it demands attention. The effectiveness of his oration is derived from the personal appeals in which he engages the listener.
At once in this speech, Douglass appeals to his listeners’ religious tendencies. He asks his audience, “am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar…” (441). Religious appeal is so important because the majority of his audience is Christian, and he implies that Christianity, in its ostensible purity, allows the mishandling of human life to the degree of slavery. By relating Christianity directly to slavery, his......
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