PD 2 AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE
This week we had our first Socratic Seminar. Hopefully you are starting to feel more comfortable with these discussions. If this was your first time, thank you for jumping into this activity!
Click here for the questions from this week's seminar. Use this space to add to the discussion. In seminar, some you may not be able to say everything that you want, especially if you are in outer circle. Others of you may struggle a bit more with making your voice heard in seminar. This space allows you to still show us what you are thinking. In the comments below, you may add to discussion from class. You must write a response of at least 6 sentences addressing one of the following:
After writing your comment, respond to the posts of AT LEAST 2 of your peers. You have until Friday midnight to post. You have until Sunday midnight to comment. Happy discussing!
55 Comments
Jaelin Cochran
9/7/2016 03:55:05 pm
8. Which do you think had a bigger effect on the slaves, physical harm or mental dehumanization? I believe it was a little bit of both. Physical harm breaks you down on the outside. In this time period, it tended to leave scars which was most definitely a constant reminder of their error. However, mental dehumanization breaks you down by attacking your emotions. When someone gets into your head it takes away all of your hope. For example, watching someone be beaten doesn't physically hurt you but it hits you somewhere inside and mentally scars you for eternity. On the other hand, when you are the someone being beaten it physically scars you and you feel pain that will go away eventually. In Mr. Bethel's class this year he mentioned that all of the people put in concentration camps throughout the holocaust are unable to forget such a traumatic event. Events such as these are both irreversible and unforgettable.
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Hannah
9/8/2016 04:05:20 pm
Good points. I feel like mental is much worse because withstanding torture is one thug that's mind over matter, but when poisoning the mind then the body is even more open to breaking under preasure. Yet I can still see how they both affecting one another.
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Czar Parrish
9/8/2016 07:59:46 pm
They were both very dehumanizing. Physical torture can literally and figuratively dehumanize a person. It seems that in most cases it is the emotional affects that do the most damage. Take for instance a man with no legs. This man may have no legs but he also could have the spirit of a man with legs. It seems as if the reality of these slaves were affected more by these emotional and mental barriers. Even physical pain conjures emotional pain, this could be fear, distrust, etc. Whatever it may be, their reality was subject to their emotions, more than physical pain. Physical pain is the cause of the emotion which is the cause of remembrance, as shown in holocaust victims. Emotional harm can be caused through other situations, not just solely through physical pain.
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Czar Parrish
9/8/2016 08:01:50 pm
To add onto this, after I noticed Hannah's point about poisoning a man, it is very possible that physical harm could be much worse with the use of items that could kill a person, or disable them to the point of no conscience or to the point where they are mentally disabled.
broc glover
9/9/2016 07:02:17 pm
I feel that both mental and physical dehumanization effect a person but i think physical would be worse. i think this because physical will leave marks that you have to look at every day that remind you of what happened. which would lead into the mental part of this so both mental and physical dehumanization are connected
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Sage Burdette
9/11/2016 04:33:52 pm
I agree. Something that happens so often and brutally can't affect you in so many ways. It can leave you affected for life and for those who were able to escaped it was a constant reminder of their past. They were made to be nothing but the equal to dirt and made to think that also.
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Hannah
9/8/2016 04:10:49 pm
In the second day of discussion there was a long focus on the reasoning behind the slave owners harming their slaves constantly and seemingly without reason. I feel that the slave owners like many people back then believed that owning slaves were okay, at least so they said, but I can't help but wonder if maybe they would doubt whether or not it was right or wrong, so when a slave made even the smallest mistake then punishing them was a way to display that they were right that African American were less than human and that they needed a strong hand.
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Allyson Shifflett
9/8/2016 08:23:35 pm
I think a big reason for them to beat their slaves was to mess with their minds. Nobody wanted their slaves to have hope of escaping, because that would make them much harder to keep. I think I remember in the book an overseer getting fired for not beating his slaves enough, and this is because they really want to enforce the idea that slaves are property. Dehumanizing the slaves is important to the overseers. Letting a slave think he could get away with something was dangerous, because that would make them all start to push the limits and see how much they could get away with, and eventually the could no longer be contained.
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Puja Chudasama
9/9/2016 03:22:50 pm
I noticed that as well. The minds of slave owners were just set to the idea that African Americans were less than human. They didn't know how to think otherwise. We know that abuse of that nature is wrong to humans or animals. It's quite upsetting that African Americans were treated like this as though it was normal.
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Caleigh Pumphrey
9/9/2016 08:27:43 pm
Personally, I think that the slave owners knew very well what they were doing was evil and wrong. They followed their own desires and used Christianity to "back it up" by taking it totally out of context. If they ever questioned whether it was wrong or not, they would of moved up North.
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Dominique W.
9/8/2016 05:41:34 pm
21. Why does Frederick Douglass refer to slavery as a living thing?
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Jaelin Cochran
9/9/2016 07:52:59 am
I completely agree with you. Slavery has lived and died and comes back up and dies down again. At this point in time, do you think slavery is dead or alive?
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Hannah
9/9/2016 09:16:25 pm
I don't know if it ever dies as much as it just grows quiet in the media, in the spotlight and in our eye sight.
Dominique W.
9/11/2016 04:08:17 pm
I believe that the specific type of slavery we had back then is mainly gone, at least in the US. Modern day slavery is certainly still a thing however, with things such as sex slaves or pedophile rings. Sweatshops and illegal immigrants on farms could possibly be classified along with slavery, but I'm not well read on that so I cant say much. I liked that your question made me think Jaelin!
Puja Chudasama
9/9/2016 03:24:22 pm
That is a very good point. Slavery does have its own way of resurrecting and dying. It travels and adapts to the area it is in. It has a great influence on everyone and everything it makes contact with.
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Kara Herber
9/9/2016 05:18:04 pm
Your perception of this question is really interesting. I never really thought about have slavery really could be a 'living thing' but your description of slavery really does bring it to life. I like that you said that slavery grows and dies and moves from place to place.
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broc glover
9/9/2016 07:15:55 pm
Slavery is everywhere and has been around forever. Which means it will probably never end, it will just take a different form and no one will do anything about it until they realize what is happening.
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Connor Hall
9/9/2016 10:53:32 pm
I agree with you and think you made a great point about how, slavery grows and dies in societies. I think that in all cases, those enslaved are just hoping it "dies out", like with Frederick Douglass's case or many others like him.
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Brady Michael
9/8/2016 05:43:32 pm
12. How do you think the world would be different today if slavery (in America) had never ended? How is slavery still seen today?
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Czar Parrish
9/8/2016 07:48:48 pm
I agree with these points, but let's say that in this current future of America, human rights organizations would not have been formed due to a timely human ignorance of the era, somewhat like in slave times. How would the economy have been affected in the US and what would be the affect on other countries. Perhaps today's technological advancements would render slavery useless, but that does not seem to be involved in this argument.
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Connor Hall
9/9/2016 10:57:31 pm
I believe you make a good point in sayin that perhaps todays technological advancements would render slavery useless. But on the other hand I feel like we as human beings try to continue with things for as long as we can and even when it would be so easy just to change that one thing (like slavery in this case) and everything else would work well, we don't. Because we don't always as humans embrace change.
Czar Parrish
9/8/2016 07:35:21 pm
On day one of socratic seminar, the debate of how religion and slavemasters were related was brought up. The religion used by slavemasters was a means of feeling as if what they were doing was right. Frederick's view of religion was somewhat moderate. He stated that religious slavemasters were far more worse than the slavemasters who were less religious. Although religion can be used in very good ways, it can also be used in the most extreme of ways (as any idea is capable of making a person be). This extremist behavior was shown by slavemasters of all sorts, but far worse in those that felt they were doing it for a righteous purpose.
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Tyler Francesconi
9/11/2016 04:17:42 pm
I agree with you about Frederick's idea of Christianity. He believed in the original idea of Christianity, and how peaceful it was meant to be. He, therefore, hated how it was followed by his masters, and, in his eyes, a white man, how they used it to justify their awful actions.
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Allyson Shifflett
9/8/2016 08:17:25 pm
One of the questions that I found the most interesting was question 3. "Which does Douglass seem to use the most in his rhetoric, ethos, logos, or pathos? Does Douglass achieve his intended purpose with his narrative?" At first when I read this question, I thought, "Well obviously he uses mostly pathos, because the book is really sad and it makes us feel bad for him." However, I continued to think about it and listen to what others thought, and it made me realize that his ethos and his pathos are almost the same. By telling us all of the sad stories about his life while growing up, not only is he affecting our emotions, he is also establishing his ethos. He is kind of proving to us that he experienced all of these awful things while he was enslaved, and they make him authorized to write a book on the subject. So, while the book was very depressing and made many people feel an incredible amount of pity for him, I think that the amount of ethos and pathos in the book is relatively the same. I don't know if I'd be able to figure out which one is there more often, because they overlap so much.
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Kara Herber
9/9/2016 05:23:41 pm
When we discussed this question in class, I remember that everyone agreed pathos was used the most in his writing; however your explanation of his use of ethos is completely correct. By sharing all his stories he really did establish credibility and ethos with the reader. After you made this point, I have changed my opinion. I agree that ethos was also used a lot in his biography.
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Quincey Sanner-Stiehr-Simmons/Watson
9/9/2016 07:16:24 pm
I remember you mentioning that on the second day of our discussions and while I had never really thought too much about his ethos, it made sense when you said that he had a lot of ethos. I think that the reason most people overlooked it was because most of us didn't think to look for his ethos because we viewed him as automatically qualified to right a book about his life and slavery. But I think he has a fair amount of logos too, because he inserts these facts in with the pathos that most readers agree with which strengthens his pathos therefore making the reader less likely to pick up on such a small detail. He uses religion, while it isn't accepted by everyone, most people would agree that the Bible teaches us to love and be at peace with each other. That's a fact, the Bible mentions it a lot. This is relevant when he points out that slave masters were hypocritical, preaching while they whipped. It makes logical sense that they're hypocrites, which when that is put in with a scene of a bloody whipping will achieve both anger at the slave master and sympathy for the slaves. He uses the lack of education of the slaves (a fact) to achieve pity from the educated reader, a reader that knows the value of education. He points out that slaves didn't know dates, their birth dates, or even days of the week. This makes most people see the slave as being treated more like animals than humans, which again makes you feel even angrier at slave masters and and even more sympathy towards the slaves. I could go on and on because the whole story is built up around facts, and they are also used to strengthen both his ethos and pathos
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Emily C
9/9/2016 06:18:41 am
Which do you think had a bigger effect on the slaves, physical harm or mental dehumanization? They had experienced both physical and mental harm. Although I believe that it impacted the slaves more mentally than physically, because of the constant fear of being tortured, watching someone be savagely whipped, or verbally being abuse. Although you can argue that if the slave was disfigured after a violent occasion would it have a lasting effect on that persons life. Yes it would and what is even worse about it is that person is thinking what did I do or what could have I done to prevent this. Its traumatic experience that will leave an impact on that individuals life and desensitize them.
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Jaelin Cochran
9/9/2016 07:59:12 am
I agree with you. It is definitely a little bit of both. It's sad that so many people went through such a struggle. However, I don't know if this experience desensitized them as much as make them stronger. As Kelly Clarkson once said," what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
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Ryan Winkler
9/9/2016 09:02:51 pm
This point is also very true. However, I believe the "constant fear" is part of the mental trauma. The fear was of physical harm, but the fear is a mental pain and torture all by itself. These fears and beatings collectively did, without a doubt, ruin many lives.
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Tyler Francesconi
9/11/2016 04:07:58 pm
I agree with the statement that slaves were more affected by the mental dehumanization, but also by seeing the other slaves being beaten. I think that even witnessing the torture would've left a mental scar.
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Tyler Francesconi
9/9/2016 01:14:05 pm
One question that was in the Socratic Seminar was: "Did slaves dehumanized other slaves"? Slaves were, in a way, in competition with each other. For example, they'd compete who would work harder to survive, or who had the better master. Survival was key to the slaves. Douglass sometimes mentioned slaves as only slaves, without specification on an identity. He doesn't intend to dehumanize, he intends to justify it for his audience.
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Brady Michael
9/9/2016 08:37:28 pm
I agree that slaves did compete with each other. Douglass mentioned how slaves from different plantations argued over which plantation was better and like you said, who had the better master. However, in this way, slaves didn't necessarily dehumanizing each other, but were just in competition. I also agree that he didn't mean to dehumanize others slaves in his description of them. He did it to mostly capture how suffering was one of the few largest components of their lives.
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Puja Chudasama
9/9/2016 03:18:21 pm
Do you think Douglass would have been presented with the same opportunities that led to his freedom had he been born a female? Female slaves were given jobs in the fields but they were also in charge of children inside the masters' home. Men were used for brute strength and weren't able to be in a house with their master as often as females. If Douglass had been a female, the number of learning opportunities might have gone up instead of decreasing. By taking care of children, Douglass would have learned as the children were learning. The best way would be by simply observing or if the children had not yet been corrupted, ask them for help. Douglass could even pull the same move he did in Maryland and challenge the children. The opportunities would no doubt be different, but they would be there.
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Dominique W.
9/11/2016 04:20:29 pm
I agree with you, but I would say that it might not have necessarily been that way. It mentions in my US history book that female slaves often had double duty, in working in the fields and then having to sew or weave garments afterwards. They would also have to worry about being raped by their masters or other superiors. I do agree that his opportunities could have been the same, especially if he kept his personality.
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Sage Burdette
9/11/2016 04:37:50 pm
I agree with the perspective of the women teaching and watching the children but they also were seen as weak sometimes and may have also been abused more therefore Douglass could have given up hope much earlier.
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Kara Herber
9/9/2016 05:15:09 pm
7.How did educating himself affect his view of his self worth?
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Ryan Winkler
9/9/2016 08:59:29 pm
I agree with this view. It didn't seem so much that he thought of himself as "more valuable", but rather viewed his life with more potential, courage, and confidence.
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Calvin Covington
9/9/2016 06:23:40 pm
The question that I found the most interesting was question 11. Douglas was completely correct in his statement that they were hypocritical. I find that religion maybe to some people to solve moral issues. These slave masters that he described were cruel which goes back on everything a Christian stands for. The thing I find interesting is that the religion Christiananity developed from Jesus Christ as he lived his life and as mentioned in the Bible he died for our sins and is our savior. He teaches us to have peace with our neighbors and love all people and respect their values. The way slave masters saw this was it was justified to treat the people they saw as people the right way which lead to the mistreatment of not just slaves but of all people across the world. The points made in class about a couple class mates about what type of rhetorical sense he was making was really good. On the second day we seemed to agree more on the side of pathos. I think he was trying to make us feel the message not just read it. The details of the characters of the story the dehumanization of slaves really made me think that all slave masters were bad. How could anyone in the world know about a mistreatment of any people and not step in. The only reason why slavery existed was because of economic reasons people knew it was wrong but stood by because money was coming in. The morals of people are truly tested when money is involved.
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Quincey Sanner-Stiehr-Simmons/Watson
9/9/2016 06:57:17 pm
I fully agree with you, I believe that being a Christian doesn't necessarily mean that you can do anything and say that it's in God's name. The slave masters not only beat innocent people in the name of God, but they ignored most of the teachings in the Bible. Although I don't think all slave masters were bad. There are many stories of slave masters (mainly those that lived in more urban areas) who educated their slaves and kept them more as butlers and servants. Those stories shouldn't be overlooked because most of the slave masters I just mentioned owned slaves, treated them humanely and even went as far as to give them their freedom. So while on the whole, slave masters were bad people, we shouldn't categorize all of them based on our preconceived notions and stories told by slaves turned abolitionists.
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broc glover
9/9/2016 06:46:06 pm
On the first day, the inner circle was talking about question number five. Some of the people in there were discussing how its all about how the person interprets it. I agree with that because people view things differently so when one person reads something it could mean something completely different than if someone else read that same thing. Also, when something is translated into a different language the whole meaning could change because of how or what it gets translated into. Another example is when we did the what I see and what it means with the adds earlier in the year, it showed that people see and interpret things in a different way. This shows that somethings intended meaning of and add or section of a book can be viewed in many different ways depending one how the person is thinking when looking at it.
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Nikki
9/9/2016 07:46:34 pm
I agree with this statement becasue not everyone will have the same exact views. We are all different and how we perceive things
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Brady Michael
9/9/2016 08:47:08 pm
This is a good point to bring up, since currently we're discussing the danger of a single story. One interpretation of something doesn't show the whole story. Details and ideas could be never even thought of if one opinion or perspective is all everyone goes by. Literature and other media can, sometimes, be made to deliberately have multiple interpretations.
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Morgan Smith
9/11/2016 05:57:18 pm
Everything is open to interpretation and people's experiances and lives can change view points and how they comprehend things which explains why everyone had their own view of it
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Quincey Sanner-Stiehr-Simmons/Watson
9/9/2016 06:47:24 pm
6. Douglass has written facts about his life (nonfiction) but he also includes a lot of pathos. How does he do it?
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Sage Burdette
9/9/2016 06:48:37 pm
What do you think had a bigger effect on slaves, physical harm or mental dehumanization? In my opinion, they both go hand in hand. If you are physically abused day in and day out, you'll loose your own self worth and how you see yourself. Not to mention, you also see the abuse happen to everyone else. You would soon start to see yourself as a something as simple as you are treated. The slaves weren't human anymore, they were pack mules, They soon realized that and then lost hope.
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Nikki
9/9/2016 07:44:56 pm
This is such a good point becasue they really never felt like they were worth anything. It was so cruel how they treated slaves mentally and physically
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Nikki
9/9/2016 07:43:27 pm
The mental dehumanization and the physical abuse really made me think. It was kind of hard to pick one because they both contribute to one another in some way. Just like how the slaves would know if they were about to get whipped but also how they would get called very rude names. To me the mental games is what is really hard to forget becasue it is so hard to be mentally tough sometimes. Honestly I don't know how they would have survived the pain and torture mentally and physically.
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Caleigh Pumphrey
9/9/2016 08:24:36 pm
I agree! Like in the book, Douglas could escape from being whipped but being less than everybody stuck with him everywhere he went!
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Caleigh Pumphrey
9/9/2016 08:22:15 pm
8. Which do you think had a bigger effect on the slaves, physical harm or mental dehumanization?
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Ryan Winkler
9/9/2016 08:57:28 pm
Which do you think had a bigger effect on the slaves, physical harm or mental dehumanization?
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Ben M
9/9/2016 09:23:40 pm
I think twenty-seven really "hits home" for me. The narrative showed how slaveholders furthered slavery by preventing the slaves from becoming educated. Due to slavery being a very common and accepted part of American life at this point in history, the slave was thought to be naturally incapable of being civil and unable to be be formally educated. The narrative explains how masters kept and gained power over the black population from the beginning. By keeping personal information of the slaves such as birthdates and other important facts, the owners could enforced ignorance from the start, and as time progress, the slaveholder prevents them from learning to write or read. This was the ingenuousness of the white, Southern slaveholder: they understood that by keeping the slaves ignorant they can be controlled; they could be manipulated, suppressed, and dehumanized. This also prevented America from knowing the atrocities of slavery from first hand knowledge; hence why Douglass's book is so substantial. Finally, I think the very least we can take from his book is that education is important. "If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslaved.
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Connor Hall
9/9/2016 10:44:57 pm
17. If Frederick Douglass was never a slave, would he have still become famous as an author and as an abolitionist? Consider how he creates his ethos.
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Emma stone
9/10/2016 11:50:09 am
The question I picked was from the second day of Socratic seminar. It was question 8; which do you think had a bigger effect on slave, physical harm or mental dehumanizations. I think that they both have an equal effect on a slave. As I said in the discussion, the physical harm can affect how the slaves feel mentally. The beatings that the slaves were experiencing could affect them physically by other slaves seeing the bruises. The beatings can also contribute to the mental dehumanization because they living in fear of being the next victim. Also living in this type of environment can make them mentally think they are not worth anything and that they deserve what they are getting. These are two very hard topics to see which one had a bigger effect because they both affect a slave differently.
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Morgan Smith
9/11/2016 05:54:41 pm
I agree with you on the equal effects. Although I think that physical harm was used more as an deterrent for other slave and mental abuse was to break their hopes
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Morgan Smith
9/11/2016 05:52:28 pm
17. If Douglas was never a slave, would he still have become as famous as an author and abolitionist?
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