How does the tone of Douglass’s autobiography help him achieve his purpose?

To many contemporary readers, Douglass' writing style in the Narrative may appear overly emotional and overwritten in its description of suffering and hardship. For example, in chapter ten, Douglass plaintively describes the ships sailing on the Chesapeake Bay as "beautiful vessels, robed in that purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen" ' 'were to me so many shrouded ghosts." Yet Douglass was very aware of the popularity of a writing style in the mid-nineteenth century called "sentimental rhetoric," primarily used by middle-class women writers as a way of engaging readers directly with their subject matter. Douglass may havebeen able to engage readers not sympathetic with slavery's victims by appealing to their hearts for freedom and justice. In other words, as Steele in his article "Douglass and Sentimental Rhetoric" notes, in order to get white audiences to trust him as a narrator, Douglass used sentimental language as a means of representing himself "as a man of reason, moral principle, religious faith, and sentiment."