Before the Civil War, America was plagued with a complicated social quandary that incorporated individual, societal, political, economic, and religious principles. This taboo of a topic found itself well-versed throughout the country in many publications. Its authorship included Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beacher Stowe who dually challenged the legitimacy of slavery in their literature. Both have earned their place as an essential and effective component to the abolition movement though differing in mannerism, aim, strategy, and audience.

Frederick Douglass offers a calm, concise, yet compelling account of his experience as a slave. Perhaps this is because he targets a primarily educated audience from the North. His logic might reason that abolition propaganda will not be supported in the South and only intellects, the voting population, have the capacity to produce change. Also, it is evident that Douglass has a bias against slavery, but that does effect his prose the least bit. When he detects it he offers a convincing explanation. But first and foremost, in order to obtain his audience's sympathies and support, he must prove himself

Harriet Beacher Stowe lacks Douglass' scholastic command, utilizing emotional appeal instead. However, her use of pathos is effective in retaining attention and collecting compassion in her verbose work. This lack of logos allows her to pursue and invite a broad based audience which can address the issue of slavery more effectively. A particular group of readers she successfully reaches are women, slaves, and religious people. When revealing the darker side to servitude though, she does not necessarily petition to those of authority who can bring about change due to her lack of firsthand knowledge and the additional elements of fiction that skew the integrity of the slave experience. Nevertheless her fictional elements are necessary because she cannot display direct bias against slavery like Douglass can with his personal accounts-instead, she uses it as a tool to protest human subjugation. Her construction of enslavement proves beneficial because it has a hint of romanticism which downplays the brutality of southern life. This strategy makes it possible to attract the Southern population as well as their white counterparts in the North by allowing white superiority and philanthropy to indirectly prevail throughout the novel. In a psychological context, Stowe may have intentionally created characters whom readers want to identify with and emulate like wise, angelic Eva or respectable, benevolent Mr. Bird. Her use of illustrious imagery, emotional engagement, and religious revelation create a personal acquaintance and attachment to the characters.

Douglass especially connects the female role with family values. It is an appeal to Northerners because they are essentially family-oriented and Bible-following people because of their Puritan religion. He discusses the lack of unity in community and family because slave owners would break those ties by selling its members, including infants from their mothers. Stowe touches upon this issue as well, using her fictional characters to demonstrate the sever between close relationships with the selling of Tom, separation of Susan and Emmaline, disunion between Cassy and Eliza, and other slaves in auctions. The adulteration of Southern family value may have been enough to get Northern attention.

Race relations, physical cruelty, family values, violations of women, and alcoholism eventually lead to the importance of religion for both authors. Douglass emphasizes all of these categories to prove the hypocrisy of the "God-loving" slave owners. He demonstrates that slave owners misuse the tenets of the Bible to strengthen their power and assume the role of God. Knowing that the North was religiously Protestant, he talks about the raping and sexual subjection of black women. He even mentions that the true identity of his father was "whispered", inferring that his mother was raped by his master. Religious slave holders are also identified as the worse kind of Christians because they would use God's word to justify bodily harm on slaves. Accounts of Reverend Weeden, Reverend Hopkins, and Mr. Freeland show that they believed it was their right to turn slaves into hard workers. Telling the truth was also a hushed habit. Slaves would often have to lie to avoid severe consequences from their masters. This shows that Southerners created an environment that cultivated liars, a contradictory way of the Bible. Douglass displays his disgust for Christian hypocrisy and makes it his audience's concern by convincing them their Christian brothers are bastardizing the religion. Though Douglass does not base his argument on religion, he openly insinuates that the North is responsible for the South's behavior. His piercing final thought is threatening yet extraordinarily witty: "Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"

On the contrary, Stowe caters to the white ego. Her characters with "white blood" presume the

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Approximate Word count = 2713
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)