Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland in 1818 as a slave to a sea captain, Captain Anthony. After decades of slavery, Frederick Douglass escaped to the North and became one of the prominent members and driving forces of the abolitionist movement. In an effort to provide a revealing account of the mistreatment of slaves, Douglass wrote An Account of the Life of Frederick Douglass. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass detailed his life from his meager early years to his escape to the North. In writing his autobiography, Douglass used various techniques, including the use of three rhetorical strategies: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, to create a powerful and influential argument against the institution of slavery in America. Pathos is a form of persuasion that manipulates feelings. of the reader by deliberately creating content to elicit an emotional response. Frequently, Frederick used pathos to describe to his readers that slavery is morally wrong. From the first chapter, Douglass appeals to his reader's morality by recounting slavery's common abusive practice of separating children from their mothers at an early age. Of this practice, Douglass writes: "I know not what purpose this separation serves, except to hinder the development of the child's affection towards its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. (Douglass 16) Drawing a troubling parallel with the treatment of animals, Douglass highlighted the treatment of enslaved children who were separated from their parents to avoid attachments, but he does not focus on this example. Only a few pages later, Douglass detailed the brutal beating of a slave that occurred when he...... middle of paper...... possessed the slightest shadow of a right to him; but only because he had the power to force me to give it up. The right of the dark-faced pirate on the high seas is the same. (Douglass 89)Logos is a key element of Douglass's writings. He uses it to add credibility to an argument based primarily on emotion. It is almost impossible to create a compelling argument on a topic as controversial as slavery at the time without the combination of a writer's credibility and the use of emotional and logical argument. Had Douglass been lacking in any of these areas, his writings and arguments would not have had the power to propel him into the abolitionist movement. Douglass skillfully combined these three key elements of persuasive writing in his narrative to argue his case against slavery. Works Cited1. http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/douglass.htm