Lloyd Garrison And George Fitzhos

Although George Fitzhugh William and Lloyd Garrison stood on opposite sides of the debates for/against the use of African slaves in the United States, both employed similar rhetorical appeals for their intended audiences. Most notably, both chose to use a rather intense symbolism for their appeal: cannibalism. However, while Garrison links cannibalism as the slave trade turning into a giant monster that swallows the American society, Fitzhugh attributes cannibalism as the unavoidable way everyone exploits each other, almost as a standard behavior for high society.

Garrison employs several pathos arguments for his anti-slave trade speech. He calls upon Christians to recognize the horrors slaves undergo in their bondage and the irony of Christians going abroad for mission trips when there are people born on American soil suffering. (64) Here is where Garrison first brings up his use of the cannibalism. Christianity was strong enough against the Native Americans and people, some who were even cannibals, who worshipped pagan gods, yet it cannot overcome the sins of its own followers who practice the evil of slavery. (64) Clearly, cannibalism is introduced as a godless, sinful practice. These arguments should make the average reader,

especially one of faith, feel shame.
However, shame is not enough to motivate people into action.

Garrison knows that in order to convince people to act, he must connect this problem directly to them. Thus, he links slavery to the act of cannibalism. Here, it is used in the most negative light. Garrison begins by stating a previous argument, that perhaps the slave trade has grown too large that people do not feel bothered to stop it anymore. This growth, however, is the very reason Garrison believed people must act immediately. Action must be taken before the slave trade multiplies further, before it becomes this cannibal that eats everyone, including the reader. The capitalization of the “TWENTY MILLIONS” (67) also emphasizes this fear, one of Garrison’s key

motivators.
Contrastly, Fitzhugh does not even seem to regard cannibalism as that evil of a deed. Although he first states that the reader is practicing “moral cannibalism,” (16) he goes on immediately to say that the reader is not alone, for almost everyone in Fitzhugh’s opinion acts in this manner. Furthermore, although it is typical to think of cannibalistic behavior as terrible, as Garrison does, Fitzhugh makes it seem as though it is necessary for the top of the social ladder to essentially exploit one another in this man-eating-man metaphor. Thus a respectable and gentleman is actually a person who essentially does none of the work, spends none of his own money, and profits from the work of others (17).
In this sense, the white slave trade that Fitzhugh coins, is worse than the African slave trade. Fitzhugh distracts his readers by saying black slaves are given access to food, water, shelter, that they are well taken care of and have nothing to worry about. However, white workers, destroyed by the cannibalistic nature of capitalism, must work all day and then come home and worry about their family at night. In fact, if a white man lived the life of a slave, he would be bored from the lack of work and stimulus. In this way of twisting what capitalism and the definition of slavery are, Fitzhugh can manipulate his audience into seeing that truly, it is the poor whites who have the worst end of the deal.