With this, Douglass can securely make the claim that slaves are, in fact, human. He does so with conviction, and aims to persuade his predominately white audience that they are capable of harboring reason and complex emotions, like the readers themselves.

"The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege," (Douglass 47). Slavery psychologically impacted individuals -- it completely stripped them of their innate identity, which is a difficult thing to understand in a context of a country so dead-set on individualism within its very foundations.

"the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute," (Douglass 105). Douglass claims the end of slavery and freedom is the climax. When he realizes he is a man, and refuses to obey Covey, that was his freedom; "It was a glorious resurrection, from...
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