“I know not how to thank you for the deep and lively interest you have been pleased to take in the cause of . . . the emancipation of a people, who, for two long centuries, have endured, with the utmost patience, a bondage, one hour of which . . . is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.
“It is such indications on the part of the press—which, happily, are multiplying throughout all the land—that kindle up within me an ardent hope that the curse of slavery will not much longer be permitted to make its iron foot-prints in the lacerated [deeply cut] hearts of my . . . brethren. . . . I am called, by way of reproach, a runaway slave. As if it were a crime—an unpardonable crime—for a man to take his inalienable rights!
“But why [you,] a New-York editor, born and reared in the State of Maine, far removed from the contaminated . . . atmosphere of slavery, should pursue such a course [supporting abolition], is not so apparent. I will not, however, stop here to ascertain the cause, but deal with fact. . . .
“The object . . . is simply to give such an exposition of the degrading influence of slavery upon the master and his [supporters] as well as upon the slave—to excite such an intelligent interest on the subject of American slavery—as may react upon that country, and tend to shame her out of her adhesion to a system which all must confess to disagree with justice. . . .
“I am earnestly and anxiously laboring to wipe off this foul blot from the . . . American people, that they may accomplish in behalf of human freedom that which their exalted position among the nations of the earth amply fits them to do.”
Frederick Douglass to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, 1846
Question
Rhetoric in the excerpt would most likely have been interpreted as promoting which of the following?
Responses
The creation of societies to send formerly enslaved people to Africa
The creation of societies to send formerly enslaved people to Africa
The immediate end to the practice of slavery through legal reform
The immediate end to the practice of slavery through legal reform
The expansion of slavery in new territories through popular sovereignty
The expansion of slavery in new territories through popular sovereignty
The encouragement of enslaved people to take up arms and revolt