Wendell Phillips
Quote 4
Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel, persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. (Letter.5)
Wendell Phillips makes the case that we should trust Douglass's story because of his character. If we know him to be a trustworthy person, he suggests, his book can be treated as true. But part of how we know that a person is trustworthy is our experience of the person himself: Douglass's audience can tell just from listening to him that he must be telling the truth.