Fredrick Douglass was an abolitionist who experienced slavery before escaping. He wrote the autobiography as a bystander who watched how everything was being done to black people. In his autobiography, he acts as a counter to the myths and misconceptions about black people and slaves. He recalls having rebelled against slavery while he was still a slave. Significant factors in his arguments were general and early recognition among some whites and blacks of the unnaturalness, injustices, and brutality of slavery. This was his first argument. He refuted the claims that blacks were subhuman and degenerate. These are the same traits portrayed by Thomas Jefferson. Fredrick argues that black people were fully reasoning and ridiculed apologists of slavery as being hypocrites.
John C. Calhoun was one of the foremost defenders of the institution of slavery. He held many high offices in the US government. He termed slavery as a positive good while apologists termed it as a necessary evil. Douglass responded to Calhoun’s statement about terming Mexicans being a part of the US as a deathblow. He refuted this by saying that a nation is ruined if it upholds pride and ambition. The government has given itself to the madness of ambition (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017).
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Douglass also counters James Hammond with great efforts that black people are inferior and compared to children, and that they will never grow up. He also disagrees with the notion that blacks were made to be slaves for the white people. He goes ahead and says that according to Christian theology, man was created by the divine and are all the children of God. He goes on and says that the bible upholds unity in human beings. He also noted that black civilization was developing but this he had loosely regarded and mostly turned to his arguments on natural law.
References
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2017, January 6). Frederick Douglass (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frederick-douglass/#Aca
