My Bondage and My Freedom is widely considered to be one of the most
             historically influential documents produced in the midst of the
             abolitionist movement. Written by a former slave, the memoir served as a
             moving argument against the inhuman institution of slavery in American
             history. Interestingly, however, although Douglass was an incredibly
             educated man, he did not resort to arguments of reason or philosophy in the
             work in an attempt to illustrate the immorality of slavery. Instead,
             perhaps because of his education and natural intelligence, coupled with a
             keen awareness of public (white) sensibility, he refrained from attacking
             those responsible for using slaves, as well as those responsible for
             supporting the institution, itself. Instead, recognizing the limitations
             of his time and dominant social culture, he used the device of emotion to
             convey the brutality to the sympathetic side of his reader's psyches.
             The genre of the "slave memoir" was hardly a novel form during the
             years of the abolitionist movement. Indeed, several accounts exist of the
             experiences of emancipated or escaped slaves. However, during that time,
             although such accounts did gain popular readership, and even greater
             readership within anti-slave circles, the accounts were often regarded with
             some amount of suspicion. Indeed, many charged that the stories coming
             from the pens (or oral accounts) of former slaves were either negatively
             skewed or fabricated, or were outright fictional propaganda, forged by
             white abolitionists with political (as well as economic) motives.
             However, in spite of this fact, many educated former slaves were
             thrown into a quandary when they considered their options for communicating
             their heartfelt opinions about the brutality of slaveryâ€"for even in the
             North, dominant white culture was not ready for "attacks" literal or
             literary against the white...