Advisor: James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, National Humanities Center Fellow. Show Lesson ContentsWhat arguments and rhetorical strategies did Frederick Douglass use to persuade a northern, white audience to oppose slavery and favor abolition?UnderstandingIn 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. TextFrederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852. Text ComplexityGrades 11-CCR complexity band. Text TypeSpeech, historical, informational. Click here for standards and skills for this lesson. X Common Core State Standards
Advanced Placement US History
Advanced Placement Language and Composition
Teacher’s NoteIn addition 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 according to the function of each one. This division follows the classic structure of argumentative writing:
We have included notes that explain the function of each section as well 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 be accessed by clicking on this icon . The first explores the subtle way in which Douglass compares the patriots of 1776 with the abolitionists of 1852. The second challenges students to determine how Douglass supports his thesis. The third focuses on his use of syllogistic reasoning, while the fourth examines how he makes his case 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, most 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 Analysis” section. The classroom version , a printable worksheet for use with students, omits those responses and this “Teaching the Text” note. Terms that appear in blue are defined on hover and in a printable glossary on the last page of the classroom version. The student worksheet also includes links to the activities, indicated by this icon .This is a long lesson. We recommend dividing students into groups and assigning each group a set of paragraphs to analyze. BackgroundContextualizing Questions
At the invitation of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass delivered this speech on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. It was reported and reprinted in Northern newspapers and was published and sold as a forty-page pamphlet within weeks of its delivery. The 500 to 600 people who heard Douglass speak were generally sympathetic to his remarks. A newspaper noted that when he sat down, “there was a universal burst of applause.” Nonetheless, many who read his speech would not have 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 right they believed was upheld by the Constitution. They simply did not want to slavery to spread to areas where it did not exist. In this Independence Day oration, Douglass sought to persuade those people to embrace what was then 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 inferior, indeed, less than fully human. Douglass tries to dispel these notions through an impressive display of liberal learning. His speech gives ample evidence of knowledge of rhetoric, history, literature, religion, economics, poetry, music, law, even advances in technology. Text AnalysisIntroduction (‘Exordium’): Paragraphs 1–3Close Reading Questions1. What are introductions supposed to do? 2. What does Douglass try to do in this introduction? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer. 3. Why does he say that “apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning”? 4. The word “flat” often means level or smooth. In this context how is Douglass defining the word “flat”? 5. Why would it be “out of the common way” for him to deliver a Fourth of July oration? 6. There are contradictions in Douglass’s self-presentation. What are
they? Cite specific instances of them in the text. How can you account for them? 7. What expectations do you think a white audience would have for a black speaker in 1852? How does Douglass address these expectations in his introduction? 1. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little 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 deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think 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 means slight. That I am here today is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience 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 will proceed to lay them before you. Narrative or Statement of Fact (‘Narratio’): Paragraphs 4–29Paragraph 4Note: Students are likely to be familiar with the function of an introduction in a speech but less so with the function of the narrative section. You might explain that in an address commemorating an event, speakers often invoke the event by offering a narration of it. This reminds the audience why they are gathered together, and it offers speakers the opportunity to draw inspiration for the future from the event. Douglass’s narration clearly performs the first function and, as we shall see, the second as well. But it also performs two other important functions. Looking back on America’s revolutionary past, the narration, through implied comparison, condemns America’s slave-holding present. Moreover, it 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 group 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? 9. Why does Douglass feel hopeful about America’s future? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer. 10. What is he suggesting in the “great streams” metaphor? 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 be sadder if the nation were older? 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, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart 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 give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations. … Paragraph 612. According to Douglass, what did the “fathers” do?
Cite specific language from the text. 13. Why does Douglass assert his agreement with the actions of the “fathers”? 6. But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion 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. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, 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 day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against 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. But, to proceed. … Paragraph 2314. How would you characterize the structure of the first four sentences of this paragraph? 15. How does the structure of those sentences reinforce the main idea of the paragraph? 16. What inference does Douglass want his audience to draw from his portrayal of the founders? 17. Often speakers and writers make their points as much by leaving things out as by putting things in. This strategy is known as the strategic silence. What has Douglass omitted in his portrayal of the fathers? Why would he choose to do so? 18. Do you think Douglass’s omission weakens his argument? 23. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny [government rule of absolute power]. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times. … Arguments and Counter-Arguments (‘Confirmatio’ and ‘Refutatio’): |