What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July Analysis Questions Answers

Advisor: James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, National Humanities Center Fellow.
Copyright National Humanities Center, 2013

What arguments and rhetorical strategies did Frederick Douglass employ to persuade a northern, white audience to oppose slavery and favor abolitionism?

Understanding

In the 1850s abolition was not a widely embraced movement in the United States. It was considered radical, extreme, and dangerous. In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass sought not only to convince people of the wrongfulness of slavery but also to make abolition more acceptable to Northern whites.

Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Text

Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852.

Text Complexity

Grades 11-CCR complexity band.
For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org.

Text Type

Spoken communication, historical, advisory.

Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.

Ten

Mutual Core Land Standards

• ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.5 (Analyze in detail how a complex main source is structured…)

Advanced Placement US History

• Cardinal Concept 5.ii (I-B) (Abolitionists…mounted a highly visible campaign against slavery…)

Advanced Placement Language and Composition

• Developing…the ability to evaluate…principal…sources
• Reading nonfiction…to give students opportunities to identify and explicate an writer'south use of rhetorical strategies and techniques

Teacher's Note

In improver to making historical points about nineteenth-century attitudes toward slavery, race, and abolition, you can use this speech to teach formal rhetoric. We have divided the address into four sections co-ordinate to the role of each 1. This sectionalisation follows the archetype structure of belligerent writing:

1. paragraphs 1–3: introduction (exordium)
2. paragraphs 4–29: narrative or statement of fact (narratio)
3. paragraphs 30–70: arguments and counter-arguments (confirmatio and refutatio)
4. paragraph 71: conclusion (peroratio)

We take included notes that explain the part of each department too as questions that invite discussion of the ways in which Douglass deploys rhetoric to make his case.

This lesson features five interactive activities, which can exist accessed past clicking on this icon . The first explores the subtle manner in which Douglass compares the patriots of 1776 with the abolitionists of 1852. The second challenges students to decide how Douglass supports his thesis. The third focuses on his utilize of syllogistic reasoning, while the fourth examines how he makes his example through emotion and the fifth through analogy.

We recommend assigning the entire text . For close reading we have analyzed eighteen of the speech's seventy-one paragraphs through fine-grained questions, about of them text-dependent, that will enable students to explore rhetorical strategies and significant themes. The version below, designed for teachers, provides responses to those questions in the "Text Assay" section. The classroom version , a printable worksheet for apply with students, omits those responses and this "Teaching the Text" note. Terms that announced in bluish are defined on hover and in a printable glossary on the last page of the classroom version. The student worksheet too includes links to the activities, indicated by this icon .

This is a long lesson. Nosotros recommend dividing students into groups and assigning each group a set of paragraphs to analyze.

Background

Contextualizing Questions

1. What kind of text are nosotros dealing with?
2. When was information technology written?
3. Who wrote it?
4. For what audience was it intended?
5. For what purpose was it written?

At the invitation of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass delivered this speech on July v, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Information technology was reported and reprinted in Northern newspapers and was published and sold as a forty-page pamphlet within weeks of its commitment. The 500 to 600 people who heard Douglass speak were more often than not sympathetic to his remarks. A paper noted that when he saturday down, "in that location was a universal burst of applause." Nonetheless, many who read his oral communication would not take been so enthusiastic. Even Northerners who were anti-slavery were not necessarily pro-abolition. Many were content to let Southerners continue to hold slaves, a correct they believed was upheld by the Constitution. They just did not want to slavery to spread to areas where it did non be. In this Independence Day oration, Douglass sought to persuade those people to cover what was and so considered the extreme position of abolition.

He also sought to change minds about the abilities and intelligence of African Americans. In 1852 many, if not most, white Americans believed that African Americans were junior, indeed, less than fully human. Douglass tries to dispel these notions through an impressive display of liberal learning. His speech gives aplenty evidence of cognition of rhetoric, history, literature, faith, economics, poesy, music, law, fifty-fifty advances in technology.

Text Analysis

Introduction ('Exordium'): Paragraphs ane–3

Close Reading Questions

1. What are introductions supposed to do?
They seek to appoint the interest of listeners and make them receptive to the speaker'south bulletin. Introductions can inform listeners of the subject or the purpose of a voice communication, attempt to convince them that a topic is important and worthy of their attention, or ingratiate a speaker with the audience.

two. What does Douglass try to do in this introduction? Cite evidence from the text to support your reply.
Because his audience is familiar with the subject matter of Fourth of July speeches and because it recognizes the importance of the occasion, in his introduction Douglass does not have to sketch out his topic or argue for its significance. Instead, he sets out to ingratiate himself with his listeners. He praises their importance and claims to be humbled by their stature. He "quails" and "shrinks" before them. He distrusts his "express powers of speech." His ease is apparent, not real.

3. Why does he say that "apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning"?
He calls attention to the rhetorical conventions of introductions to signal to his audience that in this case they do not use. He seeks to win their trust by assuring them he is sincere.

4. The word "flat" often means level or smooth. In this context how is Douglass defining the discussion "flat"?
Here the word "flat" is used to hateful wearisome or superficial. Using the context nosotros can run into that Douglass intends the connotation of the discussion "apartment" not to be level but instead to hateful something that lacks depth or emotion backside it.

5. Why would it be "out of the mutual way" for him to deliver a Fourth of July oration?
As he reminds his audience in the terminal paragraph of the introduction, he is an escaped slave. By calling attending to the fact that a slave has been invited to speak on freedom, he employs irony, a strategy he will use throughout the voice communication to emphasize certain themes.

6. There are contradictions in Douglass's cocky-presentation. What are they? Cite specific instances of them in the text. How can you account for them?
In the first paragraph non merely does Douglass draw his "powers of speech" equally "limited," but he also maintains that he has "limited experience" in exercising them, which he claims to have done chiefly in "country school houses." Yet in the next paragraph he says that he has spoken in Corinthian Hall many times to many of the aforementioned people sitting before him at present. The last judgement of the second paragraph ("Just neither…") suggests what he is doing. He is walking a tightrope. He seeks at once to ingratiate himself with a display of humility while at the same time establishing his potency every bit a speaker and justifying his presence on the platform. He continues this balancing act in the adjacent paragraph when he asserts that he has "piddling…learning." Nevertheless he deploys the term "exordium," which contradicts the footling-learning claim by revealing a report-caused vocabulary and a cognition of formal rhetoric.

7. What expectations do yous think a white audience would have for a black speaker in 1852? How does Douglass address these expectations in his introduction?
In this introduction Douglass is doing more than simply presenting himself to his audience. When he raises the topic of slavery in the third paragraph, he brings into his text a topic which the color of his skin has already brought into Corinthian Hall, racism. Even amidst some abolitionists at that place existed the stiff prejudice that African Americans were inferior, indeed, something less than fully human. Douglass's entire speech is designed to do dispel that belief. In his introduction he begins to do so with that subtle flash of learning revealed in his use of "exordium." Thus with an ironic wink he signals to his listeners that they are in for a serious brandish of learning and rhetorical skill, a feat quite beyond the capacities of an junior existence.

i. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could accost this audience without a quailing awareness, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember always to have appeared as a speaker before any associates more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my power, than I practice this mean solar day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of spoken communication. The task before me is one which requires much previous idea and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are mostly considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will non be and so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The fiddling experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

2. The papers and placards say, that I am to evangelize a quaternary [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the mutual way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who at present honor me with their presence. Just neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect cuff I remember I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.

3. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no ways slight. That I am hither today is, to me, a matter of astonishment besides as of gratitude. Yous will non, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any loftier sounding exordium. With little feel and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I volition continue to lay them before you lot.

Narrative or Statement of Fact ('Narratio'): Paragraphs iv–29

Paragraph four

Notation: Students are probable to exist familiar with the office of an introduction in a voice communication but less and then with the function of the narrative section. Y'all might explain that in an address commemorating an event, speakers frequently invoke the result by offer a narration of it. This reminds the audience why they are gathered together, and information technology offers speakers the opportunity to depict inspiration for the future from the issue. Douglass'due south narration clearly performs the first function and, equally we shall meet, the second likewise. But information technology besides performs two other important functions. Looking back on America's revolutionary by, the narration, through implied comparison, condemns America's slave-property nowadays. Moreover, information technology enshrines radical resistance to government policy and revolution in the face of bondage as venerated parts of the mainstream American political tradition. In other words, it equates the abolitionists of 1852 with the patriots of 1776, each grouping denounced in its day as "plotters of mischief, agitators…rebels, dangerous men."

8. What is the effect of Douglass's repetition of the words "your" and "you" in this paragraph and throughout the speech communication?
The repetition of the words "your" and "you" startlingly emphasizes the distance between Douglass and his audience and signals to his listeners that he does not share their perspective or their attitudes toward the 4th of July.

9. Why does Douglass feel hopeful about America's future? Cite show from the text to support your answer.
He takes promise from the fact that the country is immature, only seventy-six years old. Its destiny and grapheme are not stock-still. Thus information technology may still change and abandon slavery.

ten. What is he suggesting in the "swell streams" metaphor?
If America permits slavery to go a deep and permanent part of its life, the nation might do good from it, or it might be destroyed by it, or information technology could be morally drained by it. In the end the metaphor is a alert about what might happen if modify does not happen soon.

11. In the sentence "Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier," why does Douglass equate the patriot and the reformer? Why would both groups exist sadder if the nation were older?
In this part of his speech Douglass takes pains to equate the founding patriots with gimmicky anti-slavery reformers. He begins to make that equation here. The nation, Douglass tells his audience, is nonetheless immature, not set in its manner, and thus more susceptible to change. By inference, were it older, information technology would be more set in its ways, and the reformer who would desire to change those ways, would be sad. But why would a patriot be sad? From Douglass's perspective, he would be distressing for the same reason. In Douglass's view the patriots established a simply nation, one that would not tolerate bondage. Were the nation to mature with the injustice of slavery deeply entrenched in it, America would betray the ideals of the Revolution, and thus the patriot would be lamentable.

4. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you lot, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the twenty-four hour period, and to the deed of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration besides marks the beginning of another twelvemonth of your national life; and reminds y'all that the Republic of America is at present 76 years old. I am glad, boyfriend-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old historic period for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Iii score years and ten is the allotted time for private men; only nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the first of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I echo, I am glad this is so. There is promise in the thought, and promise is much needed, under the night clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his centre may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she [America] is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet requite management to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might exist shrouded in gloom, and the promise of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is immature. Cracking streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rising in tranquility and stately majesty, and inundate the state, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious backdrop. They may too ascent in wrath and fury, and behave away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually menses dorsum to the same old channel, and menses on as serenely every bit e'er. Simply, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry upwardly, and exit nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping current of air, the distressing tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

…

Paragraph 6

12. Co-ordinate to Douglass, what did the "fathers" practise? Cite specific language from the text.
They rejected "the infallibility of government," "pronounced the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive," and sided with "the right against the incorrect, with the weak confronting the stiff, and with the oppressed against the oppressor."

13. Why does Douglass affirm his agreement with the actions of the "fathers"?
Douglass asserts his agreement with the actions of founders and embraces the principles of the Revolution to create a bond with his audition and to reassure them that, to some degree at to the lowest degree, he participates in the American political tradition.

six. But, your fathers, who had non adopted the stylish idea of this day, of the infallibility of authorities, and the accented character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home regime in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went then far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought non to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, beau-citizens, that my stance of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. Information technology would, certainly, prove nil, as to what role I might accept taken, had I lived during the nifty controversy of 1776. To say now that America was correct, and England incorrect, is exceedingly easy. Everybody tin say it; the dastard, not less than the noble dauntless, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their twenty-four hour period, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, confronting the incorrect, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed confronting the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. Merely, to go on.

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Paragraph 23

fourteen. How would y'all narrate the structure of the get-go 4 sentences of this paragraph?
The structure balances ideas through antithesis, a rhetorical device that poses contrary qualities confronting each other: They were peace men, merely they preferred revolution….".

15. How does the construction of those sentences reinforce the main idea of the paragraph?
The carefully counterbalanced structure reinforces the idea that the founders were themselves balanced, reasonable men.

16. What inference does Douglass desire his audition to draw from his portrayal of the founders?
Since he established an identification betwixt the founders and the abolitionists in paragraphs 4 and 6, the temperate qualities he ascribes here to the one-time use to the latter also, and this ascription is of import because it addresses the charge that abolitionists were fanatics and monomaniacs.

17. Oft speakers and writers make their points as much by leaving things out as by putting things in. This strategy is known every bit the strategic silence. What has Douglass omitted in his portrayal of the fathers? Why would he choose to practise then?
Douglass never mentions the fact that many of the fathers were slave owners. This silence allows Douglass to create his own version of the fathers, untainted by facts that would challenge his portrayal. Similarly, they deflect the minds of his listeners from points that might lead them to resist his argument.

18. Do you think Douglass's omission weakens his argument?
Here you might encourage a debate amidst your students. Some will say the omission weakens Douglass's argument because it straightforwardly refutes his example. How can he say that the "fathers" sided "with the oppressed against the oppressor" when many of them were themselves oppressors? Other students may argue that this omission does non weaken his case. Despite being slaveholders, men like Washington and Jefferson did, in fact, constitute a nation congenital on the ideals of justice and liberty. That many of the founders did not live up to those ideals does not brand them any less compelling. As Douglass says in paragraphs xvi and seventeen (paragraphs we do non clarify in this lesson), the "fathers" enshrined those "saving principles" in the Declaration of Independence, and it is to those principles that the nation must cling. Thus in this part of the speech Douglass argues that merely because the "fathers" did not fully embrace justice and liberty in 1776 does non mean that his listeners should not in 1852.

23. They were peace men; only they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not compress from agitating confronting oppression. They showed forbearance; merely they knew its limits. They believed in order; simply not in the order of tyranny [regime rule of absolute power]. With them, nothing was "settled" that was non correct. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the retentiveness of such men. They were smashing in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more every bit we contrast it with these degenerate times.

…

Arguments and Counter-Arguments ('Confirmatio' and 'Refutatio'):
Paragraphs xxx–70

Paragraph 35

Annotation: Arguments and counter-arguments prevarication at the heart of persuasive discourse. Review with your students what speakers and writers endeavour to do when making a case. They put forth their arguments and refute those of their opponents. To win over an audience, they may appeal to their listeners' reason past laying out a logical case, or they may seek to win their trust by impressing them with sound sense or high moral character, or they may appeal to their emotions. Nosotros offering passages that illustrate all of these strategies.

19. What point of view does Douglass announce in this paragraph?
In paragraph three Douglass alluded to the fact that he had been a slave. In this paragraph his listeners discover the full import of the fact for his speech. Identifying himself with the enslaved, he announces that he volition consider the Fourth of July from their perspective.

35. Fellow-citizens; to a higher place your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose bondage, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more than intolerable past the jubilee shouts that accomplish them. If I do forget, if I practice non faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right manus forget her cunning, and may my natural language carve to the roof of my rima oris!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the pop theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would brand me a reproach before God and the globe. My subject area, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this solar day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the by, or to the professions of the nowadays, the conduct of the nation seems every bit hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, faux to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be fake to the futurity. Standing with God and the crushed and haemorrhage slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the proper noun of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can control, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the keen sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not alibi;" I volition use the severest language I tin command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is non at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be correct and just.

Paragraph 36

Activity: Douglass'south Use of Syllogistic Reasoning
In paragraph 36 Douglass uses logic to testify that slaves are human beings. Specifically, he employs a syllogism. This activeness explores syllogistic reasoning and the way Douglass employs it.

36. But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is only in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to brand a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you debate more than, and denounce less, would you lot persuade more than, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain in that location is nothing to be argued. What bespeak in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what co-operative of the subject do the people of this land demand light? Must I undertake to evidence that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge information technology in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge information technology when they punish defiance on the function of the slave. There are 70-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black human, (no thing how ignorant he exist), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the aforementioned crimes volition subject a white man to the like penalization. What is this just the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. Information technology 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 or to write. When you can indicate to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, and then will I contend with you that the slave is a human being!

Paragraph 37

twenty. How does paragraph 37 relate to paragraph 36?
Douglass continues to debate that slaves are men.

21. How does Douglass develop this paragraph?
He does and so by list examples of some of things slaves practise that are done past others also: ploughing, planting, building, writing, raising children, etc.

37. For the present, information technology is plenty to assert the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while nosotros are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of contumely, atomic number 26, copper, silver and gold; that, while nosotros are reading, writing and cyphering, interim as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among usa lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, excavation gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the loma-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families equally husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian'south God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, nosotros are called upon to prove that we are men!

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Paragraph 39

22. How does Douglass maintain the guild and coherence of the showtime judgement of this paragraph?
He employs parallelism, a type of organisation in which a writer places similar ideas in a similar construction. Hither Douglass parallels the indignities slaves endure in a series of infinitive phrases: "…to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty," etc.

23. What is the outcome of the repetition of infinitive phrases ("to brand," "to rob," "to work," etc.) in the first sentence?
They establish a rhythm that emphasizes each indignity and heighten the emotional impact of the argument.

39. What, am I to debate that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to piece of work them without wages, to go along them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I contend that a organization thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I take improve employments for my fourth dimension and strength than such arguments would imply.

40. What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish information technology; that our doctors of divinity [preachers, ministers] are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the idea. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

…

Paragraph 45

Activity: The Emotional Entreatment
In paragraph 45 Douglass argues from emotion. This action explores the emotional appeal and how Douglass employs information technology.

45. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America religion. Here yous will run into men and women reared similar swine for the market place. Yous know what is a swine-drover [herder]? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the state, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will come across one of these human flesh-jobbers [mankind-sellers], armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market place at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton wool-field, and the deadly saccharide-factory. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily forth, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his cruel yells and his blood-chilling oaths, equally he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the one-time human being, with locks thinned and grayness. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young female parent, whose shoulders are blank to the scorching lord's day, her briny tears falling on the brow of the infant in her arms. Run into, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have well-nigh consumed their strength; of a sudden you lot hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul! The crevice you heard, was the audio of the slave-whip; the scream yous heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow the collection to New Orleans. Attend the auction; come across men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. Run across this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, nether the dominicus, you lot can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

Paragraphs 46–48

24. What strategy of argument does Douglass employ in this section of his speech?
Here Douglass established his own moral authority to speak on the issue of slavery by citing his ain experience, by establishing himself as reliable witness with offset-hand information.

46. I was built-in amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-merchandise is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was oftentimes pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Cruel'south Point, Baltimore, and accept watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them downward the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every boondocks and canton in Maryland, announcing their inflow, through the papers, and on flaming "hand-bills," headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Always gear up to drink, to treat, and to hazard. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

47. The flesh-mongers assemble upwards their victims past dozens, and drive them, chained, to the full general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a transport is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

48. In the deep nonetheless darkness of midnight, I accept been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was ofttimes consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the bondage, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find i who sympathized with me in my horror.

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Paragraph 63

25. How does this paragraph relate to the overall thesis of the speech?
Hither Douglass offers the strongest illustration of the ways in which America is imitation to the ideals information technology has set for itself.

26. What is the thesis of this paragraph?
The ways in which Americans practice their politics and organized religion are inconsistent with the values and ideals they claim to exist post-obit.

27. How does Douglass'south sentence structure reflect the thesis of the paragraph?
Of the eleven sentences in this paragraph, ten exhibit a parallel chemical compound construction in which the beginning clause identifies an ideal and the following clause refutes America's claim to information technology. Each judgement begins with a slightly accusatory "you" so pivots at a conjunction or a word performance every bit ane — "while," "simply," "nevertheless" — that suggests contradiction.

63. Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your honey of liberty, your superior civilisation, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political ability of the nation (as embodied in the two neat political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of iii millions of your countrymen. You bung your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russian federation and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. Y'all invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, laurels them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them similar water; merely the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education withal you maintain a organization as vicious and dreadful equally ever stained the character of a nation — a arrangement begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You lot shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the deplorable story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to wing to artillery to vindicate her [Hungary'south] cause confronting her oppressors; just, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him every bit an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! Y'all are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Republic of ireland; only are every bit cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you lot sustain a organisation which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You tin blank your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny revenue enhancement on tea; and yet wring the last difficult-earned farthing [a coin formerly used in Keen Britain] from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. Yous profess to believe "that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth," and hath commanded all men, everywhere to dearest one another; yet you lot notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the earth, and are understood past the world to declare, that you "agree these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, amidst these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and notwithstanding, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your ain Thomas Jefferson, "is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose," a seventh part of the inhabitants of your land.

…

Paragraph 68

Activity: Argument By Analogy
In paragraph 68, Douglass introduces some other tool of persuasion, argument by analogy, which is explored in this activity.

Note: This paragraph is an important function of Douglass'south refutatio and equally such deserves careful attention. Not only does he address a powerful justification for the continuation of slavery — the conventionalities that it is protected past the Constitution — but he also asserts a controversial theory about Constitutional interpretation.

68. Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the Due north have allowed themselves to exist so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that musical instrument I concord there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful matter; but, interpreted every bit it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS Liberty Certificate. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway [the preamble]? or is information technology in the temple [the body of the Constitution]? It is neither. While I do not intend to debate this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, past its framers and adopters, a slave-belongings instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave tin can anywhere exist institute in it. What would be thought of an instrument [legal agreement, in this case a deed], drawn upwards, legally fatigued up, for the purpose of entitling [giving buying to] the city of Rochester to a tract [piece] of state, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are sure rules of estimation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common-sense rules, such equally you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the written report of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an stance of the Constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to employ all honorable means to brand his opinion the prevailing one. Without this correct, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too circumspect, and no American centre too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells the states that the Constitution is the primal constabulary, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in agreement thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as audio lawyers, so regard the Constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.

…

Decision ('Peroratio'): Paragraph 71

Paragraph 71

Note: Conclusions are important. Inquire your students how they role and what they should exercise. The concluding words an audience hears, they oftentimes linger and shape the impression of an unabridged speech. Traditionally, speakers employ them to do 4 things: leave the audition with a favorable opinion, emphasize key points, stimulate an appropriate emotional response, or summarize the argument. Douglass does non emphasize cardinal points or recapitulate his arguments. Rather, he seeks to cast his case for abolition in a favorable low-cal and instill hope in his listeners.

28. What are conclusions supposed to practice?
Traditionally, 4 things: leave the audience with a favorable stance, emphasize key points, stimulate an appropriate emotional response, or summarize the statement.

29. Why is information technology of import for Douglass to tell his listeners that he does "not despair of this country"?
Even though he has just delivered a nighttime and stinging denunciation of the land, he does not want his listeners to leave the hall feeling depressed and hopeless.

30. On what does Douglass base the hope he expresses in this paragraph?
He looks to the past and the ideals expressed in the Annunciation of Independence. For Douglass those ethics, if the nation can live up to them, make the United states of america, despite its flaws, a place of promise and hope for the enslaved. He besides looks to the time to come in which he believes commercial and technological progress — ships using steam to make a "pathway" over the sea and telegraph cables using "lightning" (electricity) to practise the aforementioned under information technology — volition spread intelligence, enlightenment, and moral progress throughout the globe.

71. Permit me to say, in conclusion, withal the night moving-picture show I take this twenty-four hours presented of the land of the nation, I do not despair of this country. In that location are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, get out off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is likewise cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not at present stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation tin can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the aforementioned old path of its fathers without interference. The fourth dimension was when such could be washed. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly contend themselves in, and exercise their evil work with social impunity. Noesis was then confined and enjoyed past the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a alter has at present come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne abroad the gates of the strong urban center. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the earth. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer carve up, but link nations together. From Boston to London is at present a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other. The far-off and well-nigh fabled Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Omnipotent, "Allow there be Lite," has not all the same spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading low-cal. The atomic number 26 shoe, and crippled foot of Cathay must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. "Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God." In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart bring together in maxim it:

God speed the yr of jubilee
The wide world o'er!
When from their galling chains set gratuitous,
Th' oppressed shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes, no more than:—
That year volition come, and Liberty'southward reign,
To human being his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the solar day when human blood
Shall terminate to menses!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of man brotherhood,
And each return for evil, skilful—
Not blow for blow:—
That day will come up, all feuds to stop,
And modify into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant's presence cower;
But all to Manhood's stature tower,
By equal birth!—
That hour volition come, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house the thrall
Become forth.

Until that yr, day, hr make it,
With caput and eye and hand I'll strive,
To interruption the rod, and rend the gyve,—
The spoiler of his prey deprive,―
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
Exist driven.

---

Prototype: Daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass, ca. 1855 (creator unknown). Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Rubel Collection, Partial and Promised Souvenir of William Rubel, 2001 (2001.756). Reproduced by permission.

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Source: https://americainclass.org/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/

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