17. Which statement BEST supports the speaker's claim below?
Everyone understands that slaves are people, but their actions contradict that fact.
(A) My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day
and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view.
(B) But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the
anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people
of this country need light? Must I
undertake to prove that the slave is a man?
(C) The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute
books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties,
the teaching of the slave to read and write.
(D) Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of
his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery?