Fredrick Douglass And His Arguments For Emancipation And Education

Fredrick Douglass and His Arguments for Emancipation and Education

Fredrick Douglass was an African American abolitionist leader. He was born into slavery, the product of the rape of his mother by her master. He was both the icon for slavery’s brutal nature and its direct opposition. The most well known of his three separate narratives of his life as a slave and journey to freedom is called the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. It is an autobiography and was written in an incredibly intelligent and moving way. Most importantly his narrative showed both how the pro-slavery argument was flawed and how through education any free slave could become a contributing member of society improving life in America for everyone.

One of the most widely used and adopted arguments in the 1800’s during Douglass’s life was the paternalist argument. The unique paternalists argument was that the slaves owned by a slave owner were equivalent to a family. On the heels of a religious revival paternalism developed into what most slaveholders would refer to as a Christian steward ship and idea stirred up by Protestants in the south. The actual definition of paternalism varied greatly in the south often being purposefully vague. A common argument of paternalism contained three main contingencies that all argued that slavery provided a better life for African Americans than freedom. The first argument made was that slaves were treated fairly and as if they were part of a family where the slave owner was the father. The second was that if slaves were freed they would be unable to care for themselves and the economy would collapse due to their laziness and lack of common sense. The third was that in the eyes of southerners th...

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...at had been to me a most perplexing difficulty--to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. (6.3)

The apprehension that education is the single factor that could lead to the freedom of all slaves Douglass spends his life proving it. When he first escapes his slavery he heads to New York, when he was in the south he assumed that the north was poor because the slaves were free. However when he reaches New York he realizes that with the slaves emancipated the North is in reality prospering. Douglass himself became a symbol for the fact that slaves were not subhuman as many believed in the South. He showed that slaves were not lazy or unintelligent but quite the contrary. Douglass would today be proud that he was proved right by history. Where African Americans have taken the presidency, discover life saving medicines and excelled in every aspect of society.