There is an extremely interesting mix-up of ethos, pathos, and logos running through the story of Fredrick Douglas. Fellow members of the Anti-Slavery Society wanted Douglas to speak only about his experience as a slave. This is where the pathos comes in. Douglas was a powerful speaker because he rose anger and pity in the hearts of his hearers by speaking of his experience. This would lead his audience to support the Anti-Slavery Society. He was powerfully appealing to their emotions, and that is what the fellow members of the Society wanted of him.
But Douglas was not happy with this alone. He wanted to use logos as well as pathos. He was extremely underestimated by his friends in the Anti-Slavery Society. They wanted to make the logical arguments against slavery, and leave Douglas only to light fire in the hearts of his audience. His friends believed that if he began to philosophize slavery in front of his audience, they would doubt that he ever was a slave, because popular belief held that slaves were not smart enough to take part in logical argument and debate. This is where ethos becomes important.
Douglas wanted to improve his skills in language and diction, and he was certainly smart enough to do that. But because of his audience's ignorance, improving himself (bettering his use of language) actually hindered his ethos. When Douglas started sounding like a smart, capable, educated man, his audience started to think he was dishonest.
Let me break this down for you. Douglas's friends wanted him to use pathos and avoid logos in order to further his ethos. Usually if an orator is able to effectively use pathos and logos, his ethos gains from it, because it shows that the orator is a smart and sensitive intellectual. Douglas's situation is certainly a unique rhetorical situation, and it is solely responsible for creating the occasion of Douglas's text My Freedom and My Bondage.
What I find interesting concerns the focus on pathos. Historically, as well as today, when a speaker relies on pathetic appeals, ethos is called into question. More so now, it seems that if there be an abundance in pathos in a rhetorical speech or text, we want to either blindly follow or completely disregard (based on the content of the pathetic appeal). The question is, when is it appropriate for a Rhetor to lean on logos over pathos or vice versa, or utilize a balanced mix? In Douglass's time, and situation, it was a little detrimental to him, but we now look at his text and see it as an eloquent mix of emotion and logic, yet some Rhetors today that do the same thing, tend to be scrutinized unkindly.
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