Winifred Morgan writes “As the youthful Douglass realizes when he reads, rereads, and mulls over his copy of The Columbian Orator, the American rhetorical tradition speaks in terms of universal freedom and the rights of all men” (79). Because the passage involves a black man who persuades a white man to emancipate him from slavery, it also emphasizes the connection between writing and speaking, or rhetoric, and a black person’s ability to persuade someone that they’re worthy of human rights.