what to the american slave is your 4th of july quizlet
Counselor: James Engell, Gurney Professor of English language and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, National Humanities Center Boyfriend.
Copyright National Humanities Center, 2013
What arguments and rhetorical strategies did Frederick Douglass apply to persuade a northern, white audience to oppose slavery and favor abolition?
Understanding
In the 1850s abolition was not a widely embraced motion in the United States. Information technology was considered radical, farthermost, 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 adequate to Northern whites.
Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Text
Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Quaternary of July?" An Accost Delivered in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852. 
Text Complexity
Grades 11-CCR complexity band.
For more data on text complexity see these resource from achievethecore.org.
Text Type
Spoken language, historical, advisory.
Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.
X
Common Cadre State Standards
- ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.5 (Clarify in detail how a complex primary source is structured…)
Avant-garde Placement US History
- Central Concept v.2 (I-B) (Abolitionists…mounted a highly visible entrada against slavery…)
Avant-garde Placement Language and Composition
- Developing…the power to evaluate…main…sources
- Reading nonfiction…to give students opportunities to place and explain an author's use of rhetorical strategies and techniques
Teacher'south Note
In addition to making historical points about nineteenth-century attitudes toward slavery, race, and abolition, you lot can use this spoken language to teach formal rhetoric. We have divided the address into four sections according to the part of each one. This sectionalization follows the archetype structure of argumentative writing:
- paragraphs one–3: introduction (exordium)
- paragraphs 4–29: narrative or statement of fact (narratio)
- paragraphs 30–70: arguments and counter-arguments (confirmatio and refutatio)
- paragraph 71: determination (peroratio)
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 instance.
This lesson features v interactive activities, which can be accessed by clicking on this icon 
. The first explores the subtle manner in which Douglass compares the patriots of 1776 with the abolitionists of 1852. The 2d challenges students to determine how Douglass supports his thesis. The 3rd focuses on his utilize of syllogistic reasoning, while the fourth examines how he makes his case through emotion and the 5th through illustration.
We recommend assigning the entire text . For shut reading we have analyzed 18 of the oral communication's seventy-i paragraphs through fine-grained questions, almost of them text-dependent, that will enable students to explore rhetorical strategies and pregnant 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 "Education the Text" notation. Terms that announced in blueish are defined on hover and in a printable glossary on the last page of the classroom version. The student worksheet as well 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.
Background
Contextualizing Questions
- What kind of text are we dealing with?
- When was information technology written?
- Who wrote it?
- For what audience was it intended?
- For what purpose was it written?
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 by and large sympathetic to his remarks. A newspaper noted that when he sat downwards, "there was a universal flare-up of applause." Nonetheless, many who read his oral communication would non have been so enthusiastic. Even Northerners who were anti-slavery were not necessarily pro-abolitionism. Many were content to permit Southerners proceed 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 Mean solar day oration, Douglass sought to persuade those people to embrace what was and so considered the extreme position of abolition.
He also sought to change minds nearly 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, police, even advances in technology.
Text Analysis
Introduction ('Exordium'): Paragraphs 1–3
Shut 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 message. Introductions can inform listeners of the subject or the purpose of a voice communication, attempt to convince them that a topic is of import and worthy of their attention, or ingratiate a speaker with the audition.
two. What does Douglass try to do in this introduction? Cite testify from the text to support your reply.
Because his audience is familiar with the subject area affair of Fourth of July speeches and because it recognizes the importance of the occasion, in his introduction Douglass does non 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 "limited powers of speech." His ease is apparent, non real.
three. Why does he say that "apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning"?
He calls attending to the rhetorical conventions of introductions to signal to his audition that in this instance they do not utilise. He seeks to win their trust past assuring them he is sincere.
4. The word "apartment" often ways level or polish. In this context how is Douglass defining the give-and-take "flat"?
Hither the word "flat" is used to mean irksome or superficial. Using the context we can meet that Douglass intends the connotation of the word "flat" not to be level simply instead to mean something that lacks depth or emotion behind it.
v. Why would it be "out of the common fashion" for him to evangelize a Fourth of July oration?
As he reminds his audience in the final paragraph of the introduction, he is an escaped slave. Past calling attention to the fact that a slave has been invited to speak on freedom, he employs irony, a strategy he will use throughout the speech to emphasize certain themes.
six. 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?
In the commencement paragraph non only does Douglass describe his "powers of speech" as "limited," but he too maintains that he has "express feel" in exercising them, which he claims to take washed chiefly in "country schoolhouse houses." Yet in the next paragraph he says that he has spoken in Corinthian Hall many times to many of the same people sitting before him now. The last sentence of the second paragraph ("But 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 aforementioned time establishing his authorization as a speaker and justifying his presence on the platform. He continues this balancing act in the adjacent paragraph when he asserts that he has "picayune…learning." Yet he deploys the term "exordium," which contradicts the lilliputian-learning claim by revealing a study-acquired vocabulary and a cognition of formal rhetoric.
seven. What expectations do y'all retrieve a white audience would accept for a black speaker in 1852? How does Douglass address these expectations in his introduction?
In this introduction Douglass is doing more than but 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 colour of his skin has already brought into Corinthian Hall, racism. Fifty-fifty amid some abolitionists at that place existed the strong prejudice that African Americans were inferior, indeed, something less than fully human. Douglass's unabridged speech is designed to practise dispel that conventionalities. In his introduction he begins to do so with that subtle wink 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 display of learning and rhetorical skill, a feat quite beyond the capacities of an inferior being.
1. Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I take. I do non call up ever to have appeared as a speaker before any associates more than shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this solar day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the practice of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is i 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, even so, that mine will non be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The trivial feel I accept had in addressing public meetings, in country schoolhouses, avails me nothing on the nowadays occasion.
two. The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a fourth [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 cute Hall, and to address many who at present honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I recall I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to gratis me from embarrassment.
3. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the altitude 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 hither today is, to me, a matter of astonishment besides every bit of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I take to say, I evince no elaborate grooming, nor grace my voice communication with whatsoever high 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 will go on to lay them before you.
Narrative or Statement of Fact ('Narratio'): Paragraphs 4–29
Paragraph 4
Note: Students are likely to be familiar with the function of an introduction in a speech simply less and then with the role of the narrative department. You might explain that in an address commemorating an outcome, speakers often invoke the event by offering a narration of it. This reminds the audition why they are gathered together, and information technology offers speakers the opportunity to draw inspiration for the future from the upshot. Douglass'south narration clearly performs the beginning function and, every bit we shall see, the second also. But it also performs two other important functions. Looking back on America'due south revolutionary past, the narration, through implied comparison, condemns America'due south 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 grouping denounced in its 24-hour interval as "plotters of mischief, agitators…rebels, dangerous men."
8. What is the effect of Douglass's repetition of the words "your" and "y'all" in this paragraph and throughout the speech?
The repetition of the words "your" and "you lot" 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 Fourth of July.
9. Why does Douglass experience hopeful about America'south time to come? Cite bear witness from the text to support your answer.
He takes hope from the fact that the country is young, but lxx-six years old. Its destiny and character are not fixed. Thus it may nevertheless change and carelessness slavery.
x. What is he suggesting in the "great streams" metaphor?
If America permits slavery to become a deep and permanent part of its life, the nation might benefit from it, or information technology might exist destroyed past it, or information technology could be morally drained by it. In the terminate the metaphor is a warning nearly what might happen if modify does not happen soon.
11. In the sentence "Were the nation older, the patriot's eye might be sadder, and the reformer'south brow heavier," why does Douglass equate the patriot and the reformer? Why would both groups be sadder if the nation were older?
In this role 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 nevertheless young, not set in its way, and thus more susceptible to modify. By inference, were it older, information technology would be more set in its means, and the reformer who would want to change those ways, would be sorry. Only why would a patriot be sad? From Douglass's perspective, he would exist sad for the same reason. In Douglass'due south view the patriots established a just nation, one that would not tolerate chains. 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 deplorable.
four. This, for the purpose of this commemoration, is the fourth of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political liberty. 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 human action of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that human action, and that 24-hour interval. This commemoration also marks the beginning of another twelvemonth of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years onetime. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is then young. Lxx-six years, though a good old age for a human being, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and x is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years past thousands. According to this fact, you are, fifty-fifty now, only in the first of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is promise in the thought, and promise is much needed, under the night clouds which lower in a higher place the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with aroused flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she [America] is withal in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that loftier lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, volition yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer'southward forehead heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets leave in sorrow. There is consolation in the idea that America is young. Slap-up streams are non hands turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes ascension in tranquillity and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rising in wrath and fury, and acquit away, on their aroused waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow dorsum to the same former channel, and menstruation on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, information technology may dry up, and leave nothing behind merely 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.
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Paragraph half dozen
12. According to Douglass, what did the "fathers" practice? 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 against the stiff, and with the oppressed against the oppressor."
thirteen. Why does Douglass assert his agreement with the deportment of the "fathers"?
Douglass asserts his understanding with the actions of founders and embraces the principles of the Revolution to create a bond with his audience and to reassure them that, to some degree at least, he participates in the American political tradition.
6. Simply, 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 dwelling house government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went and then far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such equally ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely demand say, boyfriend-citizens, that my stance of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a annunciation of agreement on my office would non be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might accept taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, 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. Information technology is stylish to do so; simply at that place was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the crusade 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, confronting the wrong, with the weak against the stiff, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! hither lies the merit, and the 1 which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The crusade of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to go along.
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Paragraph 23
xiv. How would y'all characterize the construction of the outset iv sentences of this paragraph?
The structure balances ideas through antithesis, a rhetorical device that poses contrary qualities against each other: They were peace men, but they preferred revolution….".
15. How does the structure of those sentences reinforce the main idea of the paragraph?
The carefully balanced structure reinforces the idea that the founders were themselves counterbalanced, reasonable men.
16. What inference does Douglass want his audience to depict from his portrayal of the founders?
Since he established an identification between the founders and the abolitionists in paragraphs iv and 6, the temperate qualities he ascribes here to the former use to the latter as well, and this ascription is important because it addresses the charge that abolitionists were fanatics and monomaniacs.
17. Often speakers and writers make their points as much past 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 exercise so?
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 retrieve Douglass's omission weakens his argument?
Here y'all might encourage a debate amidst your students. Some will say the omission weakens Douglass'due south argument because information technology straightforwardly refutes his case. How tin 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 not weaken his instance. Despite being slaveholders, men similar Washington and Jefferson did, in fact, establish a nation built on the ideals of justice and freedom. That many of the founders did not live up to those ideals does not make them whatsoever less compelling. Every bit Douglass says in paragraphs sixteen and seventeen (paragraphs we exercise non analyze in this lesson), the "fathers" enshrined those "saving principles" in the Proclamation of Independence, and it is to those principles that the nation must cling. Thus in this part of the oral communication Douglass argues that only because the "fathers" did not fully embrace justice and liberty in 1776 does non mean that his listeners should non in 1852.
23. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; only they did not compress from agitating confronting oppression. They showed forbearance; but they knew its limits. They believed in order; merely not in the order of tyranny [government dominion of accented power]. With them, nothing was "settled" that was non correct. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. Yous may well cherish the retentivity of such men. They were smashing in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more than equally we dissimilarity it with these degenerate times.
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Arguments and Counter-Arguments ('Confirmatio' and 'Refutatio'):
Paragraphs 30–70
Paragraph 35
Note: Arguments and counter-arguments lie at the heart of persuasive discourse. Review with your students what speakers and writers endeavor to practise when making a case. They put forth their arguments and refute those of their opponents. To win over an audition, they may appeal to their listeners' reason by 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 entreatment to their emotions. Nosotros offer passages that illustrate all of these strategies.
19. What point of view does Douglass announce in this paragraph?
In paragraph 3 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 spoken language. Identifying himself with the enslaved, he announces that he volition consider the Fourth of July from their perspective.
35. Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I practice not faithfully recollect those bleeding children of sorrow this twenty-four hours, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my rima oris!" To forget them, to laissez passer lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason virtually scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the globe. My subject, so fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall come across, this mean solar day, and its pop characteristics, from the slave'southward betoken of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do non 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 past, or to the professions of the nowadays, the conduct of the nation seems every bit hideous and revolting. America is faux to the past, simulated to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the time to come. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the proper noun of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to telephone call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I tin command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the great sin and shame of America! "I will non equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will employ the severest language I tin can command; and notwithstanding not 1 discussion shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is non at heart a slaveholder, shall non confess to be right and just.
Paragraph 36
Activity: Douglass's Use of Syllogistic Reasoning
In paragraph 36 Douglass uses logic to bear witness that slaves are human beings. Specifically, he employs a syllogism. This action explores syllogistic reasoning and the way Douglass employs it.
36. Only I fancy I hear some one of my audition say, information technology is just in this circumstance that y'all and your blood brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you lot argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more than, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is cipher to be argued. What bespeak in the anti-slavery creed would you have me fence? On what branch of the subject field practice the people of this land demand light? Must I undertake to show that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves admit information technology in the enactment of laws for their regime. They acknowledge information technology when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. In that location are 70-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he exist), subject him to the punishment of decease; while but ii of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this just the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible existence? The manhood of the slave is conceded. Information technology is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, nether severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When yous tin can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to debate 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 fence with you that the slave is a human being!
Paragraph 37
20. How does paragraph 37 relate to paragraph 36?
Douglass continues to argue that slaves are men.
21. How does Douglass develop this paragraph?
He does so by listing examples of some of things slaves do that are done past others likewise: ploughing, planting, building, writing, raising children, etc.
37. For the nowadays, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is information technology non astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, edifice ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, argent and gilded; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting equally clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among united states of america lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all way of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, interim, thinking, planning, living in families equally husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to bear witness that we are men!
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Paragraph 39
22. How does Douglass maintain the order and coherence of the showtime sentence of this paragraph?
He employs parallelism, a type of system in which a author places similar ideas in a similar structure. Here Douglass parallels the indignities slaves endure in a serial of infinitive phrases: "…to brand men brutes, to rob them of their liberty," etc.
23. What is the effect of the repetition of infinitive phrases ("to make," "to rob," "to work," etc.) in the outset sentence?
They establish a rhythm that emphasizes each indignity and heighten the emotional affect of the statement.
39. What, am I to argue that information technology is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep 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 chase 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 argue that a organization thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have ameliorate employments for my fourth dimension and forcefulness than such arguments would imply.
40. What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is non divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity [preachers, ministers] are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that tin, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
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Paragraph 45
Activity: The Emotional Appeal
In paragraph 45 Douglass argues from emotion. This activity explores the emotional appeal and how Douglass employs it.
45. Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and America faith. Here you lot will meet men and women reared like swine for the marketplace. You know what is a swine-drover [herder]? I will show you a homo-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. Y'all will run into 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 at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the pitiful procession, equally it moves wearily forth, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-spooky oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the quondam man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast ane glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are blank to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, aye! weeping, equally she thinks of the female parent from whom she has been torn! The drove moves belatedly. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their forcefulness; 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 accept torn its fashion to the eye of your soul! The crack you lot heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream yous heard, was from the adult female 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 movement on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend the sale; see men examined similar horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. Come 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 sun, you 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 use in this section of his spoken language?
Here Douglass established his own moral authority to speak on the outcome of slavery past citing his ain experience, past establishing himself as reliable witness with first-hand information.
46. I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Barbarous's Signal, Baltimore, and have 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 down the Chesapeake. In that location was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the caput of Pratt Street, past Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every boondocks and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming "hand-bills," headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were mostly well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. E'er ready to drink, to treat, and to take chances. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the plough of a single menu; and many a child has been snatched from the artillery of its mother by bargains arranged in a land of fell drunkenness.
47. The flesh-mongers gather up their victims past dozens, and bulldoze them, chained, to the full general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been nerveless hither, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the transport, they are commonly driven in the darkness of nighttime; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain circumspection is observed.
48. In the deep all the same darkness of midnight, I take been frequently aroused past the expressionless heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my adolescent heart was intense; and I was often 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 chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to observe 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 spoken language?
Here Douglass offers the strongest illustration of the ways in which America is false to the ideals it has gear up for itself.
26. What is the thesis of this paragraph?
The ways in which Americans practice their politics and religion are inconsistent with the values and ideals they claim to be following.
27. How does Douglass's sentence structure reflect the thesis of the paragraph?
Of the eleven sentences in this paragraph, x exhibit a parallel chemical compound construction in which the first clause identifies an ideal and the following clause refutes America's merits to it. Each sentence begins with a slightly accusatory "you" and and so pivots at a conjunction or a word performance as one — "while," "but," "still" — that suggests contradiction.
63. Americans! your republican politics, non less than your republican faith, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (equally embodied in the 2 dandy political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russian federation and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to exist the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You lot invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; merely the fugitives from your own state you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education all the same you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful every bit ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in forehandedness, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Republic of hungary, and make the lamentable story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are prepare to fly to arms to vindicate her [Hungary's] cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him equally an enemy of the nation who dares to brand those wrongs the bailiwick of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for French republic or for Ireland; but are equally cold as an iceberg at the idea of liberty for the enslaved of America. Yous discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; withal, you sustain a organisation which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You tin bare your bosom to the tempest of British arms to throw off a threepenny revenue enhancement on tea; and yet wring the last difficult-earned farthing [a coin formerly used in Neat 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 world," and hath allowable all men, everywhere to dearest ane another; yet y'all notoriously detest, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored similar your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you "hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and yet, you hold securely, in a chains which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, "is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose," a seventh function of the inhabitants of your country.
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Paragraph 68
Activity: Argument By Analogy
In paragraph 68, Douglass introduces another tool of persuasion, argument by analogy, which is explored in this activeness.
Note: This paragraph is an important function of Douglass's refutatio and every bit such deserves careful attention. Not only does he address a powerful justification for the continuation of slavery — the belief that it is protected by the Constitution — but he also asserts a controversial theory virtually Ramble interpretation.
68. Fellow-citizens! at that place is no matter in respect to which, the people of the Northward have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to exist 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 practice not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument [legal understanding, in this case a deed], drawn up, legally drawn upwardly, for the purpose of entitling [giving ownership to] the city of Rochester to a tract [piece] of country, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are sure rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are apparently, mutual-sense rules, such as y'all and I, and all of u.s.a., tin can sympathise and apply, without having passed years in the study 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 course an opinion of the Constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells the states that the Constitution is an object to which no American mind can be also attentive, and no American eye besides devoted. He farther says, the Constitution, in its words, is manifestly and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the central law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might exist named, who are everywhere esteemed equally audio lawyers, so regard the Constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a individual citizen to course an opinion of that instrument.
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Conclusion ('Peroratio'): Paragraph 71
Paragraph 71
Note: Conclusions are important. Inquire your students how they function and what they should do. The terminal words an audition hears, they often linger and shape the impression of an entire voice communication. Traditionally, speakers utilize them to practice four things: leave the audience with a favorable opinion, emphasize primal points, stimulate an appropriate emotional response, or summarize the statement. Douglass does not emphasize fundamental points or recapitulate his arguments. Rather, he seeks to cast his instance for abolition in a favorable light and instill hope in his listeners.
28. What are conclusions supposed to practice?
Traditionally, four things: leave the audition with a favorable opinion, emphasize key points, stimulate an advisable emotional response, or summarize the argument.
29. Why is it important for Douglass to tell his listeners that he does "not despair of this country"?
Even though he has but delivered a dark and stinging denunciation of the state, he does not want his listeners to leave the hall feeling depressed and hopeless.
xxx. 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 ideals, if the nation tin can alive up to them, make the United States, despite its flaws, a place of hope and hope for the enslaved. He also looks to the future in which he believes commercial and technological progress — ships using steam to brand a "pathway" over the ocean and telegraph cables using "lightning" (electricity) to practice the same under it — will spread intelligence, enlightenment, and moral progress throughout the world.
71. Allow me to say, in decision, even so the night picture I have this day presented of the state 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, go 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 also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations practise non at present stand up in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now close itself up from the surrounding globe, and trot round in the same quondam path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social dispensation. Cognition was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of flesh. Walled cities and empires accept become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the potent city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. Information technology makes its pathway over and under the sea, likewise as on the world. Current of air, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer split, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on 1 side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other. The far-off and about fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Omnipotent, "Let there be Calorie-free," has not yet spent its strength. No corruption, no outrage whether in taste, sport or forehandedness, tin at present hide itself from the all-pervading calorie-free. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must ascent and put on her still 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 saying it:
God speed the year of jubilee
The broad world o'er!
When from their galling bondage prepare free,
Th' oppressed shall vilely bend the articulatio genus,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes, no more than:—
That year will come, and Liberty'southward reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.
God speed the solar day when human claret
Shall stop to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of homo brotherhood,
And each render for evil, adept—
Not blow for blow:—
That day will come, all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.
God speed the 60 minutes, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall practice a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant's presence cower;
Simply all to Manhood's stature tower,
By equal nascency!—
That 60 minutes will come up, to each, to all,
And from his prison house-firm the thrall
Get forth.
Until that year, day, hr get in,
With caput and centre and hand I'll strive,
To intermission the rod, and rend the gyve,—
The spoiler of his casualty deprive,―
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate'er the peril or the cost,
Exist driven.
Image: Daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass, ca. 1855 (creator unknown). Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Rubel Collection, Fractional and Promised Gift of William Rubel, 2001 (2001.756). Reproduced by permission.
Source: https://americainclass.org/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/
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