Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Lesson Plan

What is unusual about the dialogue that Douglass finds in "The Colombian Orator" between a slave and his master? Could such a dialogue ever take place? Why or why not?

What is unusual about the dialogue that Douglass reads is that a dialogue between slave and master, particularly on the subject of slavery, had virtually no realistic chance of occurring beyond the pages of a book. As students will have already seen, slaveowners brooked no argument from their slaves, preferring to respond to dissent with physical violence rather than with words. The dialogue is also unrealistic because few slaves, if any, would have had the intellectual wherewithal to make the arguments...