In light of his description of the manner in which Sophia Auld is corrupted by her role as a slave mistress, one might ask if Douglass’s rhetorical purpose is to reach other black people with his account of slavery or appeal to a white person who might have been able to imagine herself in the place of Sophia. Passages like this one make it seem evident that Douglass is trying to present the horror of slavery not just to those who could relate to captive black people, but also, to those who could relate to the enslavers, and were in a position to abolish the peculiar institution.