In addition to relating what occurred aboard ship, the first officer, also goes an extra step by stating, "I dare say here what many men feel, but dare not speak, that this whole slave-trading business is a disgrace and scandal to Old Virginia". This is an interesting tactic. Although the author of the story is black, this quote forces the notion that a good many white people disfavor the institution of slavery. Once again Douglass defuses the possible hostility towards the remark by having the sailor be accused of being an abolitionist himself, to which the sailor sharply retorts, "That man does not live who shall offer me an insult with impunity". Somehow, this gives even more credence to the sailor's story by having him assert that he is no lover of blacks. The care and thought that Douglass puts into his story, so as to not have it immediately rejected by its white readers, shows the very rational and sentience that Gates was referring to.
In addition to African American Literature testifying to the intellect of African Americans, Gates also asserts that the genre "at once testified against their captors and bore witness to the urge to be free and literate". He associates the later with an embracing of "the American Enlightenment's dream of civil liberty". Douglass, through the entirety of the story, uses references to American Revolutionaries to show the correlation between the plight of African Americans and those issues that the American Revolutionary War was fought for. Douglass begins by having his main protagonist, Washington Madison, state, "Liberty I will have, or die in the attempt to gain it", thus putting him in the context of the revolutionist Patrick Henry who stated, "Give me liberty or give me death". Indeed, Douglass several times makes reference to the former Presidents for which his protagonist was named, such as, "It seemed as if the souls of both the great dead (whose names he bore) had entered him".
