It is particularly important also to pay renewed attention to the most thoughtful apostles of the integrationist faith among the major figures of the AfricanAmerican protest tradition. 2 - Evidence. In fact, weve already writtenour argumentative essays on whether Phoebe was a good friend to Sal. Of course the writing prompt is a bit more complex. In your argument for a new cell phone, your mom stands on the other side. Ivo Silveira 8877, km. In these three stories, as well as in a sizable number of other articles, lectures, and letters, Douglass strongly advocated against slavery. Frederick Douglass pure story telling in the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass directly goes against any argument for slavery from Fitzhugh, by revealing the harshness of the institution of slavery and the individuals behind it. An education can open doors that were once closed. There are four types of argumentative claims: claims of fact, claims of value, claims of policy, and claims of cause and effect. The climactic reversal in his youth came when he resolved to resist, and successfully resisted, a cruel slavemasters attempt to whip him. He is set free, in an educational sense. Douglasss arguments on this subject extended back to his early abolitionist years, when he saw very clearly that slaves natural rights to liberty were fundamentally identical with their natural rights to propertywith their natural properties in their own persons, in their own labor, and in the fruits of that laborand that the fundamental evil of slavery was to deprive them, at once, of both. parentheses that agrees with the subject. These paragraphs contain the author's sub-claims/reasoning, counterclaims, and evidence. He can no longer stand his new sense of education and knowledge. In other words, rather than attempting to restore what slavery took from its victims in actual or potential acquirements of wealth and status, governments should secure opportunities and lend support for the freedpeoples own efforts in self-improvement and self-elevation. What would you ask them to do? A counterclaim is the argument (or one of the arguments) opposing your thesis statement. Philip S. Foner (New York: International Publishers, 195075), p. 236 (hereinafter Life and Writings). That's your mom's counterclaim. IV, pp. A reason tells why. He writes: "Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Use the present tense of the verb. For Douglass especially, the stakes of that contest were matters of concrete urgency as well as of larger national destiny. In this respect, what is notable in Douglasss advocacy of education reforms is that whereas he justified them primarily as the payment of a debt due specifically to those formerly enslaved and their relationsspecifically to black Americanshe proposed the payment of that debt by a policy framed in nonracial terms, designed to benefit Americans irrespective of race. He taught them through all their hardships to love their country and their future in it. [5] As Abraham Lincoln and many others have observed, the claim that the Founders regarded blacks or nonwhites as beings lacking equal natural rights is altogether false. When you're planning an argument, you need to know what the counterclaim might be so that you can make sure that you disprove it with your reasons and evidence. It is appealing to think that Kings dream has been realized, at least in its essentials, by the reforms of the Civil Rights Erareforms that King himself characterized as the third, the greatest, and the culminating American Revolution. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! II, p. 360. Reiterating at the end of his life a powerful theme of his earliest writings, Douglass insisted that educationmeans emancipation. The first of his positive reversals occurred as he was sent to serve as a house slave in Baltimore, where, aided by his kindly slavemistress Sophia Auld, he learned the rudiments of literacy. Latest answer posted August 21, 2018 at 9:25:03 PM. ', Then it's time for the reasons you've prepared well in advance, because you know exactly what she'll ask. Through the use of first person encounters, Frederick Douglass in his narrative A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass argues that the key to freedom is claimed through education. IV, p. 68. She has an M.A. When Douglass wrote this book, slavery was still legal in a large portion of the United States. But the final, unimpeachable confirmation of Lincolns anti-slavery commitment came for Douglass in August 1864, when the President, fearing that a demoralized electorate would soon force a premature end to the war, summoned Douglass to the White House to discuss a covert scheme for liberating as many as possible in the meantime. OR. Kimberly has taught Reading/Language Arts to intermediate and middle school students and holds a Master's Degree. The hook should be on-topic and supportive of the author's argument. Counterclaim - Argumentative Essay - Kennett Middle School Library Do nothing with us! Douglass also describes the way it corroded his soul to not know his birth date, to be told he couldn't learn to read after the wife of his Baltimore owner started to teach him, and to realize that slavery was a condition he would never grow out of. To many, the U.S. war with Mexico in 1846 signified an imperialist effort to expand the number and power of slaveholding states at the national level, and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, Douglass would call it[12]effectively nationalized slavery, conscripting non-slaveholding states and citizens in the recapture of persons fleeing for freedom. Although Frederick Douglass believes that the only way to freedom for him and his fellow slaves, is through learning how to build on. He allowed that Lincolns election has demonstrated the possibility of electingan anti-slavery reputation to the Presidency of the United States.[24] But an anti-slavery reputation was a far cry from a genuine abolitionist, in Douglasss estimation, and Douglass at first expected little of Lincoln, who did not share his radically abolitionist reading of the Constitution. For example, this argument misses the key point that. The thesis provides the main argument for the essay as well as an outline for the rest of the essay. Woe, woe! The most telling, the most killing, refutation of slavery, he wrote to Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1853, is the presentation of an industrious, enterprising, thrifty, and intelligent free black population. Ever confident in the power of virtue to dispel prejudice, Douglass affirmed in 1883 that the moral government of the universe is on our side. Sophia Auld, described as "a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings," nevertheless became "even more violent in her opposition than her husband himself" after her husband convinced her that slaves should not be taught to read. Evidence is the facts or research to support your claim. After providing the thesis in the introduction, the author then spends the entire essay working to prove that claim through sub-claims (the central claim broken down into smaller chunks), reasoning, and evidence. An effective argumentative essay utilizes the following four components of an argument: The claim is the author's central argument that they are trying to persuade the audience to believe. It made of Americans one glorious and homogeneous people (as Douglass said of the Emancipation Proclamation)[30] and elevated America to its rightful place among nations as exemplar of the humanitarian spirit of the age. The principles of natural human rights set forth in the Declaration of Independence, Douglass was convinced, represent a permanent, universal truth as well as the most practically powerful moral and political theory ever conceived. Douglass saw slavery as a, It is at this time that Frederick Douglass learns one of the greatest freedoms of all. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it will help you be a good interviewer. Let us consider first the difficulties. Slavery, in their view, was simply unconstitutional; the Constitution delegated to the federal government both the right and the duty to abolish slavery immediately, everywhere in the Union.[18]. The three other claims are up for debate and need to be supported by a lot more reasoning and evidence in order to persuade an audience to believe the argument. Power, Protest, and Change Test (blonde davis, Intro To Business Chapter Three (Part Two), The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric, Lawrence Scanlon, Renee H. Shea, Robin Dissin Aufses, Literature and Composition: Reading, Writing,Thinking, Carol Jago, Lawrence Scanlon, Renee H. Shea, Robin Dissin Aufses, Edge Reading, Writing and Language: Level C, David W. Moore, Deborah Short, Michael W. Smith. God and nature speak to our manhood and manhood alone.[58]. 348349 (emphasis in original). His first hand accounts of the cruel nature of slavery and the thought. how does douglass refute this counterclaim? - fater24.com And it is no less difficult to see how the propagation of the opinion that the American Founders ostensibly universal principles and ostensibly free institutions were meant to secure the oppression of people of color could fail to spread and to deepen that demoralizing sentiment. A fair-minded observer could scarcely deny that for many Americans, race still does matter. In that speech, often considered the greatest of all abolitionist speeches, he excoriated Americas injustices no less vigorously than he ever had, but he took great care to distinguish Americas practice from its first principles and the actions of its subsequent generations from those of its Founders. [7] At the heart of all that he learned and taught were these simple propositions: A formidable thinker as well as an activist and a polemicist, Frederick Douglass produced the most powerful argument for the affirmation of those principles in the history of AfricanAmerican political thought. The counterclaim is just one of the four elements of an argument, which include: Claim - to assert facts that give rise to a legally enforceable right or judicial action. to this land, when it strips five millions of its people of all motives for cultivating an upright character.[36]. Log in here. Why is Douglass surprised by New Bedford in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass? In Ch. He gives reasons for this claim and backs them up with evidence. What is remarkable, then, is not that Douglass felt alienated from his country for most of the 1840s, but rather that, by the force of his character and intellect, he overcame this alienation as rapidly and thoroughly as he did. [28] Douglass, Address on the Twentieth Anniversary of Emancipation, April 16, 1883, in Douglass Papers, Vol. What have you learned about the struggle for freedom from reading this speech? In like manner, the election of Barack Obama as President might be viewed as the culminating, climactic event of the Civil Rights Era, signifying the advent of a post-racial America and vindicating once and for all the mainstream, integrationist tradition in AfricanAmerican political thought lately exemplified by King. Those who are skeptical of the claim of a post-racial America have a point. In a short manuscript written sometime in or near 1869, he formulated in rough outline a land-reform proposal, according to which the federal government would correct for southern landowners collusion by becoming itself a purchaser and seller of lands. Reasons for a claim can also be written as a "because" statement with the claim: the United States should ban capital punishment because capital punishment costs taxpayers more than life in prison. It means light and liberty. The words you choose make a difference in your writing. The implication was that the agitation that abolitionists had begun could never be finally pacified until slavery was finally abolished. He attempts to demonstrate this in the Narrative by describing some of the horrific experiences he witnessed.