Fredrick Douglass Argumentative Essay

Fredrick Douglass was taught to read by his mistress. She taught him the alphabet and how to read. This was very uncommon for a slave to read. She wanted Fredrick to at least be able to read the bible. Mr. Hugh warned his wife about teaching a slave to read. He saw it as the first step in a slave realizing the magnitude and how horrible slavery really was. He claims that learning will spoil the best slave. A slave that is able to read and write will try to stand up to slavery, while a slave who cannot read and write does not have the ability to learn and see how horrible slavery really was. In the next document Douglass described how slavery was terrible and his only role in slavery was a slave and nothing else. He expressed the idea that there was no …show more content…
What kind of Christian supports rape and slavery? He would pray for good fortune when he was breeding slaves. These were very backwards views that people should have never have been supporting. In the next document William Harper offers an apology to slaves. He pointed out that America would have not been as successful without slaves, and it was the slaves who truly built America. Harper is also being passive aggressive in his apology. He claims that whipping slaves is reforming them into a better person. Whipping someone will break them, crushing there soul, making them not human and more. He claims that educating slaves would be a hardship on them. He claims that slavery is good for female slaves that are pregnant, they would be rejected in other societies, but in slavery it is encouraged. It is not legal for slaves to marry, so why is it so beneficial. Every slave who is pregnant is technical single. Lastly Harper claims that without slavery the North could not be successful, they would have no cotton. Slavery is causing to economy to fall apart, and it creates horrible working conditions in the North. The South is able to produce cotton without having to pay a single worker, while the North has to pay every