eat through speeches which relied on, or later formed part of his books. Many famous writer’s heard Douglass speak. Among them, Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe encouraged the antislavery and civil rights movement through writing’s of their own. His influence also extended to such audience members as the Transcendentalist writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. His “full, rich, sonorous deep tones” (McFeely, 371) poured out against falsehoods. Indeed, Douglass’s voice and skill as an orator encouraged many members of his audiences to new heights against slavery. “To no man, did the people more widely, no more earnestly say, ‘Tell me thy thought!’ ” (Introduction, 132). His literary style resembles greatly the traditional spoken history of black slaves. “His crisp 114-page telling of his story in Narrative of the Life …grasped the imagination of American readers…” (McFeely, 180), says critic William L. Andrews. The realistic passages of the narrative contain the same biting wit found in his most famous speeches. Susan B. Anthony declared Douglass “majestic in his wrath, as with keen wit, satire, and indignation he portrayed the bitterness of slavery” (“Douglass, 1838”). He occasionally uses the rhetoric to cause the reader to reflect upon key points he wishes to make. As he grew older, Douglass’s life and personality grew more complex, and so did his autobiographies. The “far more ambiguous” (McFeely, 180) My Bondage and My Freedom underscores his changing style into one of a more subdued nature. By all means, time did not subdue his vehement attitude towards the oppression of blacks. At one speech, the white- haired Douglass dropped the prepared oratory, and confronted hecklers with grand rhetoric. In these rough times, Douglass ceaselessly campaigned for the rights of the oppressed, dying before givin...
