Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: In this essay, you will follow up on these conversations by doing a rhetorical analysis of the work. In the words of Dr.
Presidential Election Maps for and No relationship has ever impacted the future of race relations in the United States more than that of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. As a self-taught fugitive slave, Douglass devoted his life's work to the abolition of slavery in America.
Speaking at numerous events in both the United States and England and publishing his antislavery newspapers, Douglass was passionate about his cause and would stop at nothing until he lived to see the day that the slavery was abolished. Abraham Lincoln's election as President sparked a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the Civil War, emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment.
Douglass would spend the four years of the war challenging the policies of Lincoln in hopes of pushing him towards a definitive immediate emancipation policy.
Although Douglass and Lincoln did not personally meet until after the Emancipation Proclamation, their relationship up to that point was defined by their correspondence through public addresses, letters, and newspapers. During the war years, Douglass and Lincoln had a tenuous relationship that fluctuated according to Lincoln's changing policies.
From the antebellum period through the announcement of Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass' sentiments towards Lincoln went from cautious support into complete outrage inand finally respectful admiration in However, evidence suggests that their relationship grew to become more profound because the realities of the war and the end of American slavery led these two men to hold a deep respect for the other.
From the moment Douglass freed himself from slavery, he began to push his policy of emancipation. He was always passionate about abolition in all parts of the United States: He tried to incorporate religious aspects into his speeches in order to show people that slavery was a moral sin.
In a letter to British radical abolitionist George Thompson, Douglass quoted a passage from the Bible that refers to the relationship between master and slave: After this split, Douglass used a combination of moral suasion and political action in his agenda; he was determined to work within the established political system to legally abolish slavery.
He stood by the belief "that the complete abolition of slavery needed to rely on political forces within the Union, and the activities of abolishing slavery therefore should be within the Constitution. This meant that there needed to be a political party that included an antislavery plank in its platform in the White House.
At this time, slaveholders were ardently holding onto their right to own slaves; compromise was slowly becoming an exhausted option, which suggests that any party that recognized the antislavery cause as a part of their platform had little chance of reaching the presidency.
After giving his support to the Free-Soilers and the Liberty Party, Douglass realized that these third parties had little chance of winning the presidency because their platform solely rested on antislavery.
Naturally, Douglass realized that he had to throw his support to another political party that had a better chance of reaching the White House. In a letter to William Seward inDouglass expressed his desire for a party that would "disentangle the Republic from Slavery. The Republican Party "was an alliance of antislavery forces…it was not exclusively an Abolitionist Party.
Even though he was at first cautious, he decided that the Republicans offered a better chance for victory. The Republican platform stood firmly beside non-extensionism; that is, there would be no interference with slavery where it already existed, and would also not allow it to spread any further.
The goal here was to maintain the status quo in order to avoid any open conflict. As a means to execute this non-extension policy, the Fugitive Slave Law required all runaway slaves to be returned to their slaveholder.
Technically, Frederick Douglass's book is an autobiography. After all, it's the story of his life from the time of his birth to the time he wrote the book, in But it also has a lot of importa. Throughout Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the importance of education becomes apparent as Frederick Douglass’ opinion wavers. Towards the beginning of the narrative, Douglass is eager to learn, and when his master forbids his learning, it only fuels his desire to further his education. Choose three of your favorite characters from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and create a Character Map for each one. It's important to add as many details as you can to all the parts of the map.
At this moment, Americans' political concerns were split right down the middle when it came to the slavery issue as indicated by the maps of the presidential elections of and Appendix.
If the Republicans were either strongly proslavery or antislavery, they would not have reached the presidency. By sticking to the non-extension policy and by broadening their platform, Republicans hoped to appeal to the majority of Americans.
Although Douglass did put his political support to the Republicans in the election, he still had lingering fears that they would do more harm to the situation of the slaves than good. Douglass was fearful that no president would realize that the only solution to preserve the Union on peaceful terms was to end slavery.
While the rest of the nation saw the Republicans policy of non-extension as antislavery, Douglass and the radical abolitionists saw it as proslavery policy.
In an article published in Douglass' newspaper Douglass' Monthly entitled "The Late Election," Douglass criticizes the position of Lincoln and the Republican Party in regards to slavery: Lincoln… while admitting the right to hold men as slaves in the States already existing, regards such property as peculiar, exceptional, local, generally an evil, and not to be extended beyond the limits of the States where it is established by what is called positive law.
Whoever live through the next four years will see Mr.
Lincoln and his Administration attacked more bitterly for their pro-slavery truckling, than for doing any anti-slavery work. Douglass was optimistic that he would be able to push Lincoln towards immediate emancipation: In general, the Republican party "suffered from a fatally ambiguous attitude toward the Negro.
Lincoln believed that ending slavery, or at least preventing the spread of it, would end sectional conflicts and prevent open warfare: He insisted that "there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In the series of the senatorial debates with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln "denounced slavery as a moral evil, and tried as much as possible to dodge the race question.
But his criticisms of Lincoln's slowness are more harsh during his Presidency. When Abraham Lincoln took office in the spring ofhe knew that his nation was in need of repair. The issue of slavery, which was increasingly becoming a major national debate, characterized the political climate of the antebellum period.
The heated arguments over the future of American slavery became so great that compromise was no longer a viable solution.The Narrative of Frederick Douglass Characters from LitCharts | The creators of SparkNotes. Sign In Hugh prevents his wife from teaching Douglass to (read full character analysis) Edward Covey.
and Douglass only sees her a handful of times in his life. Douglass laments that he never felt very attached to her. Austin Gore. One of. A major character within The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is Covey, a well-known slave-breaker. Frederick Douglass has just become Covey's most recent challenge.
As a slave-breaker, it is Coveys duty to use whatever means available to "break" Douglass and make him into a h. Douglass tells us that none of the slaves ever knew where he would pop up next. The most important turning point in Douglass's life comes when Covey tries to whip him, Douglass refuses to let him, and they fight it out, more or less to a draw.
After researching the life and work of Frederick Douglass, write an obituary that highlights events in his life that you consider most noteworthy.
Include quotes from and about Douglass, as well as some personal details that you believe provide insight into his character. Douglass issued two versions of his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, once in and again in , marking a final split with his white abolitionist past, and including an introduction by attorney George L.
Ruffin, the first African American judge in Massachusetts. Frederick Douglass Character Timeline in The Narrative of Frederick Douglass The timeline below shows where the character Frederick Douglass appears in The Narrative of Frederick Douglass.
The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.