Compare And Contrast Stoowe And Frederick Douglass

Slavery has been present in almost every country, culture, and people since ancient times. The conditions may not be exactly the same, but people were still “owned” by others, not having a say in their own lives. Slavery has been controversial from the very beginning, some believing that every human should be equal and others believing some humans are inferior and deserve to be enslaved. In the 1800’s there were many writers and speakers trying to convince others to rid the United States of slavery. Two of these abolitionist writers were Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass. The purpose in Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” was aiding in the cause of abolitionism. Though their purpose was the same, the way that they achieved it was different. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass use religion, their background, and ___ as elements to persuade others to join them in the cause of eliminating slavery from the world. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery. Everything in his narrative is what he experienced throughout his life. Right from the beginning of his life he experienced the cruel nature of the life of a slave. He says “My mother and I were seperated when I was but an infant--before I knew her as my mother” (946).

She once said “it’s a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best have always done” and she lived that way. Robert Felgar, an English Professor, said concerning Stowe, “Harriet Beecher Stowe’s background seems to have been almost tailor-made to shape her into the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, particularly the deaths of her mother and one of her own children, which made her sensitive to the plight of black mothers, and also her reading of fugitive slave narratives, which deeply informed her most famous novel” (Felgar