eir master. Douglass wanted to show his readers how slave owners misused the teachings of the bible to strengthen their own power and how they basically saw themselves as God to their slaves. The reader would know the later was blasphemy, one of the seven deadly sins. As a result, the readers would detest their southern brethren because religious slave holders "(were) the worstmeanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly of all others." (46) Combining all the ways that Douglass sought to affect his northern audience's opinion of southern slaveholders, he hoped to give his readers a glimpse into the true character of southern slaveholders and the institution of slavery itself. Douglass realized that racism was also prevalent in the north and so his intent was not trying to achieve equal rights but basic human rights. Douglass hoped to gain compassion for those still held in slavery by relating experiences such as being separated from his mother when he was an infant and not knowing whom his father was, how slaves were treated as if they had less value than an animal, and the fact that slaves were brutally beaten and sometimes killed without it being considered a crime. Douglass also hoped to tarnish his northern white readers' view of southern slave holders and their practices by illustrating how they had adulterous and interracial affairs with their salves whom they considered to be less than human, how they abhorrently and unjustly mistreated and punished their slaves, and how they used religion as a crutch for legitimizing their actions. "Slavery was a most painful situation; and, to understand it, one must experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstancesthen, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the toil worn and whipped-scarred slave." (64) These are Douglass's own words that are meant as a plea for his readers to imagine themselves in his situation to bette...
