"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man"

 Douglass persuaded his 19th-century readers to become active abolitionists by writing a narrative that was descriptive and vivid in terms of the brutality of slavery by the treatment of the owners and overseers. For example, Mr. Austin Gore was a demonic overseer. Douglass 62 posits that  his “savage barbarity was equaled only by the consummate coolness with which he committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves under his charge.” An instance is when, after a few strips of the whip to Demby, an enslaved person, he runs into a creek. When he did not obey the command to come out, Gore shot him in cold blood and was exonerated. During that period in time, Mr. Gore says that “It is better than a dozen slaves suffer under the lash than that the overseer should be convicted, in the presence of the slaves, of having been at fault” (Douglass 61). 

Douglass uses words sufficient to evoke the reader's emotions as part of the persuasive approach. He uses diction to describe the struggles and experiences of life. A few examples are when he talks about the passing of his mother without formal notification. Then there were rumors that Douglass' master was his father, but he could not determine if it was true or false; as he puts it, in all its glaring odiousness, the slaveholders had rights and privileges by law. He went as far as to add, "I do not remember ever having met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, springtime, or fall-time" (Douglass 57).

What impresses me with Douglass is how he enhances the connection between words in his narrative. How a woman was beaten with a whip is descriptive. He wrote how Mr. Plummer, an overseer, whipped a woman: “[t]he louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin” (Douglass 58). The construction of the sentences helps us to visualize brutal moments in the treatment of slaves that are hard to read and to comprehend the inhumanity.

Douglass adds a more profound concept through symbols, one of which is wild songs. While traversing across densely wooded areas, the slaves sang songs, as Douglass puts it, that was demoralizing. “They would compose and sing as they went along [...] they would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment” (Douglass 60). The irony of the songs perturbed Douglass when they sang because that gave admiration for what their masters owned, for example, the Great House Farm if they owned a plantation as well. “The songs of slaves represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as aching heart is relieved by its tears” (Douglass 60).

Figurative language is another approach Douglass used for persuasion. An example he uses is a paradox, “[c]rying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery” (Douglass 60). If I was an abolitionist, I could empathize with slaves crying in one aspect and then singing for joy to mentally and emotionally escape the harsh treatment.