Douglass spends the next part of his speech pre-empting some of the arguments that theoretical opponents might make. As for the mildly sympathetic spectator who complains that the abolitionist fails to make a favorable impression by constantly denouncing slavery rather than making persuasive arguments, Douglass retorts by saying that there are no more arguments to be made. He says there is no person on earth who would be in favor of becoming a slave himself. How can it be, therefore, that some people are in favor of imposing a condition on others that they would not impose on themselves? As for those who maintain that slavery is part of a divine plan, Douglass argues that something which is inhuman cannot be considered divine. He considers such a pro-slavery posture to be blasphemy because it gives cruelty a place in God's nature.
Douglass condemns the profits made from the slave trade, and, once again, he compares the treatment of slaves to that of animals. He mentions that in Baltimore, slave traders transported slaves in chains to ships in the dead of night because anti-slavery activism had made the public aware of the cruelty of that trade. Douglass recalls that when he was a child, the cries of chained slaves passing his house on route to the docks in the middle of the night had a chilling, unsettling effect on him.
Next, Douglass condemns the American churches and ministers (excluding, of course, abolitionist religious movements such as Garrison's) for not speaking out against slavery. The contemporary American church, by remaining silent and acquiescing to the existence of slavery, he argues, is more of an infidel than Paine, Voltaire, or Bolingbroke (three eighteenth-century philosophers who spoke out against the churches of their time). Douglass argues that the church is "superlatively guilty" — superlative, meaning even more guilty — because it is an institution which has the power to eradicate slavery by condemning it. The Fugitive Slave Law, Douglass reasons, is "tyrannical legislation" because it removes all due process and civil rights for the black person: "For black men, there is neither law nor justice, humanity nor religion." (Under this Act, even freed blacks could easily be accused of being fugitive slaves and taken to the South.) The Christian church which allows this law to remain in effect, Douglass says, is not really a Christian church at all.
